A Problem Squared - 094 = The First Podcasts and Votes Precast

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

💿 What did the first ever podcast sound like? 🗳 How do you REALLY lose an election in the US?  📰 Business will be closed, and opened. Thank you to Emily for the Maths mittens! To see pictures of those, head over to APS socials.  You can see the incredible Agree to Disagree podcast pages from 1999 here:   https://web.archive.org/web/19990914040650/http://www.thealph.com/agree/ https://web.archive.org/web/19991004035401/http://thealph.com/agree/about.shtml There is also a file, but we don’t think it contains any data. Can someone help find an original review?  https://web.archive.org/web/19991103231714/http://thealph.com/agree/episodes/6x02.shtml Do send your problems and solutions to the website: www.aproblemsquared.com. If you’re on Patreon and have a creative Wizard offer to give Bec and Matt, please comment on the ‘Sup ‘Zards’ pinned post!  And if you like, leave us a review, pass the podcast onto a friend or give us a rating! Every little helps.  If you want even more from A Problem Squared, you can find us on Twitter, Instagram, and on Discord

Hello and welcome to a problem squared or as we like to call it peace sign waving white flag opaque drop of mystery liquid which is the wingdings. Very nice. I'm joined by actually, you know what your name is? Do you know what Beck is in wingdings? I do not. I can best describe it as okay. Hand sign pointing finger hand signs. So it's basically that.

Yes. It's the rude hand gesture for intercourse. And then a thumbs up. Hahaha! Fantastic. It's so perfect. I had to check with producer Lauren. I hadn't already... Well, I know you haven't because if you had... You'd remember that. Yeah. And now that's going to be my name on everything.

It should be. So get beckhillcomedian.com. Circle finger sign, pointing finger sign, thumbs up sign. Beck is a comedian and writer. And I'm bomb symbol, peace sign, snowflake snowflake. That tracks. Yeah I think so. I think that's about right. Yeah. A.K.A Matt that mask guy off the internet. Because you come in like a bomb.

Come in like a bomb. Come here. But then you're chilled and chilled in a snowflake way. And then a snowflake, snowflake in a chilled way. Yeah. As a big fan of six-fold symmetry. And I'm going to say fractals? I'm going to give you half points for effort.

Innuendo hand signs, thumbs up sign. Yeah. And On this episode. I'm taking us back to the first podcast ever. Oh, I've worked out the most extreme way to lose the US election. And we'll have some peace sign, flag, circle hand. So Innuendo thumbs up, how you been? I've been great. I've been great. I've been great.

I went to Berlin. Oh yes, you did. We had a really good weekend. That was beautiful weather, low thirties, sunny. I cycled everywhere. It's such a cycle friendly city. I'm very impressed. I thought of you a lot because every time I cycle now, I'm like, Matt, be proud of me.

Yeah. That's because I'm in my project to cycle every day for people who are wondering. Yes. Which I haven't done yet today. I had to cycle once we finished recording. Oh, crikey. Yeah, you will. And I discovered upon buying a bicycle, my feet didn't reach the ground. And my friend who was the same height as me went, Oh, you can try my bike.

Cause we didn't have the thing to bring the seat down. Yeah. And I got on her bike and my feet still didn't touch the ground. That's when we realized that my legs, tiny legs, very short. Now I've always known I've got short legs. I always had to get like trousers taken. I didn't want to bring it up, But I didn't realize how short they were until I, it was an issue when I stopped at lights. What percentage of your height is legs?

Do you know what? Say that like I know my own, I don't know. No. I mean, I don't know. 40, 35%. This now makes more sense because when I wear like a one piece swimming costume, I also find that it can get a little bit tight around the butt, the crotch area and the shoulders. And it's like, oh, it's just because my torso is longer than average. To paraphrase fellow Aussie comedian, Sarah Bonetto, who has a similar dilemma.

I've got trunk. You've got trunk in the trunk. Yeah, I've got a whole lot of trunk, like a tree, like just a lot of trunk. Yeah. So that was a discovery. What a lesson to learn. Yeah. But I did.

I had a great time in Berlin. Really nice. Had ice creams in the park. It was very good. But I also went to birthday party, my friend's friend. And while I was there, I was chatting to someone and ended up talking about how to podcast. Yep.

That's the job of being a podcast. Do you have to tell people? You have to tell people. Yeah. I have a podcast, you know, this reminds me of when I record my podcast. Yep. That's the job of being a podcast. Do you have to tell people? Yeah, I have a podcast, you know, Yeah. This reminds me of when I record my podcast. Yeah.

Well, it came about because the friend that I was staying in Berlin with, I met through listeners who listened to this. Hi Gilda, I met you. Who listened to enemy in Paris. You're on the podcast. I met them in Paris and my friend Anya was visiting them right and on your lives in Berlin gotcha anyway but I was like but I have another podcast. And I said that I hosted with a mathematician called Matt Parker. And he works in like data stuff I said that and he went whoa that's so cool that's amazing.

Does he like sharp in a puff of smoke or something i was like why and then i went. Mathematician. Mathematician. Great, great, great, great, great, great. So not only has he never heard of you, Matt. Brilliant, I'm on board. But he thought I said magician. And then he was like, I was going to say, I'm not sure how you would turn that into a podcast. Just be like, at African Dabra, the elephant is gone. Now for the listeners at home. Yeah, yeah. Just imagine. Imagine not an elephant.

Although I do kind of love the idea of doing a podcast as a magician and then being a really bad magician. So it's still the audio of you making those. Make it whoops. Yeah. Smash. Oh no. Okay. Forget that.

