0:00

Hi everyone, welcome

0:02

to this week's episode of

0:04

No Such Thing as a

0:06

Fish when we were joined

0:08

by the incredible mathematician, youtuber,

0:11

science communicator, all round smart

0:13

guy Matt Parker. Now

0:15

a lot of you will know a lot of

0:17

Matt's work, he's written a lot of books, things

0:20

to make him do in the 4th dimensions, one

0:22

of his humble pie was an absolutely massive book

0:25

for him. He has

0:27

a new book out, it is

0:29

called Love Triangle, the life changing

0:31

magic of trigonometry. I

0:33

haven't read it yet but I

0:35

can tell you having read his

0:37

other books it is going to

0:39

be absolutely incredible and you can

0:41

pre-order it right now by going

0:43

to mathsgear.co.uk, that's

0:48

m-a-t-h-s-g-e-a-r.co.uk, don't

0:50

forget that S if you're in America. And

0:53

you can pre-order a signed copy with

0:55

a limited edition dust jacket, of course

0:58

it will be available in all of

1:00

the local bookshops and probably in those

1:02

big online book retailers as

1:04

well. A few other things about

1:06

Matt, he is in a podcast

1:08

called A Problem Squared with Beck

1:11

Hill who you might remember from

1:13

a few months ago, she came

1:15

on the podcast and talked about

1:17

Cabbage Patch Kids, Beck and Matt

1:19

have this incredible podcast, it's definitely

1:22

worth listening to and there is

1:24

also a podcast of unnecessary detail

1:26

that Matt does with two other

1:28

ex-fish alumni, Steve Mould and

1:31

Helen Arney from the Festival of

1:33

the Spoken Nerd. Anyway,

1:35

I'm sure you're going to love this week's show, don't forget

1:37

at the end of it go

1:39

to mathsgear.co.uk to pre-order Matt's new

1:41

book Love Triangle but for

1:44

now all that's left to say is on with

1:46

the podcast. Hello

2:05

and welcome to another episode of No

2:07

Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly

2:09

podcast coming to you from the QI

2:11

offices in Hobern. My name is Dan

2:13

Schreiber, I am sitting here with Anna

2:15

Tyshinsky, James Harkin and Matt Parker and

2:17

once again we have gathered around the

2:19

microphones with our four favorite facts from

2:21

the last seven days and in no

2:23

particular order here we go. Starting

2:26

with fact number one, that is Matt,

2:29

the first computer to ever discover

2:31

a shape starred in

2:33

the 1980s sitcom, well starred, was

2:36

in an episode of the 1980s sitcom Laverne

2:40

and Shirley. There

2:42

are a couple

2:44

of concepts in there I'm not familiar with. I like

2:46

to pack a lot of concepts into a centre. Yeah.

2:49

Okay so computer, shape, Laverne or

2:51

Shirley? Can we talk about

2:53

how you discover a shape? Great, yeah.

2:55

That feels like a big question, I

2:57

also don't know what Laverne or Shirley

2:59

you'd recommend. I'm unfamiliar

3:02

with their non-computer based episodes. I

3:05

used to watch it as a kid. Really? Yeah,

3:07

yeah. And it's good, yeah. I mean it was

3:09

a spin off from Happy Days. Yeah, it was

3:11

Gary Marshall who was the creator of it, he

3:14

was the Happy Days guy. Yeah, yeah. Apparently

3:16

it was a lot of, sorry we're in Laverne

3:18

and Shirley territory now, that was in the main

3:20

part of my, apparently they were like really kind

3:22

of like, you know they had a lot of

3:24

fights on set and Happy Days, the cast, they

3:26

used to put glass to the walls to hear

3:28

the arguments that were going on on the other

3:30

side, yeah, all that stuff. Unhappy Days. Yeah. But

3:34

it was early 80s I think Laverne and

3:37

Shirley, so that's quite early

3:39

for, no it's not that early for

3:41

computers is it? It was a 1980

3:43

episode and the same computer

3:45

had previously starred in The

3:48

Land of the Giants in 1969. Wow.

3:50

Oh god it didn't get worked for a while then.

3:53

No, it went out for a while. So

3:55

it was in 60s like sci-fi and

3:57

being in the 1986. was

4:00

actually like the final bit of its

4:02

Hollywood career. Yeah, it's pretty much,

4:04

you've as a result of this fact, and we

4:06

will get to the new shape, sorry Anna, for

4:09

knocking out of this, but this website that

4:12

you sent- Starring the computer. Starring

4:14

the computer is phenomenal. It's the IMDB

4:17

of computers and movies that they have

4:19

appeared in, and it's run by

4:21

this one guy who, he has this amazing

4:23

Twitter account where he just constantly puts up

4:25

photos from movies he's watching going, what's this?

4:27

Does anyone know, and people go

4:29

hunting to try and track down the exact

4:31

computer that's in the movie? What

4:34

was this computer? The Burroughs 220. Okay,

4:37

once you've seen it in Laverne and Shirley, do

4:39

you think people then go, well I

4:41

wanna watch The Land of the Giants now, and

4:43

I wanna watch- Watch it in higher back catalogs.

4:45

Yeah, yeah, like you might be with an actor.

4:47

Well what's good about this computer? The Burroughs 220

4:49

really looks like a computer. Like

4:51

if you're thinking 60s computers, like

4:53

with tapes spinning and lights flashing,

4:56

it's like your classic retro computer

4:58

look. Okay, I read

5:00

that a similar one, which was the

5:03

B205, Oh yes.

5:05

Was the Bat Computer in Batman. Yeah,

5:08

absolutely. Really? Cause I wondered

5:10

if there were ever computers that played other

5:12

computers, and I guess that's an example. Like a

5:15

Mac playing a Dell or something. Yeah, yeah.

5:18

I wanted to find out more about the

5:20

Bat Computer. Unfortunately, one of the most popular

5:22

internet firms in Lagos is called Bat Computers.

5:24

How many are there, and that's all you

5:26

get? I did find a few things about

5:28

the Bat Computer, and by the way, the

5:30

Burroughs 205 absolutely smashes the hell out of

5:32

the 220. It does, it had way

5:35

better casting. Yeah, it's in the top

5:37

10 most appeared in movies computers in

5:39

the world. Same family of computers for

5:41

the record. One big Burroughs family. So

5:43

here we go. The dynasty, you might

5:46

say. Exactly. What you get with the

5:48

Bat Computer, the Burroughs 205, is

5:50

you get the Bat Correction signal, which alerts Batman

5:52

when he has said something incorrect. You have the

5:54

Bat Computer input slot, which I remember. Wait a

5:57

minute, so they invented the QI Klaxon. You know,

5:59

like. Exactly, yeah. There's the input slot where

6:01

it's just it's kind of like where you it's

6:03

like a mail slot where you put your post

6:05

in But it's like here's an entire book and

6:08

you just shove the book in and it computes

6:10

the whole book really quickly Wow accelerated

6:12

concentration switch that's sort of giving it more

6:14

computing power in order to deal with a

6:17

problem and Special-escape arch

6:19

criminal bat locator Which

6:22

is a preset of the computer basically

6:24

but specifically for like the Joker and

6:26

Okay, that's clever. I find my phone

6:29

app, but like find my villain Exactly.

6:31

Yeah, and the bat keyboard. That's an

6:34

actual thing It is a keyboard which

6:36

only has I think five or six

6:38

or seven keys on it and

6:40

you can make any Letter by playing

6:42

a chord. Do you know these man like little

6:44

keyboards? So you don't need 26 keys

6:47

to play all the other Strog a fruit would

6:49

use I think so Yeah But it was useful

6:52

Like disabled people who you know only had one

6:54

hand or something like that and you could type

6:56

letters quickly by knowing that if you want To

6:58

do an a you might press the first one

7:00

the third one and the fourth one Oh,

7:02

yeah, because there's 30 well if you include

7:04

pressing nothing 32 options so that you've

7:06

got enough for the whole alphabet How

7:08

many five with five five five keys will give

7:10

you 32 options? Including

7:13

the null press which is not using

7:15

the keyboard 31

7:17

distinct presses and then if you include your nose now

7:20

you can do up around lower case Keyboard

7:23

I removed all the keys apart from the zero and the

7:26

one on the keyboard so I can

7:28

type in binary so I could included

7:30

the backspace I'm not a monster I Can't

7:34

enter so I could type out I tried doing

7:36

it on stage I'll type people's names in binary

7:38

then hit enter really it'll come up and take

7:41

Wow I was looking at that website

7:44

for all the examples of this b2o5

7:46

which is what the bats Computers.

