Find the next number in the sequence

5 12 24 36 ?

A journalist was investigating a sacred cult in the jungles of Africa when he was caught by one of the person. He was confined in a cave till the leader arrived. The leader told him that he need to tell him a statement. If he thinks the statement is true, then the journalist head will be chopped off. If he thinks that the statement is false, his head will be smashed with a hammer.

What statement did the journalist make to survive?

Use only one mathematical symbol and all numbers (0-9) to get a sum of 99

A man lives on the fifteenth floor of an apartment building. Every morning he takes the elevator down to the lobby and leaves the building. In the evening, he gets into the elevator, and, if there is someone else in the elevator, or if it was raining that day, he goes back to his floor directly. Otherwise, he goes to the tenth floor and walks up five flights of stairs to his apartment. Can you explain why he does this?

You have 10 balls with you. A friend of yours out of nowhere asks you to place those ten balls in five lines such that each of the lines has exactly 4 balls on them. He needs to check your intelligence. Prove him by doing the task.

In a science lab, a petri dish hosts a healthy colony of yeast for an experiment. Now every minute, all the yeast cells divide into two. At noon, there was just a single cell of yeast and at 1:22, the Petri dish was half full. Can you calculate when the dish will be full of yeast?

John is on an island and there are three crates of fruit that have washed up in front of him. One crate contains only apples. One crate contains only oranges. The other crate contains both apples and oranges.

Each crate is labelled. One reads 'apples', one reads 'oranges', and one reads 'apples and oranges'. He know that NONE of the crates have been labeled correctly - they are all wrong.

If he can only take out and look at just one of the pieces of fruit from just one of the crates, how can he label all of the crates correctly?

An ape is trying to climb on a pole that is 60 feet high. Due to the slippery surface, the ape climbs 3 feet in a minute only to slip back 2 feet.

How much time do you think the monkey will take to reach the top of the pole?

How many cubic feet of dirt are in a hole of one foot deep, three feet long, and two feet wide?

A Miser man decided to go on a vacation for a month. He goes to the bank and asks for a trip loan of $500. The bank officer asks the man that the loan can only be approved when he mortgage some valuable thing at the bank. Miser man mortgages his only car whose worth was a whopping $80000. The Bank officer laughed at him and approve the loan instantly. After vacation when the miser man returns, the bank officer asked him "Are you an idiot, why is your mortgage such an expensive car for such a short loan?".

Miser man replied with some reason and the bank officer agreed that the miser man is actually not an idiot.

What did miser man reply to the bank loan officer?.