A Problem Squared - 020 = Filling Up and Falling Down

Episode Date: June 30, 2021

Score! It's episode 020 of A Problem Squared, Filling Up and Falling Down!     In this episode...   Can we solve global warming by diluting the atmosphere? What's the funniest way to fall down without hurting yourself?  Plus: The answer to last month's A Pudding Squared, and a final word on Arctic Krill.    As always, if you've got a problem or a solution, hit us up on our website www.aproblemsquared.com, or on social media. You can find Matt's favourite mascot fail here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-Zph323Dos For full (en)closure, the solution to the most recent A Pudding Squared, is right here: https://twitter.com/Hellcat_Mama/status/1400053063012995073?s=08  

Hello, I'm Bec Hill. I'm Matt Parker. And this is a podcast dedicated to solving your problems. If a problem squared was an auto repair shop, Matt would be the qualified mechanic who fixes your car, but expects you and anyone nearby to watch as he does it yep and he harbors a friendly grudge against the mechanic down the road who reached 1 million customers before he did eye on the other would be the mechanics radio who cannot fix cars on account of being a radio but whose noisy familiar presence provides companionship and a connection with the outside world. That's more true than I'm prepared to admit.

I think the radio in this scenario is pulling more weight than the radio appreciates, if I'm being honest. Well, you know, occasionally if enough ads are playing on the radio, one of them's going to have some wise piece of advice, isn't it? Exactly. Yeah. And the radio is holding the car up and the radio tells the mechanic when they're taking too long to do an otherwise simple task. Anyway, great introduction, by the way. I don't want that to go unsaid, top notch. I enjoyed every second of it. So, good work. Thank you very much. In this episode

I calculate if we can solve global warming by diluting the atmosphere. I try to work out the funniest way to fall down without hurting yourself. And we've got a solution to the most recent, a pudding squared. So get ready for closure. Enclosure. Enclosure. More like. Enclosure closure.

Pudding's enclosure. Whey. So Matt, it's been about a month since we last spoke. As always. How have you been? Yeah. Oh my goodness. We had WA Day.

Is WA Day the Women's Association? That's the one. Or Western Australia's slightly less problematic version of Australia Day that occurs early in June. I don't know if you have this. I remember as a kid, there was a big family gathering and whatever relative of overseas would phone up, the phone would just be passed around and everyone would be obliged to talk to the distant relative.

I realised this WA day, I am that distant relative. It was the FaceTime, so I could see people's face when they get given the phone. They're like, oh, I got to. Hi, Uncle Matt. Yeah, you do. He's talking about maths again. I genuinely did.

Yeah. Mom says you have to get off the phone. One of my nieces, trying to make conversation with me, asked how old my dog is. So Skylab the dog. And I replied, oh, they're exactly one third of a year. So how many months is that? And the kid's like, why have I? What did I do to deserve homework?

Exactly. I know. Trying to be nice. And my family, I don't think specifically to celebrate the day. They were, this struck me as particularly Aussie. In the backyard, they were trying to burn out a stump. So they'd all got together to set the stump on fire. And do they do that every year?

Every time they get together, they'll get together and just set the stump on fire again. again. Your family is like when people talk about Western Australia and just like how removed it is. Like you're not doing it any favours. Your family gets together

and tries to burn the ground. It's on WA now, like what are you folks up to? Oh, you know us burning the stump again. This is the tenth burning of this stump in an attempt to remove it from the backyard. They say that if you manage to successfully burn the stump then you own Western Australia. You own, yeah, exactly. You're the rightful heir. You're the premier for the next pandemic. Yeah, and then so

on. That's right. That's how they find their members of parliament. So how have you been keeping, Bec? Oh, just burning stumps. That's where the phrase comes from. Yeah, that's true. Get together. Burn the stump.

Burn a stump. You know? I now know what to write on all of your future cards. Yeah, I mean, nothing is exciting. Yesterday I was in Brighton filming for Makeaway Takeaway, which was, oh, my goodness. So they bought us ice creams at lunch because we were working really hard and we deserved it.

I love the fact this is such a good story. Like a Christopher Nolan film, we're getting all of it at once but slightly out of order. Yeah, that's right. I think of all uh audiences our audience would appreciate the ability to try and piece together exactly we're not non-linear storytelling so so we got four ice cream ice cream cones and one of our production assistants was carrying the ice creams over to the rest of the group sitting on the beach and i hope listeners could hear the

fact that i was using quotation marks when i said beach oh yeah because brighton is uh where the sea meets rocks pile of rocks yes so production assistant was bringing the ice creams over to us and the seagulls in brighton are huge like they make australian seagulls oh goodness oh yeah they're so big they're almost albatross like they're huge and they came over maybe not that pretty big and they started sweeping her one of them grabbed ice cream hang on whoa whoa whoa whoa how many ice cream cones in total well there were other people bringing ice cream cones ah gotcha i i was imagining one person bringing all the ice cream cones for all the crew that several people are carrying these.