7:48

Oh, yeah, and one just caught my

7:50

eye which was sex kittens go to

7:53

college The movie

7:55

why but this is an amazing movie because

7:58

it didn't just have this computer

8:00

in it, the B205. It also

8:02

had a robot called Electro in

8:04

it and Electro was an

8:06

exhibit of the 1939 World's Fair.

8:09

It was like a huge seven foot tall robot.

8:11

It could walk by voice command. So if

8:13

you told it to walk, it could walk. It could

8:15

speak 700 words using a record player.

8:18

It could smoke cigarettes, blow up balloons and

8:21

move its hands and arms. All

8:24

the parts of the shurington. Wow.

8:26

So this was like a really famous robot in the

8:28

World's Fair in 1939. And then by, you

8:32

know, the 1960s, it was in Sex Good and Go

8:34

to College. That's so good. What a career decline and

8:36

it was a bit depressing for that poor robot. I

8:38

just love it. I love all the movie. Like I

8:40

didn't read that movie. Like there are so many like

8:43

you get big ones like Austin Powers, The Spy Who

8:45

Shagged Me. It appears in that. But then you also

8:47

got Dr. Goldfoot and the bikini machine.

8:52

And the Burrows, by the way, it was

8:54

a company. Yeah. And it was started by

8:56

William Seaward Burrows, who was a grandfather of

8:58

William S Burrows. Really? The three generations. Yeah.

9:01

And he invented, at least this is, I'm

9:03

sure there are other claims to it, but

9:05

he invented and filed the patent for the

9:07

first calculator. You wouldn't imagine that spawning

9:09

William Burrows. Not really. Two

9:11

generations later, with like chain smoking,

9:13

romantic, wife shooting, wife shooting. He likes

9:15

to put that further down and see

9:18

if he can really talk about the

9:20

fact that he killed his wife. Yeah.

9:22

Well, apparently he said that he was

9:24

trying to do a William Tell thing.

9:26

Yeah. And shoot an apple off her

9:28

head and accidentally shot her. Yeah. I'm

9:30

not sure we all buy that. But

9:32

apparently that will get you off in

9:34

court because you didn't go to jail.

9:36

Yeah. Everything was fine. Yeah. I believe

9:38

an apple nearby at the scene of

9:40

the crime. Yeah. That's what I was

9:42

aiming for. Another cool pop culture computer

9:44

crossover I came across. Did

9:46

you guys know that Steve Jobs

9:49

is Homer Simpson's uncle? Oh,

9:53

yes. Yes. It's so

9:55

weird. The fact that

9:58

it's so bizarre. Steve Jobs'

10:00

dad is a guy called Abdul-Fattajan Dali.

10:02

Steve Jobs was put up for

10:04

adoption by this guy because his

10:06

partner's family disapproved of the marriage

10:09

because he was Syrian Muslim. So

10:11

Steve Jobs went up for adoption, never met his father

10:13

actually. This guy, Abdul-Fattajan Dali,

10:15

had another kid, also who

10:17

ended up estranged from him. She's

10:19

called Mona Simpson. And

10:21

she married a guy weirdly called Richard

10:23

Apple. So Steve Jobs' brother-in-law

10:25

is called Apple. She

10:29

married a guy called Richard Apple, who was a ricer

10:31

on The Simpsons, and he came up with

10:33

a character of Mona Simpson, Homer's mum, named

10:36

after his partner, Mona Simpson.

10:39

So Steve Jobs' sister is Mona

10:41

Simpson, Homer Simpson's mum. Okay.

10:43

Yeah. I followed that, but maybe because I knew

10:46

it beforehand, I'm not sure if that worked, because

10:48

we got too confused, like imagining a very

10:51

complicated family tree. Yeah, I'm thinking like the

10:53

Habsburgs, you know that family tree where they're

10:55

all kind of insurrections. Yeah, it is like

10:57

that. And also if that like branched onto fiction

10:59

for one bit of it, it's a little bit

11:02

like Icelandic sagas, where you're like, is this

11:04

true or is it not? So shapes, you

11:06

were... How does the computer invent

11:08

a shape? Well,

11:10

this is the problem. So everyone, and

11:12

this is a perfect example of

11:14

what happened in computing. Everyone loves

11:16

the B205, and

11:18

all these other fancy computers. The

11:21

B220 was like a vacuum tube

11:24

miscalculation, because they barely made any, no

11:26

one really bought them. Transistors had come

11:29

along and blown these old ones out

11:31

of the water. So they were pretty much a forgotten

11:33

computer until I was reading a old

11:36

maths paper from 1962. And

11:39

it was someone called Donald Grace, who

11:41

was trying to find the biggest shape. Now,

11:46

you're gonna need some constraints

11:48

on that. Otherwise,

11:50

the biggest shape is whatever shape the

11:53

universe is. But they

11:55

were trying to work out the biggest shape that you

11:58

could fit in like a unit sphere. Okay, so... Biggest

12:00

shape you can fit in a ball. And you

12:02

can imagine it the size of the universe if you

12:04

want. No one's stopping you. Or

12:06

you can imagine it at a nice

12:08

manageable basketball-esque size. And

12:10

to make it a bit more manageable again, they would

12:12

do it for the number of vertices, the number of

12:15

corners a shape has. And

12:17

Donald specifically was curious what's the biggest

12:19

shape with eight vertices on

12:21

it. Which some people might

12:23

think, we just work out how to put eight

12:26

points on a sphere as far apart as possible

12:28

and join them all up to make a cube.

12:31

And it doesn't work. Ah. That is the

12:33

best way to position your points on a sphere.

12:36

And that's actually quite difficult to do. That's a whole other...

12:38

No one has a good systematic way to

12:41

arrange dots on a sphere. That's

12:44

so interesting. What in that regular way that

12:46

makes a cube? Despite all the funding from Big

12:48

Golf. What

12:52

is the biggest golf? The five of

12:54

them. Yeah, there's no...

12:57

It's called the Thompson problem. There's no... Because it

12:59

came out of... Is it named after golf Alexei

13:01

Thompson? It's not. Oh, right, OK. It

13:05

came out of Thompson looking at

13:08

electrons in an atom to work out how they'd be

13:10

spaced. And they're like, oh, well, it's easy. They just

13:12

spaced such that they've got as close as

13:14

possible to the same distance between them. And they're like, we

13:16

just worked it. Oh, that's really hard to work out. And

13:19

it doesn't even solve this other problem. So we

13:22

were... Mathedge was a bit of a dead

13:24

end. And Donald Grace was studying at Stanford,

13:27

studying what would later be called computer science. And

13:29

they were like, you know what? I'll just see if

13:31

I can get a computer to solve this problem. Because

13:34

if I program a computer to start with eight

13:36

points on a sphere and

13:38

work out the shape that they define, and then jiggle them

13:40

all around a bit and see which

13:42

direction of jiggling increases the volume by

13:44

the most, and then just

13:46

do that more times than a human ever

13:48

could, you'll eventually evolve your way into the

13:51

biggest possible shape. Wow.

13:53

Yeah, OK. And so I read the paper

13:55

and I wasn't kind of aware of that at

13:57

the time. I was just looking in the color shapes. goes

14:00

read into the paper and there's a line

14:02

that said, oh we ran this on a

14:04

Burroughs 220 computer system. I was

14:06

like, that's weird, like that's commonplace in modern math

14:08

research. But I was looking at this going, that's

14:11

what, a computer already? And the paper

14:13

was submitted in August 1962. I'm

14:17

like, oh, they didn't have access to a computer. And

14:20

it turns out they did have a Burroughs 220 at

14:22

Stanford. They got it in 1960. So

14:25

Donald has since passed away, spoke

14:27

to his kids, and they're like, oh, we used to volunteer

14:29

and go in at night. He would

14:31

take the night shift from the computer lab. That meant

14:34

he could run his code on

14:36

the computer. Because otherwise, we're not going to waste

14:38

their computer time for someone finding the biggest shape.

14:40

Yeah, exactly. And he found it.

14:42

He found the biggest shape. And he published it. And he's like,

14:44

I found this thing. And do you have

14:46

any idea, can we explain what the shape is or is

14:49

it tough? It looks a

14:51

little bit like a dice from D&D.

14:55

It's made entirely out of triangles. It's

14:59

not like an acoustahedron, like a D20 or like a D8. That's

15:03

nice and neat because they're platonic solids. It's

15:05

somewhere in the middle. So there's still a

15:07

lot of triangles put together. And it looks

15:10

quite regular. But it's not exactly tidy because

15:12

that's an awkward number of vertices. So you

15:14

couldn't roll it as a physical die. It

15:16

would be slightly unfair. And

15:19

it's massive. I mean, it's going to be difficult, isn't it? Heavy. Well,

15:21

it's nice. Our universe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

15:23

Yeah. Yeah. Can

15:26

we talk about golf? Yeah, sure.

