So when I was in college, we had this group of friends and we thought we were so very clever. You're like, you were 19, 20 years old. Oh yeah. We had it figured out.
Well, that's the pinnacle of cleverness. That's when you're actually the cleverness. Exactly. They say peak attractiveness age for a man is probably mid 40s.
Yeah. Well, for now, that number's always getting updated. Yeah, I know. I've heard that it's going to be late 40s soon, but they don't know for sure.
Yeah, I've got it. You've got it. But peak cleverness and total intelligence and knowledge of the world. Yes.
They say that's 19 to 19 and a half. Really? Yep. So that's about how old we were.
But it was a group of friends that we would get together at the Ferg at the University of Alabama, which was the place where you at the Ferguson Center. Oh, I knew there had to be a reason. I like that. The Ferg.
Yeah. So we all said the Ferg and we'd just give you an idea of how clever we were back then. I'm going through the Ferg. We had $200 on our meal plan for the semester, which means you never had want for anything.
You could use $200 to eat forever. It's an unfathomable amount of money. Yes, exactly. Right.
In 19, no, in 2001 or whenever that was. They're setting up all the stuff at the Ferg. You know, they get all these little, I still remember the case of the E is at one little mixing place. It was great.
It was fantastic. But anyway, so they're setting up all the fruit. And you could everyone swap out and go and get breakfast there. This is fruit $1.
And they have like this really nice spread. And it's set up and you get to tray. Like I love to the cafeteria tray thing. You get to tray and you go through.
And they had like the fruit there. And then they have like the fruit design on top. What? You know fruit designs?
Well, it was like a, I don't know. It was like a centerpiece for a table. Our hamburger patties floated in warm water. And that's awesome.
Yeah. So they came to have fruit designs. There was a whole pineapple. They clearly took pride in what they were doing.
They had a pineapple there. And they had to sign says fruit $1. I see a pineapple and I'm like, well, pineapple's fruit. Yeah, it absolutely is.
And you have $200. So I just got the pineapple. Yeah. I just, I remember how proud of myself I was when I was doing it.
I was like, checkmate. And I just put the pineapple on my tray. And I just went to the front. And they're like, what are you doing?
I was like, I just wanted the fruit. And they're like, you can't do that. That's our decoration. I was like, I'm sorry.
It was sitting right beside the sign that said fruit $1. It's fruit. And right now you're violating my ninth amendment right. You know what I mean?
No, no, no, no, no. I just like, I just kind of looked at it on my grand. I was like, we both know what's happening. Can I just have the pineapple?
And they're like, look, I appreciate what you're doing. Also go put the pineapple back. I was like, OK, let's go with the pineapple back. But that's kind of, you know, at that age, I had a lot of bravado.
I had one, a couple of science things in high school. You know, you know what I mean? So I pretty much had everything figured out. Obviously.
Well, one of the things that we loved to do as a little friend group is about four or five nerds is we would get her food at the Ferg. And if we didn't have a test that we were studying for, we would just sit there and eat and talk about all of our vast experience in the world and all the things that we figured out, right? And one of the things we started doing is we started doing these little teasers and these brain-picking things where, you know, you present a situation to someone and they have to ask some questions to figure out what happened. There's this one in particular that I remember that I really enjoyed.
I think this has the potential to be the absolute worst thing we've ever done into a microphone. Oh, no. But at the same time, it has the potential to be very, very fun. Oh, yes.
This could be a very binary situation here. This could go to the depths of Tina's hard drive never to return. I was super comfortable to tell like 20 seconds ago. Yeah.
What? What? No, I can feel tension in my abdomen. So basically, basically, what I want to do is I want to give you this little, it's that I'm not making eye contact.
That's the problem. Yeah, you're shifty right now. It's weird, dude. OK.
Normally, you've got that. I'm realizing that this might not be as good to do. Fear me roar kind of eye contact, stare down, but you are everywhere, but on me. Yeah.
I think the reason that I'm looking all over the room is that I realized I would have been more effective had we not been in the same room because I can read you a little bit and you can read me. All right. If you want to just, I mean, there's a thing right there. You can just hide behind it.
No. No. Here we go. OK, so here's the deal.
You can ask me yes or no questions. OK. And you've got to figure out the story. OK.
Do I get anything to start with? Here you go. OK. So there's a room and there's a dead body in the room.
In the room, there's a cup filled with pink liquid. How did the person die? I assume all of my questions from here on out. They count.
Yeah. Yeah. How many do I have? I don't care.
