A Problem Squared - 001 = Sizing Shoes and Selling Organs

Episode Date: November 30, 2019

Problems featured in this episode: What's the deal with shoe sizes? Buy my body! Re-refridgeration. Nice knick-knacks for nieces. Bec Hill: http://bechillcomedian.com/ Matt Parker: http://standupmaths.com/ CORRECTIONS: 01:04 Matt says "early adapter" when he means "early adopter". But it could be both. It’s a podcast that changes you. 18:08 Bec says "4" instead of "6". Don't worry: the maths was all ok. Phew. 26:22 Bec says "implicit permission" when she means "explicit permission". She will definitely double check before she repurposes any one else's teeth.

Welcome to A Problem Squared, a podcast where we solve problems. I'm Matt Parker, a mathematician and performer, I guess. You look very confused there. I know, I've never had to specify my career in one sentence. I'll confirm, yes, you are both of those things. Thank you. And I'm Bec Hill, and I'm a comedian and friend of Matt. You've got a much more succinct job title.

Yeah, we're called Problem Squared because a problem squared is a problem halved. Provided it was half a problem to start with. Because if you square a half, you get a quarter, which is a half of the original. Ah, done. Solved. Let's go home. Problem zero, out of the way um so what we want to do is say hello first of all this is our first episode thank you so much for listening in

we're kind of learning as we go yes and thank you for any retrospective listeners or future listeners what where are they listening from matt oh yeah because i guess everyone listening now is either an early adapter thank you so much for getting on board or years from now once this is uncovered after the apocalypse all that right or um yeah i guess finish your completers we'll come back to listen to the first episode oh yeah and that's when they go oh that's why everyone told me to start from episode 10 that's why they said you got to push through the first couple years but then it gets good so whatever reason you're listening to this for, thank you so much. The idea behind this podcast is that Bec and I will use our incredible skills and niche experiences to solve problems.

So listener problems that get sent in or even problems that we have ourselves. Yeah and funny you should say that because I have a problem for you that's convenient yes that is convenient i want to know what the deal with shoe sizes is ah right shoe sizes i looked into this because you've often complained about shoe sizes yeah because they changed it doesn't matter like where i buy my shoes from or what country i'm in or none of them make sense and they don't go up the amount that you expect them to like a size seven to an eight to a nine isn't like the same amount of distance it is so it is sort of so when you ask this question i was like oh they're numbers it's some kind of measurement

i'll look it up and it's a mess so there's european sizes which are big numbers. So I'm like a 44, 45-ish, I think. Yeah, which I guessed. Which you guessed. I used to work in a bowling alley and that is also where I became obsessed with shoe sizes. Yeah, you can look at someone's foot and say what their European bowling shoe size is. I got your UK size too. You did? Yeah, I was real chuffed.

It's one of your bizarrely less creepy transferable skirts. And so then you've got UK and there's there's no genders on uk sizes they're just uk adult sizes yeah but in the us you've got men's and women's yeah and i think in australia as well oh they're the same as they i think so yeah right and all of those by the way are the same scale they just increase by one so if you're a shoe size 10 in the uk that's a men's 11 in the us which is a woman's 12 so you just go up by one the uk size add one to get us men's add one to get 10 men's is a woman's 12 yes oh that does my head in i know it's mad because women are meant to have smaller feet so they shift the scale.

Goodness knows. I wear a lot of men's trainers. Yeah. Well, in the UK, it doesn't matter because all shoes are on the same scale. Yeah. And in fact, kids' sizes are the same scale, but kids count from 1 to 13. Oh, yeah. Is that an age thing?

I don't know. Because I found out that I ordered a pair of snow boots from asos that had that had rocket ships wait a minute and did they show up and they were tiny little shoes with rockets on them they'd managed they could fit the package through my letterbox i was like oh my shoes arrived today and i was like i'm not sure how they got them through could you take the rockets off the shoes? And stick them on like adult shoes? No, it wasn't like that.