15:28

Yeah. Oh, I made a

15:30

classic error there. Let

15:32

me know. No, you can't

15:34

say no. This is interesting. So I learned

15:36

this from researching for this. I looked at

15:38

my golf balls. And there's loads of dimples

15:40

on them. All the dimples

15:42

are hexagons. Or are

15:45

they all hexagons, Matt? Because it's a

15:47

copy. They can't be, right? And

15:49

so I found out that every golf ball

15:52

has 12 pentagons on it. It's

15:54

amazing. If you get one. That was Anna, by the way.

15:58

True. I can be. Thank you. Bye-bye. I was

16:00

a weird Star Wars creature that's just suddenly

16:02

came off that. We went to Epcot, Disney

16:04

World, and I made everyone I was with

16:06

stop so we could look at the massive

16:08

Epcot sphere, which is a giant golf ball,

16:10

I guess. I'm like, in there somewhere I

16:13

said are 12 Pentagon's. Oh my God. And

16:15

I'm going to try and find something. But

16:17

the interesting thing is, this is the least

16:19

interesting part of it, now I think

16:21

this has improved my golf game because what I

16:23

do is when I put the ball on the

16:26

tee, I line up one of the Pentagon's to

16:28

where I want to hit and it helps me

16:30

concentrate that that's the part of the ball that I

16:32

want to hit. Oh, that's great. Yeah.

16:35

That's like with bowling, I use the triangle in the middle.

16:37

Well, you're supposed to. That's what they're there for. I don't

16:39

think anyone does though, but I do. I do and it

16:41

works. So yeah, I mean, that's what that's there

16:43

for. That's quite

16:46

annoying for the golfer behind you who has to wait for

16:48

you to just constantly hang on. I know

16:50

they're alone here. Finally, it's Pentagon. Well, that's amazing,

16:52

isn't it? Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah,

16:54

that's incredible. Yeah, that's because you

16:56

can't put hexagons on a sphere.

16:59

You can't. And I've gotten very

17:01

upset because the UK street signs for

17:03

a football stadium, the picture of a football and

17:06

they've forgotten the Pentagon's. It's

17:08

all hexagons, which is mathematically

17:10

impossible. So why it can't be

17:12

if they made the sign work. Well, they just

17:14

drawn a hexagon kind of slightly distorted grid and

17:16

then cut out a circle of it and put

17:18

on the sign. And we never see the other

17:20

side. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So

17:23

I had I ran a big petition. Right.

17:25

I got 20,000 signatures on a parliamentary

17:27

petition. Yeah. So the government has to

17:30

write to you at that point to say what they're going to

17:32

do about this important issue you've raised. Yeah. And

17:34

they wrote to me to say they're not going to change

17:36

the street signs to be correct. They're like, no, they

17:39

said that the correct geometry would be so similar

17:41

to the current signs. There's no point

17:43

changing it. And they also said the correct geometry would

17:45

be so distracting. It might

17:47

increase the likelihood of accidents. Really?

17:51

Absolutely bullshit. Like a lane. We've

17:54

got an election coming up. Thank you. I

17:56

Think if any party decides to go for that,

17:58

we're going to chase it. Say pro football's

18:00

on roadsides the I got my eye to

18:03

huge majority of the an athlete now I

18:05

agree although I did some now talks. Owner

18:07

makes custom. For. Balls or yeah

18:09

symbols and gotten to make me a

18:11

bowl were from one specific angle. It

18:13

looks like secret the street side nice

18:16

so I'm so true I someone who

18:18

runs a company called twelve Pentagon's and

18:20

is jumping all designed this ball were

18:22

from the front and the back looks

18:24

like a street sign but like the

18:27

a Quasar around the bit is a

18:29

nightmare of. Weird shapes, prohibitive. Patch the

18:31

John a Governor together to make it work.

18:33

In general rallies suffer and you have. I

18:35

got off. I took it up to Liverpool

18:38

Football Club now as yeah I got their

18:40

sports analytics seem to have get around with

18:42

it out are not allowed to play. They

18:44

like to eat. Youth has to come on

18:46

a day where we can guarantee they will

18:48

be no players and right in the cellar.

18:50

Played with that all sorts of his entire.

18:54

Play with these are the bulls enclosure. This is

18:56

a woman's I'm not to be. great to see

18:58

a lower league team like the in the Afoul.

19:00

Of training with that bold yeah, knowing the

19:02

game with Apple than playing a premier league

19:04

team and just seeing they are testing media

19:06

with a bomb as the guys at some

19:09

math might seem, a listening device gulf isn't

19:11

how Be much less a must have Any

19:13

this an infinite ssssss. A

19:20

podcast Sup the podcast everyone. This

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week's episode of Fish is sponsored

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on with the podcast. On with

20:58

the show. Okay

21:04

it is time for fact number two that

21:06

is James. Okay my fact this week is

21:08

that the woman who invented the trolley problem

21:10

was the daughter of a man who made

21:12

railway tracks for a living. Amazing.

21:15

And the trolley problem is the issue where you're

21:17

in a supermarket and one of the wheels gets

21:19

stuck and you can't push in a straight line.

21:22

No it's when your coin won't fit into the

21:24

slot to release it from the big bunch of

21:26

trolleys and yeah I feel like I have to

21:28

give a little bit more information about the trolley

21:30

problem. So it's like a philosophical idea that

21:32

you've got a trolley or like a trolley

21:34

car in America I guess it is and

21:36

it's going down some tracks and

21:39

it's gonna kill five people who are working on the

21:41

tracks or who are tied to the tracks depending on

21:43

the version. But you have a lever

21:45

and you can pull the lever and the trolley can

21:47

go in the other direction and it will kill only

21:49

one person. Do you pull the lever

21:52

to kill that one person or do

21:54

you just do nothing and let the five

21:56

people die and not everyone agrees with what's

21:58

the correct answer. It's always interesting. Yeah,

22:00

and that was so that was originally called

22:02

the tram problem, which was created by Philip

22:04

of but she married a guy

22:06

called foot Which feels quite rebellious if your dad

22:09

makes railroad tracks That's

22:11

true. And she is known as the grand

22:13

dam of philosophy Yeah, and her

22:15

mother was Esther Cleveland who was the

22:18

first president's child to be born in

22:20

the White House The

22:22

daughter of Grover Cleveland and her

22:24

father was William Sidney Bents boss

22:26

and Kwe who managed

22:28

skinning Grove steel works in Yorkshire

22:31

and He made a

22:33

lot of the tracks for the train tracks in

22:35

the north of England And I'm not sure

22:37

it had any bearing on her philosophical works. I

22:40

just like the idea I think it's

22:42

good that she had parents who worked on railroads

22:44

because imagine if her parents were like an accountant

22:46

and a librarian Yeah, like it'd be a very

22:48

different You

22:51

know five people are want to borrow the

22:53

same book. Yeah, one other person needs it

22:55

for their Shelf

22:58

is gonna fall on it's gonna go one

23:00

of two ways There's five people on one side

23:02

you can shove it the other way and

23:04

get one person. I'm thinking yeah I don't think it would

23:06

have caught on as the you know philosophical meme it is

23:08

today But

23:10

Philip a foot was amazing. She's incredible and it's

23:13

amazing that all the connections, you know

23:15

granddaughter of Grover Cleveland came up with this massive

23:18

Philosophical dilemma flat made of Iris Murdoch,

23:20

you know, she's like got so many

23:22

interesting little cultural touch points that I

23:24

just surprised I've never heard of yeah

23:27

I guess they all there seemed to be a coterie of

23:29

very interesting female philosophers round about that time

23:31

Which I suppose is a 30s and

23:33

40s 40s. She got her degree in 42. Got

23:35

it Yeah, so around the 40s

23:38

and yeah, I was Murdoch who I never really

23:40

thought of as a philosopher and that's just my

23:42

ignorance I read just read a couple of our

23:44

off my ducks years ago and It

23:47

makes me feel much more highbrow now having read

23:49

them because really Iris Murdoch books have you guys

23:51

ever read her? No, they're basically about loads of

23:53

people having affairs Well the two that I read

23:55

and I think all the rest of them, but

23:57

once you notice the moral philosopher, there's a huge

24:00

moral undercurrent that you're supposed to think

24:02

about. Um, so the, the trolley problem.

24:04

So started as a tram problem with Philip's foot.

24:07

Actually, let's go around the table. Sorry to interrupt

24:09

that. Yeah, yeah. Let's go around the table. Pull

24:11

on that pole. Great game.

