109 = Fourth Dimensions and Love Conventions

Welcome to A Problem Squared, the problem-solving podcast, which is a bit like the Magic Circle, in that we're mysterious, cult-like, and our existence is only made possible by the loyalty and patronage of enthusiastic nerds.

I'm your host, Beck Hill Illusionist,

the comedian.

She turned the word hill into illusionist.

I did.

Wow, that was a magic trick in its own right.

Two normal words go in.

One monstrosity comes out.

I think you're fine.

It's not a trick, Matt, but a hallusion.

A hallusion.

You dingers.

I'm a comedian-writer performer, and I'm joined by that voice who is my glamorous assistant, Matt Parker Cadabra.

That's good, that's good.

It's no illusion, but it's pretty good.

Thanks.

You have no idea how thrilled I was when I realized I could do that.

On this episode, I solve some problems in the fourth dimension.

I'll give some marriage advice.

And we have

any other is this your business card

card

most boring networking magician, Just giving people back their own business cards.

It's a great act, but we have no idea how to contact them.

Matt, how are you?

I'm good.

But how are you doing back?

Magic Circle.

That's what I got up to.

That's what I've done.

That's what I did.

I did the Magic Circle intro.

Great work.

I went to the Magic Circle.

I saw a show.

My friend Sam Fletcher was hosting.

My wonderful friend Sam Fletcher, who is genuinely one of my favorite comedians.

Totally overlooked Gemstone.

Find him on social media, Sam Fletcher.

He's probably more clown than stand-up.

He joined the Magic Circle a couple of years ago because

he'd always been a big fan.

And he's very good.

And he's really good at

doing...

dumb magic.

It's almost Tommy Cooper style, right?

Like doing a little bit of stuff or like Steve Martin, that kind of thing where you go, well, that's not not really magic, it's just you being silly.

But then we'll do something that makes you go, oh, you do actually know how it works.

Ben actually does the magic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

It's delightful, fun, silly, big fan.

I went along, and Sam was the highlight of the show.

He did very well.

Oh.

In a good way?

Look, it wasn't a bad show.

There were loads of kids in the audience, and they were loving it, and I was very happy for them.

I'm glad that I managed to sneak a discount code.

Wow, this is a scathing review.

Ah, just

with the ticket price, you do get

to look around the

magic circle.

Oh, that's fun.

And they have like roaming magicians and they've got a little like magic museum room.

I actually would, my brother does sleight of hand, as you know.

When he comes to visit next, I'll likely try and take him along to a show there because it's an interesting thing.

But

you and I, we've both been, you've been to the Magic Castle, haven't you?

Yep, a couple of times.

Love the Magic Castle.

So the Magic Castle in LA, very American, right?

It's

big old fake castle.

It's like Disneyland for magicians.

100%.

Everyone's dressed up.

It's so fake but enjoyable.

It's great.

Good times.

Don't go expecting anything like genuinely

like, oh, wow, this feels so authentic.

It's not, but it's fun.

It's very, very fun.

There's some authenticity to it.

There's magic all the way to the bones.

Like, they have thought through every last bit of it.

Yeah.

It's so good.

The Magic Circle is like,

a friend put it, it's like the Magic Castle

done

in a

regional town.

With a regional town budget.

Oh, dear.

Like, it has the vibe of a local pub.

Right.

That's the thing.

It can be its own thing.

Is the most British version?

And I understand that it would have probably come before the Magic Castle.

Maybe.

Oh, yeah, probably.

I haven't looked it up, but there's no way to find out.

There's no way to find out.

We'll never know.

It's a mystery.

They'll never tell their secrets.

While we've been talking, producer Laura, unlike us, has been doing her job

and

has looked up that the Magic Castle started in 1952.

It's a while ago.

Okay.

Coming up on 75 years.

Whereas the Magic Circle, 1905.

Whoa!

Got them by 47 years ahead.

And they've not updated it.

I feel it to this day.

I love that the castle is in the country that doesn't have castles.

And then the country with an abundance of castles has gone for

a building behind Euston Station.

Yeah, there you go.

Which in a cul-de-sac, which I'd never been to.

It's a lovely theater.

Very lynched.

Well, look, it means if the Magic Castle is in 2025, the Magic Circle is in 1978.

It's about it.

Yeah, that tracks.

That's about right.

Yep.

It was very 80s, and I kind of loved it for that.

So I'm saying this.

I'm saying this in a sense where it sounds like I'm like, oh, oh, this was awful.

Don't go.

Genuinely,

I think it was worth it.

I think people should go to experience it.

I've never been, so I am curious.

Maybe we should go and see a show that...

Maybe next time Sam's doing something there, we should go.

Sounds great.

Because there was a good range of acts.

There was one act that was very, very impressive who did like sleight of hand and he did like a.

The thing is, the acts were impressive, but they were a brand.

So there was one act who was the young, cool hip one who's done some modern takes on some old tricks, and they were, he's very slick

and a big crowd favorite.

There was the like swindler type guy who does pickpocketing and his banter is so like it was very slick.

You could imagine him, you know, doing tours of regional towns and stuff.

And that sounds like it is.

It's not.

There's nothing wrong.

Regional towns need entertainment.

I've done regional towns.

We've all gigged.

It's far away.

He had the shtick that would work anywhere.