But I didn't even bother opening the packet. That's how sure I was that I'd ordered some children's shoes. I was amazed. I was like, finally, I found some snow boots that I want. And then when I... But they were like a size eight. Well, kid sizes here are exactly the same scale. So a 13 in kids is a zero in adults and then a 12 in kids is a negative one in adults so it's like the scales just go straight from one into the next one

which which makes a lot of sense and i'm semi happy with that the issue is where those numbers come from so in the uk shoe sizes are based on the length of a foot which makes yeah man thank you thank you they're like they're like 12 inches like a foot like a foot so it turns out and i know this is obvious but a foot is about the length of a foot so so size so general because that's why we have shoe sizes because feet are different i know and so size 12 is pegged at exactly a foot which is 12 inches that's a very do you know what that has definitely been designed by a man hasn't absolutely but not just like that is designed by a man who's lying about his foot size yes oh yeah yeah definitely average definitely normal yeah yeah 12 is so anyone who's under 12 is definitely really small. But then they don't go one inch at a time.

Each change in shoe size is one barley corn difference. This is true. One barley corn away from 12 inches. Is it the same barley corn? No, you can use several barleycorns. So what shoe size are you, Bec? Between... See, that's why I have an issue.

But like a seven? About a seven? Can I guess? Excellent. You are 12 barleycorns shorter than 12 inches in terms of shoe size. And a barleycorn, for the record, is one third of an inch because the original definition of an inch was three barleycorns. So this is so true.

This is why I don't like imperial units. So if you translate that into modern real units, each size you go down from 12 is a third of an inch smaller which is about 8.4 millimeters so size 12 12 inches and then you go up or down a third of an inch at a time as you up and down sizes except that's not based on the actual foot size that's based on what's called a last which is like a model foot that's used to make a shoe. And for some reason, I don't know any cobblers.

If you can help us out, let me know. The shoe ends up being smaller than the size of the last, or at least the foot that fits into a shoe is smaller than the size of the model foot that was used to make the shoe. So you have to offset everything by a fifth of an inch. And so take everything I just said because like originally you would make it in leather and it would shrink that's good i didn't that didn't occur to me

so maybe it's leather and it shrinks down i'm really good at coming up with things that sound that sound plausible yeah good well let's go with that until we're told otherwise yeah cool so the whole scale is then shifted by five millimeters and it's a nightmare so that's where it comes from it is a linear scale but it goes up in multiples of barley corns and 12 is 12 except you've got to shift it off by a fifth of an inch oh good so if i'm ever unsure about my shoe size yeah i'll just do that now if you want to use the european sizes yes which i do they are also a linear scale so they increase by a set amount each time but they're two-thirds of a centimeter so each time you go up a european shoe size so if you go from 44 to 45 your foot is

in theory roughly seven six or seven millimeters two-thirds of a centimeter longer where do european shoe sizes start well so in a similar fashion they're offset by one and a half centimeters so if you multiply your shoe size in european sizes by two-thirds of a centimeter and then you need to subtract one and a half centimeters from that you'll get your foot size in theory and because of this quirk they have shoe sizing for a negative foot so a european shoe size one fits a foot of negative 0.8 centimeters so if your foot faces backwards yeah yeah if you've got a really big heel in it yeah yeah so so why they've got a size for a negative sized foot i think it the same deal. It comes from when you had the model foot and the shoes shrink a bit. But it's just...

This is crazy. Why do we still use this? So I thought I'd come up with a better system. Yes, because you're a problem solver. Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly, and thank you. But I've not got time for both.

I like it. Exactly. So, right, I thought you just ignore the model i don't care how they make the shoe ignore the the model foot how big that was i just care if my foot is this size what size shoe does it fit in and then do it in millimeters and maybe round it to the nearest half a centimeter or centimeter that works for me yeah works fine i reckon half a centimeter because then you get a bit more accuracy. And you should factor in the width of the foot because different width feet make a difference.

And feet is the correct plural in that situation. And like you do it with jeans, like you get the waist of the jeans and the length. We can have two dimensional sizes for jeans. Why can't we do it for shoes? So I thought it could be to the nearest half a centimeter length and width. It turns out there was yet another way of sizing shoes, which is that. Oh. I rediscovered mondo point.

I don't know how it's pronounced. Sizing. I can't see it, so I'm going to guess that that's how it's pronounced. Well, in very naive reading, it's the word mondo followed by the word point. Well, I can't see how else it could be pronounced. It's mondo point. I don't know. I don't know.

But anyway, mondo, mondo sizing, as we're calling it. Mondo point. Mondo point. Yeah, that's it. It's to the nearest five millimeters. I have no idea why we don't use that sizing. Yeah, mondo point. Let's get it going.