I mean, this is starting to sound like an elementary maths question, but it's more like- I may be bumping it in that direction. The plan was that she would bring ice cream cones to us. There was one or two other person helping, but she would also go back for more ice cream. And she didn't have to be in a boat with a fox and a chicken or anything. She was just- No.

One ice cream cone per hand. Just as dangerous. Seagulls. So she's holding two ice creams. fox and a chicken or anything she was just no one ice cream cone per hand dangerous yeah so she's holding two ice creams the seagull swoops knocks the ice cream ball ice cream scoop off the cone classic saddest thing that you can ever see in real life ice cream while she's while she's looking down at it another seagull grabs the cone flies off with it and then as she's like looking at that and like ah and screaming another seagull grabs the other whole ice cream cone like a whole proper adult ice cream cone like it managed to get its beak in there so that the ice cream stayed on the cone to the point that it looked like it had a giant fake beak on its beak and it flew off like it

didn't even drop the ice cream. Like, I've never seen anything like it. Not even dropping the... Couldn't believe it. It was amazing. What I love, though, is the escalation to them working as a team. Like, they had a strategy. Oh.

They came in waves. The only thing that doesn't make it, like, actually, like, because it was pretty scary. Terrified and impressed. Um, the thing is they behaved like it was like a mugging with the whole misdirection and like confusion and. Good on, I mean, I mean, you're right. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them had a flick knife and if I had a flick knife, you know how it got it?

Stealing it. Stealing it from someone carrying a flick knife over to, do you know what, if they mugged some muggers. That's how it works, then they become the muggers. That's how you pass on the. And stole the muggers flick knife and then used it to go get ice cream. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

The glamours of TV. Yeah. Glamours of TV. Our first problem for this episode comes from Phil via the problem posing page. Phil says, I'm wondering whether the planet is warming because of the increased relative proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or the absolute amount. If it's the proportion, then could we alleviate the problem, theoretically at least, by putting loads more nitrogen and oxygen into the atmosphere? That's such a great problem.

And they're a solution person, Phil. They've seen global warming, the issue. So it's not so much a problem, but the problem is, is this a solution to the problem, I guess? Yes. Yeah. So basically we're solving the problem of climate change potentially. That exactly. It feels onto something. We could be here the moment when the tide turned and we found the solution to the global problem facing all of humankind. And we do talk about the amount of carbon dioxide as a percentage, as a ratio. We talk about in parts per million. So we talk about for every million molecules or whatever particles are in

the atmosphere, we talk about the parts per million. And currently, well, the most recent figure I could get was from April this year, 2021. So at the time of recording, for every million particles in the atmosphere, 416 of them are carbon dioxide. So that's the current parts per million. And when I was born back towards the end of 1980, that same figure was 339 parts per million and that's way more than what you'd expect historically if you go back a million or so years it varies between 180 and 280 and like the absolute max was 300 so for a very long time it's gone up and down between 180 and 280 and then quite recently it's gone much much higher so the question now, is that a problem because there's just a set amount of carbon dioxide, or is that a problem because it's a set percentage, which is what we always talk about as.

And also we're ignoring other greenhouse gases. So there's a lot of water vapor up there, there's methane, there's hexafluorides, all sorts of stuff going on. up there. There's methane, there's hexafluorides, all sorts of stuff going on. And the issue with all of them is you get light coming from the sun, largely in the visible and UV frequencies. These like high-ish, I'm going to call them frequencies of light and carbon dioxide doesn't care. High frequency light straight past it. It's like a really- A bad bouncer. frequency light straight past it.

It's like a really- A bad bouncer. A bad bouncer, a very lax bouncer. It's just like, yeah, high frequencies, come on in. I don't care that you're not wearing shoes. I don't care. Whatever you want. High frequencies, in you come. However, the high frequencies hit the earth.

I mean, obviously some hit clouds and it's not, they don't all get through, but a high percentage do. Once they hit the earth, the earth then warms up and the earth then re-radiates that heat. And so the heat is then released from the earth back up towards the atmosphere. But importantly, now at a much lower frequency, because now it's infrared radiation, not visible or UV. And so the frequency has dropped dramatically.

Now the bouncer cares. So the bouncer lets the high-frequency people in. So maybe high-frequency, like they're sober. Sober people come on in, but then when they're drunk, they can no longer get past, although now the bouncer's stopping them from leaving. Meh, it's a good enough analogy, right? I think it's the other way, isn't it?

They're coming in drunk and the bouncer doesn't care, but they're sobering up and the bouncer's like, stay in there until you get more drunk. Get back in there. Keep drinking. Love it. We've cracked it. Right.

So the light is sobering up, leaving, and now the carbon dioxide cares and absorbs it. And so a greenhouse gas is basically a gas that doesn't absorb photons when they're light or UV and does absorb them and then re-emit them and send them back when they're infrared. There's our issue. In a nutshell, the issue is on a photon by photon basis, when the infrared radiation is released as a photon from the earth, will it make it out of the atmosphere or will it hit a bit of carbon dioxide and get stopped? And so you're like, oh, okay then. So concentration would make a difference.