24:14

Would you pull on that pole? Pull. Pull,

24:16

yeah. But what depends on the freight, the whole

24:18

point is you change insignificant

24:20

details. Yeah. Flips what people will say.

24:23

Okay. And that seems to be what happened. So this

24:25

one seems to be relatively straightforward, although

24:27

there's some disagreement, but almost everyone says they

24:29

would pull. But then when you add lots

24:31

of other bits of the scenario, and that

24:33

seems to be done by this other woman

24:35

called Judith Jarvis Thompson, who was the person

24:38

who made the trolley problem famous, came up

24:40

with the term the trolley problem. That's trolleyology

24:42

is this whole kind of area of study

24:45

that's because of her. And yeah, she expanded

24:47

on it with loads of possible examples. I

24:49

think the most famous is probably the bystander

24:51

case where rather than being the driver of

24:54

the trolley, you're now just on a bridge.

24:56

And you see the driver between faint and

24:59

then as a bystander, do you step in and

25:01

then that's like, are you're intervening now? Well,

25:03

it's slightly different. The bridge one slightly different. There's two

25:06

options that Judith came up with. One is that you're

25:08

on the side watching the trolley come and there's a

25:10

lever that you're able to pull. So you now need

25:12

to make the decision. The five people are one people.

25:14

Yeah. The bridge decision is you're standing on the bridge.

25:17

You've suddenly done an interesting calculation where

25:20

you realize that if you chucked what

25:22

they call the fat man, someone big

25:24

enough, someone big enough, not yourself,

25:26

you've like, no, you're too important. But

25:29

there's someone who's big and weighty next to

25:31

you and you somehow have the skill to

25:34

throw them off the bridge and stop it.

25:36

Would you then do that? Yeah, that's that's

25:38

the biggest dilemma because that's taking an innocent

25:40

bystander and well, then there is

25:42

another version where the bystander is not just

25:44

big enough to stop the train, but he's

25:46

also the person who put the five people

25:48

on the track in the first place. So

25:51

he's the villain. So is it

25:53

better to push him if you know he's a bad

25:55

guy? He's the one who set this whole terrible scheme

25:57

up. Did he do it deliberately? Yeah, so much backstory.

26:00

now. Okay, well what are the five people done to him? Oh,

26:02

well, that's a good question. That's why if they're

26:04

workers versus tied to the track, yeah, can change

26:06

it sometimes. Because are they foolish

26:08

workers who didn't follow health and safety? Or are they

26:11

there of no fault of their own? You're

26:13

right, they had it coming, mate. You don't follow health and

26:15

safety. This feels like a game of pool whenever I

26:17

go to a pub and you have to work out

26:19

what rules you're playing before you make the... Two shot

26:22

carry, two shots in the black. What is it? But

26:24

I like the bridge one because a lot of people

26:26

would, in the standard issue version

26:28

of this, pull the lever and

26:30

sacrifice one person to save five. But then

26:33

there's the hospital waiting room problem, which

26:35

is where a perfectly healthy person walks in

26:37

and sits down the hospital waiting room and

26:39

they realize there are five people who all

26:41

desperately need an organ transplant. Yeah. And if they

26:43

got the organ, they'd all live. So if

26:45

we take this one healthy person, we

26:48

can take their organs and five

26:50

people, which in the abstract is equivalent to

26:52

the same problem. But now it's universally no,

26:54

as opposed to almost

26:57

universally yes. Yeah. And I think

26:59

this is what befuddled old Judith Jarvis Thompson

27:01

and she changed her mind on

27:03

her solution. She said you shouldn't push the bystander off.

27:05

And this was years later. So it was in the

27:07

70s that she came up with her... It was a

27:10

bit late by then because she's already killed 500

27:12

people in experiments. She

27:14

suddenly was like, I feel terrible about this.

27:16

It's wrong. But she said, it's

27:18

kind of what you were saying, Matt. She said, actually,

27:20

if you're on the bridge and you've got the option

27:22

to push someone off the bridge to save the five

27:25

people, but sacrificing them, would you

27:27

sacrifice yourself? And if the

27:29

answer is no, then you've got no right to

27:31

sacrifice the other person. And if the answer

27:33

is even yes, you've still got no right

27:35

because their answer might be no. Yeah. Yeah.

27:37

So it kind of makes sense. But is

27:39

it absolutely right, Danny? Well, my

27:41

answer to the trolley problem, if I'm on the trolley,

27:43

I would immediately look out, see if someone's standing near

27:45

a lever, go pull the lever for Christ's sake, if

27:48

you want, or

27:50

yell up to the bridge. Are there anyone who's just having

27:52

a bad time of it? You just kind of want to

27:54

be a hero? You need to be over 16 stones. Judith

28:00

Thompson was really important in the abortion

28:02

debate and around Roe vs. Wade, she wrote probably the

28:04

most famous or maybe the most

28:06

seminal paper about it with another thought experiment

28:09

that she came up with. Which,

28:11

and I guess what's quite fun about thought

28:13

experiments is they're kind of a bit

28:15

funny. Abortion often not a funny subject, but in...

28:17

But Judith made it rather than a way.

28:20

She found the comedy and she

28:23

said in defense of

28:25

abortion, she wrote, imagine this, you wake up

28:27

one morning and you find yourself back to

28:29

back in bed with a famous unconscious

28:32

violinist. Nigel Kennedy,

28:34

say. Not say Nigel Kennedy yet.

28:36

In fact, because he's probably the only

28:38

famous violinist you can name. I'll check Benny.

28:41

All right, you can have Jack Benny. Jack Benny? This is

28:44

a game I was not equipped to play. Vanessa May? Very

28:49

good. All right, it can be any famous unconscious

28:51

violinist. It's not really important which specific violinist it

28:53

is. Go on, Dad. We're playing the famous violinist

28:55

tennis. No, no,

28:57

no. Please. I'll

29:00

go on. I can't think of one. So

29:03

the famous violinist has a fatal kidney. Sorry,

29:05

that's just the smallest violin playing for me

29:08

in my sadness of losing. So

29:11

the violinist has a fatal kidney

29:14

ailment and the Society of Music

29:16

Lovers have therefore kidnapped you and

29:19

rigged up your circulatory system to

29:21

the violinist, and this will save

29:23

the violinist, him or her. And

29:26

you go to the hospital and you're like, someone's

29:28

rigged up my circulatory system with this fucking violinist,

29:30

and I don't want it there. And

29:32

the hostel's like, look, we're super sorry. Wouldn't let

29:34

it happen if we'd known about

29:37

it, but now it's happened. It's kind of letting him die

29:39

if we unplug you. She says, should you

29:41

have to agree to be plugged into him?

29:44

And her argument is no, you shouldn't have to agree.

29:46

And the doctor also says in nine months it will

29:48

all be fine and you'll be unplugged anyway, right? The

29:50

doctor says in nine months it'll be fine. Yes.

29:52

Although she sort of expands on it a bit

29:54

because if you have a child often it's

29:56

not straight up. So in nine months it'll

29:58

be fine. But. He's going to

30:01

have to look after the chromatic envelope. He's going to

30:03

have to look after the man! He's going to change

30:05

the nappy! I think

30:07

Philippa Futt's original one was also about

30:09

abortion, the one with the trolley problem.

30:12

Because it had the trolley problem in

30:14

it, but it also had another quandary,

30:16

which was a magistrate who executes one

30:18

man in order to quell a riot

30:20

in which five innocent men will die.

30:23

And so she asked people, should you

30:25

be able to execute one person to

30:27

save five people in the riot? And

30:29

almost everyone said no. And then you said,

30:31

but should you pull this lever so that the

30:33

trolley kills this one person? And almost everyone said

30:36

yes. And she's like, this is a weird dichotomy

30:38

of ideas. And I think maybe

30:40

that's where argument came in of one

30:42

of the judges actively killing someone versus

30:44

just not saving people, wasn't it? So

30:46

she was like, that's quite slightly different.

30:49

Very confusing. And then Daniel Battles of

30:51

Columbia University says this is all bullshit

30:53

because these dilemmas are really engaging situations

30:56

that people enjoy thinking about, but in

30:58

real life you wouldn't enjoy it at

31:00

all. If you had to

31:02

make that decision, you probably would be a

31:05

bit stressed. On

31:07

Mastodon, the new Twitter, there's

31:10

a user called Sidereal who came up

31:12

with a solution where the trolley is

31:14

going down and you've got a lever.

31:16

And what you do is you pull

31:18

the lever just when the front wheels

31:20

of the trolley have passed, but before the back

31:22

wheels of the trolley have passed. And

31:24

that will make the trolley car stop. I'll

31:27

kill everyone. No,

31:31

you kill no one. And apparently this

31:33

is how railroad workers stop runaway trains

31:36

and how railroad robberies used to take place in

31:38

the Wild West is you would make the tracks

31:41

change just as the train's going over you. Right.