It was like, and it was really fun to watch him do his thing.

But also, the pattern was very rehearsed.

It is, it's the delivery of someone who's had to do that bit for 20 years.

Yeah, it was great.

Yes, it's yes.

You know, that kind of vibe.

And then there was another guy

who took himself so seriously.

Magicians, I love them.

That it ended up being both

the

worst part and the best part of the lineup.

He just was so and I'm not going to say names that feels unfair.

He's committed.

He was so committed.

And the magic just wasn't quite enough to hit the amount of committed he was.

And the thing is, if he lent into it, it would have been the funniest character act.

If he just lent more into the idea that he's this serious magician who can't, who won't let people laugh at him, who gets upset if anyone undermines him

then and then if he went a little bit more awry with the tricks it that would have been the

perfect level to be like comedy gold but instead it just felt a bit

you and i working the circuit have met no shortage of performers who if they were more self-aware are this close to an incredible character so close right yeah absolutely he was the first act on

and we were like great then there was the swindler, pickpocket guy, then an interval, then we had young, cool hip guys, won loads of like competitions.

Mom taking on a classic, yeah.

And we're like, all right, who's the last act going to be?

And it was the first guy with his partner doing a double act.

Brilliant.

And the driest double act you've ever seen.

Like, so dry.

Like, the part it was just.

And again, if they relented.

Oh, and then because he was stuffing stuff up, she was getting annoyed, but having to seem happy.

And I was like, this is so close to being brilliant without you realizing that.

I wish I'd seen this.

This sounds incredible.

I kind of now want to just go see them.

I'll see when they're on the lineup and we can go.

All right, should we do a show?

A magic show.

And then insert magic sort of

sound here.

Our first problem comes from

an unnamed person.

How do we we know they're real?

They're not AI.

Actually, this is the most AI question I could think of, because listen, the question starts with, as a 3D human,

yeah, sure you are.

You know, as a fellow 3D human.

It's like that Steve Bascemi gif.

Yeah, hello, fellow 3D human.

As a 3D human, what would it look like to be trapped in a 4D world?

If an entity or object moved across the fourth dimension, would I be able to see it till it was too far away?

Would it it only be visible when on the same layer, there is quotation marks, as me?

If I could see it, would it just look like it was motionless, but I am unable to reach it?

I guess this would depend on if light would move in four dimensions.

All right,

Matt, before I pass this over to you to solve,

I would say that I have, as someone who works a lot with arts and crafts, I prefer to work in 2D.

I like two-dimensional things.

Once we enter...

Same with games.

I don't like three-dimensional games, too many dimensions, right?

Two, perfect.

Yep.

I've often thought, oh,

what would a 3D person in a 2D world, or what would it look like to someone in a two-dimensional world?

And I like all the different representations of this in like animation and stuff like that.

However, I don't know what the fourth dimension is.

Is it, I thought it was time.

Ah, so

the reason I thought I would take the mysterious unnamed persons problem

is,

and I'm going to kind of talk around

what they're going for.

It just gives me an excuse to talk about the fourth dimension again.

It's a lot of fun.

I'm a big fan.

Because you wrote a book about it, didn't you?

I wrote a book about it.

Over 10 years ago, I wrote a book about it.

Which I've not read, clearly.

It's fine.

It was my first book I wrote.

It's not all about the fourth dimension.

It is called Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension.

It is a theme throughout, but it was more about making and doing maths things.

And it was written much more for hardcore, not hardcore maths nerds, but it was definitely written for a nerdy maths audience.

Hence, why you're not like, oh, surely you've read this back.

No, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

You read Humble Pie, and that's

a much more

book for everyone.

Humble Pie convinced me to do a podcast with you.

There you go.

I was like, you know what?

I don't give this guy enough credit.

This guy can string some words together.

But I'm a big fan of the fourth dimension.

And you are correct that a lot of the time the fourth dimension is time.

And that's because, so the way physics works is,

so mathematicians just have a good think about things.

And then maths happens.

Whereas physicists have to do a bunch of experiments, collect data, get some evidence of how the world behaves.

And then they wander over to the maths department and just be like, Hey, what do you folks done recently?

And they pick up all the math stuff that mathematicians have done and carry it back to the physics department and then use it to try and explain their experiments.

That's it in a very

concise form.

And

the way that the universe works, and this is a lot of like Einstein stuff.

I know you mean that genuinely meaning Einstein and not being like just shorthand for smart.

The actual guy, the actual guy, who coincidentally also quite smart.

So, the best way to understand our universe in terms of mathematics is to imagine it as a four-dimensional space, which it is, it's more than just like

an analogy.

It is a four-dimensional space.

It functions like a four-dimensional universe

because time is not like some absolute thing that marches forward.

It's a flexible, wibbly-wobbly

part of the fabric of the universe.

And so, you can understand a lot of our universe.

All the equations kind of work in four-dimensional space where you have the three spatial dimensions that we live in.

We can move in three different directions.

Or anything we do is a combination of those because we can move diagonal, but it's the same as going across and up or back and forth or whatever.

Time is then like different.

It's a

time, a temporal dimension as opposed to a spatial dimension where you kind of can't decide how you're going to move around in that one.

You're moving through that one, albeit at different rates relative relative to what else you're up to and what you're near.