The dove's loose. Yeah. It's just the audio. Yep. Things smashing. Yeah. Oh no. Oh, so anyway, that's how I've been. How about you? I've been magical. I was recently in the States. I went to the Bridges math art

conference, which is a big conference where mathematicians are do arty thing and artists who do math see things come together. Yeah. Like a Da Vinci. Like a Da Vinci book. And I previously attended this two years ago in 2022. And I don't know if you remember, but I mentioned that one of my favorite talks last time was someone who made generative mittens. So these are mittens where the pattern is like randomly started, but then once you you've seeded it you get this cool pattern that covers the men. Yes. Yeah it was a while ago.

It was a while back. So Emily Dennett is the person who made, did the talk, showed the mittens, somehow heard it in the podcast. Probably with, with ears. Probably with her ears. Yeah. And got in touch to say do you want some mittens? Like should make some change in mittens. And I was like sure, love some mittens.

Who doesn't want mittens? Well then no mittens ever arrived. We never got those mittens. Emily however continued listening to the podcast. And do you remember the episode where I was cycling in London because of my cycling thing? Yeah and you had to put socks on your hands. I had to put socks on my hands. And then I realised all the things that were wrong with cycling with socks on my hands.

Yes. So I risked life and limb and still had quite cold hands. Emily, listen to that and went, oh my goodness, this wouldn't have happened. If I sent Matt the mittens. You're right. Emily, I hope you feel horrible. Exactly. So Emily was at Bridges again.

Yep. She found me. Yes. And said, here are your mittens. Amazing. And there's a pair for me and a pair for you. Oh, what? I have them here.

Let me get them out. Oh my gosh. This is perfect timing because the weather's starting to turn here. It's just starting to get cold. Wow. They're in the bag. Let me get them out. Oh my gosh.

So I can't remember if she allocated. I'll give you one of each so you can see both. So we can have like uneven pairs each. Oh my gosh, these are so cute. They got a little thump. Look at this. I'll be able to hold handlebars. We'll put some photos on all the socials afterwards if people want to see what they look like.

They've got a cool generative mathematical patterns and then different colors. Ones like white and blue. The other ones like more of an aqua color and then gray then different colors. One's like white and blue. The other one's like more of an, I don't know, like an aqua color and then gray pattern on it. They're very, very cool. Yeah. And so now, now we have, uh, procedurally generated mittens. That's amazing.

You can decide which pair you would like to hang on to and I'll have the other one. And yeah, they're all mine now. It's now I'm not getting them back. I never had proper mittens. I don't think I've ever owned a pair of mittens. No, I've had like cut off finger gloves. I've got a pair of finger gloves, cut off finger gloves that have a little hood, so they sort of transition into mittens.

Oh, right. Yeah. But, but then they're very weak. They're very, the, the, the wind gets to them. The wind gets right in there. Yeah. These, these are proper. Nice and warm.

Look at that. Yeah. Amazing. So I just wanted to close the loop on that. That's amazing. The journey is complete. Thank you very much, Emily for our fantastic mass mittens. Or as I'd like to say, pointy finger, bomb, full hand.

Open hand. Yep. Sad face. Sad face. Star David. Star David. Classic Emily. Our first problem was sent in by someone who goes by the name Tadas or they're just Tad-as.

Yeah. Oh, that's their actual name. Oh, that's right. Quite rude. Look, if someone sends their name into this podcast, they know what they're getting. Yeah. And that's cause you're a magician. That's why you're better at that.

Yeah. Yeah. So Tadas says, what is the first podcast ever made and what kind of pods were they casting? I don't feel like a podcast casts pods. I feel like it's cast on a pod. Well, well, it depends when you want to start clarifying stuff as a podcast. Yes. Basically, since the internet allowed us to send sound. There's been like audio blogs and things like that to upload sound and stuff.

So people could listen to people's like personal radio shows and stuff like that. In 2003, there was a software engineer called Dave Weiner. Dave Weiner. Yep. Who developed an audio RSS feed for a New York Times reporter and public radio host called Christopher Lydon. Right. And they use that RSS feed to offer audio content.

And that's still largely how podcasts work this very day. Yeah, it was whenever he was doing interviews with like, notable people and stuff. So if you define a podcast as distributed by an RSS feed. Yeah, that was 2003. So just over 20 years ago, there was blogger con. I didn't even know blogger con. I loved the 2000s. Yeah. So blogger con in 2003, people started to talk more about these like audio. Yep. Audio blogs. Yep. Audio blogs.

And then Dave Weiner partnered up with Adam Curry, who is an MTV VJ, which I'm assuming stands for video jockey. And they created iPod. iPod. Yeah. And that program helped people download internet, like audio blogs onto their iPod. Got it. So that allowed them to download internet radio broadcasts onto their iPods. And there you go.

Audio content. That could be it. So people then started calling them podcasts. Apparently the iPod MP3 player that played them was called a podcast. Like a pod. I'm guessing like a podcaster at the end of 2004, the first podcast hosting platform. When I have a guess. The first podcasting hosting platform lips in yeah,

go to lips and we are no longer with. That's correct. Yeah, I thought it was much earlier than this, but it wasn't until 2005 that they built podcast subscriptions into iTunes so that you could just get it straight from iTunes. You didn't have to use any other sort of program. And that's when Apple podcasts was released and became a thing. I mean, technically you could argue that the first podcast as in something that could go on a pod on an iPod were these interviews by Christopher Leiden. So you could argue that those were the first podcasts.