So let's say, okay, let's say in the pub or the bar, the club, wherever all these people are, you're in the club, you're sober now, you want to leave. But you know that now that you've changed your frequency, aka you you're sober the bouncers aren't going to let you out so you look out in the hall and you can see bouncers everywhere and you're like ah i'm definitely going to bump into one of those bouncers as i try and leave and then by some miracle the hall is suddenly twice as long but the same number of bouncers so you're like ah suddenly the room is twice as big. And you're like, oh, this is much better. Wow, the bouncers are now way more spread out. I'm less likely to hit them.

But now you've got to walk twice as far to get to the other side of the room. And so actually, even though the concentration's gone down, the distance you've got to travel's gone up. You're still going to bump into eight bounces. This is the initial problem with the idea of diluting the gas so that more light can make it through without being absorbed. Yes, you've diluted it, so it's less likely to be absorbed. However, Earth is a sphere.

As you add more gas and dilute the carbon, you're going to increase the height of the atmosphere. The sphere is getting bigger and bigger, right? There's just more area to cover as such. But we can calculate this because we can calculate the volume of a sphere, four-thirds pi r cubed, big fan. We can work out the change in volume,

how much it changes the concentration, and we can also work out how much it changes the concentration and we can also work out how much it changes the distance light would have to travel to get through the atmosphere yeah so i ran the numbers okay so i had to decide how big the atmosphere is and in my calculations i'm assuming it's all the same density i've ignored the fact it starts super dense down where we live and then gets less dense as you go up because the maths behind that would be super difficult. I will say, I know we make a lot of fun of biologists for things being all over the place.

Atmospheric scientists, honestly, like the atmosphere doesn't end. It doesn't end. It's like they're like, oh, you know, because it's quite dense for a while. Then it's less dense. Is it like a pop ballad from the 80s? Yeah. Where they just let it fade out?

Just keeps going. Keeps going. Yeah. And so technically a lot of those songs never finished. So it turns out it does work in so much as the distance the photon has to travel increases slower than the concentration is decreasing. So it's like you're trying to leave the club. It's getting longer, but the bounces are getting more spread out. So eventually you'll be able to avoid all of them and get out.

Okay. So is it like if you're in a nightclub that you're trapped in because the bouncer won't let you leave? Because you're sobered up. Through a normal sized door. Correct. But if you were to make the door wider, you could maybe get past the bouncer, but another bouncer would appear. Yes. But at some point the door would become so wide that there's still some space

between the bouncers. Yes. You've got it. Yeah. The question is, you've got a lot of bouncers. How wide does that door have to be? Like how many times bigger? Which is the equivalent of.

When does the nightclub become a tent? I don't know how. Going to the club became an accessible reference point for anyone here you know you know when you're in the club come on all we've done is prove that we've neither of us have been to a club for a very long time sometime if any time ever yeah right the fact that we think that would stop you from leaving because you're too sober. We're like, well, that's the obvious business model. I can't see any legal... That's what stops me from going out dancing. I'm scared that I'll sober up and won't be allowed to leave.

Okay, it's flawed in several ways, this analogy. If anyone's got a better analogy, keep it to yourself. Right. Now, theoretically, yes, Phil, it is the concentration. It's the concentration tied with how much atmosphere the light has to go through. Technically, you absolutely could just add enough nitrogen and enough oxygen or whatever gas you want and dilute the atmosphere.

And we could lower the greenhouse impact to any level we require. But you need to add a lot of atmosphere is the issue. So people argue once you go up six or so kilometers, you've already gone past like half the atmosphere by mass because it's so much denser down low but the the officially it doesn't end for like a hundred kilometers up so i assume the atmosphere is 50 kilometers deep and so let me make sure uh you would have to increase the atmosphere about 85 times as much. So if you had 85 times the atmosphere, you would reduce the greenhouse effect back to pre-industrial era levels of heat being able to escape the earth. Okay. That's good news.

You make it roughly 57 times deeper. Oh. Give or take and but the issue is now there's a thing called atmospheric pressure which is the pressure we're under and we're currently under one atmospheres of pressure and humans i think david bowie famously sang about it didn't he with freddie mccree pressure yeah it's pressing down on you pressing down on me pressing down on me yeah Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I tried to look up how much pressure can a human survive? Because I figured there's no point solving global warming if the pressure then kills us all.

Yeah, why bother saving the Earth if humans can't live on it? Am I right? That's what I said. Well, you could save the Earth by removing the humans very quickly. Yeah, it'd be much quicker. And I don't want to alarm you, but the Earth by removing the humans very quickly. Yeah, it'd be much quicker. And I don't want to alarm you, but the Earth is fine. Earth don't need no saving. It's if we're comfortable is the big issue here. So while the atmosphere would be 57 times deeper, the pressure is just how much more massive atmosphere is above us.