But it's fundamentally different to the other three,

even though it

can be used as a dimension.

That's a very physics use of the mathematics of four dimensions.

A long time before Einstein, mathematicians were messing around.

A lot of this happened in the 1800s, because Einstein was very early 1900s.

Through the mid-1900s.

Around magic circle.

The magic circle was forming at the same time.

The magic circle was formed in the same year as Einstein's special relativity paper.

It was a big moment.

Coincidence?

Coincidence?

Exactly.

That's why they're stuck in time.

Time moves at a different rate in the magic circle.

Before then, before physicists were like, hey, can we borrow this?

Mathematicians were messing around with the fourth dimension, but as another fourth spatial dimension.

So exactly the same as the three we experience where you can move around in them.

They're like, what if there was a fourth one that we could move in that direction as freely as we can the others?

So it's fundamentally different to what physicists do with time.

Do you mean like a parallel universe?

No, just like, what if there was a different universe?

So much of maths, people think maths is useful, but that's it.

I mean, it is, but that's by accident.

Maths is just about.

So just what?

Can you imagine if like this was the episode where you admit maths isn't useful and then that like this was the episode that got you cancelled by all your fans

I get cancelled, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mathematicians would still be doing maths exactly the same way if there was no practical applications.

Now, don't get me wrong, we get applied mathematicians and you go everyone, you know, engineers use it, all that jazz.

But at its heart, mathematics in its purest form is just make some assumptions and then explore what the ramifications of those assumptions are.

And so there's nothing more,

you know, grounded to it than mathematicians were like, you know what?

What if instead of three, we had four?

What if?

So it's not like there's no reflection if we do or don't or if a different universe does or whatever.

It's just like, meh, what if?

And so they then explored all the, you know, geometric and mathematical implications of if there were four directions, you can move it.

And it's a fun thought experiment.

But crucially, because as a visual person,

I want to know what that direction is.

Exactly.

A new one.

Yeah, so we just, we have to talk about it, but it doesn't exist, but we're saying, what if it did exist?

We don't know what it looks like, but it could mean this.

Yeah.

The beauty of mathematics is it means we're no longer constrained by human intuition and imagination.

We can explore things that we can't conceive of, which is a strange way to put it.

But we've evolved very particular ways of perceiving the world.

And to kind of spoil the punchline,

if we were in a 4D world looking around,

our brains would just take it as if it was a 3D world.

It would be like, you know, illusions where

our brains interpret it wrong because they're assuming everything makes sense in 3D.

We would just look at it and be like, oh, yeah, that makes sense.

But we wouldn't be able.

We might go, that's weird.

That's moving a bit odd.

But we wouldn't be able to process it as fourth dimensions because our brains just can't do that.

We would just see it as weird, like malfunctioning optical illusions.

Yeah, got it.

Now.

The go-to example is always imagining trying to explain the third dimension to a 2D creature.

That's like your classic, how can we get our head around this?

And a lot of what we take for granted in three dimensions doesn't work in two or four dimensions.

There's a lot of specialness in three dimensions as such.

So, one thing I didn't talk about in the book, because I thought it would be a bit lazy of me to just come and like basically do the audio book version of my chapter on 4D.

I didn't talk about rotations because if you're making a 2D artwork and you want to rotate something, there's only one way you can rotate it.

Clockwise, oh, I guess you can go the other direction anti-clockwise, but you can only rotate backwards and forwards the same way.

Whereas in 3D,

you can rotate something three different ways.

So,

I mean, for the listeners, I'm holding a pen up in front of the camera because we're recording remote.

I can rotate this along the length of the pen.

So, I mean, I guess you can describe that as I'm just like spinning the pen in place.

I could instead rotate it by like this, tipping it towards you, like that.

So, you're watching as if it's tumbling towards you.

Or I could rotate it like this.

So, now

that's akin back to our clockwise, anti-clockwise from before.

So, there are three, and any other rotation, any kind of tumble is

some combination of those three rotations.

Right.

Because when you were saying at two dimensions, you could only rotate,

because I think in terms of animation,

I was like, imagining

the different drawings you would do to show three dimensions, like frames to turn something, right?

But that's not what you meant.

What you mean is like, if I was to draw a picture of, let's say, Mickey Mouse,

and then all you're doing, it's like a picture on Microsoft Paint.

You're rotating it clockwise or anti-clockwise, but there's no way you can rotate it that's going to make it a three-dimensional Mickey Mouse.

Anything you did to rotate it like a three-dimensional Mickey Mouse

would involve distorting it in some way, which our brains would interpret as a 3D rotation.

But if you just looked at what's actually you've drawn, you've had to draw it from a weird angle, which involves distorting it to get perspective or whatever to make it look like it's rotating.

You're talking in terms of a two-dimensional picture being rotated in three dimensions.

My brain's interpreting it as

as it switches, you're seeing the underside, the other side, but that's all three dimensions.

Yeah, yeah.

But then what you're drawing changes because you're seeing different parts of it.

Exactly, yeah.

We've got a fixed image.

We can't, there's nothing else you can, yeah.

And if you want to get ever so slightly more rigorous, if you were to look at any one part of Mickey Mouse,

as you rotate it, it would draw a circle.

It would go around in it.

So in fact, any one part of it is doing a circle because it's not being distorted as it goes.

