Lateral with Tom Scott
Comedy panel game about weird questions with wonderful answers. Each week, Tom Scott is joined by three guests to ask each other questions with a sideways twist. There's no points or prizes - just reputation and bragging rights on the line. For business enquiries, contestants applications and question submissions, visit https://www.lateralcast.com
Our Editor's Take
Lateral with Tom Scott offers listeners intellectual stimulation with a side of humor. Each question on this panel quiz podcast seeks to make the guests think outside the norm. It encourages them to consider unusual associations to find an unlikely answer. In the process, the panelists also joke and quip about whatever comes to mind. The podcast hopes to make learning fun or to make entertainment educational. Either way, it succeeds in creating quality content.
The podcast host, Tom Scott, has always had a curious mind. Almost any project he was a part of had an educational element. The first podcast that he did, along with his improv group, was a reverse trivia game show. Using a 1984 trivia game, the panelists had to guess the question from the answer on the back of the card. A later project, featured on Scott's YouTube channel, received the title Citation Needed. In this quiz, the host presented a Wikipedia article and had the guests come up with facts about the topic.
After that came Lateral, where participants had to find the answers by way of deduction. Since the format gained positive reviews from YouTube viewers, Scott revived it as a podcast. However, in this version, he removed the competitive element. Instead, he wanted to generate longer, funnier discussions by making the guests collaborate. They first say whatever they think of, no matter how irrelevant, to progress the lateral thinking process.
Since most panelists are comedians, these are always hilarious responses. For instance, one question stated that skydivers always carry a toilet paper roll. To understand why, it determined that dog walkers use the same reason to carry baby powder and soap. The responses to this odd question were wild. One podcast panelist decided that the toilet paper could act as a distress flare. Another answer suggested that baby powder helps a walker recognize if the dog has farted.
Lateral with Tom Scott presents lighthearted and clean entertainment with obscure facts. It might also be fun for people listening together to play along and see who gets it right.
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