A foolproof way to get around 

The cat appearing just shows how the whole show has to be a video and not an audio podcast.

I feel really smart thinking "wait we can do this on our earth, making northpole as our mountain centre!" And then I realized, I just reinvented longitudinal and latitudinal coordinate

Having watched Tom's video before, my mind went straight to absolute directions too, did not even realize it was the other way around

As an Aussie Anthropologist, the language Tom is referring to is the Indigenous Australian language Guugu Yimithirr whose speakers are in far North Queensland, near Cooktown, not too far north of Cairns. I know some people will get curious and that might help find out a bit more for you folks.

Love the kitty cameo at 4:40 🐈‍⬛

Dibs on the bandname "Tom Scott and the Mental Cholesterols". Tom already knows how to sing, I'll gladly take up bass.

isn't that also hov it is done i Discworld. "Cardinal directions within the Discworld are not given as North, South, East and West, but rather as directions relating to the disc itself: Hubward (towards the centre), Rimward (away from the centre) and to a lesser extent, turnwise (direction of the disc's rotation) and widdershins (against the direction of the disc's rotation)."

I'm totally going to incorporate "mental cholesterol" into my vocabulary. Thanks, Tom!

On Guam, where I'm from, the CHamoru language used to use four directions other than NSEW; they were lågu, håya, kåttan, and luchan, corresponding to "seaward", "inland", "right of seaward", and "left of seaward", respectively. I think it's an awesome linguistic feature

I solved this way too quickly because of Terry Pratchetts discworld novels: hubward, rimward, turnwise and widdershins...

I made exactly the same mistake as Tom did when I heard the question, and then realized my mistake at pretty much the same time as him too. I'm a little disappointed nobody mentioned that the Discworld novels use the same system of navigation as this island. I wonder if it's a coincidence or if this is where Pratchett got the idea?

Funny that, North-South-East-West are also Polar coordinates, it's just that when you're far away from the Poles they feel like Cartesian Coordinates, say you were standing a few metres from the North Pole, it would be obvious that North and South are simply further or closer to the pole, and East and West are Clockwise and Counterclockwise

Will's cat in frame is hilarious

2:16 Dani was on the right track! "But circles is another way that that could potentially be a thing, if everything is just built in circles. Then going in straight compass points, not particularly helpful."

I got this one right away because I used to navigate similarly. I grew up on the slope of one mountain range with another one visible off in the distance, big flat inland seabed in between, and my reference frame was in relation to the mountains because almost everything I did stayed between them. Really threw me for a while when I moved across the country and the mountains were in the wrong places, took ages to get my mental map oriented to the same language everyone else used.

All I can think about is the giant cat that's about to eat William as he's calmly describing polar coordinates.

I thought of the answer immediately since I've heard Hawaiian uses something similar (at least toward the ocean and towards the center of the island / volcanic mountain; not sure about clockwise/counterclockwise). Presumably it's somewhat common on volcanic islands.

This may have been the inspiration for Terry Pratchett and his Discworld.

When I first visited Thessaloniki (a big Greek city built on hills surrounding a central bay) I was surprised to learn they have something similar going on. For them the two main directions were DOWN (towards the bay) and UP (away from the bay), which would also change in a polar way depending on where in the city you were. Only if UP and DOWN were not enough they would use left or right to give directions.

William finally using that engineering knowledge, bringing out "polar coordinates"

I guess the system is not that different from ours. Where we center it around the north pole, they center it around their volcano. Then their 'south pole' would be somewhere northeast of Brazil. Do they have something that's similar in function as our prime meridian?

I have seen the video Tom made about that. I immediately thought of that, but recognized it as the reverse. When Tom said he had done a video on this, I was very confused.

Tom is the spirit animal of, like, half of all academicians.

Literally my first thought "I think I've seen the Tom Scott video in this, wait this is a Tom Scott channel"

"Brain Clogged With Mental Cholesterol" is the best phrase I've heard this decade - You're legend Tom!!

This is really interesting because it’s the same way bees communicate the locations of things in relation to their hive. Their “waggle dance” tells 2 things: distance from the hive and angle away from the sun!

_"Mental Cholesterols"_ I am *TOTALLY* stealing that one!!!

Like Terry Pratchett's Discworld which uses rimward, hubward, turnwise and widdershins. Also Black Rock City, Nevada where Burning man is held is laid out like a clock with concentric circle roads. The circular roads start at the Esplanade but then go outwards with words that follow some theme but first road starting with A, next starting with B, etc. The spokes of the clock are numbered like times every 15 minutes from 2:00 to 10:00. The whole thing is at an angle, so North is a meaningless direction. You navigate by street names when you're in the city and by landmarks on the playa.

This is also used in Diskworld by Terry Pratchett. Because the world is a disk the directions are instead Hubward, Rimward, Turnwise and Widdershins.

Any time Dani and Bill are on it's an absolute treat. Love their sense of humor. Their podcast is great too, and I was only introduced to it because of Lateral, so thanks for that!

Watching Tom Scott videos is a common source of mental cholesterol; I'm ok with that!