Everything's going in a perfect circle.

And that's happening in 3D.

If you pick any part of this pen, it's making a little tiny circle as I rotate it.

around the central axis.

And if you pick all the circles you pick, any point you pick, they're all making circles that are parallel to each other as it's rotating in that direction, or this direction.

Oh, yeah.

Or any other direction.

I just realized I know a little bit about that from your mapping of the Christmas tree lights.

Yes, yeah.

So we can move in three dimensions and we can rotate in three dimensions.

In four dimensions, you can move in four different directions, but you can rotate in six.

There are six different rotational directions in four spatial dimensions, which is ridiculous.

It's

so silly.

And if I was to rotate this pen

in the very middle of it, there's a perfect line of atoms that aren't going anywhere.

They're spinning on the spot.

They're not moving.

Or if I did it this way, there's a line of atoms right in the middle that aren't going anywhere.

They're just spinning on the spot.

Four-dimensional rotations, there's a plane of atoms that don't go anywhere where everything else spins around it.

And the reason there are six directions you can rotate in four dimensions is we're used to, by accident, thinking about axes of rotation.

We think about the axis of rotation, everything's rotating around it.

That's actually not super useful.

It's more easy to think about a plane that it's rotating in.

So each of those little circles, if this is spinning, each one's making a little parallel plane.

Any one of those, you could think about it as the flat plane it's rotating in.

And if you've got four axes in 4D, you can pick any two of them to define a plane.

And four choose two is six.

In fact, for any number of dimensions, the number of dimensions choose two

will give you the number of different ways you can rotate,

which is a long way to say things when they move in 4D

move weirdly.

So it's not even just a case of there are more directions you can move around in.

When things are rotating, they're doing it in new and exotic ways.

And our brains just

won't be able to handle.

Well, they're not going to burst, but

so much of what human perception is, is filling in the blanks.

We get a little bit of information from photons hitting our retina, and our brain fills in the rest of it.

And all of that will be useless.

So

what we're going to end up doing is just be more like hallucinating than anything else because our brain will frantically be trying to piece stuff together.

And people,

you don't appreciate, because our brains are so good, how much of our perception is our brain making it up and having guesses and using shortcuts.

And

seeing stuff in the fourth dimension, we just break all of that.

So, I think the light would still come into our eyes.

Light, I think, would still work in terms of electromagnetic radiation oscillating the the the angles of would it be able to hit our retinas i don't know but if it all did work

it just would look ridiculous to us right i'll be honest i got lost at the multiple planes how many axes axes was it well there are four four axes

six planes so we're used to like x y and sometimes z if you're looking if you're looking at a,

you've got a cross and then another cross going through there.

Yep.

That's ours.

Yep.

We can't picture the other ones because they don't exist in this dimension.

Yes.

Is that what we're saying?

Yeah, basic.

Well, yeah, that's a very short way of putting it.

Yeah.

I mean, this is a very, you know, audio medium, obviously.

So there are ways you can kind of try to get a sense of how fourth-dimensional things look.

They're all typically based around

bringing four-dimensional objects down to three dimensions so we can understand them.

And that's because they're all kind of born out of being slightly practical.

This is a different question.

This is a question of

if we were in four-dimensional space, what would things look like then?

As opposed to if we brought 4D things into 3D, what would they look like here?

I thought I'd mention two bits of fiction that I've come across over the years that I found useful and interesting regarding these things.

Okay.

One is a comic by Alan Moore, who is the, you know, famous graphic novelist.

Yep.

Watchmen, Viva Vandetta.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Massive nerd, too.

And Robin Enz knows Alan Moore reasonably well.

Of course he does.

And then they do shows together.

And so I got to do a couple of shows with Alan Moore, which was very exciting.

And one year, Alan Moore and his partner gave Lucy and I a Christmas card because we saw them around Christmas time.

And I was like, I have a Christmas card from Alan Moore that's gone in my box of special collectibles.

And because he's really into like trippy math stuff.

And in the early 90s,

I know.

In 1993,

he was involved in a comic called, confusingly, 1963, Tales of the Uncanny.

but it's a 1990s comic and in it he wrote a story called it came from higher space

which is about a four-dimensional creature infiltrating and attacking a three-dimensional space station

and it's really nice because it tries to show in graphic novel style

what the four-dimensional creature would look like to

a three-dimensional astronaut.

And it does a very good job of getting across the vibe of what that would be like.

I particularly like it because, you know, in comics, if you want to show two adjacent rooms, you can just draw like the cross-section of the wall in between them.

Yeah.

To emphasize how a 4D creature would interact with 3D walls, they've drawn like the cross-section walls, which we understand to mean...

There's a wall here, but then they've drawn the 4D creature reaching around it to get into the other room.

It's really nice.

Yeah,

it's like when you see cartoons that play with the idea of

coming out of the frame.

Yep.

Nice.

Yeah.

Although my favorite version of that is Homer at the, I think it's the Museum of Modern Art.

He makes fun of a Matt Groening picture.

on the wall

with a giant pencil eraser

and starts trying to rub him out and then it's it's uh an installation hey get out of the way yeah story.

It's so good.

Whoever wrote that, I hope they took the rest of the day off.

It was fantastic.

Breaking the fifth wall.

Yeah.

But that's nice.