Oh, this is OK. We're going to get there one way or not. How long you got. So this episode of Twilight Zone where the vampire chases the guy into the room.
And he hides behind the locked door. And the vampire who's immortal is like, oh, I'm going to get you. 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1 pound. And there, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2 pound.
Really? And the guy in the little locked glass room just has to stand there while the vampire goes through all the numbers. Because he can do this all day. Yeah.
So we're going to get there one way or another. OK. OK. Did this actually happen?
No. Oh. OK, that helps. That's my next question was going to be, did you kill him?
No. So you didn't. No, I didn't kill him. You've not killed anybody.
No, no, no. OK, that was my understanding. So the ground rules here. This is an exercise.
I'll tell you the type of exercise this is at the end. But the three answers I can give you, we can banter and stuff. But I'm going to say yes, no, or be more specific. OK.
That's kind of how I'm going to answer the questions. But we used to do this thing all the time. It was really fun because it's an exercise in your brain and how your brain approaches a problem. Huh.
OK. Well, yeah. That was going to be great. I have no idea what this is.
Yeah, no. This is cold. I have no idea if there's an actual answer. Does everybody else has heard this?
I don't know about this. This is why I regret being in the room. Because you can kind of read my body language. And you can pick up a little bit more than just the yes or no.
Well, just be deceptive with your body language. What? No, what is it? Is it offensive?
You don't know. I don't know. See, so do that. It'll throw me off.
OK. OK, please don't actually do that. OK, dang it. You're actually going to do it.
No, go ahead. All right, here we go. Yep. Is this man famous?
No. You're actually doing it. You're doing the baby alien popping out of the chest. Yes, you're going to throw me off.
And it's working. Go ahead. Go ahead. All right.
I think there's already stinks. I think we've already. No, I think this is phenomenal. All right.
All right. Did he die of natural causes? No. All right.
That's a great question. No. Are there any obvious signs of injury trauma or struggle on his body? Yes.
Is he clothed? Yes. Is he fully clothed? See that one?
We'll say yes. Yes. OK. OK.
All right. Does the room have access to the outside, to sit outdoors and windows to the outside? Be more specific. Can you walk immediately from this room to outside of the building?
We're up. Yeah. Yes. OK.
So we're just going to picture that it's a room like that. Sure. Is this room in the United States of America? Yes, it is.
OK. Yeah, it is. Did this happen during my lifetime? Yes, it did.
Yeah, sure. You see what I'm doing? Yeah, I do. I do.
You're being annoying. But go ahead. No. Yes, I'm going to keep going.
Keep going. Keep going. How it, wait. Stop.
We're in a fight. How am I being annoying? I'm just throwing you off right now. All right.
Is the pink liquid drinkable? Yes. Is it safe to drink? Yes.
If I drink the contents of that glass of pink liquid, would I suffer bodily harm? No. OK. Is the container of pink liquid full?
No. OK. It's pretty awesome in it. This is awesome.
Is there a bed in the room? Be more specific. Is there a bed in the room? Yes.
OK. What would be a more specific way to ask that question? I don't know. I'm just poking you.
Go ahead. OK. All right. Is the dead man on the bed?
No. Is the dead man on the floor? Yes. Is the dead man face down?
No. Are the dead man's eyes open? Uh, irrelevant. Has the dead man been dead for longer than 24 hours when I discover him?
Yes. Has the dead man been dead for longer than a week when I discover him? No. OK.
Are there any signs around the room of forced entry, breaking an entry? Is there any damage to the room? Mm-hmm. No.
Is there anyone else in the room? No. Is there a dresser in the room? Uh, the cup setting on something.
Uh, sure. It's a dresser. Mm. Is it a standard height ceiling?
Yes. Eight feet, let's say. Yes. Is there a ceiling fan?
Um, no. Are there any communication devices in the room? No. Did this man die of a heart attack while in a room and there was a container of pink liquid in the room when that happened?
No. Is the man's death related to the container of pink liquid? Yes. And now you're starting to, this is the interesting part, right?
Because the nature of the questions are changing. They're broadening, but they're, you're going to get this, but we'll talk about this later, but there's a moment where you pivot mentally and you've started to do it already. And the answer is yes. The pink liquid is related to the man's death.
OK. And just so I don't forget, here's my journey so far. I wanted to start with picture. Just make sure it's not some obvious little gimmicky thing.
So it doesn't matter when, it doesn't matter where. I'm just trying to eliminate things that don't matter so I can throw my attention to the stuff that does, including the when question is big to me. That adds or removes a lot of possibilities. I would agree with you.