31:44

So that's a way to trick it. Brilliant. Did you

31:46

read the really recent story about a runaway train? No.

31:49

No, no. Like two weeks ago,

31:51

it was mad. In Japan, it was

31:53

a freight train. It had 50 carriages

31:55

and it went for 80 kilometres

31:58

on its own. Totally drive-lur. 100

32:01

km per hour. So the driver disembarked

32:03

for like a driver stop at a station in a

32:06

place called Jammu and

32:08

it just started rolling and it kept going and

32:10

they had to close all the road crossings ahead

32:12

of it. They were like, oh my god, we

32:14

can't stop this train like quickly. Make sure pedestrians

32:16

aren't crossing the tracks. Went for 80 km and

32:19

eventually I think someone came and put like

32:21

blocks on the track to stop it. So

32:23

I'm randomly on the track. And there

32:25

was no people on it to drive Rick Gannon? No people, just shed

32:27

loads of bricks I think. That's

32:30

a worst case scenario. Not

32:32

pillows, marshmallows. I

32:36

think you guys know

32:39

Vsauce, the YouTuber. Oh,

32:41

your buddies are them. You're our Michael friends. Are

32:43

you? I really want to know your opinion on the

32:45

fact that he actually tried the trolley problem for real,

32:48

which has never been done before and is so

32:50

weird to watch. I mean I think he did

32:52

it. He's claiming to have done it. Yeah, it's

32:54

really hard to work out if people are acting

32:56

or not because you really kill five people. Yeah,

32:59

next video comes from

33:01

jail. Maybe it's us, Michael

33:03

in jail here. Yeah,

33:07

it wasn't quite that extreme, but basically he took

33:10

volunteers from the street and told them they were

33:12

in an experiment about high speed rail and were

33:14

like, we're testing this train,

33:16

this automated train, took them into a switching station

33:19

and he said, why don't you have a look

33:21

at how this switching station works while you're here?

33:23

And there's a guy who's there saying, hey, this

33:25

is the button I press to put the train

33:27

on a different track. And then he gets a

33:29

phone call and has to leave. So the volunteers

33:31

just alone in the switching station and they suddenly

33:33

see a train coming and they're watching workers on

33:36

the track with headphones on so they can't know

33:38

what's happening. And they think that the only way

33:41

to save these workers is to click that switch

33:43

they've just been shown and to kill one person

33:45

but save the other five. And it's incredible to

33:47

watch. And it's mad to me that it was

33:50

allowed to happen. But he took it through this like

33:52

ethics board and seven people did it. Do you want

33:57

to guess how many? Because obviously the other thing about it is that it's a very The

34:00

problem is people always say they'd switch and

34:02

in real life. Would you actually yeah? Yeah Seven

34:06

people how many people do you think click the switch? I'm

34:08

gonna go one. Yeah, I think just like

34:10

if you're in That's someone else's office. You

34:12

just don't want to touch anything. No matter

34:15

what all the other so like you like

34:17

Oh, yeah, people dying, but the social awkwardness

34:24

That's how good human beings are

34:27

you're actually right two people

34:30

They were like well, it's not really my I don't know

34:32

maybe it's pretty good under control It

34:36

is part of the dilemma that you sort of think the act

34:38

of pulling the lever Makes you

34:40

complicit to a murder versus yeah, I hadn't

34:43

thought of that really like that being part

34:45

of the emotion I'm deciding you die. Oh,

34:47

yeah, where is that just like if it's

34:49

your job? Then you could

34:51

be negligent for not pressing it right right you've let

34:53

five people die and it's your job And you should

34:56

have made that decision, but if you've just be left

35:01

If you've misunderstood this the situation you make it

35:03

worse Okay,

35:15

it is time for fact number three and that

35:17

is Anna My fact

35:19

this week is that on the first ever road

35:21

trip across America? Multiple bridges

35:24

collapsed under the weight of the cars and had to

35:26

be rebuilt along the way Wow

35:29

Presumably crumbled behind you often

35:32

crumbled with the vehicles on it, and they would

35:34

plunge into a river all right I

35:37

was thinking like that Maybe it's like you know

35:39

when you're walking in the countryside, and you have

35:41

to close all the gates behind you like consider

35:43

it driving in America bridge back Cow's

35:47

camcros This

35:49

is a very specific road trip and involved a

35:51

lot of cars so it was 1919 and it was 79 vehicles Specifically

35:57

it was the army motor

35:59

transport and they were

36:01

driving across America to check out the state

36:03

of the road. So it was ordered by

36:06

the War Department, this road trip, and

36:08

no one had ever traveled from East Coast

36:10

to West Coast in America because the roads just weren't equipped

36:13

for that. There wasn't an interstate road

36:15

system and so this trip

36:17

was commissioned to see if the roads were

36:19

passable and it turned out not really. And

36:22

there were just constant diversions because

36:24

roads like cars would sink in

36:26

the mud or they

36:28

often had to disassemble covered bridges because the

36:30

trucks were too tall so they'd have to take a bridge

36:32

apart and then put it back together when the trucks had

36:35

gone through. And then if you look up

36:37

news reports about it, it was a huge media

36:39

deal. Every new state they went into, this caravan

36:41

of cars, everyone was like, hey! So it was

36:43

always reported in the news and the news was

36:46

always saying, you know, 12 bridges

36:48

repaired today, 8 bridges collapsed today, you

36:50

know, none other 12 bridges. This truck fell and

36:52

had to be pulled out of a gully. So

36:55

really, if you were a small town, you'd want

36:57

to divert the road to your worst bridges so

36:59

that you're getting free repair. What

37:02

was the date again? Sorry Anna, I know you said. 1919.

37:04

1919. And how many cars were on it? 79 vehicles. And

37:06

it took a surice

37:10

a long time because the roads were so bad

37:12

so it took all together, they traveled 3,242 miles

37:15

and it took 62 days which ended up being an

37:17

average of about five

37:23

miles an hour. A bit over five miles

37:25

an hour. Wow. They took 20 days longer

37:28

to do this than the records were running across

37:30

America today. Right. Oh wow. So

37:32

then this caused this report to be written by

37:35

loads of people, one of whom was a chap

37:37

called Eisenhower in 1919 who went on along

37:39

for the road trip, wrote a report saying

37:41

we've got to fix these roads, became president

37:44

more than 30 years later, was like, they

37:46

haven't fixed these bloody roads yet. And so

37:48

he was the one who fixed the roads.

37:50

I find it amazing that the

37:52

in-state system in America is basically

37:55

an army thing, it's a defense thing isn't it? That's

37:58

why they built it. Is that why they did it in Italy? It's

38:00

actually officially known as the Dwight D.

38:03

Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense

38:05

Highways. So yeah, but then after

38:07

it had been going for 40 years, they claimed that

38:09

it had saved the lives of 187,000 people. Is

38:14

that because it's so safe? It is because

38:16

motorways and highways are just super safe

38:18

compared to normal roads because everyone's going

38:20

in the same direction. Yeah, yeah. And

38:22

it's so regimented how it works. So

38:24

I didn't really know anything about the

38:27

interstate highway system. But

38:29

all the rules are exactly the same across the

38:31

board. So America didn't have a unified road system

38:33

by the 1950s. You still

38:35

couldn't really cross efficiently from one state to

38:37

another because it's just not in a state's

38:39

interest to make the crossing between states good.

38:42

So the federal government took over. And

38:44

yeah, it's super safe, but like everything down

38:46

to the last detail is the same across

38:49

the board. So tunnels and bridges are exactly

38:51

the same height everywhere. There's

38:53

the same gradient of slope at the edge

38:55

of the road for water runoff. Everything's the

38:57

same. That's cool. Universally across

39:00

America, still to this day. Just in

39:02

the interstate highway system. Yeah.

39:04

Yeah. Yeah. And sweetly, Alaska

39:06

and Hawaii both have interstate

39:08

highway roads, even though they've

39:11

got no states to go to. I'm the one in

39:13

Alaska and it's not like... It doesn't seem the same

39:15

as the ones in New York. Oh, did it not?

39:18

Really? No, no. Yeah, they maybe have played it a

39:20

bit faster than these, so the rules are there. The

39:22

ones in Hawaii are the ones in Honolulu. They're exactly

39:24

like anywhere in America, for sure. The

39:27

average age of bridges in the US is

39:29

a year younger than me. Wow.