So actually the increase in pressure is just how much more massive atmosphere is above us. So actually the increase in pressure is just how much we've increased the amount of atmosphere and that is 85 times. So we would be under 85 times as much pressure on the earth. The record for a human, I think is about 71 from what I could find in my terrible research. What did they do? How did they test that?

It's always deep sea diving. And pressure is different from gravity, hey. I could find in my terrible research. What did they do? How did they test that? It's always deep sea diving. Oh. And pressure is different from gravity. Hey, like this isn't like going to a planet where your gravity is more. So you wouldn't necessarily feel heavier. You wouldn't necessarily feel heavier because the pressure would be pressing in from all directions. Like a corset. Like a corset.

But the pressure inside you would also as long as you've changed slowly that would also be fine so pressure is only really dangerous if there's a pressure differential like if you're low pressure inside your body and high pressure outside that's an issue and vice versa also an issue which is why divers the bends, because they're fine at the low pressure. They will ultimately be fine when they come back up to normal atmospheric pressure. But if they change from one to the other too quickly, gases come out of blood and all sorts of horrible things happen. And I think it would take a long time to increase the Earth's atmosphere by 85 times. But I don't think it'd be pleasant.

And I think you'd have to do that with helium. I don't think we've got enough helium on the Earth's atmosphere by 85 times. But I don't think it'd be pleasant. And I think you'd have to do that with helium. I don't think we've got enough helium on the Earth. And they're the sorts of gases we use when deep-sea divers need to be able to breathe in a different oxygen because nitrogen becomes toxic. Wait, do deep-sea divers breathe in a mix of oxygen and helium? Yeah. Do they have hilarious, squeaky voices?

Yeah, does that mean when they come out, they're all like, oh, that was a really great dive. Oh, my God, you wouldn't believe the wonders I saw. The irony that they're called deep sea divers. Deep, yeah, exactly. That was just someone having a laugh. Any deep sea divers listening that want to tell us if they get squeaky voices, please let us know.

Problem posing page. But to do that, it's not like you can talk when you've got your scuba kit on. This would be if you were then living in that atmosphere in some kind of vessel at the bottom of the ocean. Like when you're doing oil rig deep sea diving, people have been down there for a long time. Hmm.

Okay. So there you are. So my answer kind of is, yes, you can do it, but we would all have to learn to live at approximately 85 times the current atmospheric pressure. And I think biologically that's going to be an issue. So that's where I've got the problem too. So now I'm curious. Deep sea divers, let us know.

Do you think humans could adapt to live in 85 times the pressure in some kind of heliox atmosphere? And there you are. Global warming solved with little to no downsides. Yeah, I'm going to save giving that a ding until we hear back from any deep sea divers. Deal. deep sea divers deal our next problem has been sent in by someone named andrew and it starts by saying they thought of this because two episodes ago in episode 018 beck mentioned she likes falling over like a plank so yes beck you want to give us a quick recap on your love of plank falls? Yeah.

Oh, well, it was in regards to Makeaway Takeaway, which is the kids' show that we're making, and I was saying how much I enjoy falling over like a plank when you've got like a crash mat or something, you know, the sort of falling out of shot, smell something disgusting and fall over backwards. Yeah. Keeling over.

Funny stuff. Yeah, yeah yeah i really enjoy doing it andrew however has said they have a medical condition which causes them to pass out randomly and unexpectedly and then go on to say uh this goes along with a condition that means i dislocate my joints when doing this rather than breaking them. How would you reduce injury and or make it the most funny? Since life is limited, less pain and more laughing is always good. So that seems to be a mixed bag of both medical advice thereafter and just straight up comedy advice. Yeah, and because I am much more of an expert in the comedy realm rather than the medical, I will say I haven't gone too far into pain relief or injury, you know, stopping yourself from

breaking or dislocating limbs. We gave dental advice once and even that made me mildly nervous. I think we should, we are not the people. And we did get a professional dentist to do it too. Exactly. What was interesting though about this question is that both the reducing injury and making it more funny go hand in hand, I believe. That's convenient. I was excited by this because I've always found visual comedy really fascinating ever since I was a kid. In 1992 Rowan Atkinson did a mini documentary as part of a larger series of other comedians it's called visual comedy a lecture by rowan atkinson right

and uh the series was called funny business you can actually find rowan atkinson's one somewhere on youtube if you look it up oh it is out there i also saw that at a young impressionable age and rowan atkinson's funny business had a big impact on my understanding and sense of comedy ever since. Yeah, exactly. So you, you'll probably understand a lot of this already, Matt, but for any listeners, there are different elements at play when it comes to visual comedy, but I did go down a little bit of a rabbit hole.

So I'm going to try and be as succinct as possible because once you start tugging that thread of, why do we laugh? What makes things funny? I mean, we know professors who have spent their entire lives dedicated to working out what makes us laugh. Can I put a disclaimer on the very top of this before you get started?

