A Problem Squared - 079 = Driving Clockwise and Evolving Dragonflies

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

In this episode… ⤵ Is it faster to drive around Australia in an anticlockwise direction on the inside lane?  🐉 What were dragonflies called before there were dragons? 💼 Business of an ‘Any Other’ nature. New segment: Things Matt Needs Help With. If you can help with ANY of Matt’s ideas, get in touch!  If you’d like to see Matt’s diagrams and GP MOTO plot, head on over to Twitter or Patreon! The podcast has officially HIT 2 MILLION! Tell us how you think we should celebrate.  As always you can send your problems and your solutions into the Problem Posing Page: www.aproblemsquared.com. If you want more from A Problem Squared, you can also find us on Twitter, Instagram, Discord and of course, on Patreon.

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared, the podcast which is a lot like Valentine's Day, in that it is no way like the original Valentine's Day. I'm one of your hosts, Be Beck Hill, and if this podcast was Valentine's Day, then I would be a rude card and a box of chocolates, because I love double entendres and will go straight to your thighs. And your other

host, Matt Parker, would be a romantic dinner, because he'll often start off with pie, and the next thing you know, he's moved onto spreadsheets, and then sums possibly a square root i can see why you were so proud i'm so excited it's very well written excellent work well written incredibly immature oh no yeah good stuff you know thanks you picked you picked a line and you you held. Yeah, that's it. Good work. You're welcome, everyone who has gotten amorous to this podcast.

No, don't. No. No. On this episode. I've worked out how important it is that Beck chooses the correct direction around Australia. I look at the backstory behind Dragonflies. Oh, and we will finish with some delicious. Any other business?

Mmm. Set the mood, Lauren. A sweet treat. I want some romantic music right here. It better just be the theme. I don't know about you, but that's what I get jiggy to. So, Matt. Beck.

We're back in the UK. We are. Yeah. We're in the same room together. And producer Lauren. Yay! I'll be honest, that's my highlight. Yes.

Yeah. It's nice to see Lauren again. Because sometimes we're both here, but Lauren's phoning in. On a screen. On a screen, yes. Yeah, like Hal. She's like the little computer. I'm afraid I can't do that.

Like Holly in Red Dwarf. That's true, closer to Holly. But it's nice. It's nice. What have you been up to since I saw you in the States? Well, since we were in the States, the United Ones, and now we're back here. It's the Yoit.

It's the year of YouTube. Yes, it is. It does all go. Which I do have to quickly say, because I was like, I'm going to put up a YouTube video on each week that we don't have Problem Squared. Great plan. How's that going? Well, I've already missed one of the weeks. And then the next one is in one week as of the time I'm recording.

And there's no way I'm turning around an episode. I'm still wading through all the things I said I would do after I'd finished writing a book. Some of which is like making illustrations for the book. Yeah, I was going to say, it's still book related. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I messaged you because I was like, last night I was like, I have a deadline to get a bunch of images in by first thing Monday. And today is a Monday that we're recording on.

And so I was up until like just after midnight last night sorting out images. And they're not all done, but the ones I had to get in for today were all done. Yes. So that is still carrying on. And all the stuff I kicked forward. But we have gone into the OIT. We had our OIT planning. We had a little away trip myself.

You did? Camera person Alex. Oh, nice. And producer Nicole. Nice. We found, it turns out, if it's in the middle of winter, hiring like the kind of seaside room where you would have a very small wedding. Okay. Is very affordable.

A little conference room. Yeah, like a little conference room. but with like pretty much on the beach. Nice. But they're not windproof. So it was fine. Drafty. We were alert. Wow.

But we went through. And because we were going to do it in the office here, but it's so easy to get distracted with actually just working on videos and doing things that need to be done. Yeah. We're like, you know what, let's just go somewhere else for the day and plan out the year ahead. That's nice. That's a good plan.

It was a lot of fun. So we post it, note it up. Oh, great. Not all the videos in production, but kind of all the stuff we wanted to do, things we thought would be fun. And then we kind of sectioned it off into here's what we might do this month, next month, so on. And kind of got a next six months pretty planned out, hopefully the whole year. Yeah. See, that's what I'm missing is planning out what I'm going to film.

This is the first time we've done this. And then put it out. Yeah. Yeah. I'll report back on how well it goes. I'm also missing the camera person and producer. But baby steps. Come on.

