What Flying Animal is missing from this book title? P is for Blank, the worst alphabet book ever.

The answer to that, at the end of the show. My name's Tom Scott, and this is Lateral.

Hello, welcome to Lateral and a little bit of behind-the-scenes info for you today.

We are recording the show at an earlier time than usual, so forgive us if we take a little bit of time to warm up.

We tried solving a test question just before we started recording, and it turned out it was just the instructions for the coffee machine.

So we didn't solve anything, but I do now understand how to make a macchiato.

So there's that. Here to see what's brewing. We have an all-Australian special today. We start with YouTuber talking about city design and Melbourne. Julian O'Shea, welcome back to the show. Saying good-day feels like the right thing to do today. Yeah, we can do it. Every time you say good-day, those Brits, they're like, what's going on?

That's right. What's the, what are the words coming out of this guy's mouth? But we can do it today.

We can tell who the rest of the panel is already, but Julian, how are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Fantastic to be back.

Yeah. You say it's an early start.

No, it's not my friend. It is evening time.

According to three quarters of the paddle.

Yeah.

What are you up to at the moment?

What's, uh, you say it's an early start. No, it's not my friend in his evening time, according to three quarters of the panel. Yeah. What are you up to at the moment? What's,

what's going on in your world? Making videos, making videos for the national broadcaster,

which feels like a promotion. Yes, so you can see my stuff on the ABC, the little Australian

cousin of the BBC.

I do like how Australia and the UK refer it to, like, the ABC, the BBC.

America is just NBC, CBS. They don't get the article.

That's right. And that's the, that pause just kind of matters, you know?

The elevation, the status of the.

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