That is an important question. And you said yes to the question, did this occur during my lifetime? Yeah. Yeah.
But you said, yeah, telling me whatever. Yes. So it's a timeless question. Cool.
Then I wanted to feel out, is it just a dumb gimmick, like a children's riddle where it's just some play on words is really what we're doing here. There were 44 heads. What? But there were only 40 people on that bus.
How could the coroner after the accident have counted 44 heads? Right. Oh, it's playing words. I forgot it.
Yeah. So I'm just making sure it's not that. Yeah. Did you ask all these questions?
You're an idiot. That was a reasoning. And the pivot question you're right was, okay, is it what it looks like? Something happened with the pink liquid and now the guy's dead.
And the answer is yes, yes. Something happened with the pink liquid. Did the man ingest any of the pink liquid? No.
Did any of the pink liquid get poured on him leading to his death? No. Did any of the pink liquid evaporate in a way that would cause him to inhale it? No.
Not in any way that would lead to his death. Okay. Does he own the pink liquid? No.
Did he own the pink liquid before he died? Yes. Did his wife inherit the pink liquid from him after he died because of an overly elaborate and well-crafted will that could have anticipated this type of death? No.
Okay. Just again, I was just checking. That's an absurdity check. Okay.
He did own the pink liquid. Did he not consuming the pink liquid lead to his death? No. If he had consumed the pink liquid, would he still be alive?
If he had consumed the pink liquid, would he still be alive? No. That could be misleading. Okay.
I can ask anything here, right? Yeah. Did he die of disfixation? No.
Did he die of strangulation? No. Did he die of internal organ failure? It'd be more specific.
Did he die of a heart attack? No. Did he die of an aneurysm? No.
Did he die because of some sort of trauma, blood force? No. Did he die because of ingestion? No.
That being, he ingested something he should not have? No. Did he die of natural causes? No.
Thought I'd already asked that one, but the way you were shaping it up, it's a double check. And did he die of electrocution? No. Was he alive once?
Yes. Now we're pivoting. So we're pivoting, I'm not going to call it panic mode, but it's like a, you're like, okay, there's something here that I'm not seeing and I've got to try to figure it out. It's like climbing a wall and you need a toe hold and you're looking for it.
This is interesting. Watch your mind do it. Keep going. If I walked in and saw the situation, would it be immediately evident to me in your estimation, knowing my capacities?
What happened if I saw it? Yes. Did the room move in some way when he died? No.
Is the room in a place that makes sense attached to a building? Yes. Did a cataclysm happen outside the room? Any more specific?
Okay. I'm going to take a different run of that. Is the cause of his death still in the room? Yes.
Is the cause of his death that is still in the room connected to something else outside the room and it wouldn't be the cause of his death if it weren't for that other thing external to the room working in conjunction? Yes. There we go. That was a complicated one.
I've never had anyone ask that question in this. That was a very complicated question. And the answer is yes. If I were to go to other rooms in the same neighborhood, in the same city, in the same county, would I find other people dead in the same way?
No. Is there something unique to this man's physiology or physical condition that made him particularly susceptible to whatever killed him? No. Would it have killed anyone?
Yes. Even a person in prime health would be dead from what happened? Yes. Okay.
Was he murdered? Yes. Is the murderer still alive? Yes.
Did the murderer try to hide the fact that they committed a murder? Yes. Is the pink liquid part of that deception? Yes.
That's a hard one. That's hard. Does the motive of the murderer matter? No.
Okay. Did he know the murderer? Yes. Okay.
Yeah. Irrelevant. Okay. We're not going to go through the whole backstory of why it took place.
But you would if you were actually trying to figure it out and you didn't know the answer. Yeah, you would. Okay. Did the murderer kill anyone else?
No. Has the murderer ever killed anyone else? No. Jerk.
Did the murderer play in this in advance? No. Did the murderer see an opportunity and seize it in the moment? Yes.
Did the opportunity have to do with a coincidental accident unfolding at the same time? No. Did the opportunity have to do with an atmospheric event outside the room? Yes.
Is the atmospheric event common enough that we see it once a year? Yes. Is the atmospheric event a thunderstorm? No.
Is it a snowstorm? Yes. Is the pink liquid antifreeze? No.
You said I could drink it. Did the deceased freeze to death? No. Was the deceased crushed?
No. Did the accumulation of snow directly lead to the death of the individual? Be more specific. Did the accumulation of snow enable the murderer to get away with what they wanted to do anyway?