Yeah. Baby steps. I mean, i did everything myself for the first four years yeah and that was it didn't start paying its way for four years but i think it's worth saying every time and also i had the incredible luck that my wife is a full-time physics professor so i had the freedom to lark around. Yes. On something ridiculous. Yeah, that's what I. And the bills are still being paid. I didn't get the memo for get. Marry a physicist, I told you.

So I took some photos of all the post-it notes that we put up on the walls. I just thought I'd have a quick look at them and see if there's any that I think our listeners could help with. Oh, that's a good idea. Because there's always things where I'm like, I'd be really handy if someone could do a thing or knows a person or something like that. So it was very funny. People were walking along the seaside and trying to read cryptic because they could kind of read through the post-it notes because we'll stick them on the windows. And one's just got the cube root of I written on it. I like to think that someone walking past was like, hey, there's a cube root of I.

I can't wait for that video. That's going to be a winner so if anyone knows anyone at the emily moore transmitting station it's like the tallest tower in the uk that's not like an antenna or something ridiculous like bought by a communication company but i have seen videos of amateur radio people getting little tours of it so i feel like because i want to film some ridiculous math videos involving a very tall tower. Everyone, if you do know, either go to the Problem Posing page at problemsquared.com and put in what you know, or email me at matt at standupmaths.com.

If anyone lives near Bletchley Park, let me know. Just in general? Just in general. Lives near Bletchley Park. Yes. Let me know. Just in general? Just in general.

I want to do something about how the local area has changed since it was the World War II code breaking center. And so if anyone lives in the area, particularly if you're in like one of the places that have been built up since World War II, get in touch. Or certainly anyone who's seen the changes. Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah. First hand. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. That would be very handy. Anyone who lives on Orkney. The Scottish Island? The Scottish Island. Or can get there. If you're already there and you want to help out with a maths construction project, let me know. Or if you've always fancied going to the Orkney Science Festival.

Yeah, that's cool. Give me a shout. If anyone likes doing ridiculous 3D graphics to help out with ridiculous 3D things, every now and then there'd be like a mechanism or something or like an illusion. And I'm like, oh, this would be really handy to show if you could like model it in 3D and then rotate it to show the other side. In Blender or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, that's my list of things Matt could use help with. The end. People listening to this as their first episode of A Problem Squared, they're like, oh, I didn't realize it was them sending us problems. The host just handing out problems. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a give and take situation, everyone. I want to show you that I have learned how to solve a problem. Oh, what have you been up to? As I mentioned on our Patreon bonus episode, I'm a wizard, which is the exclusive content for our lovely financial backers. We love them all very much.

Yes. I recently was filming some stuff for the last two weeks. You were. And during downtime in the studio, I thought, well, what a perfect chance to work on something that I set up some time ago. Right. This is vague. I'm going to take something out of my bag.

You've brought a prop. How exciting. You ready? Ready. Yep. No. No way. So, dear listeners, Beck has held up a well-worn, well-loved,

but finally solved Rubik's Cube. And it's the key ring one that you've done. Yeah. I've been playing with your speed cube. Yeah. I can now do it in two and a half minutes. No, that's really good. But I'm trying to learn the Friedrich method.

It's the one where you do the two first layers at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. After the cross. That's the most dramatic speed up in your solving times you'll get yeah i can't do that method so you'll be ahead of me that that's that gives me more motivation to level i got to but the next thing i should learn is the two layer method yeah also two and a half minutes is i can definitely do it under three every time two and a half minutes has only happened a couple of times, but I'm counting it. Oh, you just need to do it once for it to be your personal best. And I've got false nails.

I've got acrylic nails. Imagine how fast I'll be when these babies are off. All right, we should do an episode. Okay, right. Let's do it. Our first problem is for you, Matt. Yep. It's from Scott, who wrote into the problem posing page which is a problem

square.com oh yeah another place and scott said if beck embarked on a trip to circumnavigate australia which direction clockwise or anti-clockwise would be longer given the side of the road we drive on i'm guessing that scott is also in australia if so what's the difference so this is a brave problem by the way and i don't know if you factored this into your calculations I'm guessing that Scott is also in Australia. If so, what's the difference? So. This is a brave problem, by the way. And I don't know if you factored this into your calculations, but I do not have a driver's license. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. That's a really good point.

Is she being you've got a chauffeur? Yeah, or like whichever direction, clockwise or anticlockwise, would result in fewer crashes. Yes. Would be the shorter one. Probably the correct side of the road. So Australia we drive on the left. Yes.