That's really nice.

We can share some of the panels from that if people want to check it out on our various socials.

And then I, you know what?

I don't know if I can recommend it or not, but when I was a child, I read a book called The Boy Who Reversed Himself, which was written in the 80s.

Is that what they call it?

That's what they call it.

I'm sorry, I seem to have reversed myself.

So childish.

I'm going to go change.

Who was the author?

I looked this up so I could name check the author.

William Sleeter.

Now, I don't know if the book's any good because I haven't read it since the early 90s.

But it was my first,

it was, it's a work of fiction, my first interaction with what it would be like to try and interact with the fourth dimension.

It's like a

pre-teen fiction version of Flatland, for people who've read the 19th century

social commentary/slash maths text, Flatland.

And that I thought was nice because it was a really good way

to

use

a story to get people to think about what it would be like in the fourth dimension.

I think it's interesting that the fourth dimension, mathematicians did it because it was pointless.

Physicists have now made it incredibly useful because it describes our universe.

But it's often fiction that makes it easiest to understand because

it's outside our normal intuition and

it's so abstract, anchoring it in a work of fiction works really well.

I was lucky enough back in the day to write on a show called The Amazing Mod of Gumball, Cartoon Network Show, which already was lovely because it used a real mix of animation styles for all the characters.

So, some of them are two-dimensional, some are three-dimensional.

It all sort of mostly plays by the rules of a two-dimensional cartoon, but they do play with it sometimes.

I'm sad I didn't write on this episode.

I wish I had.

There's an episode from season three called The Void,

and it's where they discover discover in a in a tiny gap in the street that there's a void where all of the characters that were featured in the previous series that you don't really see much of.

Yeah, basically, there's a character that they realize that they can't remember her.

And they're like, why can't I remember?

Like, she's in all these photos.

We were friends.

Why can't I remember her?

And they realize that she's been sucked into the void.

And in the void are all these obsolete things, and it changes dimension as it goes into it.

And it gives me goosebumps just to mention it.

It's a beautiful, in fact, there's a still

from the like, there's a still from it, which in itself is just a lovely image,

which

we can post on socials.

It's really enjoyable because when they find the void, it distorts the imagery around it in the background,

but not the characters.

Oh, anyway, as like a as an animation nerd, it's thoroughly enjoyable.

And I feel

I feel like there's already going to be a lot of people listening who go, I know that episode, I know what you're talking about.

But do yourself a favor, find the episode of The Void, The Amazing World of Gumball.

Just,

yeah.

So in conclusion, person who didn't put your name down,

it would look confusing.

In a nutshell.

Yep, the end.

It's exactly the answer I expected.

Yeah, no one was surprised.

Matt, talked about Axe Season 4 Choose 2 for a while.

I enjoyed the excuse to talk about it.

I don't understand it fully still.

Yeah, yeah.

But I now understand a bit more the idea of

if you can design a rule which doesn't work in a practical sense but does work,

if you're all playing by the same rules, it could help you work out some stuff that is not workoutable

by our standards.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a good summary of mathematics.

I feel like I'm one step closer to understanding maths.

Yeah, there you go.

Thank you, unnamed problem poser.

Up next,

we have a quick, light-hearted, fun problem from William, who went to the problem posing page and typed in, recently my partner asked me about what the idea of marriage means to me.

Oe.

And they've come to us.

William says they still haven't come up with a satisfying answer.

And they give us a few details about the conversation they had with their partner.

But I believe, Beck,

you've taken on this as a problem-solving challenge.

What have you got for us?

Well, I thought it was an interesting question.

I believe they added at the end of this question.

question i love the podcast i've been listening nearest the beginning around episode 30.

i love everything about it look forward to hearing more from the two of you which means that william is eventually going to reach the point where i mentioned that i am getting divorced so i think this is a fun

they're going to feel real real silly so what's going to happen is they're going to hear that be like oof oh i hope they've forgotten about the problem i'm glad they ignored my problem.

And then they'll get to this episode and go, oh, no,

that was me.

But I wanted to talk about it because

I think it's not something that gets talked about enough.

And I think that puts a lot of fear in people's minds.

Because I've been asking like what marriage means to me and relationships and things like that.

Because I think I've mentioned before, Gavin, my divorce has been very amicable and we've very much been talking through it.

It's been very slow because we, due to financial constraints, are still living together.

But it's also meant that we've been able to take this quite slowly and it's not been too jarring.

Funnily enough, it was my answer to

a much, much older problem, which might be around the time that William's listening actually is when we're talking about anniversaries and anniversary gifts.

And I briefly looked into the history of marriage on that episode.

And I think there was a lot of stuff we cut because classically, I did a deep dive that was unnecessary.

I'm sure we recorded a quick three hours that was cut down.

Eventually, the version of marriage that we've come to know today, in terms of a marriage of

love

and

consent, was essentially born after the Industrial Revolution because most marriages before that were business.

It was a way of joining families together and keeping the business and the money within

a bond within a group that was then passed down to offspring and so forth.

It's not to say there was never love involved, but it was largely arrangement-based.

It's also worth noting that

what you've touched on with the fact that you got divorced but have to keep living together is,

I mean, one thing that marriage is, is combining resources.

And I think it's interesting that once two incomes became the norm, house prices just kind of buoyed up to that level.