I bet Leiden does. I bet they do too. So it was called radio open source. The actual term podcast was officially coined by Ben Hammersley was a Guardian columnist. Oh, that's a bit like how your friend of mine, Dr. Carl, was the first person to coin the phrase selfie. Was he really? Yeah, I'm sure there's probably some contention. I'm sure more than one person claims that,

but I think he's got a pretty solid claim on the first person to use selfie. Yeah. Huh. But that's biased towards people who have a Guardian column or a radio show, to be the first sighted person to use a new word. Yeah. It obviously lends itself to people who have a platform to say a word on the record. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Have you ever pioneered a word other than the park square? That's a whole vibe. I don't think I've ever pioneered a word. I mispronounced words. I'm very envious. My friend, Brady, Brady Haran, who does number file, came up with free booting for when people download your video and re-upload it somewhere else. Ooh, that's nice.

Based on an old pirate term, which is very cool. That is because bootlegging is, is the recording part of it. It's such a good word for it. And free booting apparently was a phrase used for like original pirate activities. That makes sense. Yeah. Bluetooth is from. From a guy with a Bluetooth.

Viking stuff, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to invent a word and have it stick. I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before. I hope you've invented a word. I've invented a word, gushoping. Gushoping?

Yeah, it's when you gush about someone in a gossipy way. So when you're complimenting someone behind their back. Right, got it. So for instance, oh my gosh, Lauren, have you seen that Matt's just had an asteroid named after him? That's so cool. What a great guy. Oh quick, here he comes. Yeah.

Gushoping. I'm really trying to get it out there. Like I've been trying really hard for several years, but I think it's a good term. I can't think of anything that quite describes like when you're aggressively nice about someone behind their back having a good gushoping session. Do you want to know what year I did my first podcast? Yes. 1999.

Go on. But I don't- Obviously it wasn't called a podcast. It wasn't called a podcast. It was before the iPod. It was me and two of my mates. Yeah. We would limit it, if this sounds familiar, the new season of The X-Files was coming out.

And so we would discuss and review each episode of I think series six of The X-Files on a show we called Agree to Disagree. And we would then edit it down identical to a podcast and then put it up on my mate's website. We got shut down almost immediately because the amount of bandwidth was being used up to agree to disagree. Didn't make it very far. Are these episodes out there still?

I very much doubt that. Are they not in a hard drive somewhere? Potentially Simon's. This is my mate, Simon Wright, who actually does the design for my stand-up mass channel to this day. Simon and Cohen Eichan. Yeah stand up mass channel to this day. Simon and Cohen Iken. Yeah. We all went to school together.

Yeah. This was like my first year at uni. So it could still be available. It could still be available. Please find it. Any internet sleuths, good luck. We have a new wizard, Patreon, a hundred bucks a month. You get to listen to baby Matt talking about X files.

Yeah so we tried to do it but the technology wasn't there because we just like it basically was like the audio blog thing you're talking about. Yeah. This was also before blogs because before movable type or any of that so we were you had to do a lot of the lifting yourself to host the files in a way people could then listen to. Um, but too many people downloaded it that, so we got shut down by our service provider. I net to blame for the death of my first podcast. I mean, it's not a podcast, but I used to like, you know, how you make mixtapes for people. Like I would make mixtapes for my friends when they went on holiday.

But I would- Did you do the radio DJ in an out of each store? I did, yeah. I would intersperse it with little bits of chat and everything. I would, like, come in in between. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So technically, it was like a manual.

It's a surprise. That's brilliant. An acoustic podcast. I do leave very long voice notes for my friends. You do. Which we've started calling- As the recipient of- Oh, oh, oh Matt.

Oh no, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm on the light end of this. You think there is a lot? No, no, no, no. I'm not making this a challenge. My friends and I routinely leave each other voice notes that are between 20 and 60 minutes long. It's too many minutes. We call them personal podcasts. You should. And I love them.

I love them. And it's great. My friends and I were saying like, cause sometimes there's a minute WhatsApp group with two friends back from Adelaide and there'll be times where we won't talk to each other for ages. And then someone will send a voice note and then another one and then you'll get quite far behind because you're quite busy. But then it means that later when things quieten down, you can binge their personal podcasts

and just like they're talking about how they're worried about something at work or whatever. And then the next one, they're like, okay, so this happened. Oh, I love it. I love it. It's like the best possible soap opera because the, the power of social relationship is a genuine relationship. No, that sounds like a nightmare to me. To, to fill the social obligation to catch up on hours of un-listened media. Ooh, it's no, thank you. I tend to just call you.

I interact with your voice notes. You tend to just call you and then keep you on the phone for 20 to 60 minutes. Your favorite conversation is one where the other person can't interrupt or say anything. Anyway, back to answering this question. Have I just seen in the notes web archives of the Alpha Pier? That's terrifying. That's the website we hosted hosted it on I think producer Lawrence found it. Yes. That's terrifying check out my trousers. Oh wow, okay about the team here we go Matt Parker, he's the new guy to the X-Files before we recruited him for agree to disagree. He's only seen a couple of season one episodes in the movie.

That's true. But it doesn't stop him from making insightful, that's in quotation marks. That sounds like me. Comments on season six, no sorry Bob. It was season six, I remember. Matt spent most of 1998 just outside London. This was a quarter of a century ago, I want to make that very clear. And before that lived in Perth, Australia and Indonesia.

Not all at once though. There's a joke. And the fact that the school in Indonesia was run by Americans when combined with the UK and Australian experiences gives him that truly bizarre accent. That hasn't changed. Your accent's not that weird now though. Really?

I think it's very Australian. Oh, okay. His greatest achievement so far in the reviews would have to be his world record attempt in Drive where he managed to say Bobbins three times in the edited version of the reviews. And we're supposed to- That was my substitute expletive. Bobbins.

