A magical bit of string

[@lateralcast]

FULL EPISODE: www.lateralcast.com/episodes/102 PRE-ORDER THE BOOK: www.lateralcast.com/book

[@annebolynzarsilve]

I just noticed the subtitles change the spelling of "multicolo(u)red" depending on who is speaking 😂

[@Jimmy_Jones]

Tom does like to be very accurate with subtitles

[@hairyairey]

​@@Jimmy_JonesWe Brits manage to hide the (u) when we speak!

[@matze1211]

Specifically dependent on whether the speaker is British or American, they also do this for other words with different spelling!

[@danchristoph2255]

Well, of course. That way you are conscious of the different pronunciation of "colo(u)r" based on the individual dialect of the speaker. ;)

[@ChrisWar666]

​@@danchristoph2255coluh? 😁

[@stapler942]

Oh wow, that is wholesome in a way that tugs at the multicoloured heart strings.

[@timothymclean]

My first thought was "Theseus and the minotaur," which I discarded immediately for obviously being wrong. Imagine how surprised I was when I discovered that the kid is in a labyrinth and the string does actually lead out of said labyrinth. (5:01, 5:47)

[@Oddlot0930]

I'm not crying, you are.

[@TITSTODIEFOR]

'fraid so.

[@LordTrousers]

Tom, in many previous episodes: "We don't do dark, sad questions."

[@SpyrosKoronis]

I guess it might be because the question focuses on eradicating cancer and keeping the patient calm, rather than cancer itself.

[@vaclav_fejt]

Well this isn't dark either, is it?

[@CurtTweedle]

Does glowing in the dark count?

[@AreilKnight]

It's not dark, it's bitter-sweet, fate of the universe has dealt this child an awful hand, but humanity has stepped up to provide comfort and compassion for children undergoing radiation. Having seen the way the radiation process goes for adults, it's often utilitarian and cold, it warms my heart to know that extra steps are taken for children to have fun designs on their masks, and a connection with their family.

[@bbrockert]

You get Hank Green on your strange little show, you let him do a question that's important to him.

[@GustavSvard]

As a parent, this is intense. Never had to do this specific thing, but I've held down my toddler so the xray image would come out crisp. No need for a string to feel the connection, but not easy either. Being a parent is amazing, and also not without hardship at times.

[@marimbaguy715]

I immediately thought of some kind of cancer treatment - Hank giving the question unfortunately was a bit of a giveaway

[@BlazeMiskulin]

I was wrong. I thought it was the knitted octopuses that they give to premature babies. The yarn mimics the umbilical cord which gives a sense of familiar environment, and the entire thing gives tactile feedback which is important to early development (like how newborns cling to your finger--or beard, or chest hair, for the dads 😆). Also, the babies pull on the yarn rather than the various tubes and wires taped to them. If you knit or crochet, and are looking for simple projects to use up all those short yarn scraps, see if there's an octopus group in your area.

[@shllybkwrm]

This is cool, never heard of it!

[@milksheihk]

I'm old enough that I've been on an airliner where the headphones were hollow tubes that plugged into a box with an enclosed speaker.

[@empath69]

Yep! It's also the basis for literal Muzak™, a patented system of providing 'mood music' to offices and elevators, etc. Instead of using wires and speakers, Muzak would use ductwork and pipes to literally 'pipe the music' to where you wanted it. Long since obsolete, but it still shapes our language with its influence (muzak is now a generalized term for 'waiting room music')

[@greensteve9307]

I remember that too, and I'm younger than Tom! About 1997 for me.

[@empath69]

@@greensteve9307 ouch! I'm ooooold ;)

[@milksheihk]

@@greensteve9307 it was 1994 when I was on said airliner & I was already 16.

[@williamnathanael412]

This is much more wholesome than I could have imagined.

[@abigailcooling6604]

I guessed the general location almost immediately, then got thrown by the multicoloured nature of the string and couldn't figure any more out.

[@space.tel-e-grams]

such a sweet spot in a really crappy situation

[@Zichqec]

One of the few questions where I got the answer before they did and was dying watching them skirt around the answer 😂 As soon as he said it was something where the parent could not be in the room, I knew! Because I've seen Hank talk about this before! Not this specific thing, but with the labyrinth and all that

[@gabagoul67]

1:50 Love how the tiny British TV presenter inside Tom had to make sure no one at home might take his little ground wire joke the wrong way and accidentally hurt themselves

[@chevronagon9912]

Other plug systems are available 😂

[@IceMetalPunk]

That said, we don't say "earth" here like that, we say "ground", so anyone who would want to try that at home with a different plug system also wouldn't know what he's talking about 😂

[@grmpf]

The joke itself, on the other hand, was much less "respectable TV presenter" Tom and more "thought process of a man who tried to burn off his fingerprints with a pineapple, ran for multiple elections in character as a pirate, faked a government website to warn of the zombie apocalypse, and cooked food on a clothes iron" Tom.