That became the new.

Yeah.

Because, you know, suddenly demand couldn't meet supply, so prices just popped up to where two incomes is now the normal.

And I think that's a real shame we've priced out effectively single-income people from buying a house by themselves or even renting in some places.

And it means it complicates separation because, you know, you've

you can only financially survive as a team because that's the society we've built.

Yeah, precisely.

And it is something that,

you know, for a long time, my belief was,

you know, you find your partner, you get married you buy a house potentially have children if you wish and then that's kind of what you do and once you've got that you can do whatever else you want

but it was sort of seen that that's like your baseline and I'm now starting to realize that is when you build your life around

both needing a person

to feel whole but also financially requiring another person to live whole, to be part of society the way that we are.

It's, yeah, it's very problematic.

And it's why a lot of divorces can get

even the smooth ones can get very messy.

We're yet to reach an issue like this, but I can imagine it being an issue financially if, luckily, Gav and I, both not very well off.

Very few assets, therefore very easy to split.

But if we had more assets, if we had dependents and things like that, it would be much, much more complicated.

I think the way that society is structured has made marriage

or at least traditional models of relationships

sort of necessary to live the lifestyle that everyone else is living if we want to kind of participate in society with the other benefits of living in society.

I talk about it on stage a bit actually at the moment and I was saying a lot of people see

marriage, they'll say marriage ends in either death or divorce, which sounds very negative.

The interesting thing is, we talk about the death one as if that's the good one.

Like

it's a successful marriage if one of you dies.

Dies.

That's very few situations in life is that the metric of success.

Yeah.

Children's birthday parties?

No.

Yeah.

Going on vacation?

No.

No.

Magic shows?

No.

I've had a few people now

say to me that they appreciate me talking about this and because i wasn't aware that there is an option of divorce which just means you acknowledge that the dynamic of a relationship has changed and that doesn't need to be a bad thing and i was chatting to another friend about it recently and saying how there's quite a few people in my life who I was exceedingly close to at some point.

You know, they were very close friends.

We went through very tough times together.

We helped each other out.

Those sorts of friends that you talk to on a daily basis and you might go on holiday with them you might spend Christmas with them like that sort of thing yeah but then as your lives change you might slowly find that you end up spending less and less time together

and eventually it might phase out I've got friends

from my past who I remember thinking wow they I couldn't even imagine

them not being in my life every day at one point.

And now

I know they exist, I know they're happy,

but they're now, it's like a season, a season that passed and the season happened and I'm glad it did, but it's not, it doesn't make it sad that the season has passed.

In the moment, the idea of that not having that person, it can be incredibly painful because you need them in that moment.

And that's what would be harsh.

But if you recognize that sometimes there is no need for that dynamic,

And when you reach that point, you won't be sad because

something else will be there or something something else will be different.

And so I'm seeing divorce less as the end of something and more of just an acknowledgement that

our partnership has evolved into the shape of something else that serves us where we're in our lives right now.

And it will continue to evolve.

And we may end up

when I find my own place.

or if Gav finds a place, whatever happens, we might go a while without seeing or talking to each other, but we might come back into each other's lives.

Who knows?

But I have to trust the fact and understand that that's okay.

If that's meant to be, if both parties are happy, if no one's hurt, if no one's been abused or anything like that,

there's nothing sad or bad about that.

And so, to me, I've become a little bit,

I don't want to say cynical of marriage.

I still think marriage is a lovely thing and a lovely choice, but I do

see the idea of

a partnership with someone as exactly that.

It is an ongoing conversation, an ongoing agreement to a type of dynamic.

And in order for you to both benefit from it, you have to be flexible with the fact that nothing is permanent and we as people change constantly.

And so I do understand that there needs to be a level of stability if you are.

investing in things together, if you're running a company together, if you're bringing children into the world who need to rely on you and need that stability,

and I think it's important that people do discuss what marriage means, or what does a partnership mean, what does a relationship mean?

I came across a really interesting term recently called relationship anarchy,

which is

a new term, a new ish term, it's a decade and a half old, but essentially it's referring to the fact that it's rejecting the idea of a hierarchical relationship structure.

Because traditionally traditionally in society we see romantic relationships as the most important and then friendships or maybe other family relationships under that maybe work friends whatever now naturally there's going to be some hierarchy of relationships in our life well yes to the extent that you need to prioritize

different yeah people in relationships

in fact i'm going to quote a friend of mine i'm the comedian john luke roberts because he

said this to me recently recently and it stuck with me and I've quoted it to several people since then.

Love is limitless, time is not.

So our capacity to love people is infinite,

but we don't have infinite time on this earth.

So eventually you do have to prioritize where you put that love, how you spend that love with people.

And

I think that's a really good example.

But I do love the idea of rejecting the idea of a hierarchy because

it's unfair to expect any one person to be everything for us, to provide us with all of our needs.

It's unfair on them and it's unfair on us.

There are certain things that we need to provide ourselves.

There are a lot of internal things that we need to get from ourselves.

A lot of time we try and get them externally and that places pressures.

But also there's a lot of things that we can get from close friendships that we can't necessarily get from a romantic relationship.

There's things that we can get from family relationships that we can't necessarily get from friendships.

And they're all equally important because they all play a really large role in who we are and

how we

belong in the world.