Yeah. A stand-up comedian asked to talk about comedy will never stop and um a group of comedians discussing comedy can be one of the most tedious experiences ever for a non-comedy person to witness like uh any notion of being funny is dispensed with if stand-ups get to talk about comedy. We will bang on for a while, but we will draw this to a close before it itself is causing pain and suffering. Yes, yeah. I'm going to mention a few things that make stuff funny. I might leave some out.

That's more for time rather than because of a lack of... This is not exhaustive. Yes, but here's some that I think make sense in relation to solving this problem obviously anything that i quote i will put sources in the show notes links to those things so the first thing i want to talk about is context and in one paper it's referred to as play frame but essentially what it's saying is that something serious can be made funny if you know the consequences are not serious. So if you see someone in a sitcom having a panic attack and

they're like breathing into the paper bag and everything, that's quite funny. But if you saw someone having a panic attack in real life, that might be quite scary. You know that the person's acting, you know that it's in a funny setting, you're allowed to laugh. And when it comes to falling, we know comes with a risk of injury or death. Like falling is quite a serious thing just in general to people. But if it's done in a place where injury is less likely, if we can tell that the person's uninjured, so it looks serious, but we know it's not, that basically already helps us solve this problem because part of it is to reduce injury.

It's already funnier. So I propose that Andrew should either only frequent soft places. Assy Castles, trampolines. Pillow factories, space. Space. You know, anywhere that we're falling wouldn't cause as much injury already. It's going to be funnier if Andrew passes out in one of those places. I say this as well, assuming that this is all fine.

The information that Andrew's given us is that we can talk about it like this. Yeah. I wouldn't be this lax. This cavalier. Yeah. Unless someone had specifically asked. So please, Andrew, if we are in any way disrespecting this condition you have. I think Andrew strikes me as they want to make the funniest of life.

Or Andrew could just wear something soft and protective. And this is where my lack of medical knowledge comes in. I don't know if any of that would hinder it. But I would imagine wearing padded outfits of some sort would help. And I will come back into that a little bit more later on. Another thing that comes into play when it comes to why we laugh at things is incongruity, or as I like to say, the unexpected. When it's pattern breaking is how I am. Yes. Yes. Actually, do you find in your professional opinion, I mean, from mathematics rather than

comedy, do you find that if a pattern is broken, have you ever laughed at a pattern that is unexpectedly broken? Yes. But I don't know what's informed what, because I view like the rule of three in comedy. I see two points as a trend line and then the third point bucks the trend line. And so it's always enough data to establish a pattern and then you break the pattern. That's interesting, isn't it? Because they say that it's three things that make a pattern. It depends if you're an astrophysicist or anyone else.

Oh, really? Yeah. In cosmology, one point makes a trend line. Astrophysics, two points makes a trend line. All other science, three points. That itself was a rule of three joke about data extrapolation. You're right. It was too clever to be funny. We'll spend a whole other podcast talking about that later. Yeah, sorry, yes. clever to be funny story of my life we'll spend a whole other podcast talking about that later yeah yeah sorry yes um but i've definitely had an unexpected mass result that's made me laugh

because it's just so ridiculous and came out of nowhere yeah even stripped of all other anything an unexpected number makes me laugh out loud so and i think this is because when we learn these certain rules obviously we assume that everyone abides by these rules in society so whether it's a case of like you know a banana is always a bit curved so you assume that everybody believes that so if you see us an absolutely straight banana that is a a funny. That's pretty funny. That's funny because you also know deep down that other people would be like, what? Like, it's almost like you've discovered something. That's my theory as to why that makes it funny as opposed to just, oh, that's different.

Comedy doesn't work in a vacuum. Yes. Well, that particular type of comedy. A lot of slapstick does work in a vacuum. So, you know. Does work in a vacuum. So, you know. Does work in a vacuum. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like miming like you're choking.

That's it. That's it. And Matt, as you think you'll find, it's only funny if we know that you're not actually choking. And if you're in a vacuum, you are. Exactly. You have to know. So it's not funny. The person in the vacuum is fine. Yeah.

Exactly. You have to know. So it's not funny. The person in the vacuum is fine. Yeah. The unexpected part brings me to the Rowan Atkinson documentary because he sets out three sort of rules and I'm paraphrasing them, but it's essentially saying you can make any object or person funny if you make it appear somewhere expected, make it look unexpected or make it behave unexpectedly. And so if it was an appearing somewhere expected, you know, you walk into an office and there's a horse in there. That's funny. Yeah. Make it look unexpected.

You know, you go in, the horse is unusually small. Like that's an unusually small horse. It's just, that's a pony. You've just described. No, no. I would say that an unusually small horse, if you went, that's a pony, everyone would say that's a pony.

So it has to be. That's a usually small horse. That's a usually small horse. Yeah, exactly. Gotcha. Sorry. That's where I went wrong. Unusually small. Yeah.