Same as the UK and like. Some other places. Japan, some other places. As opposed to continental Europe and North America. So that means if you're on the left, if you're going clockwise, you're on the outside of the big circuit. And if you're going counterclockwise, you're on the inside. And so I guess the simple answer is if you're going clockwise,

you're going to have to travel a greater distance. Yes. And actually, I remember when I was a kid, not understanding why when they started a running race, all the runners are staggered. Oh, yes. Yeah. I was like, that's not fair. Yeah. My parents are like, yeah, but the people on the outside have to travel further. There's a greater distance around the outside than the people running on the inside. It makes sense that you've got to stagger people in the race to make sure it's fair. But if everyone was just running around a big loop and you're on the inside,

you'd travel a smaller distance. Yes. That's that solved. The question now is how big is the difference going around? Although could I go faster being on the outside, like cyclists? You go faster being on the outside. You know how you can go really fast when you're a cyclist in a velodrome? Right.

Because you lean in as you turn. So they can ride faster if they're on the outside than if they're on the inside. You'd need a road with adverse camber. Yeah, we could do that. I see what you're saying, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like what you're saying.

If Australia was a velodrome, then that would work. So now we need to work out the length difference going around Australia which I thought we would do together that's why I've got the paper and pens here well because you're like Bec's gonna say something that I will need a diagram for you know what it came in handy we always tend to have bits of paper and pens lying around during the during the podcast let's do a simplified version of Australia. Okay. Let's make it a very small circle. What if you were just going like around a roundabout or something? Okay. What's the smallest version, easiest one to work out?

And then we'll work our way up to all of Australia. Okay. So here's my first question to you. You've got one person driving on the outside around Australia. So they're driving on the outside of the circuit. Yeah. That person's on the inside. What's the distance in from the outside to the inside?

What's the difference? That's your job. Well, because also it's going to be different widths. A standard urban lane is 3.5 meters wide. But we're not going to be using urban lanes. It'll be highway lanes, yeah. Most of it's going to be highways. It still says up to 3.5 meters.

Well, there you go. You might have a median strip in the middle. Sure. We can call it 5 meters on average yeah yeah if you seem confident with that pretty confident you're bear in mind you're talking to someone who does not drive okay that's very true but you've been on in a car on a road yeah but i'm never like trying to measure how far away we are from other cars what do you do when you're when you're being chauffeured around yeah okay so here's what we're gonna say let's say we're doing a tiny circle where the inside person is going around a circle with a middle diameter of

10 meters yep and then you've got an extra five meters out to the outside person but that's on both sides so actually they're going to be going around a circle that's 20 all the way across, right? Yeah. So this is like an extremely small Australia. Yeah. So we're going to work out our technique and then we'll scale that up. So Matt's just drawn a diagram, which is a little bit like the London tube logo, but without the bit through the middle. I see that.

It's not to scale. Or a very simple target. The circumference of a circle is two times pi times the radius, but we're doing everything in terms of diameter. So it's just pi times the diameter. Okay. Piece of cake. Piece of pie. Piece of pie.

Like I could probably do 10 times pi in my head, but for completeness, pi times 10. Oh my goodness, 31.4. So the inside person, they're going to do 31.4 meters. The outside person can do 62.8. And you're sort of doing this based on if you're driving like right on the edge of the road. Oh, that's, well, I'm doing the center of one lane

to the center of the next lane is three and a half meters. But I'm adding in a meter and a half of median strip in between. So it's five meters. So the middle of your car is five meters away from the middle of an oncoming vehicle. And having driven a lot of Australia, it's single lane each way for a lot of it. Yeah. I don't think that's a wildly inaccurate assumption.

Later on, we could change that number and redo the calculation. We're just working out our formula. Yeah, we're just kind of working out the equation for what we're going to do. So actually, the difference here is 10 times pi. That's quite nice. So for our mini version, the difference is 31.4 meters difference. Let's do it on a much, much bigger. How big is Australia across? Yes. Apparently, the mainland extends from west to east for nearly 2 500 miles and then in brackets 4 000 kilometers so let's just assume australia is a massive massive circle that's 4 000 which is 4 million meters 4 mega meters the inside person is going

around a circle that's 4 million meters yep and the outside person has an extra five meters on this side not to scale an extra five meters on that side so they're going to do four million and ten meters okay so pi times four million twelve five six six three seven zero point six one now I'm going to do 4,010,000 times pi equals, oh my goodness, 12,566,402.03. So slightly longer. I'm going to subtract 12,566,370.61. Okay, here we go. So the difference is between the massive circle and the other one is 31.4 meters.