Yeah. And we're supposed to keep this quiet, but he's also a science engineering student at UWA in Perth, but we didn't hear it from us. Here we've got some answers as well. Coke, Pepsi are one of those generic supermarket ones you've written from us. Here, we've got some answers as well. Coke, Pepsi, or one of those generic supermarket ones. You've written Coke, Coke, Coke. I was really into Coke as a teenager. I mean, I'm assuming you mean Coca-Cola.

Yes. Because the exclamation mark you put here. The energy level would say otherwise. I am the anti-Pepsi. Wow. Dogs or cats? Cats. This was all handwritten. You've said?

Skies in the room. Skies literally sleeping right next to us. They are always their own person and then brackets, feline, whatever, and can be amused for hours by the simplest things. You haven't done a closed bracket, so I feel like we're never going to get any ending. I'm going to go find this page now. What type of music or musicians do you listen to most? Jars of clay rock!

Yeah. Three exclamation marks. What type of music or musicians do you listen to most? Jaws of clay rock! Yeah. Three exclamation marks. Also, skillet cores, audio adrenaline, delirious tree, blues brothers. Oh yeah, the blues brothers thing going on. Savage garden. Classic savage garden. DC talk? I haven't heard them in a while.

That's a guy I grew up with parents in the church. Correct. Savage garden and newsboys. My favorite color is green. Stuff under your bed, a drum kit. I did actually have a drum kit. And then you put taboom ching. Or you can put taboom ching. Favorite saying, oh my giddy aunt.

The first thing you thought this morning when you woke up, why is Simon phoning this early? That is literally true from memory. Drinks with or without ice cubes, with indeed a glaciers worth. Your childhood dream job, a brickie. That's true. Yeah. Hey, I just wanted to build stuff. I have since found out that it is the engineers who get to have all the fun making stuff.

Well, since then, I've also learned how tedious working as an engineer can be. This was like my first year of my engineering degree. Yeah. Ah young Matthew. Then the suggestion that people get in touch with you. I don't think that email address will still work. I'm pretty sure Simon has not reviewed the elf.com. You could tell him that his aunt is a dee-dee-giddy.

This is a treasure trove. My friend Simon started a thing called the X-Files alphabet book which was a school project. When we're at high school in like 1997 I want to say and it ended up being one of the most popular X-Files websites. Oh like doing interviews with the cast it's very it's very enemy in Paris if I may. Yeah it sounds like it's better research to be fair. And then off the back of that, cause he already had this on, it's his back when a teenager in high school can make a website of comparable quality to anything else that was on the internet.

Yeah. It was very level playing field at the time. And off the back of that, that's when we re-ed it as the Alf instead of the X files alphabet book. And that's when we then released it, agreed to disagree. I love this. It was a lot of fun. Yeah. There's never been a point in my life where I've not been making ridiculous things.

Bad tracks. And there's not been a point in my career when my good mate, Sy, hasn't been doing design work to make me look more legitimate than I should be. Yes. Yeah. Those friends are so necessary. Yeah. The number of projects I've done where Simon making it look legit has made it happen. That's when I ended up working with Ross Noble. Oh yeah. Before doing anything else, Sai and I knocked together a website and a ridiculous project involving a printout Nana. And got in touch when he was doing triple J and because I made a sign I remember that I remember you telling me about that and me remembering it because I would listen to Ross Noble on triple J.

And being very excited about that I may have even printed out the Nana at one point. You may have printed out the Nana we made. I think I did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. None of this sentence surprises me. So this was 98, did you say?

99. 99. Do you want to see a picture of me in 99? That feels only fair. I don't feel like we have much of an age gap until- Until you see this year by year. Oh, that's cheating 100% on brand Is that like your last year of primary school? Yes Hang on. I think to be fair a photo of you at age 18

I'll find a photo of me. There is one from my 18th birthday. Great. The audio file that I got off that website is like 37 bytes I'm very fortunate that when I hit my teenage years, technology had just got to the point where you could start doing some of this stuff yourself. Yes. So me and my mates could knock together a ridiculous audio review or whatever we called it at the time, which is basically podcasting. And then, then we, during university, we all made short films and did all

sorts of ridiculous things like that. And I think that's still true. I mean, it's nice now people can still start a YouTube channel or a podcast. Just bear in mind, be creative, make stuff. But in a quarter century, it will be dragged up and you'll be reminded of the things you made when you were 18. Yes. No regrets. No regrets indeed. when you're 18.

Yes. No regrets. No regrets. Indeed. Back to the original question. Adam Curry, who was the MTV VJ who helped create iPodder. So that was the first podcast that went onto iPodder once iPodder was a thing. So that was the first thing that was called an actual podcast. It was the daily source code, which was all about podcasting.

Amazing. Yeah. That was the best possible choice for first podcast. Yes. It covered events in the podcasting space, general news and played music from the Podsafe Music Network. The Podsafe Music Network. Yeah. I feel like you've answered the question.

I think that answers it. Would you like some bonus podcasting stat facts? Yes. Would you like some bonus podcasting stat facts podcasting was kind of like mea sort of getting some traction and stuff in 2006 Ricky Gervais got the Guinness world record for most download podcast in one month which was over 260,000 downloads which sounds like a lot. Yeah and it is a lot. But other podcasts are getting those numbers. Like I'm routinely in 2011 Adam Corolla. But other podcasts are getting those numbers like, yeah, quite routinely. In 2011, Adam Corolla won the Guinness world record for most downloaded podcast with over 59 million downloads from, I think the show started in 2009.