Does this also explain your love of big things? Yes, actually it does It has been well documented on this podcast Yes Bec is a big fan of big things I am, I am And tiny things as well We should do an episode on that at some point

I do like tiny things too I went to a tiny museum in Prague We need to balance that out, don't we? But yeah, exactly I love things like that I think it is funny when people go to that much effort to make something massive and then of course yeah make it behave unexpectedly as well that would be if you went into the office there was an unusually small horse and it's answering

the phone and it turns out the horse is the mayor you know what did you describe the horses uh the mayor not our mayor oh the mayor yeah right but it's a mayor it's a horse if it's if it's a female horse it is yeah so the horse is like you're late for your 10 o'clock or something like that yeah that's funny yeah it's funny you weren't expecting that yeah so with that in mind i think that andrew obviously they said that they pass out unexpectedly. So already funny. Already. Already funny.

We could add that to the no injury thing. So if Andrew's clearly not being injured because they're in protective gear, that makes it funnier. We've got that. Other things that make stuff funny when it comes to falling down, superiority or ranking is a very interesting one oh okay yeah psychologists think that that has something to do with the fact that someone who is perceived to be of more value than you if they do something that is inherently human such as fall over that then brings them back to your level does that mean that andrew should have the padding and then cover it like dress up like the Monopoly man? Exactly!

Like a monocle that flies out when they fall over. Yes! And that would be funny. Yeah, absolutely. If Andrew looks like they have a lot of money or power over everyone else, and then they fall over unexpectedly, but are not seriously injured. Extra funny. Very funny. There's another theory as well, which is that we laugh as a form of public shaming. Falling over could be seen as a punishment. So if you're doing something that feels like you deserve to fall over. Right.

You're seeing justice being served in the natural world. Karma. It's funny when you see someone doing something stupid and they hurt themselves. Yeah, just a little bit. You never want to see that video where they die from it. No one wants to watch that. What we want to watch is someone running across an ice lake and then slipping and falling on their bum.

It's why Funniest Home Videos is so successful. I want to see that. It's why Funny Time videos are so successful. I want to see that. But it's theorized that by laughing at someone, we're putting them in their place and reminding them that their behavior wasn't correct. Well, it's adding insult to injury, basically. It's like not only have they hurt themselves and they've probably learned that, but we just want to reaffirm that that's not what they should. That we saw them and they shouldn't have been doing it.

Karma has balanced out. In fact, I would go as far as to say that this gives Andrew an entire motivation to just be a jerk all the time because every time they suddenly and unexpectedly pass out, everyone will be like, well, good. Couldn't have happened to a better jerk. Yeah, exactly. They'll get to laugh. You know, Andrew gets to steal candy out of baby's prams.

Do download too slow to everyone. Download too slow. People can just push you over. I think that those are the rules. There's a line, Beck. I mean, there's different shades of being laughed at. It depends if you were intending to be entertaining. Yeah.

The intention comes back into context. And again, that's about making sure that everyone understands how serious something is. There's some other ones as well, but I'll just touch briefly on them. Relief is one that sort of gets talked about more in verbal comedy rather than physical comedy. That's the idea of building up tension and then releasing it. Jokes generally tend to work on the unexpected, but when it comes to relief and tension building, you can combine those. And that usually comes into play when you're talking about storytelling. So it's when you tell a really deep and, uh, you know, draw everyone in, bring in the story,

raise attention, and then undermine it with something tiny or come in with an ending that no one expected, but Andrew would have to be doing something that has a lot of tension built around it, but then time it specifically, which is very difficult because Andrew's condition means that they don't know when it's going to happen. So we kind of have to get rid of the idea of timing. It all being based on timing. Yeah. Given they have, they've got no control over that. And another one was a psychological distance, which is how much empathy you have for someone.

If you're feeling quite psychologically distanced from them, either because it's on television, so you're not there, so you don't actually feel like you need to show empathy, or if you don't like them. I think this comes into the idea of your brain working out, you know, does someone's age come into play you know what what are the mitigating factors and then your brain decides whether you actually care that this person's fallen over so i think sometimes we might laugh because we're surprised that we don't care i don't know what andrew could do with that other than maybe just film themselves

all the time i mean are you saying Andrew should have a padding monocle and maybe a t-shirt on the back of it that says, it's okay, I thought it was funny as well. And then if they fall over. Although there is something I was once told during a writing session, which is the term explosion at a clown factory, which is when so many things that meant to be funny happen at once it actually stops it from being funny it's almost like you can't establish that pattern that's needed

to do anything and there's a bottleneck you could you don't know what you're paying attention to yeah exactly yeah yeah so ultimately i think taking all these things into account, the psychological distance, superiority, relief, unexpected context. I think Andrew needs to become a sports mascot. Right. So there's padding. Padding. And they're sort of dressed as something silly as well. And there's a certain cartoon-esque-ness.

It's like you don't care when Daffy Duck gets shot in the face with a shotgun. There's definitely an element of that carried over into the mascot world. We're probably aware that in cartoons, they don't get hurt. So if someone is acting like a cartoon, we assume they're not getting hurt. So they've got that. The unexpected, we've already mentioned before. Andrew doesn't know when they'll collapse. So instantly, you've got that answer.