Huh. It's pi times twice the average difference. Australia was a circle. Well, what happens if it's not a circle? It's still the same answer. What? I know. So, because what we could have done is taken our small one

and imagined Australia. People are like, but what about the straights? Because if it's a straight road, it's the same distance. Well, more so, I'm thinking there's a lot of times where there's a lot of pointy bits. Yeah. So, there's times where the outside lane, the right-hand lane will actually be shorter.

It's 100%, yeah. And they all cancel out and leave you just the one. What? 360. So, okay. So imagine Australia has a massive triangle, long, straight, all the way across the bottom. And then here you chuck a 120-degree corner.

Yep. And then both your roads go all the way up to the top, up to Darwin. Matt's essentially drawing a, like the sort of sign, the triangular sign you see by the side of the road that might say dip or, yeah. There, right. So now you've got three straights and you've got three corners. And each corner is 120 degrees if this is an equilateral triangle. Yeah, which equals 360. Yeah. And each corner is 120 degrees if this is an equilateral triangle.

Yeah, which equals 360. Yeah. So you're just doing the same circle but in three sections. Huh. So all the- All islands are circles. Yeah. Yeah. To a topological approximation.

Yeah. A giant disk. All the backwards and forwardsness cancels out. Do you remember when I went on a MotoGP bike around Silverstone? Yes. I had a phone on me that was logging a bunch of data that was coming off the sensors of the phone. One of which was the angle I was moving through. So here's my plot.

This is from my documentary book. Caption, yaw had to be there. caption your had to be there your had to be there your your is when you're rotating and is that plane yeah that's your and i put your had to be there yeah it's a very funny joke i honestly i wrote that joke and i i stood up and left the room i was like do you know what that is as a fan of wordplay I really appreciate that and the only reason I'm not giving you what it deserves is because I hate that I didn't know what the word was it's a dumb word it's a dumb word because I just was like oh Matt's misspelled y'all y'all that's embarrassing because the bike

I was measuring the y'all of the bike, I was measuring the yaw of the bike. Yeah. Not the pitch, not the roll. The yaw. The days of yaw. And so you can see here, turning to the right is positive, increases my angle. Turning to the left is negative. So this is tracking my overall angle I'm pointing at.

Okay. As we do a complete lap all the way around the circuit, we're turning right, then we're turning left, then we're turning right, and we're going backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. At the end of the lap, we're 360 degrees higher up the plot. Huh. Because no matter what you're doing along the way, if you do a complete lap around a circuit, you've got to do a full 360 rotation.

Ah. Huh. So no matter what your backwards and forwards are going around australia when you get back to where you started you will have done one net 360 rotation because you've done a closed loop wow around the circuit that's really cool yeah so the difference is assuming an average separation between the two circuits of five meters is 10 times pi or whatever the average separation is, it's twice that times pi. Yeah.

If we were to go for like three meters of different, all we have to do is, wow. Double it and multiply it by pi. Yeah. These are my favorite things on this show is a problem where I'm like, oh, it's gonna be so much math involved. We have to work out the topography or whatever. you know i mean the layout blah blah blah and then it's like oh this is the journey such that i can use terrible python code to calculate that no no this is was this something you knew going into this problem already i looked at it and went i

bet it's a dumb circle thing dumb can we get that on a badge it's a dumb circle thing yeah yeah there's like a famous puzzle where if you put a rope all the way around earth and then you're like oh i'm sick of it being tight to the surface i want it to hover a meter above the surface the entire way around how much longer rope yeah it's 6.3 meters it's two times pi times the amount you're increasing the circle it's a dumb circle thing and now it's like oh but i've got i've got the plot of me doing that on a race course the only difference between the race course and going around australia is going around australia is such a big circle the curvature of the earth might come into play oh because we're adding a third dimension yeah huh the curvature of the earth might come into play.

Oh, because we're adding a third dimension. Yeah. Huh. And because of the curvature of the earth, because the outside one's further around the earth, you're going, you've got to go slightly further again. Ah. This is why. So now we're not dealing with circles, we're dealing with spheres.