Um, be more specific. That means I'm close. That's good. Did snow physically factor into the death of the man?
Be more specific. Did ice physically factor into the death of the man? Yes. Is the man bleeding or cut in any way?
Yes. Was the man stabbed with ice? Yes. Is the pink liquid a mixture of the ice and his blood?
Yep. This episode of No Dumb Questions is brought to you by Raycon. They make earbuds that we both like. Hey, Dustin.
Yeah. Guess what I'm listening to you on right now? If I had to guess, I would say it's a conch shell that you found on the beach that somehow is connected to your little roadcaster mixer board. Is that right about that?
Well, no, that wouldn't make any sense at all. That's just not how electronics are. It's an empty housing of a formerly organic thing. It's not.
Is that where sand comes from? Like the sand on the beach? Is it basically shells? Isn't it just tiny little baby rocks?
What? Some of the shells, right? Like I think that's how it is. Because you can buy live rock and like a certain type of sand when you keep salt water fish.
So maybe it's just ground up shells mixed with little tiny baby rocks. We should know this. I feel stupid for not knowing this. It's not a conch shell.
I'm going a little tiny baby rocks. No, it's not a conch shell at all. It's my studio monitor headphones that I use whenever we record because it goes clear over my ear and then people can't hear when you talk in my microphone. But do you know what I would use if I wasn't recording a podcast right now and I was just like, I'm working on something and we were talking?
What would you use? A conch shell. Well, it would be Raycon. And that's the sponsors of this episode.
Yeah. You see what I did? I do. I do.
You made it. You fit it right in there. I fit it right in. You threw a lot of hurdles in my way, but I would not be toward it.
I appreciate that. Raycon's are great. They're buds that you can use and I last night when I was tucking my daughter in and my beautiful teenage daughter, I saw my blue Raycons on the ground under her bed. I was like, wait a second.
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They're so good that everybody steals them. And so I uncovered a pair last night and I was excited about it. It was the kind of have a little pill. You charge the pill and then the pill charges.
I call it a pill. It's a little storage box. It charges that your buds and your earbuds go right in your ear, Bluetooth, sinks up to the phone. I would say there's two technologies in my life that betray me more than anything else.
One of those is Bluetooth. Okay. And Raycon somehow has avoided that. They have figured out how to make the Bluetooth pairing thing on a phone just work perfectly.
But the other technology that has really betrayed me is those sinks that automatically detect when your hands are there. Those don't work well. I was sure you were going to say laser back acne removal. No, it's not.
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Do I win? Yeah. Sweet. So there's a snowstorm.
Okay. Whatever back story you need. A guy, you know, they're stranded or whatever. A guy comes in.
They have an altercation. There's icicles on the house. They get in a fight. Guy grabs an icicle.
Stabs him. There's a couple on the table. And the cup walks out the door. Huh.
Interesting, isn't it? Okay. Yes. It's interesting for a couple of reasons.
One, I wasted mental energy guarding against being made of fool of the entire time. Right. And if I'd been made a fool of it, it would have been fine. Yeah.
It's not like I was going to come back to you like, Dustin, you know what, dude? I needed to drop the whole thing right now. We're deleting this file. No one makes an idiot of me on the intern.
No one makes an idiot of Matt Whitman. No one makes me bleed my own blood. Now let's go watch that video where I dressed up like Pharaoh and shrieked into this camera and watch it. But it's a weird thing, right?
My guard was up. Yeah, why is that? I don't know. Not terribly.
I thought I had fun. Well, so we used to sit around and do these things all the time. And we would, it's an exercise in lateral thinking. I think Tom Scott actually has a podcast called lateral.
I got an email the other day for managing a part of that. But it's an exercise in figuring out what's important and what's not and what's adjacent to the thing that here's to be what's actually going on. I think this exercise keeps your mind nimble. And we as 19 year olds, we thought we were just the clevers people in the world sitting around and having conversations.
We were like talking about something that was super intellectual, you know what I mean? But I still find it to be fun. And the other day someone did something like this for me and they asked me this little riddle and I got to sit there and play. And I was like, this is really fun.
I was just reminded of that recently with our boys. They tried something like this, you know? Yeah. It was pretty cute because they didn't know the answers to the questions.
But it was really fun. Did we ever find out what it was? No, we did not. We found out that it was 25 questions, which I didn't know that the 25 was an interval.