Relief and tension. I mean, what has more tension than a good old sports game? Game of sports ball. You speak from a place of knowledge there, Bec. What is a team mascot if not someone employed to come out and relieve the tension? I mean, they're one step removed from Rodeo Clown. Which I would also recommend, except for the fact that Rode rodeo clowns, I don't think they're very soft.

Quite dangerous. Superiority. The mascot gets to be on the field with the players of whatever the sport is. They get to go and be involved with something. They're getting paid to walk around. I would say a sports mascot ranks higher than the average person in terms of status yeah that's why people enjoy treating them poorly because they see them as something that is above them and they want to bring them back down yeah yeah and for i mean i

i'm sure there's some people out there who are like, no, they're actually, there is the butt of the joke and we're allowed to attack them. I'm going to go with the fact that I think they have better lives than most of us. And the psychological distance, again, you're physically distanced, you're on a field, you often probably have a barrier between you and the audience. They know that if you were injured, they don't have to help. There's hardcore medical staff nearby. They don't have to do anything should you be hurt. Hang on, hang on.

Are you, are you, you're either suggesting that Andrew just dresses up as a sports mascot in their everyday life, or you're suggesting that they become a sports mascot for a living and exist near exclusively in sports arenas. Both. Is this career advice or is this just like life existing advice? Both. Yeah, gotcha. I think that will solve their problem.

Can I give you one data point? So I may have already mentioned this to you before, but when I was a young burgeoning comedy person, actually when I was at university making short films, making little segments for local TV, one gag I thought was particularly funny, I cannot say why, is I dressed up in a galah outfit. And like a sports mascot, like the full thing over the head, big outfit. Was it a bit padded? A bit padded.

We filmed me running into storefront windows, like on like a busy kind of the Hay or the Murray Street Mall, for people who know Perth. Someone wearing a bird suit runs into a window. I just thought that was very funny. And so we filmed that. But then I entered it in Australia'sia's funniest time videos oh did you know yeah i did and guess what 500 bucks what yeah yeah i won 500 that funded that that entire year

of filmmaking activity was funded by sending in that clip of me dressed up as a galah running into a window and uh you know it just validates everything you've said well i'll tell you what if andrew thinks this is a ding then i think you need to find that footage and put it up i think it was i mean i had to post it a listener out there needs to find it. Nah, good luck. It'll be somewhere. Someone will find it. I'll have it on a DV tape.

That's the kind of era we're talking here. In the meantime, I think the amount of clips that come up if you type mascot fail into YouTube proves that this is a solid solution. Matt is typing. You're right. Oh my God. There is a solid solution. Matt is typing. You're right. Oh my God, there is a plethora. And I'm only at the compilation stage.

I can tell you without even looking them up, like one of my favorite mascot fails, I think it was the Raptor mascot from the Toronto Raptors NBA team where it falls over in one phase and then its tail kind of deflates and falls on it as the second phase of the falling over. And it's just, it's beautiful. I'll put that in the show notes. I don't feel like I'm qualified to issue this ding, but we'll check in with Andrew and

we'll see if this is dinged. Thank you. This is dinged. Thank you. On to any other business. Matt, do you have any AOB for us? I do have any other AOB. Chris, the chemist on Twitter had a follow-on question about my solution to how many leaves a human would need to be able to exist solely on the energy from the photosynthesis. And they were wondering if I factored in the energy output required for actually growing

and maintaining the leaves. And the answer is yes. Yes, I did. I just looked at the amount of energy biomass you get from the leaves. So there you are. Just thought I'd say yes, just so you know, we do listen to our listeners. And so there's your answer, Chris. Good stuff.

But that said, the main event why people are listening to the Any Other Business is to get some closure on last episode's A Pudding Squared. Yes. Yeah. And we do have an answer. And guess what, Matt? Is it? It was Dexter? It was Dexter.

It was Dexter. Yeah. For any new listeners, Dexter solved our first pudding squared problem that we put out there, showed they're working out and was the only person compared to a bunch of adults to actually get it completely right because they went through with it in great detail. And that's why we now call doing all of the maths correctly, doing a Dexter. And we don't have a leaderboard for a putting squared, but if we did, Dexter is still solid top position. Yes, absolutely. I'm going to double check the maths, but Dexter got the same result as me, which could mean that it's wrong, but let's

have a look. So the original putting squared problem was if pudding the hamster's cage is 36 inches by 17 inches and a hamster needs six inches deep worth of bedding in their hutch and a bag of bedding is 3,000 inches cubed, how much of a bag or how many bags would we need to provide the amount of bedding the pudding needs. So the way I worked it out was I did 36 inches by 17 inches and then by six inches. You worked out the area of the bottom of the hamster container? Yes, because I don't need to know the rest. I don't need to know what's above it.