39:34

Are we talking like 54, 54? Oh, slam

39:36

dunk. Ouch. Will

39:39

that always be true? They age with you? No,

39:42

they'll chase them and repair them and get new

39:44

ones. They're not going to get older than you,

39:46

though, sadly, are they? Yeah. Who has the best

39:49

truth? How

39:51

often do you remove a bridge, though? Like how many bridges

39:53

are we losing? Well, a third of them are classified as

39:55

structurally deficient. in

40:00

the US. So they are having to replace

40:03

them, but they've kind of kicked

40:05

the can down the road for years and years

40:07

and years and now. Who has a longer life

40:09

expectancy? You or the bridge? Average

40:13

bridge or you? I reckon the bridges probably

40:15

don't drink as much as me, but I get a

40:17

bit more exercise. Who would you save in the trolley

40:19

problem? There's a trolley, it's going to kill a bridge.

40:22

There's a bridge on top of a fat man. I

40:27

would love to see a website where it's

40:29

you and listed all the other bridges of

40:31

America and let's see who wins. Let's see who

40:33

makes it to the end. This is my list

40:36

of the letters. This is

40:38

a terrible memento mori, which

40:40

I wasn't expecting. It would

40:42

be a great update that James has outlived

40:45

another bridge. Bridges

40:48

are not surprised collapsed with cars. Engineering

40:51

and designing a bridge is complicated. Yeah.

40:54

And more engineering is kind of experimental.

40:56

I mean, less so now we've got

40:59

computers. Now we're in the post-Burrows 220

41:01

era. But

41:03

back in the day, you build

41:05

a bridge, you're over-engineered a bunch and

41:07

hope it stays up. But

41:10

it's only really as good as the load

41:12

cases that have been over it so far.

41:14

Right. So when they wheeled out cars, I'm not

41:17

surprised this is a whole new load case. Yeah.

41:19

Bridges failed. Yeah. They built a bridge in

41:21

the north of England in 1846. It

41:25

was a railway bridge and it was

41:27

fine. It was like longer than they'd ever built before.

41:29

So they tensioned it up to make it extra stiff

41:32

and trains were going fine over it. And then

41:34

they added a bit more rock and aggregate to

41:36

the top of it to kind of protect the

41:38

sleepers. And that additional mass

41:41

opened up a new mode of movement for the

41:43

bridge that they'd never seen before. And the next

41:46

train that went over the middle of the bridge

41:48

was long enough that the middle bit could twist.

41:51

And they just they just never seen that happen before because no

41:53

bridge had been big enough or had that low foot on it.

41:55

And that now Alton Towers. What

41:58

happened? a

42:01

lot of injuries, five people died.

42:03

The first train that

42:05

went over after they'd added this

42:07

extra rock caused it to

42:09

twist in a new mode in the middle of the bridge

42:11

that hadn't been seen before. And

42:13

it'll happen every now and then. We'll

42:15

build something bigger or different to before.

42:18

And until you test it, we have

42:20

no... I mean, now, obviously with computers,

42:22

we can do a lot more modeling

42:24

and testing in advance, but particularly historically,

42:27

it was a build it and survive

42:29

a bio. Yeah, whenever I'm on Instagram

42:31

and I'm just scrolling through videos, there

42:33

often is an advert that comes up for

42:35

a game where you have to build a bridge

42:37

and you have to put the positions of the

42:40

steel underneath it. And I just watch

42:42

this ad for minutes on end because

42:44

every conceivable way I think a bridge

42:46

should be built, it collapses and flips

42:48

and crashes. Well, thank God you're not

42:50

a civil engineer. I'm not the first

42:52

one that thought that. So

42:55

yeah, that's right. It's more

42:57

complicated than we realized. Yeah, like it was kind

42:59

of a big deal at the time, although I have to

43:01

say I've forgotten about it

43:03

and still reminded researching this, but like the

43:05

Millennium Bridge was a big case, wasn't it?

43:07

And exactly as you say, it's sort of

43:09

untested with a huge deal. So

43:13

for our listeners, it was a quite beautiful bridge across

43:15

the Thames in London that was opened

43:17

in the year 2000 in the summer. And

43:20

I think it closed after two days because it

43:22

was wobbling, wasn't it? It was moving

43:24

about seven and a half centimetres backwards

43:26

and forwards. And people felt it.

43:28

It didn't sound like a lot, but if you're

43:31

standing on this bridge, That's earthquake level. Yeah, it's

43:33

noticeable. And it's because it was able to move

43:35

from side to side. And what I really like

43:37

about it is London is called the Wobbly Bridge.

43:39

They didn't call it the Bouncy Bridge because

43:42

it wasn't going up and down. It

43:44

was very specifically going side to side.

43:46

It had this lateral back and forth.

43:48

They accidentally, when they built it, tuned

43:50

it. They tuned. It

43:52

wasn't deliberate. It ended up being tuned

43:55

to be able to resonate at about

43:57

one Hertz. And when a

43:59

human walks, take about two steps a

44:01

second so we're basically at mass going backwards

44:03

and forwards at the rate of one Hertz

44:06

and people walking across the bridge are naturally

44:09

walking at a Hertz where their

44:11

bodies moving backwards and forwards once a second and

44:13

it would cause the bridge to move a little

44:15

bit but then you had the synchronizing effect where

44:18

because the bridge is moving slightly people are

44:20

more likely to step in rhythm

44:22

with it. Yeah, we're all natural

44:24

dancers. So

44:27

yeah then it makes it worse and worse. I

44:29

feel like is it the same as on a

44:31

trampoline you know when someone's bouncing and you automatically

44:33

bounce in sync with them to make it more

44:35

comfortable. Yeah. So it's quite cool to imagine everyone

44:37

on Millennium Bridge was walking exactly in step

44:41

and then all vomiting. Yeah, you've got seasickness

44:43

going over a bridge. Is it the case

44:45

that they had to fix it? Was it

44:47

dangerous because you could break the bridge? It

44:49

could have got worse and worse so at

44:51

the levels it was happening it wasn't dangerous

44:53

but no one wants to be on a

44:55

bridge wobbling backwards and forwards. It genuinely made

44:57

people feel sick. This is my new entry

44:59

for how I'd solve the trolley problem. I

45:02

would be on the bridge I would see

45:04

the trolley coming and I'd say everyone let's

45:06

walk in sync and let's down the bridge.

45:08

Shake the bridge. Shake the bridge. It

45:11

cost an extra five million pounds to fix.

45:13

It was like on an original budget of

45:15

17 or 18 million to build it. It

45:17

took them two years and five million pounds.

45:20

They had to add extra damping to take

45:22

out those frequencies. Yeah, yeah. By doing that

45:24

they increased the damping below

45:26

one and a half Hertz by about

45:28

15-20% and that was enough to stop

45:30

that runaway feedback group. How interesting. So

45:33

if you got a load of

45:35

shorter people with shorter legs walking

45:37

along might it happen

45:39

again? If you were able to

45:42

walk at a frequency that

45:44

would it be faster or slightly like

45:47

race walkers? The way it's been designed

45:49

now you'd have to be running. Okay. You'd have

45:52

a higher frequency to cause a problem

45:54

but you'd have to have a lot of people running at

45:56

once to fall in sync. I guess

45:58

the London Marathon changes. is

46:02

like people who work on designing

46:05

football stadiums have to make sure

46:07

the stadium is not accidentally tuned

46:09

to any of the frequencies where a concert that's

46:11

put in the stadium might match

46:13

to. Yeah. And so what

46:15

do you mean? Because then the actual structure

46:17

could be the whole structure, the video of

46:19

people dancing in a stadium, although it

46:22

was a football chat that people were doing. And

46:24

you can see the whole structure itself figure out

46:26

and down because they've hit that resonant. That's

46:28

extraordinary. For even though it was just a year of five.

46:30

So every engineer on the stadium has to go, the referee's

46:32

a wanker. Okay, let's do it

46:35

to that one. The

46:37

famous one up near where I

46:39

live is the Broughton suspension bridge

46:42

between Manchester and Bolton, which collapsed

46:44

in 1831 and was supposedly

46:46

because people were marching across it

46:48

and that resonance caused the bridge

46:50

to collapse. I think that's the

46:52

first, in my research, that's the

46:54

first bridge that collapsed. Yeah,

46:57

resonance. Really? And

46:59

the military from then on were always told to

47:01

break step when they cross over a bridge. It

47:04

is sensible to not walk exactly at the same

47:06

pace if you're going over a bridge, I think.

47:09

Yeah, actually, for the British army,

47:11

at certain points, you have to stop playing the music.

47:14

So the trumpeters have to

47:17

shut up as you go over a bridge so you

47:19

can all walk really carefully, not

47:21

coordinating with anyone else's walk. They

47:23

won't walk totally randomly. It's

47:25

different to everyone else walking randomly. You

47:27

could just put some music that's really

47:30

difficult to dance to. Yeah, something like

47:32

some Shostakovich, some really sort of... Get

47:34

all three of the best known violinists.