We're dealing with spheres and a triangle. I could do this because i know the angles on a triangle add up to 360 the angles of a triangle on a sphere add up to more than 360 because you've got to compensate for the curvature and so the total circuit all around australia might i don't think it's going to be a significant impact but on a planetary scale you might have to factor that in i had not done that if people wish to check that, I'd be curious to know. There's an equation that involves the ratio of the area inside the path compared to the total surface area of the whole planet.

I think Australia might still be so small that it's not going to make a difference. But the short answer is, if you're on the inside edge, you're saving two times the average distance times pi. Not taking into account the curvature of the Earth. Not taking into account the curvature of the Earth. Yeah, yeah. I love that. I really enjoy these types of moments.

It's fun, isn't it? Yeah. Thanks, Matt. My pleasure. And we did it together. Yeah. I watched. Well, it was a conversation.

No, I appreciate it. I also like being included. It's a journey. Yeah, it was a conversation. No, I appreciate it. I also like being included. It's a journey. Yeah, it is a journey. It's a reveal that when you do a tiny circle and then you do the continent-sized circle and the numbers are all different, but the difference ends up being the same. It's those moments in mathematics where you're like, oh my goodness, there's a link here I didn't realize.

Yeah, it's like me realizing that I don't need to go by the average length of a piece of spaghetti. I can just do like, what is the diameter of spaghetti? Which by the way, one of our listeners, Caleb, said, huge fan of the show. However, I was disappointed in your recent spaghettifying human episode that you didn't say the singular form of spaghetti is spaghettis. Spaghettis not. Yes. Never spaghettis.

It's a circle thing. Yeah. It's a circle ding. Oh. Well done. Thanks. Thank you. Bec.

Gules. Aaron here went to the problem posing page. They took all the effort of typing in a problemsquared.com. Well done, Aaron. Gilles. Aaron here went to the Problem Posing page. They took all the effort of typing in at ProblemSquared.com. Well done, Aaron. To ask, what did we call dragonflies before there were dragons? They do build on this. They assume we had a name for these flying insects that you and I would call dragonflies before we had a name for the mythical beast that is a dragon.

So they want to know what do we call them before and when did the name change? I'm glad they specified mythological because at first I was like, what did we call dragonflies before they were dragons? And I was like, I think we're still living in the pre-dragon era. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's that. And it suggests that dragons, because because to me dragons are an old concept well yes yes but i can imagine like they've just been invented for game of thrones you know

that's true it's an old concept yeah but i'm like what if a rogue genetic experiment in in the 2300s produces dragons then human history will very much be before actual dragons yes and after actual dragons and then in the future people be like what did we call dragonflies before they're dragons and then someone would be like actually the mythical concept existed before yeah our fiery overlords uh i like this question i mean i say this every time. I love a problem like this. I saw this one come in and went, that's interesting. Yeah. And then I kept scrolling for a maths one.

See, that's how I feel when I look at it, but the maths ones. Like I saw, because it had my name in it, I saw the one about me driving the circumference and was like, not for me. Not for me, thank you. Let's look at words. So I can absolutely answer the second part, when did they get the name? So the name is derived from Old English,

and Old English was spoken between the 5th and 11th centuries. Okay, yep. 600-year window. Well, I'm getting to it, Matt. So the word dragaon in Old English refers to the mythical creature how would you spell that in old english that is d-r-a-g-o-u-n oh were you yes uh very english to add an extra u in there no cheeky you yeah so that referred to the creature it's usually a large serpent or sea monster and then the old english word flog flog it's spelled f l e o g e oh that could be

anything i mean that's fluff yeah sure that referred to flying insects and so when they combined they used to be called dragon flush or dragon which meant dragon like flying insect yep which became dragon fly dragon fly became standard in the early 17th century. There's your answer. There you go. So there you go. In time in the 1600s. Yeah.

Aaron also wanted to know what they were called before this. Now, obviously in other languages, they're not necessarily called dragonfly still. But I wanted to look at what it was in the past. So an old Japanese word for dragonfly is akitsu. And some of the classical names of Japan are akitsukunu, akitsushima, or toyo akitsushima. And one of the interpretations of akitsushima is dragonfly island. And it's attributed to a legend in which Japan's mythical founder,

Emperor Jimmu, was bitten by a mosquito, which was then eaten by a dragonfly. And for these words, is the literal translation still dragon-related or are they whole different words? No. Right. I don't think it is. Yep. They've got their own names going on.

