Bridges, bathroom mirrors, and Bob.
13th October 2025
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Hello!
First of all: thanks to everyone who attended the Lateral live show yesterday! At least, I hope that's something I can say; I'm writing this on Friday, so from my perspective the show's a couple of days away. If either myself or the theatre collapsed, well, that's my fault for tempting fate. The podcast itself continues, of course! This week, Macy Gilliam, Toby Howell and Neal Freyman from 'Morning Brew' face questions about tortuous things, terrible typefaces and talented tans. As for the road trip: it’s nearly done but there’s still some mopping-up to do, alas.
First of all: thanks to everyone who attended the Lateral live show yesterday! At least, I hope that's something I can say; I'm writing this on Friday, so from my perspective the show's a couple of days away. If either myself or the theatre collapsed, well, that's my fault for tempting fate. The podcast itself continues, of course! This week, Macy Gilliam, Toby Howell and Neal Freyman from 'Morning Brew' face questions about tortuous things, terrible typefaces and talented tans. As for the road trip: it’s nearly done but there’s still some mopping-up to do, alas.
All of this week's video suggestions are from channels that I've linked to before. Which
seems a little disappointing: I'd like to focus on new and smaller channels from time to time, but I can only see what YouTube shows me. So if you happen across something that'd fit well here, do send it over to me! But in the meantime, here's good stuff I've found on YouTube this week:
- Calum's video on the Bailey Bridge, the "invention that won World War 2", is a lovely combination of location and studio work, well-narrated, that also contains a brilliant demonstration with matchboxes. It's worth your time: I knew about the concept of Bailey bridges, but never more than that until now.
- Dallas Taylor does in-person, deep-dive interviews with the sound technicians on big American TV shows. This time, he's talking to Bob Palladino, who mixed Saturday Night Live for 40 years, before his final show -- and the person who'll be taking over the job next. This gets quite technical, but I found it interesting even though
it's nowhere near my areas of expertise.
- MinutePhysics spends a pleasant five minutes on common moon mistakes. I learned something about the stripes of Jupiter that's obvious in hindsight but which I'd never considered before.
And around the rest of the web:
- Did somebody really
gut the inside of a 4,000-seat theatre and turn it into a car park? For once, the answer to the question posed in the opening of the post is yes.
- You may remember, a few newsletters ago, I linked to a "cesium-contaminated shrimp" news story as if it was a minor, relatively lighthearted thing. Since then, things have taken a turn, and a journalist at Consumer Reports
investigates: what is really going on with all this radioactive shrimp? "Investigators think that radioactive dust was released into the environment after PMT inadvertently smelted scrap metal containing cesium-137."
- Heavyweight.cc is part web toy, part joke, and part tool. It makes any letter look like it's sent by a team of American lawyers. There's a behind-the-scenes blog post, which includes the wonderful line "I worry about people using it because I’m not sure it will work." And from a technical standpoint, it's really impressive: as far as I can tell, this is all done in-browser!
And finally, I have absolutely no context for this, but over on TikTok, here's an excellent use of a bathroom mirror. (Alternate link.)
All the best,
— Tom
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