Mondo point all the way. So how can people log what their munder point size is? Here's what you do. You measure how long your foot is. You round it down to the nearest where you always go down. So we'd call that a floor function in mathematics. So if your foot was just over 265 millimeters all the way up to 270, you just say 265 and that's it that's your shoe size what

about the width oh uh width is done the same way now actually to be fair when i was looking into it some people the way you round it is not 100 clear i'm pretty sure you round it down and you do the same thing for the width i've not seen the width in use anywhere though. Well, we've got to start that. We've got to start using MondoPoint. We need to start writing it under the tongues of our shoes, on the soles of our feet. That's it.

Everyone, measure your feet, round down to the nearest half a centimeter and then sharpie them onto your shoe or embroider them on the tongue. Yeah, sure. Embroider your shoes. The way you said that... I think we found the name of our episode the way you said that implies that i've said something incredibly stupid without realizing that's not what you would do to a shoe no no you can get shoes embroidered thank you what yeah your tone has not changed since

i was pretty sure you were mocking me. No, it's just a lot of effort. Well, that's never stopped me before. If you embroider your Monda Point sizes onto your shoe. Or use a permanent marker. Matt will send you a book. Wait a minute. I'll tell you what. If anyone sharpies their Monda Point foot size onto their shoes,

send us a photo and we'll retweet it. It's at a problem squared. And hypothetically, the first one I get, which is embroidered, I will send them a book. Yeah. The first one. And I'll sign it. And you can sign it too.

But anyway, does that solve your shoe size problem? It does. It does. Because my problem was what's the deal with them? And if you could explain it to me. That is the deal with them, yes. Yeah. So you have solved that problem.

Tick. Ding. But what we've accidentally done has revealed a much bigger problem. Yeah, that shoe sizes are a mess. Yeah. So I think that this is a problem that's bigger than the both of us. And not until we've got enough people out there using MondoPoint system. If everyone switches to MondoPoint, then we can count that one solved as well.

We'll collectively mark it off the list. We have a problem from one of our listeners who's not a listener yet but they will be soon surely surely well they replied to you on twitter exactly yeah they replied to you on twitter and said when you asked for problems to solve what is the most number of my own organs i can sell for the highest profit without dying in the process? Yeah. Now the first thing I want to say to little Mikey is thanks for ruining my Google algorithm. Oh my goodness. You've just been searching for prices for black market organs. I am definitely on a register somewhere. Like absolutely definitely. It's pretty messed up um so that was fun thank you very much for that first of all i wanted to look up how many body parts you can live without oh yeah what's

optional um so i found this on a bbc news article you can live with one lung one kidney without a spleen uh without an appendix or gallbladder ad adenoids, tonsils, some of your lymph nodes, fibula bones, ribs, up to six ribs. You can lose up to six ribs. Up to six ribs. Wow. Uterus, ovaries, breasts, testicles, prostate. And then further on, if you have help from like medications or like a bag or...

Okay, so your life will change but you can with medical intervention you'll survive so on top of that you can then go with this without a stomach without a part of your colon pancreas salivary glands thyroid bladder and your other kidney because you plug into a dialysis machine yep uh and then if you uh i'm just gonna say given the original question was to make a profit selling these things i think the cost of dialysis must outweigh oh yeah yeah we're not we're not on to that oh okay right this is just absolutely everything you could live without what about one of your eyes yeah eyes limbs nose ears larynx tongue lower spine and rectum your skull your heart and your other lung but all of these will require you to

be basically on a machine you would have essentially not much of a life so basically you can live without up to 45 percent of your body mass 45 percent of your body mass what's left your brain yeah and some blood but um what what i will say before you run out and try this at home is um if you were to lose all of those things at once you would die of trauma you go into shock yeah yeah you go into shock exactly and uh even if you tried to go one at a time and have things removed slowly your immune system would be so compromised that you would eventually get an infection and die so do not recommend that but that's a little uh beginning so now looking at what of those parts can you sell and that was really interesting so um and i have i've rounded up with these and i've

got to say it depends where you're selling them as well because certain countries you'll get a lower amount because i guess there's more people selling um technically in the uk you won't get an amount because it is illegal all right yep um but and in most of these cases these are all illegal so it's actually really hard to get amounts because usually black market retailers don't they're not advertising no so yeah so given you've got to go to different markets for different organs you can't really ship organs very easily you've just got to travel to these different locations yeah so there'd be a cost involved with that and then you offload organs in different places oh so there are organ trader like organ traders and they will take a fee and then of