Some of the English vernacular names. Horse stinger. Horse stinger. They sting horses. Like a horsefly. Devil's darning needle. The devil's darning needle. The devil's darning needle. Which I think sounds like it's like what you would call a penis.

The devil's darning needle. The devil's darning needle. And ear cutter. Ear cutter. Yeah, is another. These sound more like names of spiky plants. Yeah, they do. Than a dragonfly.

But the dragonflies, the Norwegian name for dragonflies, I'm definitely going to mispronounce this, apologies, is Alfinstika? Alfinstika? It's one of those cool looking O's with the cross through it. So it's spelt like oven with a cool O and then S-T-I-K-K-E-R. Yeah. Oven sticker.

Which translates as eye poker. Eye poker. Yeah. In Portugal, they're sometimes called tira alhos, alhos, sorry, tira alhos, which translates as eye snatcher. Eye snatcher? What is it with eyes? I guess maybe people found that they would start like flying

near their eyes and they'd be like, ah, stop trying to steal my eyes. Oh, maybe. Do you know when you're in the bush though in Australia and just normal flies flock for like the moisture parts of your face? Which is why Australians don't open their mouths very much. Right. So they go for those. I wonder, because dragonflies are always hanging around water as well.'s a good point yeah so maybe they fly for people's eyes sometimes i caught a dragonfly as a kid that's my whole story oh you're like karate kid but yeah but

it's a bigger target so it's less one of the best christmas presents i ever got was a bug catcher thing which is basically a chamber with a funnel attached oh yeah every kid got a bug catcher so good not every kid thought it was the best present it was the best present and i also had like a thing, which is basically a chamber with a funnel attached. Oh, yeah. Every kid got a bug catcher at some point. So good. Not every kid thought it was the best present. It was the best present. And I also had like a butterfly net. I somehow managed to catch a dragonfly and get it into the bug catcher. It barely fit.

My mom was unimpressed. It was her second least favorite thing I brought home. What's the first? It was a scorpion. I was not happy I got a scorpion into the bug catch you get a scorpion in the bush i don't know there were scorpions that oh yeah yeah where i was an angry one oh yeah i mean well it wasn't to start with then it was in the bug catcher in welsh the name gracewaes-in-Nidra. That's definitely correct. Gwaes-in-Nidra. I'm definitely mispronouncing that.

I'm so sorry, Wales. That translates as Adder's Servant. Adder's Servant. That's not far off dragonfly. No. In the southern United States, terms snake doctor and snake feeder refer to a folk belief that dragonflies catch insects for snakes or follow snakes around and stitch them back together if they're injured. Wow. That's cool.

So the category seem to be obviously dragon, being poked or injured with the eyes and snakes. Yeah. Oh, there's more. There's more. Yeah. Yeah. In ancient Swedish folklore, dragonfly is called the Skamsbesman, which translates to devil's steel yard. Devil's steel yard?

Yeah. This name is derived from the shape of a dragonfly's body. So its body shape looks a little bit like a weighting tool in steel yards. Yeah. And so people believed that the devil used the dragonfly to weigh people's souls. The dragonfly would circle a person to get the measure of their soul. If your soul was found wanting, you could expect to be seriously injured in the near future yeah dragonfly to the eye yeah that's right go get him ah my eye yeah sick sick him why does that snake look so happy

he's got like all these stitches yeah so we put back together yeah so um i have really interesting it was a great question yeah i had a lot of fun looking into all the different terms. I didn't realize how much folklore was attached to dragonflies specifically. I guess it is quite an unusual shaped insect. Yeah. In fact, there's reports that dragonfly watching in the same way as like bird watching is becoming a bigger and bigger thing because there's different variations and people really like. I didn't know that. Trying to find. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. So so there you go aaron i hope that helps answer your question well i'm going to give you a ding also dragonflies uh you've

already got the ding back i know but one more fact okay there's dragonflies on every continent except for antarctica which is way more common than i thought okay you've not lost the ding. You've still got ding. Yay. And now we're to the AOB section, which stands for any other business. Don't say it like that. Any other bays. Any other bays? Oh, bays. Like my bay. Yeah, like a boyfriend or a girlfriend got it

your bay well done um we hit two million two million downloads for our new listeners i tried to predict when we're going to get to two million downloads we had a lot of fun with one million we're making commemorative plates we regret nothing i predict. It took some time for them to go out. It did. It was not a quick process. We then tried to predict 2 million. I had one model where I tried to factor in exponential growth of the podcast. Yeah. And I was too optimistic. Yeah.