So that was over two years. That was over two years. Now it was in 2014 that Serial started started which was a true crime podcast and that was so popular that people started listening to podcasts in general more. Oh wow. It dragged up the whole industry. They started listening to serial and went oh this is quite good what else can we do. Which I think is just incredible can you imagine having a show that genuinely changes the industry?

It was the first podcast to win a Peabody Award. And here's a couple of other little stats because I know you're hungry for this sort of thing. At the moment, there are about 546 million podcast listeners worldwide. I thought you were gonna say podcasts. I don't think it's far off to be fair. I don't have the number.

47% of the US population who are over 12 years old, listen to a podcast at least once a month in 2024 worldwide podcast ad spending is estimated to hit $4 billion. That's a lot of billions of dollars. Yep. We get zero of those $4 billion. So this episode is brought to you by our Patreon, patreon.com slash a problem squared. Yes. Well I hope that answered the question.

Yeah, I mean the question was, what was the first podcast and what kind of pods were they casting? It was literally the iPod. The first podcast was the daily source code. If you're going from the term podcast. Yep. Talking about podcasting. And it was talking about podcasting.

Couldn't be a better answer. Yep. Well we agree to agree. Oh, let's start a podcast. It couldn't be a better answer. Yep. Well, we agree to agree. Oh, let's start a podcast. Bec, I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you a ding. I'll give you an I ding. Excellent.

You've answered all the questions. Thank you. Not a wing ding. Not a wing ding. You've answered it so well. I don't think we even need to include that stuff about my 1999 podcast. Oh, I'm going to ask Lauren to put that in twice. Oh, what? Just loop it.

This next problem is from Parker square enthusiast. I already have reservations about this, but carry on. They say, hello, BNM. That's us. I hope so. With the upcoming US election and the usual talks about swing states, it got me pondering this. What is the theoretical highest percentage of nationwide individual votes that a party

can get while still losing the election due to the state based system? Thanks for a great show. Great. Thank you, PSE. I don't understand this question. So that's my problem. The reason I was attracted to this question, despite it being from Parker square enthusiast is we have a US election coming up and last time we had a

US election in 2020, I made a bunch of videos because people were throwing around all sorts of ridiculous and made up statistics and mathematics after the election, because the calculations and the way us election works is not super straightforward. And it's almost like large amounts of the population have been primed to expect shenanigans and so they'll latch onto any wisp of a shenan. Any bobbins. Yeah. I think it's interesting that there's an audience for learning about statistics that normally

wouldn't care about statistics. And so I like to make videos at the time. I think it's both useful to set the record. Straight and it feels like if people want to learn about stats, it would be a direction of duty for me to not. Yeah, I'm assuming this election will go so smoothly. There'll be no need for me to step into the fray and talk about statistics. I would be very happy if that was the case on the slim chance. That's not what happens in November. I thought me brushing up on some stats would not hurt.

Yes. So I thought, you know, I'll dive in. It's like a warmup lap for me to just chuck together a spreadsheet and answer some election questions. So the way a US election works is it's not whoever gets the most votes who wins. It's whoever gets the most electors who vote for them. Because the U S system is very clever in a lot of ways. One of its early features was because the U S was such a geographically spread out

area. Yeah. This is even back when they only had like 13 states or 15 early on. You wouldn't directly vote for who's going to be president because you didn't know who they are. Yeah. You've never met them. Yeah.

You've not been to New York or DC or wherever the. This is before podcasts. You couldn't. Before podcasts. You couldn't listen to Mark Maron interview Barack Obama. Exactly. And so they thought, what are we going to do to fill the gap between now and podcasting? And what they decided to do was in their own local community, they should vote for

someone from their community who will then travel all the way to wherever the election is actually happening. Wow. Meet and greet or find out what the deal is. Yeah. And then cast their vote. Oh, so you basically- I want to be that guy.

Yeah, yeah, you're nominating one human to go and represent you wherever the actual- then they can go there, they can be informed, they can get up to speed on what's happening elsewhere. I can't see that possibly going wrong. Can't go wrong. That system still holds. Yep. But what's interesting about it is now, in different states have enshrined this in different extensive law because in the US like in Australia we have a whole separate electoral organisation who run the elections. Yep. In the US each state determines how they run their own elections.

Okay. So it can be different state to state and some states. Some of them use machines some of them use beans. Oh yeah and let's not get into the beans versus machines debate. Why can't the two coexist? Beans and machines will never see eye to eye. Dr. Robotnik's lean bean machine or whatever it's called. So some states, the electors have to vote for the way the vote went in the state, whereas others, there's some ambiguity. But anyway, the knock-on effect we have now is when people are casting a vote in their state, they're actually voting for the elector who will go and then vote for the president.

voting for the elector who will go and then vote for the president and the vast majority of states. Will have a number of electors that represent the state so the more population the more electors you're going to send but they will all have to vote the same way. Okay so California for example is the one with the most California has like 50. Electors that will be sent. Yeah. And then they use a clapometer. And they use a clapometer. You know how it works. They come out and say, who do you want to vote for? Like, I can't hear you.

Yeah, they hold their hand above each candidate's head. Everyone goes, wah! You know how it works. It's a lot like the Gong show at the comedy store. I think that should be how the debates go. It should be how the debates go. Not enough Gong. Yeah.

If it's not, if they're not enjoying it, if they're not like, oh, this is awful. If like three audience members hold up a card, they have to leave this. They get a Gong. Yeah. The lights go out. That'll fix them. So California's got 54 electors and it's all or nothing. All 54 vote Republican or all 54 vote Democrat.

