Lateral with Tom Scott 171: Duck on expenses
15 snips
Jan 16, 2026 Join Ella Hubber, Caroline Roper, and Tom Lum from the Let's Learn Everything podcast as they dive into quirky questions and amazing facts. Discover the concept of a 'brown ace' in disc golf, and learn about the amusing uses of rubber ducks in debugging. They discuss how tourists mislabel locations in Iceland and the quirky use of a Nintendo Mii in a police investigation. Lastly, find out why identical items appear three apart on hooks and how Danish hikers use beer cases to count storm distance. It's a wild ride of knowledge and humor!
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Unexpected Disc Golf Terms
- A "brown ace" in disc golf means a hole-in-one that lands in the wrong receptacle — the trash bin.
- Variants include "black ace" (wrong basket) and "grey ace" (correct hole, wrong basket).
Use Clear Signals For Chores
- Use clear, simple markers to avoid domestic friction, like magnets showing dishwasher status.
- Choose culturally meaningful icons or people to make the signal obvious and memorable.
Talk Problems Out To Solve Them
- Rubber duck debugging is explaining a problem aloud to a nonjudgmental object to find the solution.
- It prevents interrupting colleagues and often reveals the fix before asking for help.