course then there's the fees on top of that to have the organ removed safely so that you survive so there's all the costs of that so and you just search for all of this in your normal web browser just logged in like normal yeah you weren't using nope like tor or anything you would definitely wow you are definitely on a list um so for instance you can get up to 105,000 pounds for a kidney but 105,000 pounds yeah up to up to that's not what you would get though that's what the selling price would be so the brokers can't tend to take a huge percentage as well as the cost of surgery so actually realistically if you were to sell your body parts i haven't done the calculations here but in us dollars you'd probably only get between 1,000 and 10 10 000 us dollars for a

kidney after all the costs yeah even if you've got a really good kidney you're gonna get max 10 000 us dollars yeah probably in your pocket but you know it depends how good your depends how good your organ agent is so um what the other thing i learned by researching this is that um is if you can find a buyer you can sell anything like that's all it comes down to is like does someone want it you don't know what you're going to use it for and i'll delve into that more deeply but let's go in with um with some of these organs yeah so um so your lung you could get uh 200 grand for that your spleen you can get only 364 pounds only 364 pounds for a spleen but who wants a spleen people have them removed anyway it's it's a buyer's market for spleens it is a gallbladder 874 your uh rib is 40

dollars us each you can sell ribs six yeah i think it's just for display i don't know you can buy them you can buy them for 40 bucks you can buy ribs i found a site where you can buy human skeletal things so um yeah you can get about 40 bucks for a for a rib so times that by four convert it into pounds it's about 186 pounds and 30p i've created an excel sheet for this matt you'd be really proud you'd be so proud now there was an instance where one guy said that he managed to sell a testicle but it's kind of a bit more complicated than that because essentially it was part of a trial where he had a testicle removed and a false one put in and the cost of that trial paid him roughly around 30 000 pounds okay so over in the u.s so this is a case

where you're involved in some kind of medical research yeah during which you lose something exactly so it's not like he he just sold his testicle on the market it was like part of an ongoing okay but to be involved in that trial he had to start with a perfectly good testicle right and end up with one less testicle yeah so i've said well in my head of my calculations i've gone what if you could sell both testicles in some if you could find a trial where that's happening um then technically you can make up to 60 grand so with all of those in mind while staying alive you could make 361 424 pounds 30 but that's i mean i've rounded up a lot that's up to the amount then we can go into the bits that if you wanted to sell them and hook yourself up to a bunch of machines there's ongoing costs afterwards yeah

your stomach can fetch uh 364 grand your pancreas can go for up to a hundred thousand apparently pancreas i thought was very interesting a lot of people um do pancreas transplants to help with diabetes oh but also apparently pancreas is quite easy to come by with um corpses right so yeah i i wouldn't quote me on that one i wouldn't quote me on any of this to be honest eyes and corneas you could get up to 18 grand um your shoulder 358 your shoulder i don't know it just said shoulder so i wrote it down uh on that note hand and forearm you can get 276 well i feel like this spreadsheet is one day going to be like exhibithibit B in some court case. Absolutely.

Yeah, it's definitely going to show up. We found this on Beck's laptop. It's real dodge. I haven't saved it. I'm going to discard this as soon as this podcast is recorded. Ligaments and bones, just over $2,000. Your scalp, $435. Your skull, $861.

You can live without your skull on a machine. When I first saw this question, I was like, oh, that's a fun little quirky question. We can look at the longer you're talking, the more the ethical concerns are building up for me. Oh yeah, I'm not like condoning any of this whatsoever. Finally, your heart, you can fetch up to 425 grand for it. So in total, if you wanted to sell all those body parts you could make just

over 900 000 but i wouldn't advise it and also those are wildly ranging prices i've just i've picked them off the internet but i thought you know everyone wants a figure so that's what i'm going with just over 900 900 000 pounds what i thought was most interesting is the other things you can sell. So first of all, I should mention your uterus. You can have a uterus transplant now. There's been 18 women in the UK have had uterus transplants so that they can give birth. I don't know how that's gone on. Yeah, there's no price.