Other parties in theory that have to all vote for the same party. Yeah. So it means if you get just over half the votes in California, you get all the electors vote for you. Yeah. So it means the impact is you basically individually win or lose each state separately. Yeah. And then you've got to add together the electors you get from each one. So in theory, to win the election, you could lose a bunch of states completely and barely win.

In just enough states so all their electors add up to over half of the total number of electors and then you're in business and there are five hundred and thirty eight. Electors. Okay. And there are 538 electors. And so you have to get 270 to win. Okay. Which is why this website called 538. That's where they got their name from from doing election predictions. But Matt you say, how do they work out how many electors per state?

But Matt, how do they work out how many electors per state? Great question, Bec. Cause you think, oh, it's just you scale it based on the population. Yeah. You don't. Oh. What you do is you look at how many representatives in Congress they have, and they get the same number of electors as they have reps in Congress.

Well, that seems unfair. And in Congress, every state definitely gets two members in the Senate. Uh every state gets to doesn't matter on your population in the house of reps. You get a minimum of one you can't have zero you get at least one representative and then that scales based on population. Okay so the bigger your population the more members in the house of reps. Yeah. your population the more members in the house of reps but you're always guaranteed at least one and everyone gets two in the senate which means the minimum number of electors the state can get is three because they're guaranteed to have three in congress but very small states like wyoming has like tiny population has a population currently.

Under 600,000 people in Wyoming and they still they get a full three electors which means their electors representing. Very few people in the state per elector which is why some of you hear the arguments in different states your votes worth more or less. Okay. Because there's more or fewer people per elector. Got it. Whereas somewhere like California with millions of people. Yeah. And 54 electors, there's way more people per elector. And it's this weird thing in Congress where the Senate works is why you get this weird skewing.

Now, on one hand, that is kind of deliberate because the point was originally. You don't want small states to be bullied around by the big states and you don't want the needs and requirements of people in the rural areas just getting rolled over by people in the cities. Totally. Because they've got the votes in terms of sheer numbers of people. Yeah. We still need farmers in rural areas and all that jazz. Yeah. We still need farmers and rural areas and all that jazz. Yeah. So this is a deliberate attempt.

The reason the Senate doesn't matter how big or small your state is, you get the same number is to meet every state's on equal footing in the Senate. And so there's representation for even small far flung spread out states. But it doesn't mean now people get very upset about this, but the electoral college is the issue. If they didn't have Electoral College, which is the fact that you go send all these electors who then vote. And you didn't have states that just sort of have an all or nothing approach. You wouldn't have these issues. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, will split their electors based on the ratio of the vote.

OK. Split their electors based on the ratio of the vote. Okay. So if the votes pretty close half and half, they in theory, I mean, they haven't got that many electors to be honest, but in theory, they would say half the half you vote for this party and the half vote for that party. Yep. So they scale the electors to the vote, which people are like, well, that makes a lot more sense. Yeah. And in theory, that would solve a lot of the problems. Yeah. Now here comes the question. So I temporarily thought I would flip the question because they said, what's the most votes you can get and not win.

Yes. I thought I would answer, what's the fewest votes you can get in order to win. And then assuming the other party got every other conceivable vote that will answer that question. Yep. I had to work out how many people are going to vote. So what I did was I took the population increase since 2020 for all the states. Because like the UK voting is not compulsory.

No, yeah. Whereas we're from Australia where you have to. You have to vote compulsory voting. Yeah. from Australia where you have to vote. Compulsory voting. Which has its own pros and cons. I think it's better compulsory voting. But I can see there are arguments against it. Yes.

Because the good side is politicians have to appeal to the entire population, not just the demographics within the population who tend to vote. Yes. So they know everyone's going to be voting for them. They got to appeal to everyone and you can still choose to not vote. You've just got to show up and write. They're all jerks. Yeah. The ballot and shove it in.

You have to show up and not vote or shop and vote. I mean the downsides are a lot of people will vote without knowing much about the parties and so potentially will vote based entirely on one or two things in the media, which means certain stories or bad faith reporting can skew voting way more than it can in other countries. So I had to take the turnout for all 51 states because DC does get to vote, scale it up by the population change because since the last election, states have increased in population some have decreased in population. So for example Wyoming is up by like over one and a half percent whereas DC is down DC is down like two percent ish. So I went through and took the number of people who voted last time did all the percentage changes based on the population change since then and then I tried to work out what's the fewest votes you need. To win the electoral college and so I just sorted every single state by number of votes per elector in the electoral college and your absolute winner is Wyoming.

College and your absolute winner is Wyoming. You want to go hard in Wyoming because to win Wyoming you're getting electors at just under 47,000 votes per elector. Whereas somewhere like Florida it's almost 200,000 votes per elector. Yeah. So those are very expensive. If you're trying to minimize how many voters are voting for you. You don't want Florida. You want Wyoming and then District of Columbia, DC is next, followed by Alaska, North Dakota ranks them all. And what I've seen done before, because people have done this online, is then you just

start from the bottom and you work your way up, adding on the states one at a time for the ones with the fewest votes needed per elector until you hit the threshold at 270 and you're like job done. Yep. However, that's not the most efficient way to do it. I then realized if you do that, just looking at the numbers, you actually overshoot because you go up in such a big block every time. The state that gets you over the line is Illinois, but that's 19 electors and you only

need nine of those to hit the threshold. So I was like, oh, maybe there's a more efficient way of doing it. And so I spent ages working out like if instead of Illinois, you didn't win Illinois, you did win Arizona. It's more votes per elector, but you don't overshoot by as much. So it's actually fewer votes in total. elector but you don't overshoot by as much so it's actually fewer votes in total. And so I went through and shuffled exactly which states you can win or lose and I worked out that if you don't win Tennessee and Missouri, but you do win Arizona, the ranking otherwise works as the absolute minimum number of votes to win. And that ends up being it's thirty four point seven million votes.