[@WyvernYT]

To be sure, if a kid starts touching anything electrical, the ground wire is the least bad of the options.

[@itskdog]

​@@grmpf He tried cooking with hair straighteners as well

[@JoeBleasdaleReal]

This one made me cry just thinking about it. I was sort of aware that Great Ormond Street does a similar thing with the masks, because one of my best mates from uni has a son who was diagnosed with lymphoma at seven, and it recently came back. I always send him and the family extra large birthday cards, they’ve been through so much yet there’s an insanely positive glint in his eyes. No child should ever have to go through this but it’s so cool that doctors have come up with little ways to make it slightly less unbearable. Thanks to Hank for sharing this ❤

[@b33thr33kay]

I absolutely adore hearing stories of adults coming up with simple but effective ways to make kids feel better in scary situations. ❤

[@Mythilt]

Those MRI headphones are what the Airlines used to use when they would play movies during long flights...the headphones had no electronics, and you would have to buy them as the movie started.

[@VonOzbourne]

Ah, but you didn't have to buy the headphone thing. I was able to use a Fisher Price stethoscope held to the end of the armrest to the same effect, if with mono sound.

[@thirdwheel1985au]

I remember taking flights where they'd be provided, but of course you'd have to give them back because they were useless everywhere else

[@techno1561]

I was expecting the string to not be connected to anything, and that it was meant to be a fidget toy bracelet or something along those lines.

[@nikkiofthevalley]

I was thinking that too, because I'm autistic and I could genuinely see myself playing with a multicolored piece of string

[@myladycasagrande863]

My initial thought was about the crocheted octopuses that are sometimes given to preemies, so that the baby will hold onto the tentacles instead of their medical tubes/wires (and thereby prevent accidentally displacing the equipment).

[@kf10147]

I thought it was a friendship bracelet for emotional support!

[@phreddalicious]

After going through radiation therapy myself this past summer, this one not only hit close to home, but was fairly fast for me to get.

[@glomann]

bitten by a radioactive spider. got cancer instead of superpowers.

[@IceMetalPunk]

I mean... there was that story in the comics of what happened to Mary Jane...

[@chairwood]

ok the hulk tho

[@anonyslime]

I was conceptually close. I realized it was probably keeping a child in contact with parent during some sort of medical isolation. But I thought it was one of those old cups on a string phones

[@Tomtit_Andy]

Wholesome story. 😊

[@sophiamarchildon3998]

I enjoy this group joking along together. Hope to see them again soon.

[@random832]

For the ground wire in the US, the modern electrical code allows the green-yellow or just green, but traditionally they're just bare copper.

[@mortuos557]

my thought was a collapsed building and they give the kid the string so it knows it's been found and they're working hard to get it out.

[@bonelesswatermelon420]

Oh wow my first thought was just slinky toys. Did not expect that fact at the end.

[@MercenaryPen]

has to be said for superhero origin stories involving radiation, arguably the Hulk is a closer fit that Spider-Man to what is being described here

[@Spanner1971B]

The coloured-ness of the string completely threw me off. I wanted to guess almost exactly the answer (I went with MRI and assumed you couldnt be in the room for it), but mentally eliminated this line of reasoning due to the coloured nature of the string.

[@grandicellichannel]

0:37 Good grief, so proud that Tom is (probably) part of the Blade Runner fandom - or that he just likes it to the point of remembering the Voight-Kampff Test questions' format! 😎

[@robertwilloughby8050]

Yes, sound tubes exist, they're called Gosport Tubes, they were (are?) used for communication on board ships. It's basically an amplifier on one end and a speaker on the other.

[@KyrilPG]

Speaking from experience too, the mask screwed to the the board is really a nightmare. Plus, it has to be molded on the face with very tiny breathing holes. It's absolutely horrible...

[@olivier2553]

The way Tom describes the tube headphone, he does not seem to remember that not that long ago, that was the way headphones worked aboard airplanes.

[@gymnasiast90]

How long ago is that? My first flight was in 2002 and the plane had plain 3.5 mm stereo jacks that you could plug your own headphones into. Tom is a few years older than I am, so this tube headphone era could easily have been before his time

[@KlayJones]

I never get the answer right away until the last two - Charlie bit my finger and this one. I have a kid who has been in the hospital a lot, so I instantly knew what was going on. So sweet!

[@holgerchristiansen4003]

My guess was that it had something to do with eye surgery and the multicolored aspect was for the kid to be able to verify that it worked in some way.

[@wyrdlg]

That was a frightening heartwarming interesting exciting question!