So I think people have donated them. There's not been any money. I feel a lot better with that. This is better news. Okay. Yeah. Also, a lot of these prices I got off of a website called buddyloans.com, which is a loans-based website that wanted to tell you how much your body parts are worth,

which I think is a problem in itself. Also, another of the websites was leisure jobs. I'm assuming it's jobs that you can do that don't involve that much work, but i would argue this is a lot of work some interesting stuff 2011 a chinese boy sold his kidney for 20 000 yuan which was what an ipad cost he wanted an ipad so he sold a kidney i'm both amazed at medical science and what humankind can do and dismayed at yeah also that ipad is definitely out of date now yeah that's you know

i would want more for that i'd want more for my kidney so let's get on to the other things that you can sell which aren't body parts but you produce you can sell your blood or plasma that's about 11 pounds a pop is that in the u.s do you get paid for blood uh yeah. Yeah. So over in the US, over in the UK, you can sell your hair for up to five pounds an ounce. That's on Wigs UK. There's also in the States, if you're a stateside listener, you can go to thehairtrader.org. If you wish to sell your hair, I think you can make up to a grand over there. Sperm, you can make up to a hundred pounds if you go and donate your sperm over there. And I think you can donate several times a month. Oh, wow. So you can make up to 600 pounds if you go and donate your sperm over there and i think you can donate several times a month oh wow so you can make up to 600 us dollars a month that's a good income stream yeah

yep certainly a stream um eggs um so women can donate their eggs you can make up to nine grand donating your eggs is incredibly painful it's very very invasive. It involves short shots, hormone therapy, like a lot of stuff. Yeah. You can be a surrogate if you have a womb. You can be a surrogate mother. That can pay up to 40 grand. These are in pounds. Bone marrow, you can make up to two grand donating a bone marrow.

Breast milk, up to seven pounds a bottle. That's quite a big one as well. There's some really good stories about that because breastmilk is in high demand for women who can't produce it. And there's a lot of women who overproduce breastmilk. So it's actually a really interesting community that's built up around that. Feces, you can sell your poo for up to nine grand a year. Nine grand a year. Yeah, there are people with certain conditions that genuinely need fecal transplants because their gut doesn't have the bacteria needed to break down food i've come

across this way if you've not got the right culture of bacteria or whatever's going on in there you can get apparently your cult is just not enough i thought it was like a one-time thing you'd do a fecal transplant and that would then fix it forever fix it like it would cause that that whatever bacteria to then be in your system. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe they just need a few shots ongoing as it gets used to it. I'm not sure. I wasn't doing a whole bit about poop.

No, you made the right decision. Urine, you can get up to 14 pounds per ounce. There's actually a website in the states called urine the clear nice which is where you buy urine for urine tests so people aren't doing any form of drugs and they sell clean urine yep so there you go also if you are you're in the money would have also been an acceptable name that would be a great one you should check that to see if that's a website already i'm not going to do that you're're definitely going to do that. Because my search history is still squeaky clean. So, yeah, if you can find a buyer, you can make money.

So, yeah, that's how much money you can... So, in conclusion... In conclusion, I found out a really interesting thing because for anyone who doesn't know this, I now have the title of Tooth Fairy. That is true. You are surprisingly qualified to answer this problem. Yeah. So I realized that the only thing that differentiates the Tooth Fairy from anyone else

is the fact that the Tooth Fairy buys teeth. And so I was like, well, if I buy teeth, then that makes me a Tooth Fairy. And I didn't want to muscle in on the Tooth Fairy's actual territory. So I've gone in saying that I've set some ground rules i will only buy teeth from people who are 18 and over that's a good ground rule yep because you know kids they've got their own tooth fairy yep i'll deal with the adults so any adults who find themselves in possession of their baby teeth or any extracted teeth anything like that you can come to me they have to be your teeth you have to be the owner of them so no no brokers for teeth? No, no, I don't. It feels a bit dodgy that way.

The deal has to be done in person. I don't want any teeth in the mail or anything like that. For someone who's trying to buy other people's teeth, you're being very sensible about this. Yeah, well, you know, you've got to keep a... And how many teeth have you acquired? I've got about 14 now. That's great.

They're all from the same woman though, so I did cheat. But yeah, I buy them for two pound a tooth or five pound or a pint for a wisdom tooth i haven't got any wisdom teeth yet but if anyone's listening wants to sell them to me by the way for anyone that's saying i haven't got a plan of what to do with the teeth yet everyone asks me that i don't know and if i do come up with something i won't do anything with them unless i have implicit permission from all the people who sold me their teeth but when i started telling people about this, they were really grossed out. And they're like, oh, it's creepy.

Why do you want people's teeth? Why would you buy them? What do you do with them? And yet, look at this list of things that you can buy and sell from the body. And that it's an ongoing business. It's an actual thing. So I think my little hobby is nothing. You've really recontextualized your buying teeth.