Which is twenty one point six percent of all votes cast wow which means in theory. The other party could have gotten seventy eight point4% of all votes and still lost. Wow. So it's under you need under a quarter of votes cast for you to win in theory. Yeah. In the most efficient way possible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that kind of makes sense because if you want to win the electoral college, you have to win half the states and each of those states you have to get half the vote or half the vote plus one.

And so if you have to get half the vote in half the states to win that's a quarter of the votes. Yeah and then everything I've done around there is just fine tuning exactly which state you do and don't win to get it down to twenty one6% but I'm not at all surprised it's about a quarter in general. Could you go to win half the states by half the vote. Yeah huh I don't know how that makes me feel. That's a lot of numbers. I mean it's it was a great system it still is a good system but the electoral college is a bit of a nightmare. The knock on effect now is some states, because it's all or nothing, there's no point campaigning in a state like California, if you're the Republicans,

because the Democrats have such an advantage. There's no way the Republicans are going to get over 50% of the vote. Yeah. Unless you can get over 50% of the vote, you get zero of the electors. If it was proportional, if they like, oh, well, if we do a bit of campaigning in California, we might increase our vote by 10 percentage points. And that would get us an extra elector or five. Then it would be worth worth campaigning even though you're never going to win the whole state you might lose by a bit less and still get more electors. But the fact that it's all or nothing means unless you've got any chance of winning the entire state there's no point campaigning or appealing to those voters.

Other than obviously you want to maintain your base because you don't want to stay to flip and it means you get these things called swing states. And it means all the campaigning money and effort and resources and policy is dumped on a tiny number of states which could go either way. Yeah. And so in that regard it's not incentivizing people who are campaigning for president to appeal to all voters, they're incentivized to only appeal to voters in swing states. Which is, which is, I think a misfiring of the intention of the setup. I think this could all be solved if we say beans. Okay. Well, I've got nothing. No, I still think that it should be based on, I've said this previously on the show before. I think it should just be based on voting for policies and not as in like, you don't,

it's a blind vote. You don't know who you're voting for. You just see the policies on the paper. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's something in that. It involves more effort from each person, but at least then you know, you were getting what you asked for.

Yeah. But I think we should have, you know, uh, ranked choice voting. I think that would solve a bunch of problems as well, but you know, we can dream. Anyway, neither of us are Americans, so we can just watch on in horror, curiosity, hunger, and hunger. I will say for people in the US for the election, come election time. If you've got suggestions for videos or things that you think are worth looking into something that's interesting. I can't guarantee I'll do it but if there's something sufficiently good I would definitely make a video about it so do email me with your suggestions research comments etc. Well thank you very much Matt I just said so many numbers you've got no choice but to say that sounds like a solution I will put a complete list of all the states. You need to win to do the minimum vote victory.

I will put them in the show notes if people would like to see the actual list. I think you should run for presidency I know there's no thank you you weren with. Yeah. Yeah. But now you know how to hack the system. It's Wyoming or nothing. Oh, it's nothing but hacking the system over there. Pennsylvania or nothing this time, I think. Oh, thanks for teaching us. I think I'm going to give that a ding state. Hey, see what I did there instead of a swing state, swing states, a ding state. Give you a ding. Ah, no, I get it. That's very funny. Yeah, thanks. That's the Instead of a swing state, it's a ding state. Give you a ding state. Ah, now I get it.

That's very funny. Yeah. Thanks. That's the sort of humor I'm going for. You nailed it. No laughter. Just people going, that's very funny. Was that joke putting up a ten-ounce?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm happy with that, but Pug Square enthusiasts, are you? Let us know. Yes, let us know. Now it's time for a little segment we like to call peace symbol, waving white square edged flag hole in the finger symbol. AOB.

Any other? Any other wing bingness. Wing bingness. That's what they call it. Yep. We heard from Mark, who's referring to episode 092, broken hands and Alexander's bands. They said, regarding how many colours of the rainbow you can see in episode 092, I checked 140 named HTML colours supported by all browsers.

Now I just want to flag up here. A lot of people talked about RGB values. Yes. Which is just how you define a colour on a computer. Yep. But in HTML, you can just name a color. You can be like background blue, orange. So you can write it in text.

Got it. Which is good because obviously the, if you slightly tweak an RGB value, it might be indistinguishable to the human eye. Cause RGB values generally are done like, so red, you'd have zero, zero. Yes. Green would be zero zero no well as in like none of them yeah so it's like six numbers each two represents red green yes blue and then it's kind of like if you were looking at

it on a square graph and you were plotting it out yeah yeah it's a point in a 3d graph yeah you were right yeah You're spot on, but it means there's like 256 values for each of our GNB. So if you slightly change one of them, you probably couldn't visually tell the difference, whereas if you've named the colors, HTML colors are distinct. They've got names each like text, human readable names. It's almost like sizes of Neil. It's like sizes of Neil. Yeah.

They said they checked 140 named HTML colors supported by all browsers and selected the ones with 100% saturation and 100% value in the HSV color space. A different color. Not RGB. You can switch it to a different color space. Hue, saturation, value. Value. Yeah. Based on that, I conclude you can see 12 colors or 13 if you count magenta, but you shouldn't.

There isn't a magenta wavelength. Long story, we're not doing that now. They are red, orange red, dark orange, which still has value at a hundred percent, so isn't really dark. Orange. Orange. Gold. Yellow. Chartrereuse chartreuse. Yep.