Love William's cat!

While navigating a spiral galaxy one can use coreward, rimward, spinward, and anti-spinward in a similar fashion. In orbit one would use prograde, retrograde, normal, antinormal, radial in, and radial out

Something similar on Oahu, Hawaii. We use Makai for closer to the ocean, Mauka for closer to the mountain, Diamond Head for things closer to Diamond Head volcano - typically cardinally East, and Ewa for things closer to Ewa Beach - typically cardinally West. But it is fairly relative.

The same directional system is used for giving directions to sheepdogs, using sheep as the 'volcano': Walk Up for approaching the herd, Get Back for stepping back from the herd, Come By for going clockwise around the herd (both start with C), and Away To Me for going anticlockwise around the herd (both start with A)

As soon as I heard the question I remember seeing a video about this, funny that it was a Tom Scott video

this channel is so underrated, its great

See, I initially thought that this would be a variant on the Hawai'ian system of mauka and makai, that is to say when giving directions you tell someone whether they should be going "up the mountain" or "towards the sea," both terms which are used instead of (or in addition to...nowadays, anyway) N, S, E, W. But then I remembered that recent evidence shows that the Melanesians (inhabitants of PNG, among other places) and Polynesians (ancestors of Hawai'ians) actually are pretty different (genetically and culturally), tracing their origins to different places, so if this was the case, it would have to be because both cultures developed the same system separately (which is possible, but not so likely).

When Tom said he did a video on it I was surprised there was one of his linguistics videos I’ve not seen and literally thought of the video he was confused by and went oh no that’s the opposite and was so confused what he was thinking

In Hawai`i there's similar terminology since all the islands have tall volcanic peaks or ridgelines. "Mauka" means "towards the mountain(s)" and "makai" means "towards the water". Similarly they also use "windward" and "leeward" pertaining to the prevailing winds so the north/eastern side of the island gets more rain versus the south/western side which tends to be more arid.

In Hawaiʻi we often give local directions as “Mauka” (inland/upland), “Makai” (seaward/towards the sea), and Leeward-/Windward-side, referring to the typical trade wind direction sides of the island. It works fine until you get to the saddleback areas between mountain ranges in the middle of an island when multiple directions are simultaneously equally mauka or makai.

WOOHOO!! Oh you two are in for a treat - the story just gets better and better. Peter Jackson did SUCH an amazing job as the director. This was first written as a book series in the 1950s and for A LONG time it was considered too long and complex with too many imaginary locations to make into a live action film, but Peter Jackson knocked it out of the park. Most of the gorgeous landscapes were filmed in New Zealand, and although they did use a lot of CGI of course - a surprising amount of things were done without CGI. They built TWO copies of the hobbit towns and buildings and furniture: one for "hobbit size" and one for "Gandalf size", and then were able to alternate which ones are used in which shots, which is why a lot of those scenes look so good and don't have that "obvious green screen" look to them like some movies have. Can't wait for the next two movies! Cheers

That was the only possible answer I could think of, but maybe that was just me?

Travel around the Milky Way should totally be in cylindrical coordinates: "toward/away from the galactic center", "in the direction of / against the average galactic rotation" and "right-/left-hand rule perpendicular to average galactic rotation".

Got this immediately because it's how Discworld does it, too. Got your Hubwards, Rimwards, Turnwise, and Widdershins

reminds me of the Diskworld by (Sir)Terry Pratchett : they have Hubward(towards the center), rimward(towards the edge), turnwise and Windershins(clockwise and counterclockwise)

Ok, now I'm trying to find Tom's video about these absolute directions to feed my mental cholesterol (did I use it correctly?)

I went through the exact same thought process as Tom in almost the same exact moments.😆

In Hawai'i, the four directions are Mauka (away from the ocean), Makai (toward the ocean), Windward (toward the trade winds, NE in our case) and Leeward (away from the trade winds, SW). These term are still in common usage and used in current government documents.

Polar coordinates : 100 miles SW of St Louis Rectangular: 80 miles west and 60 miles south of St Louis

I really thought more Tom Scott fans would be instantly familiar with the Discworld books! I'm pretty sure that anyone who likes the Tech Diff humour will love Terry Pratchett's books.

My first thought was "I know this", followed by "Wait, I know this from a Tom Scott video", followed by "wait that ain't right" at the same moment Tom realized

Tom, that isn't worse. You didn't hear the question correctly, you had the right answer to a different question. That isn't being wrong, that is just starting the race from the wrong starting line.

a brain so full of information that it's actually become smooth

Well, a lifelong interest in linguistics means that I know the answer to this one immediately. _Through the Language Glass_ is a book I strongly recommend.

cat!

Pratchett's Discworld uses this system as well.

Hubwards, rimwards, turnwise and widdershins. The directions on Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

I remember seeing this language on a NACLO puzzle so I knew it right away

4:55 - Cat!

Hubwards, Rimwards, Turnwise and Widdershins

The Discworld does this canonically

So, basically, hubwards, rimwards, turnwise and widdershins? Got it!