Because when I first saw that on Twitter, I was like, I just saw it back a couple hours ago. She seemed fine. And now on Twitter, she's trying to solicit teeth. Right. But actually now of all the things that you can sell for money, I think that's one of the most harmless. Yeah. Put it into context. So there you go.

So it turns out you can make about 0.9 million pounds. Yeah. I mean, if you're crafty, back in 99, someone on eBay tried to sell a kidney and it got up to 5.75 million before it got taken down by eBay. So, you know, it's based on demand. In short, we need to hurry up medical research to be able to grow new organs for people. Well, it's funny you say that because I was looking into thyroids to see whether you could sell those and apparently the success rate for um for them is very low they try and transplant them and they basically never take but they have started 3d printing them and that has been much more successful okay so we are getting into areas where previously untransferable organs

are being 3d printed so one day there won't be a market there's hope for the future yeah unless you need money in which case you're stuffed so this problem comes from prl at usr bin prl and they asked given the general cost of running a fridge is the electricity and that they're continually becoming more energy efficient whilst electricity becomes more expensive, how often should one buy a new one? That's a good question because technically a more efficient fridge could save you more money on your power bill than the cost of buying the fridge. Right. So I looked into it and fridges were hugely inefficient right up until the 70s. Okay.

And so a fridge from around the 1970s will be using 2,000 kilowatt hours per year. All right. And a kilowatt hour is just how we measure electrical energy being used by any appliance. So you get charged in kilowatts. Otherwise known as orcas. Orcas. So you get charged in kilowatts. Otherwise known as orcas. Orcas. Yeah. I'm thinking kilowatts.

Sorry, continue. Oh, you're thinking of kilowatts. Yes. Kilowatt hours. And so one kilowatt hour is roughly 860 calories, like kilocalories, like on packaging. Oh. So a normal human.

So you can measure a fridge by calories. Yeah, yeah. The amount of calories you can fit in the fridge and how many calories a year it takes to run. And so a human needs about three kilowatt hours of power a day. Okay. To carry on. Right.

And fridges were using 2,000 a year. But then by the 90s, they were down to about 750 in the 2000s they were down to 500 and now if you buy a fridge it's not far above 250 kilowatt hours per year to run whoa they're way it's insane that's less than a human. We're coming up on, exactly. Your fridge uses less energy than you do in a year. So would it then, would it not just be cheaper and easier if I just got like a little bike? Yeah, if you powered the fridge, yes. Yeah. You need to eat, anyway, you need to eat more.

We need a bigger fridge. It's an escalating problem. So yeah, basically fridges are way better now. They're coming up on 10% of the power requirements and the volume's gone up. Like you can fit more stuff in a modern fridge and it's coming up on using 10% of the energy that they did when they first came out in the seventies. And it's because there's been regulation after regulation that demand that they become more and more efficient. So the question now is how much does the fridge cost and how much does the electricity cost? I looked up wholesale electricity costs over the last almost a decade.

I was able to find the data on. And the thing is wholesale prices go up and down wildly. So I got everything from 2010 through to now, August. Well, the data goes up to August 2019. And it's always priced in megawatt hours, so 1,000 kilowatt hours. And it averages out to about 50, 40 or 50 pounds per megawatt hour. But then what you get charged as a customer, the wholesale price is roughly a third of your total bill so it comes in at about give or take 150 pounds per thousand kilowatt hours right i'm saying the words that make it sound like i understand i was about to say you're saying the fact that you're saying one word answers means

that i you've tuned out okay so look the moral of the story is the prices go up and down all over the place and so power companies who have to buy this wholesale power then try and average it and charge the customer an average because you don't want your bill going up and down a load so i tried to average the wholesale prices over a rolling 12 month window to try and average across an entire year okay and over the last decade ish they've gone up by 10 but actually they went down for the first two-thirds of the decade then they went up so i don't agree with the premise that power costs are going up to be fair i've not factored in if you want to get all renewable energy and it's a whole i briefly looked at the wholesale market

for how you get renewable energy and And it's interesting, but... Do you know what I love about this is that with the problems that I had to solve for this one, I very much rounded out or just chose a number and went, ah, that's roughly right. Let's go with that one. Otherwise, this will take ages. And what you've done is shown exactly why you won't do that. No, no, I have done my equivalent of that.