That's not a word. You never had chartreuse. I've never heard of chartreuse. It's it's like a yellow. I'm getting a little liquor when I Google it. Like a very, very bright yellow is how I would. Well, that's how I'm going in memory. Oh, whoa.

Yeah. Oh, okay. It's not lime, but it's slightly green, bright yellow. Okay. Yeah. Although I think it is, I would say green. When I Google that I'm then getting chartreuse the liquor, which is a green liquor. It's sort of an olive color.

Appropriately named for its resemblance to the French liquor. It's a yellow green color that sits between yellow and green. Oh, well done everybody. Wait, the liquor came before the, I like how we just started naming colors after food. Yeah. This is great. It could have been anything. We could name it after animals that have that color.

Yeah, that. Plants. No food. Yeah. I want nugget. Not gold nugget. Just nugget. Just nug.

Yeah. Nug. Oh, I love what you've done with your living room. Oh, thanks. It not gold nugget, just nug. Yeah. Nug. Oh, I love what you've done with your living room. Thanks. It's a, it's all nug. Nug. It's more of a nuggy brown. Can I just say my favorite thing about having producer Lauren in the room with us is

when she has to look out the window, but I see her shoulders moving. Yeah. Yeah. So after chartreuse, we've got lime, spring green. You don't get just green. You get spring green. Yeah. Spring green.

Aqua or cyan. Deep sky blue as one word. Deep sky blue. Deep sky blue. Blue. And blue. Yeah. They managed to stick the landing there.

Mmm. So thanks Mark. 12 colours. 12 colours if you were to create a rainbow in HTML, which would be Rod. Yeah. Og. Rod, Oggy. Rod, Oggy. Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, Klus, K A few people wrote in with more details about if you get health care if you're travelling within the EU and you're a UK citizen.

Yes. Which is not something we originally talked about in depth. It was in passing. Yeah, because after we recorded that episode, one of my friends had been to Paris and had fainted while on a walk, a food walk, but she, she'd been holding off from eating for the, for the guided food tour and, and then there was too much walking versus eating and she fainted. So she had to go to hospital. She's from America and they couldn't believe how lucky they were. She got to go to hospital in an ambulance for free for, was not charged. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. Cause we just record an episode where someone said that you would be charged.

So please tell me more. Well, apparently UK citizens can still get a GHIC instead of an EHIC. I don't know what either of those are, which provides the same reciprocal health benefits. And that was Richard who pointed that out as well as a few other people I'm gonna guess an EHIC would normally be a European health insurance Maybe now it's a great health insurance certificate but the point is Richard and several other people wrote in to say it still applies and Tom said That even if you haven't got the correct

EOG HIC, you can still apply for a provisional replacement certificate at the time of need. So if you do need healthcare in the EU and you didn't previously have the certificate, you can still get a provisional one at the time. So healthcare for everyone it seems. Yeah. And apparently if you faint from lack of blood sugar. Even if you're American, I wouldn't be surprised if the French specifically offer free healthcare to Americans just to rub it in. Yeah.

Or say, I was going to say thanks for the Statue of Liberty, but they gave that as well. What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you, Paris? They gave them Lafayette, Statue of Liberty, and what did America do? Freedom Fries. Emily. Emily.

Ugh. Oh, before we wrap up any other business, my friend Tom Salinski, actually our friend, friend of the podcast, cause he came on and talked about aspect ratios with us. He's written a book, which is essentially the definitive guide to Red Dwarf. The British comedy sci-fi series Red Dwarf. Yes.

I have a feeling that there'll be somewhat of a crossover between our listeners and fans of that show. So if you are a fan of Red Dwarf and you would like to read, it's a very good book. I've been written. It's very, very funny and fascinating he's basically collated all the information about the show from conception how it's coming out yeah it's everything it's literally everything you've ever wanted to know about red dwarf presented a very funny and interesting way. So that is being launched on the third of October He's doing a public book launch for it. That's in the future. It is, which I am hosting. Oh, wow.

In London. I believe there are tickets still available. We'll check a link up on the show notes. If you can't make it, you can still buy the book, pre-order it, do whatever you want. I'll sadly not be there because I'll be on a plane to Australia. You will. Otherwise I would have been there. Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, that's so many other business. Thank you so much to everyone who listens to our Problem Squared or as we call it, peace sign symbol, pointy white flag, mysterious opaque drop of liquid. So we thank you for listening, telling your friends and family, reviewing us on all the various online podcasting platforms, both old and new. But we particularly like to thank our fantastic Patreon supporters who keep this whole enterprise up and running. We pick three of their names at random to thank and mispronounce every episode which this time includes Willy and Wau Lace Moving the Spacers

Char, Delick, Hollita Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. Chlita, yeah. CORE! Knee. Knee. I'm trying to like print. Yeah, yeah. Knee. See our teen knee. That's when you've got a T on your knee. You've been listening to A Problem Squared with myself, Matt Parker and Beck Hill.

We'd like to thank our producer, Lauren Armstrong and Carter, the L.A.S. or Sad Face Peace Hand Symbol Drop of Mystery Opaque Liquid. That sounds about right for her as well. Yeah, that sounds about right. You should do readings. Let me read your wingdings. Yeah. I think some of mine have fallen out. Oh, my ships have stayed, but everything else is a nightmare. We should just glue these in. I was...

And then we can send... We should can buy our own and glue them in. And then we can send them. We could hang them as art once we're done. That's cute. C3. C3. Miss. Bum.

Now I'm not copying you, I'm continuing my strategy. C3. Miss. Oof. Bet it was close.