And then I divided that by three because we're doing times by times by times, because that would be a cube, we've cubed it. So then I divided it by 3000 cubed inches and I got the same result as Dexter. Dexter did it slightly differently. Dexter did 36 inches by six inches. So Dexter worked out the inches on one side. inches by six inches. So Dexter worked out the inches on one side. Dexter got 216, took that answer and then times that by 17. Well.

But then got the same answer as me. One of the great things about multiplication. Because they've just done it in different order. It's commutative. Yeah. You're fine. Exactly. Yeah. I wish I'd known that as a kid. I wish it had been put to me in that way because that would blow my mind. So Dexter got 1.224, which is what I got. Matt, is that correct? I can confirm you have done a Dexter. That is correct. Yay. And if you'd like to see Dexter's working out, not only that, but Dexter's drawn an incredible diagram not only of the cage, not only of the cage, but of the bag that the bedding comes in.

Classic Dexter. Now aged 8 and 113 out of 365. Dexter's also drawn pudding in the cage, and that is my absolute favorite thing. So all in all, A pluses all round. We'll retweet that from at a problem squared on Twitter. And with at hellcat underscore mama's permission. We'll also pop it up on Instagram.

You got anything else, Matt? Well, I have one last definitive bit of any other business. People are still sending in suggestions of animals. Well, it had to be species. Let's clarify that because it's not just animals. It's like a specific species. It had to be species, which would form a very long queue if they were put one after the other. And I thought we'd put this to rest with the Arctic krill.

Great suggestion. We'll call that. People are still sending stuff in, including things like the Pelagibacter ubique, which is a type of-11 bacteria, which, to be fair, insanely abundant. And if you got all the SAR-11 bacteria end-to-end, the estimate is there's 2.4

times 10 to the 28 of them in the ocean, making up 25% of all the mass of plankton. And if they were all in a line, they would be 10 times the width of the Milky Way galaxy. Like that's just insanely long. But we don't even know how many species there are within that clade. Biologists, sort yourself out, right?

And there's so many unknowns and uncertainties. And I'm pretty sure I already gave a hand wavy, we're not going to, gonna i know there's some probably some ridiculous bacterium that people are going to suggest and and this seems to be the candidate and the person who put it forward who i will say thank you to nathan who sent this in nathan it's a great point and they say look that's so many orders of magnitude bigger than what we got from the antarctic krill that it doesn't matter how many species there are within the sar 11 clade one of them is going to be way bigger and it's probably this one the um pelagii bacta ubiqu but i think no no no there's not enough certainty here so i just thought we'd draw a line underneath this.

The final answer is Antarctic krill, because that's the best combination of, there's a lot of them, they're big enough to make a huge queue, and the numbers are sufficiently certain that we're not arguing that technically there exists a bacterium that would do this. We've got the Arctic krill. That's the end of the queue. That would do this we've got the arctic krill that's the end of the queue that's it we've reached the end i thought toasty put it correctly when they wrote into the problem posing page saying should arctic krill really be boarding an ark yeah which is a problem in itself we accept problems and solutions on the problem posing page and i think

that problem should they be boarding an ark, is a solution in itself. It is. A solution that says, let's not talk about that problem anymore. We've had the one final Crilla solution and we are done. Before we go, we would like to thank all our many Patreon supporters who very kindly make this whole podcast possible. And at the time of recording recording we have just hit 200

patreon supporters so thank you so much to all of you and i can say well actually we've had more than 200 supporters but obviously some people have had to stop supporting new people come on and that's fine if you're supporting us and your financial situation changes there is no guilt in stopping supporting us um however those of you who did stop meant that sophie got to be officially the 200th patreon supporter of a problem squared they just beat out the 199th just says nope i like to think that's their approach to giving out their personal information so patreon is like what's your name? They just wrote, nope. So well done. Nope. You are 199, Sophie 200. And our goal was in the second year of A Problem Squared to hit

pi hundred. So 314 and we're looking okay. We'll have some treats in store if we hit that goal. I want to remind everyone that if you do have a problem that you would like to send to us, or indeed a solution, you can do so at the problem posing page, which can be found via www.aproblemsquared.com. I mean, you can just write in like Robert did, who said, I want to contribute to the show, but I can't think of a fun problem that I have. A fun problem. What a problem. Yeah. Actually, if you do just want to help out, we're running a survey to help inform one of our solutions for the next episode.

One of the next episodes. That's not over promise. So if you can go to our online survey page, which is thatsurvey.ilikeit.problemsquared.com, we are asking you to put in what you call the substance that you put in your skin when you're going out into the sun. So we're curious to know how people would answer that. So please, that's survey.ilikeit.problemsquared.com. One final thing is we'd like to thank and welcome our new producer, Lauren Armstrong-Carter. Hello.

Hello and hi and thanks. Thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it. And as much as we talk about Patreon, we don't mind if you're not one. We just like the fact that you listen. Please tell your friends. And have a wonderful month. Until next time. Bye!

And before we go hang on let's just go on over to his bookshelf back yeah is this your card no i should be putting these back systematically to be honest