The fact that I was prepared to round to about 10% over about a decade. Now I know exactly how accurate that rounding is. It's not great, but it's fine. So anyway, I then went on and I found a standard buying white goods website. And I looked up, I just searched for fridge freezer and got the 10 first responses as an average sample. And the prices range from about 200 pounds up to nearly 500 pounds, but they average cost of a new fridge is 260 pounds. And you get a decent amount of volume. It's about 165 liters that's pretty standard and it uses on

average 254 kilowatt hours a year so it's pretty much 250 which means that in grand conclusion if you own a fridge from the 90s yeah and it is using 750 kilowatt hours a year. And you get rid of it and you replace it with a modern one using 250. You will get back the money you spent on the fridge in three and a half years. If you've got a fridge from the 2000s, which is about 500 kilowatt hours a year, and you replace it with a 250, you'll get your money back in seven years. So there you are. So if you've got a fridge from the 90s, you'll make your money back three and a half years. Fridge from the 1000s, seven years. Huh. So there you are. So if you've got a fridge from the 90s, you'll make your money back three and a half years.

Fridge from the thousands, seven years. Interestingly though, if you've got a fridge from the 90s or even from the 2000s, anything before 2010 and you're like,

oh, I'll get a new one and I'll put the old one in like the garage or somewhere to be like a beer fridge. No. If you get rid of it and buy a second whole fridge,

it'll still be cheaper within, you know, four to seven years to just got rid of it. Don't even try and use it as a second fridge. Buy a second fridge if you want to be a fridge. So it's cheaper to buy a second fridge as your spare fridge than to use your old fridge as a spare fridge. Exactly. It's not even worth trying to repurpose it as a backup fridge because it's still using loads of power. Wow. And the only thing I've not looked into is if you're doing this for environmental reasons, I don't know the environmental impact of getting rid of a fridge and I don't know the carbon impact of making a new fridge,

but the power saving is so much that if you've got a fridge from the 90s, a ballpark, I reckon, it's definitely better for the environment to get rid of it and get a new one. Fridges after 2000, I have to double check. If you've got an old school fridge from before the 90s. Repurpose it into a door for a hipster bar. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. To, you know, use it in the garden as a novel planter pot or something, right?

You can definitely get a new fridge if it's older than the year 2000. Cool. That doesn't quite answer the question. Oh, really? What was the... Which is how often should you buy a new one? That's... Oh, good point.

So I'm saying if you've got an old one, it's currently... If it's more than 5, 10 years old, you should. However, we're plateauing out on the improvement so we're down to 250 kilowatt hours i don't know how much lower that's going to go i suspect if you buy one now it's going to do you for a while it's not going to get down much more than that even if it gets down to like 100 kilowatt hours it's not going to be a big difference because we're pretty close to the bottom so i would say if you haven't bought a new fridge in a while, it's worth doing it now and you won't have to update for another couple of decades.

Thanks, Matt. Does that count? Is that problem solved? I think that's problem solved. Thank you very much. My problem for you, Bec, is that I need to hurry up and buy Christmas presents for my nieces. Ah.

And as always, I struggle to think of a cool... Well, I was going to say educational gift, but I think that's my problem in a nutshell. Yeah. What you need is you struggle on the cool side. Very much so. But you keep going for the educational side. I bought them all sorts of science things over the years. How old will your nieces be at Christmas?

At Christmas, they will be seven and nine oh good ages too so this is these are ages i deal with yes because you're an expert in this i do comedy for kids and that is like the pinnacle age six to twelve so perfect and these are comedy shows where you entertain young people i do yeah yeah it's really fun i very much enjoy it i get to do stuff on tv and get gung and everything. It's good fun. And because of that, I know exactly what the kids are wanting. Brilliant. So strap yourself in. I did a little research for you. So the first one, which I just think is fantastic and I thought you might get a laugh out of it, is a Harry Potter invisibility cloak. You can buy an invisibility cloak? Yeah.

Is it like an empty packet? You can buy an invisibility cloak? Yeah. Is it like an empty packet? No, it's 60 pounds. And you're going to love this, Matt. Basically, it's an invisibility cloak because the lining is green. And when you show it with an app, it turns your cape into a green screen if you turn the cape inside out.

And then you can show yourself disappearing in the app. Okay, that is very cool. Yes, but they're charging 60 pounds for what is essentially a piece of green material. Green screen material. Hey, I'm crafty. We can make them an invisibility cloak. Oh, that's so good. Okay, no, I really like that invisibility cloak.