And so

I can't, unfortunately, I'm not sure I can fully answer the question

because,

I mean, except for marriage is a construct

on a personal level.

But I will say I'm really glad that you guys are discussing this because I think

a lot of people get scared of discussing it because it can feel scary to

look at the materials that have been built

for like that have been used to build these structures.

It feels like you can ruin the magic by examining it too hard.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Nice one.

I love that.

Not to bring it back to the...

Work out how the trick's done.

Exactly.

And then it's less impressive.

Romance obviously has a lot of meant to be, you know, my soulmate stuff to it.

Now, I'm going to preface this by saying, as we're all aware, I married up.

Having locked in a Professor Lucy Green, it's going to slightly undercut my general point.

But, you know, marriage for me is a choice.

And every day you choose to be married because statistically, there is no soulmate.

I mean, statistically, within a hundred mile radius of you right now, are several people you could have a meaningful, lifelong relationship with.

Just statistically.

But

you need to just find someone that is within your error bars and make a decision that you're going to...

It's a relationship that you're both going to put the time and effort into.

That's my statistical view on the matter.

And I think in general, it is a shame it's become you need a partner in terms of finances, but I think humans work best as a team.

And so, I think, I mean, for Lucy and I, a lot of marriage, obviously, deeply in love, blah, blah, blah.

But being an effective team is not to be underrated.

Our marriage is

based on the 2013 Tom Cruise film Oblivion,

where

there's several points in it where, like, the central base is contacting the two people who are the team and saying, Are you an effective team?

And that just became a catchphrase in our relationship.

And we always ask each other, are we being an effective team?

Yeah, slightly tongue-in-cheek, but you know, there's a moral to the story.

And I think it's a little analytical, but I think there's something in it.

And it comes down to prioritizing because we ebb and flow.

You've only got a finite amount of support and focus.

and I think you can achieve more as a team, as an effective team,

if you are aware that sometimes one person needs more support than the other and you can go back and forth.

And it's like two people on a trampoline.

You can both

individually jump higher if the other person does that little cheeky double bounce thing.

Yeah, but it means you're not both jumping at the same time.

Yes, that's true.

I'm going to agree with that and add the caveat of because there'll be

people listening who maybe have chosen to be single, maybe people who are single and looking but haven't found that person,

or maybe there's people in less traditional couplings

but have other sorts of relationships and other sorts of dynamics.

I think you can still use the same term as team.

Because right now, I do feel like I'm finding my team members.

They're just not necessarily

one other person

in a contractual partnership.

It's my team members are slowly starting to emerge as

friends, as family members,

as

listeners.

No.

It is weird.

Marriage is the only team where you can at some point say, right, I've just show up with some paperwork one day and go, you know what, I just want to, I want to get some of this in writing.

Yeah, yeah.

I brought witnesses in case you try and sneak out of this.

Yeah, that's it.

But I do, yeah, just to get back to the original thing of like marriage before the Industrial Revolution was largely business-based.

When the Industrial Revolution occurred and the idea of individual wealth, and I will state individual wealth for white men,

white able-bodied men, largely.

It did mean that there could be slightly more choice into

who married.

However, bearing in mind that I believe in Australia, women couldn't open their own bank account without a male signature until 1960, which is within my mother's lifetime.

Yeah, I think most Western democracies have a very similar

alarmingly recent point in history where women could open a bank account without male permission.

Aaron Ross Powell, and as you so

rightfully point out, that

even

when things are fairly equal in terms of privileges, there still needs to be an arrangement of convenience and financial stability and that sort of thing.

So I

do see marriage as much more of a choice of

investment in one another.

Yes.

A lot of that will be emotional investment, but it also does generally involve financial investment.

And that's just kind of where we're at in society.

It's just

a way that we have found to do things here.

But

even though you might work out how the magic trick is done,

When you see it done well, it doesn't make it less magical.

If anything, I think you can appreciate it even more.

And that's the only way that you can build a magic trick and modernize it and make it even more surprising and more glorious.

Damn, Beck managed to stick the landing.

Oh, that's some bizarre.

Can we have the smoke and magic sound effect?

And we're done.

Now, on to any other

Izzy Wizzy, let's get busy.

Okay, okay.

Several people wanted to comment on the alphabetical travel route that we covered in episode 106.

For a start, Theo got in touch.

You posed it

to say that they're going to give us the ding

where they're going to give us the Cambodia

Thai land.

I don't know how to pronounce the N in that.

My

Bangladesh.

Thank Thank you, Theo.

And

other people come in with ways to fix

the glaring issues with my solutions.

Okay.

Run on to the next bit.

Y'all.

Theo also added, big fan of the show since the very first episode.

Or in other words, blah, blah, blah.

Because that's the stuff where you always overlook it.

And the fact that you're the next bit makes me laugh.

Oh, yeah.

I actually even skipped over the blah blah blah.

Oh, yeah, of course.

Big fan.

Blah, blah, blah.

Love your work.

Thanks, Theo.

Moving on.

A few people pointed out that you could make it work if you use historical names for some countries.

Things like West Germany, Czechoslovakia, that kind of thing.

So Leo came in with a list.

Now, Leo's good.

They've kind of mixed and matched

older and modern names for countries, but they've been consistent.

Like once they lock in West Germany, they're then consistent.