47:46

Stop the podcast! Stop the podcast!

47:48

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47:50

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on with the podcast. On with

49:22

the show. Okay

49:28

it is time for our final fact

49:30

of the show and that is my

49:32

fact. My fact this week is that

49:35

in the board game Rising Sun players

49:37

are able to collect monsters that are

49:39

inspired by both Japanese mythology and by

49:41

complete accident a New Zealand farmer. This

49:44

is the board game which they put on

49:46

Kickstarter they needed 300,000 in order to get the game going but

49:49

they ended up getting over 4 million dollars and

49:51

so they had all this additional money. That

49:56

was a stretch goal. One

49:58

guy from New Zealand. He gets to

50:00

pick a monster. So what

50:03

they did was they said, okay well as we've

50:05

got all this extra money what we're going to

50:07

do is we're going to produce more characters. So

50:09

it's like a bonus pack that you get. So

50:11

one of these monsters is called the katahi and

50:14

basically it's described as a manawa bradford, a spirit

50:16

monkey that is very hairy and gets engulfed in

50:18

rage. Are you the New Zealand farmer, Dan? I've

50:22

never seen you consumed with rage.

50:24

No, but you have seen me

50:26

naked. Which made him pretty angry at

50:29

it. But

50:32

yes, so then what happens is the game comes out,

50:34

all these characters are out there and then there's this

50:36

guy who's online who says, hey I'm

50:39

actually from Japan and I've never heard of this

50:41

character. Does anyone know anything more about it? So

50:44

it sparks off a big hunt online for people to

50:46

try and get to the bottom of it. Someone

50:49

eventually discovers that there's a Wikipedia page,

50:51

Legendary Japanese Monsters, that has all the

50:53

characters on it and in there is

50:55

an entry for this katahi and a

50:58

guy in New Zealand, 19 year old

51:00

and his buddy Dickin' About Online, went

51:02

to this page and they named it

51:04

after him and it just sat

51:06

there for over a year and the makers of

51:08

this game went on to Wikipedia, cut and paste

51:11

all of the characters on there, didn't

51:13

do any additional research and ended up

51:15

using him and so he's immortalised in

51:17

this game as a Japanese mythological character.

51:20

Awesome. I encourage more people to

51:22

edit Wikipedia and they're desperate hope they'll make

51:24

it to a board game. Yeah, that's true.

51:26

And there's this great line which says, someone

51:29

was describing it saying, this is the most

51:31

exciting thing to happen in Danoverque, which is

51:33

the rural town where he's from in New

51:36

Zealand, since someone tried to open a brothel

51:38

there in 2008 and it lasted

51:40

precisely three weeks. I think,

51:43

I mean people got really moralistic about it. One

51:45

woman said she'd sit outside the brothel every day

51:47

knitting to shame anyone who came in and she

51:49

also said, I can't see any of our men

51:51

paying $100 a bonk, which I can see a

51:54

lot of her men reading that and going, can't you love?

51:57

A bonk. She's

52:00

from the 50s. One of the

52:02

district council chiefs said that brothels were

52:04

a legal business and the only thing

52:07

that they could do was impose environmental

52:09

conditions on it. And his name was

52:11

Roger Twenty-Man, which sounds like coming on

52:14

the menu. No, brothel. Have

52:17

we ever mentioned the Ant and Dec

52:20

Saturday Night Takeaway board game? I don't

52:22

think so. You say that

52:24

and we must have mentioned it. No, it's the

52:26

game we play all the time. Yeah, we've noticed

52:28

it in pretty much every episode. I don't know what you're on

52:30

about. We came out in 2017. It was

52:32

an Ant and Dec board game called Saturday Night

52:35

Takeaway based on their TV show and it was

52:37

basically a quiz. So you would play the board

52:39

game and get lots of trivia questions. That sounds

52:41

good. It was in theory

52:43

good, except it was just riddled with

52:45

mistakes. One question asked

52:47

where is Stonehenge located? It

52:49

said Somerset. They said that Albert Einstein

52:52

died in 1949 instead of 55, which

52:54

is I guess, you know, you're not going to automatically know if

52:56

that's right or wrong. How about this one? True or false? This

52:59

is not the question. I'm really rephrasing the question here. True or false?

53:02

The moon is the same distance from London to

53:04

Australia. That is

53:06

incorrect. Incorrect.

53:09

Yeah, and it's incorrect that they said that.

53:12

By a factor of 10. Yeah, they said it

53:14

was the same distance as London to Blackpool. So

53:17

in answer to how far away is the moon, they put

53:19

225 miles as the correct answer. It

53:23

posted 238,000. Wow. The

53:27

short lived TV game show Color

53:29

of Money. I

53:32

only know it from the game and pub. Oh yeah.

53:36

You could choose from. They

53:38

hired a mathematician to analyze the game for them.

53:41

And the mathematician ran the numbers

53:43

and came back and said, this is a terrible game. No one's ever

53:45

going to win. And they're like,

53:47

oh no, but I tested it when I was

53:49

home with the family and my grandma won and

53:51

everyone had a great time. And so they put the game into

53:54

production. And basically no one

53:56

won. And that was it for the game.

54:00

I think that would be a good thing for the production company

54:02

though, right? Or if it doesn't make good people. No, no,

54:04

no one wants to watch it. You know, you know. Did

54:06

they ever think of putting that grammar on the

54:09

show? They should have. Lucky grammar. That's where you're

54:11

going wrong. Sweep up.

54:14

Take it all home. It's like the fruit

54:16

machines, pokey's. You

54:18

can tune the payout rate. Like it's not

54:20

doing, you're pulling the lever but it's just

54:22

hitting a switch that's spinning the

54:24

things. And the

54:26

payout rate is programmed

54:29

in to be once every kind of so

54:31

often. It's not even doing

54:33

something particularly randomly. It's evening out the payout

54:35

rate. Right. So you just have to

54:37

watch and once it's been long enough then

54:39

you go on. When I used

54:41

to work in a bar we would watch it and if no

54:43

one won all night and people were playing it all night then

54:46

once everyone else had gone home we'd put a lot of tips

54:48

in and lose all our tips. But

54:51

then we were just terrible at those.

54:53

For instance there was a QI quiz

54:55

machine game. Oh yeah. Have

54:58

we said this on here? I don't think so. I don't think so. So

55:01

there's a QI quiz machine game and before it

55:03

went out they sent me all of the questions

55:05

so that I could check through them to make

55:07

sure there wasn't any mistakes and make sure that

55:09

it was kind of QI as it should be.

55:11

And there was probably, I think it was 20,000, it might

55:14

have been more. Anyway I had

55:16

a database of all the questions and they put

55:18

one in the pub next to where we were.

55:21

Yeah. I was like, I'm really in love with this

55:23

pub down the road. We'll get a clean

55:25

up here and so we went and played and

55:27

we just lost all our money. We

55:29

couldn't win. We just hit every plaque

55:31

so it was ridiculous. Oh

55:34

my God. On Japanese games in the 1980s, I think

55:36

it was 1985 or 1986, did you know that almost half

55:41

of Japanese people owned a

55:43

computer domestically when in the US

55:45

for instance that was about In

55:48

what year? I think it was 1985 or 6. I

55:50

just read it this week. But that's because

55:52

they all owned Famicon which

55:55

was a family computer which

55:57

was the Nintendo console thing.

56:00

And they were all playing Nintendo. In

56:02

1990, I only knew one

56:04

person who had a computer in Bolton. Yeah,

56:06

there you go. And it was called, interestingly,

56:09

everyone called it FamilyCom, and they still do,

56:11

and it's still always called FamilyCom, but the

56:13

name is Family Computer because

56:15

they weren't allowed to trademark it as FamilyCom

56:17

because there was an oven released

56:19

a couple of years earlier, which

56:21

was a family convection oven,

56:23

which was FamilyCon. And

56:26

so, just on board games,

56:28

cool new weird board games, which are always fun,

56:30

people always coming up with them these days. Have

56:33

you guys heard of Consentical? No

56:37

one I already regret half hearing about. Go

56:40

on, guess what it is? You

56:43

can touch my board. So

56:47

it's a cooperative card game for two

56:49

players, and it's about

56:52

a consensual, crucially sexual encounter

56:54

between a curious human and

56:56

a tentacled alien. Oh,

56:58

wow. Consentical. And

57:00

the way it works... I see, like tentacle.

57:03

Yeah. Tentacle. Not

57:05

testicle. That's down below. I see consent

57:08

tackle. Consenticle is a testicle

57:10

one. I think Consenticle is the one where it's

57:12

you and Mr. Tickle have that. There

57:14

are lots of variations, it's like the trolley problem.