It’s like Discworld!

I made the same mistake as tom, except I was reading the question at the same time as we both thought of his video, and I was like "Oh that's the wrong way around" RIP tom

I guessed that the island was both on the equator and the international date line, but after thinking about it, the cardinal directions would still work there, huh?

I was like "oh I'm sure I've heard about this" then realised it was in a Tom scott video. Then he said he made a video about it and we all felt smug.... Until we didn't

The other thing is, in that same video, Tom mentions that Hawaii I think(?) uses "towards the mountain" and "away from the mountain" as well. Or something like that. Volcano? Point is, kinda.

I knew the answer immediately, and I'm pretty sure Tom mentioned it in one of his videos too (or I might bethinking of QI). Or Discworld, of course.

Tom confused not only himself, but me as well. I remembered his video about the languages that DOES ONLY the cardinal directions, and I understood the question correctly, so I was like... when did he make a video about this reverse thing?? My initial guess is that they use "to the volcano" and "to the sea" and CW/CCW around the volcano.

I’m officially letting Tom know that I Pam stealing “mental cholesterol,” thanks.✌️

My first guess was "Because no one lives there." But I guess it wasn't a trick question after all! Hah.

Got this one after the volcano in the middle was mentioned, but it isn't so different to NSEW when you remember that's for sphere instead of their cone.

I've often thought it would be helpful if stations on the Circle Line labelled their platforms as "Clockwise" or "Anticlockwise" rather than "Eastbound" or "Westbound".

0:16 I don't think I've seen this video before... but I'm pretty sure a lot of island languages (particularly in languages used on a single large but very isolated island) use something that translates to upwards or inwards for towards the center of the island and outwards or downwards for away from the island; and with the wind or against the wind (because the general wind direction is rather stable). Interestingly there's also also languages used on tiny archipelago nations that do not use relative directions like "left" and "right" but use only cardinal directions (NSEW) for everything. So they would say they have something in their west pocket or east pocket of they turn around; and because of this extensive use of cardinal directions in their language and culture the speakers have a very good sense of direction and will generally be able to point out any cardinal direction with less than 10 degrees error even when indoors. I'm pretty sure in many of these languages, the only relative directions they have are away from or towards the center of the island; which is only used when near or on an island.

come to think of it that's the same with NSEW directions, it's just that we picked the north pole a center instead of a volcano

Lol William is about to be eaten. 4:56

I'm getting shades of Terry Pratchett & Discworld

Don't worry Tom, I was thinking the same sort of thing. 🤔👍

Just like Discworld's Hubwards, Rimwards, Turnwise, and Widdershins. I wonder if Terry Pratchett had heard of this, or if the idea is just so sensible when you live on a circle.

Technically, north/south/east/west _are_ are form of polar coordinates, just for a globe shape. It's just angles, not linear distance. East-west are around the pole, and north-south are like the radius of PCS.

i yearn for the tom scott merch store, which will contain exactly one item.

Inland - north Outland - south Clockwise, counterclockwise - west and east With the north pole being the top of the volcano.

Now unnecessarily wondering, if they refer to Cardinal Volcano versus True Volcano, LoL. But it is reminiscent of how they call out relative coordinates in Star Trek : TNG -- Bearing (i.e how far to turn your head) and Mark (tilt your gaze down or up)-- at least that's how i recall it. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Friendly reminder that William Osman is an educated engineer

Don't worry Tom, I made the exact same mistake.

You see something similar in some science fiction, with the directions rimward, coreward, spinward and trailing in reference to the center of the galaxy and its spin.

East = Spinward = Counter clockwise (on earth) West = anti-spinward = clockwise (on earth) North = right hand rule for the spin South = opposite of north Altitude = distance from center point of spin on planets or distance from axis of spin in other structures North and south are totally useful and core to the most intuitive coordinate system in space.

But that's not really different from north, south, east and west, is it? Just the point of reference is different. East and West are essentially counterclockwise and clockwise and North/South are towards or away from a pole.

I think we just found the mini discworld of the Roundworld

Pirahã (in the Amazon forest of Brasil) has no left or right, just upstream, downstream, toward the river, and away from the river.

rimward, hubward, turnwise(deiseal) and widdershins per terry pratchett

To be fair, north south east and west are almost polar coordinates as well. North and south give r, east and west corresponding to theta

3:03 OOOOh i remeber this its was his video about language features and how some languages ONLY use NESW and not left or right.

With this many nerdy Brits involved, how did none of them think of Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld with its hubward / rimward / turnwise / widdershins directions?!

"Mental Cholesterol" is my Milli Vanilli cover band.

5:55 that's funnier than it sounds cause if you go in space, the better navigational system would be Close to sun, Away from sun, Clockwise, and Anti-clockwise from the sun

That is similar to how many people will navigate Vienna, Austria...

And ive been watching tom so long i knew what video he was talking about, and that he had it wrong way round.

polar coordinates? assuming the volcano made a mountain. then you can go towards, further away, mountain to your left and mountain to your right? nice