I know that was a denomination of question games. I thought it was 20 questions. It was happy for the X for five. We got to the point where we knew it was not a plant, but it was a tree.
It was a tree. Right? And it was either deciduous or conifer. Yes, not totally positive on which one.
And you cannot eat things from this tree, but you might eat. I mean, you could, but you don't. And it's in my parents yard. Yes.
Or it was once or could be in the future. Yeah. And I was like, well, then I named literally every species. Until we were out of questions.
We lost and now they're never going to tell us. We're the losers. Have you ever done an exercise like this? Yeah.
I suppose I've done some of those murder mystery events. We did one of those in college. That's right. We did this in college too.
We did some kind of stupid board game murder mystery. Go into the thrift shop and we dressed up. And I overacted the whole time. I did not get it.
I'm so glad that wasn't recorded. You know, you got those 20 or 30 things in your brain that rides. You're going to sleep. You're like, remember that time of that murder mystery party?
When you overacted, you made an idiot of yourself in front of everyone? That's one of them. Oh, really? Yeah.
I just, I just, I mean, how can you over act it? I don't know. I just, I overacted. I was trying to like, oh, we're all playing parts.
Well, I shall be this guy and I'm working on my character and his motivations and it's soft. It's just embarrassing. I think I tried to sing too hard at karaoke. I love things like this.
I love these little brain teasers and some of the most famous ones are Samson and the Bible. You remember that one? Well, sure. Like when he's goofing around with the Philistines who want to wreck him or with Delilah and yeah, those are brutal.
They had a different formula back then to the ancient Near East for riddles. There was something about a lion. Yeah. Yeah.
Do you know the riddle? Because I remember looking at that thinking I wouldn't do a very good job of figuring this one out. Remember it was something about a carcass like it's all dangerous, but you can it's sweet. There's a Bible right behind you.
Let's find it. There's five thousand behind you on the shelf. Yeah, there is. All right.
I'm going to pick one here and it's going to be good. Where is this Catholic one? I think this is really attractive Catholic Bible. That looks like the Necra Monica or whatever it's called.
It doesn't look like the Necra-Cronica. What's that name of that movie? Evil Dead Army of the Dead? Evil Darkness?
Evil Dead Darkness. Yes. Army of Darkness. Yes.
Army of Darkness. No, I don't know. Are you just saying books and chapters from the Bible right now indiscriminately? Is that not it?
Yeah. I'm just 19. There I said one too. No, I don't want you to go look that up.
It's not even funny. Samson's Riddle. Yeah. Okay.
Well, that one right there is going to be in judges. All right. We're going to judges. What did I say?
I don't know what you said. I thought I said judges 14. You probably did. Okay.
All right. Samson's Riddle. All right. So judges, that's the time in the Bible where they come back and under Joshua's leadership.
They conquer the Holy Land, but they're like, we don't want anybody in charge. So they had these people. So people that land didn't look right in their own eyes? Yes.
That is the worst. No. Basically now in America. So the time of judges is equivalent of ancient Near Eastern doom scrolling to read through it.
It's just you watch the unraveling of civilization in real time. Okay. I don't know what translation did Catholic people read. It's an L.S.
V. Okay. I've heard of that. All right.
Then Samson went down with his father and mother to Tim now where he came to the vineyards and I was a young lion and the spirit of the Lord came upon me toward the lion with his bare hands. And I didn't tell his father and mother when he went down to me. First of all, first of all, you just said Paul's there. Yeah.
Tor a lion in half with spare hands. Well, the spirit of the Lord came upon him. Those are strong bear hands. I never had that happen.
I should the spirit of the Lord ever come upon me. I'm going straight to a zoo. Hey, is there a lion here? I know this is going to seem weird.
But I was at church. Yeah. Is it cool if I like help the person that feeds the lions today? I don't like it either.
But go ahead. I'm sorry. Okay. So what are we doing?
I don't know. After a while. He returned to Mary. Oh, no.
Then he went down and talked with the woman and she pleased to Samson. That is a bit of Bible euphemism right there. After a while, he returned to Mary her and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion. It's almost like a Bible riddle within the riddle.
I should like a donut hole within a donut hole. Keep going. So riddle with an o-riddle. So he returned to Mary and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion.
And there's a swarm of bees in the body of the lion and honey scraped out with his hand and he went on eating as he went and as I lied and paid off twice. When he came to his father and mother, he gave some of the tomb and they ate it. But he didn't tell them that he'd taken the honey from the carcass of the lion because that would be a Jewish naughty, not supposed to do that. Why?