Yeah. You're going to have to get them an app as well. My older niece is a big reader. Reads, reads, reads, reads. I'll just double check she's read the Harry Potter stuff and then boom, invisibility cloak. Done. All right, we've sorted. Next. Now, this one I just found problematic

but I wanted to bring it up is the Scruff-a-Love's My Real Rescue. You know how you get these like toy dogs? No. You don't know what a toy dog is? I know, I'm aware of the separate concepts of a toy and a dog. Yeah, like the little electronic,

like it's sort of a half robot, half cuddly toy. You know, you get different little toy dogs that follow you around or whatever. This is one of those. This is, right those. This is. Right. Okay. Right now there's people listening going, yeah, that makes sense.

Why can't Matt understand the idea? Let's assume I'm totally down with a cuddly robotic dog that stalks you around the house. Yeah. So now you can get one that's called My Real Rescue where it's meant to be like a rescue dog. And it comes all with like scruffy fur and stuff. And trauma. And you brush it and wash it. And it's really tim timid and then it starts to come out and you like tame it and part of me is like oh it's kind of sweet but the other part's like just buy an old toy dog like if they were secondhand the whole point of a rescue is that it's you're saving something that

wasn't wanted part of me is that's good teaching empathy and training up a timid robot to be an outgoing robot that achieves its full potential. But I'm still, I don't know. I tell you what taught me empathy as a kid. Whenever my mum found a toy that was abandoned, like on the road or something, and it was all messed up, she'd take it home and wash it and then fix it and give it new eyes and stuff there you are see right okay that's that's a rescue pet okay good so what i'm saying is find a toy on the road yeah about to say invisibility cloak or some kind of toy on the road yep this one's pretty cool it's a smart pixelator uh with art capitalized and smart do you remember those bead things as kids where you put the bead on there and you iron it and oh yeah it looks like a mosaic thing yes so it's that but it comes with again

we're talking apps but it comes with an app where you upload a photo into it and it gives you the sort of pixelated template to print out that you put under it so that then you can pixelate your photos and do it as a beaded thing i do like pixels i know you do that's why that's got the right amount of maths in it too so what was that one called that's the smart pixelator art in capital letters i should make it clear we're not being sponsored for this oh no yeah no money is changing hands i realize this has started to sound like an ad but these are just some cool toys that i found if people want to sponsor us brand beads are available yes exactly um so yeah if you want to buy that off the rack that is somewhere between 50 and 70 pounds depending on my handwriting so it's 60 pounds with a standard deviation of maybe four pounds then uh of course the uh the oculus Quest is on my Christmas list,

but this is very high end. You're looking between four and 500 pounds. Wait a minute. Are you just dropping in your Christmas list? Can you see where the line began? Yes, I can. It was super obvious. But hey, what kid's going to turn down virtual reality?

And then your nieces can watch my latest show. I'll be back. Wait a minute. Which you and Lucy started. No, I'll be honest. I'm going to come down with the final one. And this is definitely is the Lego Mars Research Shuttle. It's 20 pounds. It links in with what you and your wonderful wife, Professor Lucy Green, do.

And I think that. Let's be honest. What my wonderful wife does. She's the legitimate space scientist. Well, yeah, but you do gifts. Yes. think that let's be honest what my wonderful wife does she's the legitimate space scientist well yeah but you do um uh gifts yes you do the gift side supportive supportive spouse yeah there you go so i think that's what i think that's your other one is the lego mars research shuttle lego mars done that beck is a problem solved yes so that's all the problems solved in this first episode i think it's been a successful

first outing yeah i don't think we need to make any more no i think we're done yeah yeah and what we'll need to make more are more problems so i'll definitely come up with some more for you matt and vice versa but any listener problems would be welcomed we're at a problem squared on most social media on most social media on most social media yes we also we haven't got sponsors or anything for this podcast we're not quite sure how we're going to make it all work but we will have a patreon yeah one of our problems is we're currently running at a loss yes so if you could solve that problem we'll set up a patreon if you go to patreon.com slash a problem squared, you can pay

a number of currency units that we will decide. Mondo points? Per episode. No, we do take Mondo points. And we won't have any perks there just yet, but if you get involved, you can request what you would like to see as a backer or someone

who's paying per episode to make this happen. Of course, for everyone else, it's still completely free to listen to and to send in your problems to get them squared. Is that it? Yes. I'm going home now.