57:16

It builds on a lot. Anyway,

57:19

it sounds super fun. So you've got

57:21

these cards, which are things

57:24

like things that you

57:26

might want to do to this alien

57:28

that you fancy with tentacles. So like

57:30

wink, gaze, envelop, bite, lick, penetrate is

57:32

one of the cards. And

57:34

you convey which card you want to mutually

57:37

put down with faces and gestures. So you

57:39

make a certain face. I'm looking at that

57:41

and it's like very awesome. It's so

57:43

wonderful. Not me, I'm looking

57:46

at that plant over there. I'm showing a lot of

57:48

copies of those QI books over there. That

57:51

looks and penetrate at that plant. By

57:55

Hockeside there's a famous painting of a

57:57

woman having sex with a... Yeah,

58:00

with an octopus. Yeah. And

58:02

a load of octopus scientists looked at it

58:04

and said it didn't look like the octopus

58:06

was enjoying itself. Really? Because

58:09

apparently, octopuses have ways of changing their

58:11

body whenever they're mating and stuff like

58:13

that. I think there was an exhibition

58:15

at the British Museum that had a

58:17

bunch of these, effectively a monster erotica

58:19

paintings. And in the year that they

58:21

were there, if you go to the

58:23

website and you looked at the data,

58:25

there were more searches for that exhibition

58:27

than there were for the opening hours

58:29

of the British Museum. It was very popular.

58:32

Well, maybe I'll try this game, you

58:34

know. It's like, stop having this non-consensual sex

58:37

with octopuses. So what happens, sorry, you put the cards

58:39

down and... I would need to convey through a series

58:41

of looks and gestures what kind of sex move we

58:43

should make with each other. And then, we would... Should

58:45

look at the table. The plants over there, if you need it. And

58:54

then you would play a card, and I would play a card,

58:56

and we would hope that our cards mutually match each other

58:58

and build trust between us, rather

59:00

than being non-consensual. It's

59:02

snap. Yeah. It's a sexy

59:04

snap. Sexy snap. It's snap.

59:07

Oh, snap. It's a really random

59:09

thing that is a board game

59:11

I'd love to get my hands

59:13

on. It's a game which

59:15

you can get in Sierra Leone,

59:17

which is essential to be played

59:19

by anyone who's trying to obtain

59:21

a driver's license. It's

59:24

not funny, but it's just the only piece of the

59:26

car. I

59:29

think you go around the board and whatever you land

59:32

on it, ask your question about the highway code. Right.

59:34

And you have to play it for two to

59:36

three months, and then you do

59:38

the test and the game supposedly gets you ready

59:40

for the test. Oh, right. It's so good. I

59:43

could do with that. I'm learning to drive at the

59:45

moment, and I'm dreading the theory test because it's a

59:47

big old book to read, the highway code. So a

59:50

board game would be amazing. There you

59:52

go. If you're listening, please God, make the

59:54

board game. Otherwise, that would be as difficult

59:56

as possible. So a lot of fun. Did

1:00:01

you guys ever play the game Guess Who? Yes, yes,

1:00:03

still play it. Good on you mate, it's not going

1:00:05

to help you party, Tash. Yes, okay. LAUGHTER That

1:00:09

was invented by this couple called

1:00:12

Aura and Theo Koster, who created

1:00:14

a company called Theora. It

1:00:17

was invented in the, I think it was the 60s. Theo

1:00:20

was actually a classmate of Anne Frank, went to

1:00:22

school with her. No! Yeah, interestingly.

1:00:25

His original name was Morris, but

1:00:27

he was brought up in the Netherlands when it was

1:00:29

under German occupation, so changed his name and

1:00:32

hid his Jewish identity. And yeah,

1:00:34

they married and they became amazing game designers. They

1:00:36

designed loads of extremely popular games, one of

1:00:38

which was Guess Who, and they died, one

1:00:40

of them died in 2019, one in 2021, I think, both aged 90. Wow.

1:00:45

And their gravestones are the Guess

1:00:47

Who pop-ups. You're kidding. You can

1:00:49

flip their gravestones down. You can't flip

1:00:51

them, sadly. That would be

1:00:53

so cool. But no, you

1:00:55

can't. What is it? What do they have? They

1:00:57

just have the same design as the Guess Who

1:00:59

pop-ups, which are quite similar to an actual gravestone.

1:01:02

Optimal Guess Who. You

1:01:05

want to be able to split

1:01:07

the remaining possible people as

1:01:10

evenly in half as possible. Yes. Because you want

1:01:12

to basically do a binary search. You

1:01:14

want to split it in half each time. Yeah. And

1:01:16

that's the fastest way to get to the final answer. And

1:01:20

the way you need to do that is

1:01:22

by stacking your conditions at once, which a

1:01:24

lot of other people will claim as cheating

1:01:27

or making the game not fun

1:01:29

anymore. But you can say, like,

1:01:31

if it's a man, do they have

1:01:33

glasses? Or if it's a

1:01:35

woman, have they got a hat? And

1:01:38

there's still a yes or no response.

1:01:42

But now you've used the categories to better split

1:01:44

the options in half. That is so much better

1:01:46

than the way we play it. Yeah, that's brilliant.

1:01:48

We always say, does your guy like peas? And

1:01:51

you have to make a judgment. Deep into their

1:01:53

eyes, would you trust them with

1:01:56

the trolley problem? So roughly, how quickly do you

1:01:58

destroy the seven-year-olds you're playing? I

1:02:01

wonder how mathematicians had a go

1:02:03

at the other game invented by

1:02:05

Aura and Theo Costa, which

1:02:07

is the, and they made it in the 1970s,

1:02:10

the popping out rubber spheres

1:02:12

game that's come really popular recently. I've

1:02:14

only seen it because suddenly I'm surrounded

1:02:16

by young children. Yeah, we've got a few at

1:02:18

home. Yeah. Yeah. Do you guys know what I

1:02:20

mean? The big toy thing. Yeah. Yeah. And people

1:02:23

are into it. I thought babies were into it,

1:02:25

but apparently it's popular. I thought they were invented

1:02:27

by someone who's inspired by a field of breasts.

1:02:29

Theo absolutely right. And that is Aura

1:02:32

Costa. Wow. Yeah. She was actually sweetly

1:02:34

and darkly inspired by her sister who

1:02:36

very sadly got breast cancer. And she

1:02:38

had a dream around that time of

1:02:40

a huge field of her sister's breasts

1:02:42

and woke up and went to the

1:02:44

game designer and was like, make me

1:02:47

a field of boobs. Wow. Oh my

1:02:49

God. I had a dream last night where there

1:02:51

was this referee in a football match and he

1:02:53

tried to send one off, but he pulled out

1:02:55

a rice cake instead. Oh yeah. Can we turn

1:02:57

that into a game? Not all dreams are going

1:03:00

to be money for them. That should have been

1:03:02

her tombstone, a giant rubber gravestone that you could

1:03:04

push down into the ground. But

1:03:06

then what if she pops it back up?

1:03:08

That is scary. Okay.

1:03:18

That's it. That is all of our facts. Thank

1:03:20

you so much for listening. If you'd like to

1:03:22

get in contact with any of us about the

1:03:24

things that we've said over the course of this

1:03:26

podcast, we can be found on our various social

1:03:28

media accounts. I'm on Instagram on Shriverland. James.

1:03:31

My Instagram is no such thing as

1:03:33

James Harkin. Matt. I'm stand up maths

1:03:36

pretty much everywhere. Yep. And Anna. You

1:03:38

can find us on Twitter on at no such

1:03:40

thing or on Instagram. No such thing as a

1:03:42

fish or you can email podcast.com. Yep. Or you

1:03:44

can just head straight to our website, which

1:03:46

is no such thing as a fish.com. You'll

1:03:48

find all of our previous episodes out there.

1:03:50

You'll find a link to club fish, our

1:03:53

secret members club where we have lots of

1:03:55

bonus episodes. But most important of

1:03:57

all, you should find yourself to a pre-order

1:03:59

link. for Matt's new book which is

1:04:01

coming out this June, you were saying? June

1:04:03

in the UK, August in the US. And where's

1:04:06

the best place for them to go? If you

1:04:08

go to mathgear.co.uk, you can get the signed pre-ordered

1:04:10

copies by me, but you can

1:04:12

support your local independent book shop or anywhere else

1:04:14

online to pre-order it. Remind us what it's called?

1:04:16

It's called Love Triangle. Okay, that's it. We'll be

1:04:18

back again next week with another episode and we'll

1:04:20

see you then. Goodbye.