So then we switched to more of a linear model, which predicted Valentine's Day, which is in two days after this podcast comes out, but a couple of weeks in the future at time of record. And that was too pessimistic. It split the difference. Yeah. So thank you, everyone. Two mega thanks to everyone for listening to this podcast.

Thank you so much. And we want to celebrate with another weird item. Yeah. So we don't have a plan at the moment. Yeah. So we were floating the idea of commemorative teaspoons which is funny but i think is you can we had a quick look around and you can get ones where they'll engrave things on a spoon for you yeah which is fine but we kind of want

like the little enamel picture of like us or something. Yeah. But I don't know how, if anyone's got suggestions, it doesn't have to be a teaspoon. No. No, my only suggestion for that was because we have the episode about keeping the sparkling wine fizzy. It's nice. It links in. Because before the plate linked into our plate bowl debate,

which was. But also we've been meaning to do a follow-up to the sparkling wine one where we do it on a much larger scale. we will see whether our findings are correct that was one of the post-it notes at the yoy planning day oh you're gonna cross it over with a totally that 100 it's got to be a youtube crossover but i think maybe if that's the case it makes more sense to wait until our next announcement which will be for four million downloads yeah that's a good point because the plan is to do 1 million, 2 million but then the pattern is doubling

not adding 1. We're squaring because it's a problem squared. Oh, we could... Squaring 1 doesn't give you 2. Damn it, I'm so close. We're just doing 1 over and over. I like what you're saying there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We needed to start. We should have done Fibonacci. With a number bigger than one and then squared it. Yeah. It's not too late for Fibonacci. Yeah. We should mean we skipped the, we did one twice. We did plates and bowls for one.

Yeah. I think two, then four, then eight, then 16. Yeah. I'm a big fan of doubling. Vote. What do you want? Fibonacci or pounds of two? We can only have one poll on the episode, Matt.

Just express your opinion via prose and we'll decide. Yeah. Because we're split down the middle on that one. If we do save spoons for four million, once we've concluded our spoon in the champagne journey, let us know what we should do for $2. Yes. Yeah. Or whether you don't want any. Well, because you still have to buy it.

What are you willing to pay as well as the question? We're then going to sell this thing to you. So bear that in mind. Most podcasts release merch as an extra form of income. No, we don't. We're like the opposite. And we quite often do these at a negative at a loss and effort where we undercharge we are the worst at business yeah we're awful but but we like to have fun feel free to take

advantage of that and suggest a stupid thing yeah or something that we can pay money on that's also good. I've got so many other business. Matt. Yeah. You mentioned in one of our episodes that we recorded in Australia. Oh, yeah. That you had some.

Oh, I did. Some crisps. In fact, I've got a bag of things to give you. Yeah, you do. Should I grab it now? It's over here. Popped it on this side. Okay. First of all, long-time listeners will know that Beck is a huge fan of the Australian snack, the chip, the crisp.

That is Twisties. Yeah. We need to get them to sponsor us. We managed to. We should. I managed to get, with the assistance of my brother, Twisties that are Donut King cinnamon donut flavored. I'm so excited. There you are. And Twisties. These wereut King cinnamon donut flavored. I'm so excited. There you are.

And twisties, these were the harder ones to get, twisted raspberry flavored. I've not tried those. I did try because I could still buy donut at the time. Right. I ate a pack of the donut once, but you couldn't get more of the twisted raspberry. They've come and gone. So I don't know what they taste like because that's the pack I had. Yeah, because the twisted raspberry best before date was 19th of November last year. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I think considering how out of date some of the twisties have been that we've eaten in the past. Very true. We'll check. We know the taste of stale twisty pretty well. Yeah. We'll be able to identify thatale twisty pretty well. Yeah. We'll be able to identify that separate to the twisted raspberry.

Yeah. Now, I know people don't like listening to people eating on podcasts. No. So we're going to open these and try some now, and we'll report back in what will seem like no time at all. Do you know what? It feels like it's covered in freeze-dried raspberry. Yes.

It's like an unflavored twisty covered in freeze-dried raspberry. Very Moorish. There's no savory to be had, but it's definitely. Next up, we've got the Twisties Donut King cinnamon donut flavor. Flavorless twisties that have been rolled around in some sugar and cinnamon, which I'm going to guess is what it tastes like. You may have cracked the secret sauce. It tastes like a crunchy part of a donut.