All other Germanies are East or West.

So they've done that kind of thing, which is very nice.

But

absolute gold star to Andrew, Andrew H,

who says they got a bit obsessed with this problem.

Yep, no, you're fine.

You know the feeling?

And they worked out.

Not only did they use like old names for countries, which is necessary to make it work but they worked out the moment in time for which all of those countries would have had those names simultaneously and they have found a 40-day window in 1990

specifically from the 24th of August when Tajikistan when they declared independence from the USSR beginning at that moment right through to the reunification of Germany on the 3rd of October 1990 in that 40-day window all the names aligned such that you can do

going only border crossing to border crossing

countries where you have the entire alphabet somewhere in each of the names in that order

moving a border each time incredible so huge congratulations to andrew for putting it together we now have the complete list you know what we'll put that in the show notes i think that's a thing we can do there is a

my favorite bit is you just hop backwards and forwards between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Iraq.

I mean, not, I don't know diplomatically how you do that, but you go backwards and forwards three times to pick up all of NOPQRS,

and then you have a break in Afghanistan.

So, well done.

Well done, Andrew.

Yeah, that's phenomenal work.

I'm very impressed with everyone who did it, but just for finding that 40-day period, very exciting.

We also heard from

Gabrielle

or Gabrielle, depending on if you're from the States or France, or neither.

I'm currently listening to all episodes in order, and I am very satisfied with my experience.

Oh, that's good.

Oh, thanks for that.

Oh, no, they keep going.

However.

All caps, however.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah.

You know they mean business.

When listening to episode 042, in which the threshold between a plate and a bowl is discussed, oh no.

Oh no, not again.

We just...

I was very frustrated.

Happy

line of nonsense about curvature and screenability.

Why are you going to dig this up?

The difference between a plate and a bowl is obviously the radius to height ratio as proven by this the case of a square plate or frustrum of a pyramid.

This shape has no curvature, yet when scaled on its vertical axis, undeniably switches from square plate to square bowl.

Now, I waited until the end of the episode, thinking this would be a high-priority matter, but it hasn't been addressed, and I cannot bear to wait another minute for this to be resolved.

Hopefully, this was a topic for episode 044, as it wasn't in 043.

Otherwise, I expect to hear about this in 64 episodes or so.

Thank you for this wonderful podcast.

Very best.

Man, blah, blah, blah.

Look, I thought we closed this.

I thought we did too.

I didn't put this in here.

Laura.

I didn't put this in here.

I blame producer Laura somehow.

Next, we're going to discuss which animal species, if they formed a little cue, would be the longest.

No!

Never again.

And that's it for this episode, obviously.

We do like to thank all of you, our fantastic listeners.

We appreciate every single one of you, especially those of you who share it with your friends, tell other people to listen.

We

need listeners.

Otherwise, this is just us talking to ourselves.

Two friends hanging out.

Two friends hanging out and paying someone to edit it.

Yeah, and paying a third friend to hang out with them.

And just listen.

You're not allowed to talk.

Listen.

Don't say anything.

Just sit there.

Not only that, but we want you to listen back to the conversation again later.

Again.

And that's yourself.

And we're not there.

But we also want to thank our amazing

patrionists.

That's a magic term, I think.

Yep.

Our Patreon supporters who allow us to pay the third friend to listen back and edit our words.

And we thank you specifically.

Well, we make bonus episodes for starters.

If you're on a Patreon supporter, you do get bonus shows for anyone who's hungry for more content.

Oh, I did want to mention as well: there wasn't any other business from someone who said that they like our show so much, they decided to download the first 25 episodes from Libsyn and put them on their iPod.

But then we moved to Spotify and they can no longer download the episodes onto their iPod.

Now,

probably they can't hear this because they haven't been able to download it.

We're not on their iPod.

But if anyone would like downloadable episodes, you can download our episodes and our bonus episodes from Patreon.

So

that's a way that we thank you for supporting us.

Another way that we thank you.

I can't believe you were able to reach into the thanks and pull out another AOB.

What a hellusion.

Yeah, don't ever underestimate my ability to keep talking

just when you think things are over.

Oh, yeah.

Spot who's in the time zone seven hours earlier than I am.

We also like to thank our Patreon supporters by choosing three of you at random and mispronouncing your names at the end of each episode.

And on this episode, those three supporters are

You Sock.

Excuse me?

You heard me.

B

Nebrandon the Amazing.

Ma Dis

Onjo

Y C

I hope you enjoyed that.

Patreon supporters.

I hope your money was worth it.

Your money well spent.

Now with a wave of my magic wand, I will make myself, your host Beckhill, disappear, as well as my fantastic co-host, Matt Parker.

And this wouldn't be possible if it weren't for stage manager who's actually doing all the real magic, the Jonathan Creek of this show.

Solving mysteries in her spare time is producer Laura Grimshaw.

Been stuffed into a box the whole episode.

She's a bear of legs.

She's the one who cuts the podcast in half.

She really does.

What an amazing trick.

What a trick.

It's the amazing Laura Grimshaw

Dini.

Wow.

F

three

F

three

miss.

Ooh, okay.

I know that sounds happy, but for me, every miss,

you know, it is a process of elimination.

Every miss is another door closed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

G2.

You've sunk my battleship.

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.