[@NickJerrison]

What's with the bots lol

[@sirBrouwer]

They also want a magic string

[@sandwich2473]

I'm surprised it took them so long to get the last bit

[@RFC3514]

"What's that, Little Billy, you want your mask to be painted with... Hannibal Lecter?"

[@draquillin]

I was expecting the child to be revealed as not a human child at some point

[@alxk3995]

Dang this is a combination of harsh and wholesome.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

3:50 - Tom obviously just a little too young to remember airplane headphones. (That were basically exactly what he describes - they weren’t electric speakers connected by a wire, they were “air tubes that just relayed stuff with just plastic into your ears” - the “headphone sockets” on airplane seats were just holes for air - you could hunker down and put your ear up to the headphone socket and hear whatever was playing.)

[@SpikeMatthews]

I must admit I thought it was an isolation chamber for immune system-compromised kids.

[@Nintendont64]

I thought this was going to be about a baby in the womb with the umbilical cord lol

[@lucydog3376]

Well... That ended up being severely depressing.

[@lmpeters]

Several years ago, I saw a pair of headphones that used that hollow-tube design so that the electromagnetic parts could be placed as far away from your head as possible. Because some people still think that tiny doses of electromagnetic radiation will give them cancer.

[@ashleyh7755]

I fully believed this child was in utero, and the "multicolored string" was the umbilical cord

[@ashleyh7755]

The real answer hit me so hard

[@cauto84]

why salty water comes out of my eyes?

[@winkletter]

Good job, Hank, sporting the Pizzamas merch just in time for Pizzamas.

[@ginvr]

I love this much more than perhaps I should

[@epimorphism]

Is the child human? Maybe the child is a young bird or something, and some multicolored string is enough to entertain them.

[@_D_P_]

I was going to guess braiding as a simple manual task to keep the mind off the procedure.

[@jamespusey7186]

does this work for adults or do i have to be 5 or so years younger

[@korbindallas4552]

Because there's a balloon attached to the other end, and everyone knows balloons are therapeutic (ignoring irrational phobias).

[@LydiaFossmark]

the guys from hey riddle riddle would be great on this show

[@Beanedict_C]

Aw that’s such a good idea ♥️

[@luckygozer]

The answer was so sweet and so sad

[@sarahprunierlaw9147]

I thought it was a baby in the womb

[@AR-ed3xw]

How long is a piece of string?

[@williamnathanael412]

Is the roadblock and northbound thing from an earlier question?

[@alveolate]

yea i'm curious too... sometimes they cut up the segments and release them out of chronological order, afaik no previous yt vids have mentioned that yet

[@matze1211]

Yes it is

[@TheM0JEC]

MRI scanner?

[@Auric-BraiNerd]

I think this is the first time that I absolutely knew it 100% confidence from the outset. There were times where I had an inkling in guest right but never this degree of certainty. However I'm 100% cheating since I'm a child neurologist and have spent a lot of time in neuroncology and radiation oncology during my training.

[@trainzelda1428]

[SPOILERS] . . . I just assumed it was a given that the child had cancer, and it took me a minute to realize that wasnt actually included in the question, but rather something they were supposed to figure out. Knowing the show's tendency to give questions to people with the relevant expertise, my mind was just already there.

[@alexj9603]

S p o i l e r Hank is the right person to ask this question, given what he has been through.

[@Idefilms]

Upload the one where Hank got it within 20 seconds, you cowards 😉 (Love the show!)

[@sophiamarchildon3998]

Initial thoughts: a child going through a scan (X-ray, CAT, MRI, etc.) which leave it alone in a "scary" place. The coloured strings could in the short-term captivate/focus its attention, making it feel better by forgetting about the scary place for a moment or two. It could even be that the other end of those strings is held by a parent to reassure the kid that it's not alone and that they are still there together. The long-term is just the info from the scan that helps provide better medical care.

[@sophiamarchildon3998]

4:12 So not a scan... an incubator (like for premature-born babies), or an isolation chamber (to prevent contamination)?

[@Z_MIB]

I'm sure in the US they would charge for use of the string

[@jacobschwartz6579]

Boo!

[@ianjackson8643]

If I was the parent I wouldn’t tug back if the kid tugged the string or even better let go of the string

[@SenshiSunPower]

Ooh, we've got a certified edgelord over here!

[@KyrilPG]

The process and experience with the mask screwed to the board is really horrible. Plus it needs to be molded on the face first and has very tiny breathing holes. It really is an extremely difficult time even for adults, so why you wouldn't try to make it a bit less so?

[@paradoxica424]

@@SenshiSunPower the wolf DP says all we need to know, really.

[@space.tel-e-grams]

Maybe your parent should have let go of you, sociopath

[@jamesaditya5254]

by the sound of it, that's a really big if