Who would have thought? I thought I was going to be so angry at sweet twisties, but instead I'm delighted. And we have a stump date, which is an update about the stump. Yes. I realized there was ambiguity in the hilarious portman 2 of stump date yes it's not a date with a stump in a sense although in this case it is because i have there it is wow it's the clock wow and a thermometer and thermometer and i can see that it's it's 20 degrees in this room right now yeah which is why i am i haven't taken off my jacket it's an old building we've been through this this is great you still got the axe marks and stuff in 20 degrees in this room right now. Yeah. Which is why I haven't taken off my jacket.

It's an old building. We've been through this. This is great. And you've still got the axe marks and stuff in it. Look at it. It's so good. The clock has stopped. I took the battery out when I put it in. Oh, you can take the battery out.

Yes. Because I was just looking at it going, I. I managed to pull it apart, take the battery out because I was putting it in my. I figured a suitcase that ticks audibly. I mean, I know life is not a cartoon, but I don't want to stray that close to the edge. No, no. The next thing you know, you just see people out on the.

On the tarmac. On the tarmac. Hitting it with comically large hammers. Yeah, or just like a SWAT team. Yeah, yeah. And they just explode it. Yeah, yeah. Controlled explosion.

My twisties. That's again another euphemism. It's me swinging an axe into a root to try and get a bit of stuff. I love that they've kept that. Yeah. And the other one? The other one's got resin, doesn't it? This one's got a bit of resin as well, but not as much.

So the other one I left in Australia. Yes, you did. So we'd have one for Aussie recordings and one here for our UK recordings. I love that. I'm going I love that. I'm going to pop that. There's now a new member of the desk. Beautiful.

Great work. Yeah. Well, great work to everyone who made that possible. Yeah, thank you. And we do still have another massive chunk of stump root that I dug up on a later occasion. Oh, yeah. And people have suggested cutting it into cubes. Yes. So they're cube it into cubes. Yes.

So they're cube roots. Yeah. Very funny. That's the current winner. Yeah. I guess you could turn them into little desk. Like dice or little desk vision things. Dice is nice.

Yeah. I mean, my dad will express the occasional opinion. Turn them into dice and give them to me as a reward for when I eventually guess how many die are in there. Oh, I don't know. I feel like you're going to guess the number of dice before we do something with the rest of the stump. Yeah, well, you know.

And on that note, we're at the end. We want to thank all of you for listening, especially people who share the podcast and tell other people to listen, whether you're doing that on your chosen social media platforms or in real life. We really appreciate it because the more listeners that we get, the more we feel like this is worth doing. We also want to thank the people who financially make this possible because a lot of work and

effort goes into this and we like to compensate people appropriately. So with that in mind, we're going to choose three of our patreon supporters at random and read them out incorrectly as is the way i will say as a little added bit of any other business we did we did have one come in and say you mispronounce the names of random supporters oh i saw this comment yeah why don't you mispronounce the names of the problem senders and the person who sent this in has entered their name as jonathan that's cheating the system unless that's really their name mispronunciation i loved it it was fine thank you jonathan

it really made me chuckle um i don't know what do you know what i think we probably do mispronounce the names of some of the problem senders. I think we made it a thing just to make our lives easier because we felt bad getting people's names wrong. And on this episode, those lucky Patreon supporters are. Becky Renolds.

Rianne Salter. Ryan Salter Ryan Salter Mang us to reset Magnus You just make the vowels longer to reset in one syllable mas reset

I also want to thank ourselves, the hosts We're great, hooray Matt Parker Thank you very much for being my Valentine It's not been easy Myself, Bec Hill

and our unrequited love who never returns our calls lauren armstrong carter she's too good for us man so true we just have to love her from afar i'm glad she was third wheeling today yeah she's also our producer i should mention she's not someone we're obsessed with it could be both goodbye more obsessed with it could be both uh goodbye back we're back in the same room as the jar of dice oh yeah it's behind me i have here in the um notes that lauren left us before she quit for sexual harassment yeah your previous guest was 453 and i said higher and your previous like the closest guest above that was 486 so that's the band you're working in now yeah so my original plan was to like

go in go in half split it each time yeah that makes sense but i can't because i'm left with Let's say 474. Lower. Interesting. I mean, it's 50-50. Oh, I should have said 50-50.