079 = Driving Clockwise and Evolving Dragonflies

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared, the podcast which is a lot like Valentine's Day.

Oh, in that it is no way like the original Valentine's Day.

I'm one of your hosts, Beck Hill, and if this podcast was Valentine's Day, then I would be a rude card and a box of chocolates, because I love double entendres and will go straight to your thighs.

And your other host, Matt Parker, would be a romantic dinner because he'll often start off with pie.

And the next thing you know, he's moved onto spreadsheets and then sums.

Possibly a square root.

I can see why you were so proud.

I'm so excited.

It's very well written.

Excellent work.

Well written, incredibly immature.

Oh, no, yeah, but good stuff.

You know,

you picked a line and you held it.

Yeah, that's it.

Good work.

You're welcome, everyone, who has gotten amorous to this podcast.

No, don't, no.

No.

On this episode.

I've worked out how important it is that Beck chooses the correct direction around Australia.

I look at the backstory behind dragonflies.

Oh.

And we will finish with some delicious.

Any other business?

Set the mood, Lauren.

A sweet treat.

Romantic music right

here.

It better just be the theme.

I don't know about you, but that's what I get jiggy too.

So, Matt?

Back.

We're back in the UK.

We are.

Yeah.

We're in the same room together.

And producer Lauren.

Yay!

I'll be honest, that's my highlight.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's nice to see Lauren again.

Because sometimes we're both here, but Lauren's phoning in.

On a screen.

On a screen, yes.

Yeah, like

Hal.

She's like the

little computer.

Like Holly.

Like Holly.

That's in red.

That's too closer to Holly.

But it's nice.

It's nice.

What have you been up to since I saw you in the States?

Well, since we were in the States, the United Ones, and now we're back here.

It's the Yoit.

It's the European.

Yes, it is.

Which I do have to quickly say because i was like i'm gonna put up an a youtube video on each week that we don't have problems squared great plan how's that going uh

um well well i've already missed one of the weeks

and then the next one is in one week as of the time i'm recording and i there's no way i'm turning around an episode i'm still wading through all the things I said I would do after I'd finished writing a book.

Some of which is like making illustrations for the book.

Yeah, I was going to say it's still book related.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I messaged you because I was like, last night, I was like, I have a deadline to get a bunch of images in by first thing Monday.

And today is a Monday that we're recording on.

And so I was up until like just after midnight last night sorting out images.

And they're not all done.

But the ones I had to get in for today were all done.

Yes.

So that is still carrying on.

And all the stuff I kicked forward.

But we have gone into the

yoit planning.

We had a little way trip.

Myself, you did.

Camera person Alex.

Oh, nice.

And producer Nicole.

Nice.

We found, it turns out, if it's in the middle of winter, hiring like the kind of seaside room where you would have a very small wedding

is very affordable.

A little conference room.

Yeah, like a little conference room, but with like, like pretty much on the beach.

But

they're not windproof.

So it was fine.

Drafty.

We were alert.

Wow.

We went through and because we were going to do it in the office here, but it's so easy to get distracted with actually just working on videos and doing things that need to be done.

Yep.

We're like, you know what, let's just go somewhere else for the day and plan out the year ahead.

That's nice.

That's a good plan.

It was a lot of fun.

So we post-it noted up.

Oh, great.

All the well, not all the videos in production, but kind of all the stuff we wanted to do, things we thought would be fun.

And then we kind of sectioned it off into here's what we might do this month, next month, so on.

And kind of got a

next six months pretty planned out, hopefully the whole year.

yeah see that's what i'm missing is planning out what i've got what i'm gonna you know normally this is the first time we've done this and then put it out yeah yeah yeah i'll report back on how well that goes i'm also missing the the camera person and producer but baby steps come on yeah baby steps i mean i did everything myself for the first

four years yeah and that was it didn't start paying its way for four years but i think it's worth saying every time and also i had the incredible luck that my wife is a full-time physics professor So I had the freedom to lark around

on something ridiculous.

Yeah, that's what I did.

And the bills are still being paid.

I didn't get the memo for get marry a physicist.

I told you.

So I took some photos of all the post-it notes that we put up on the walls.

I just thought I'd have a quick look at them and see if there's any that I think our listeners could help with.

Oh, that's a good idea.

Because there's always things where I'm like, oh, it'd be really handy if...

Someone could do a thing or knows a person or something like that.

So it was very funny.

People were walking along the seaside and trying to read cryptic because they could kind of read through the post-it notes because we'll stick them on the windows and one's just got the cube root of I written on it.

I like to think that someone walking past was like, hey, there's a cube root of I.

I can't wait for that video.

That's going to be a winner.

So if anyone knows anyone at the Emily Moore transmitting station, it's like the tallest tower in the UK that's not like an antenna or something ridiculous.

It's like bought by a communication company.

But I have seen videos of amateur radio people getting little tours of it.

So I feel like, because I want to film some ridiculous maths videos involving a very tall tower.

Everyone, if you do know, either go to the problem posing page at problemsquared.com and put in what you know or email me at matt at standupmath.com.

If anyone lives near Bletchley Park, let me know.

Just in general?

Just in general.

I want to do something about how the local area has changed since it was the World War II code breaking center.

And so, if anyone lives in the area, particularly if you're in like one of the places that have been built up since World War II,

get in touch.

Or certainly anyone who's seen the changes.

Yes.

Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that would be

very handy.

Anyone who lives on Orkney, the Scottish Islands, the Scottish Island, all can get there.

If you're already there and you want to help out with a maths construction project, let me know.

Or if you've always fancied going to the Orkney Science Festival.

Yeah, that's cool.

Give me a shout.

If anyone likes doing ridiculous 3D graphics to help out with ridiculous 3D things,

you know, every now and then there'd be like a mechanism or something

or like an illusion.

And I'm like, oh, this would be really handy to show if you could like model it in 3D and then rotate it to show the other side.

Or Blender or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, that's my list of things Mac could use help with.

The end.

People are listening to this as their first episode of A Problem Problem Squared.

They're like, oh, I didn't realize it was

problems.

Sending out problems.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, it's a give and take situation, everyone.

I want to show you that I've learned how to solve a problem.

Oh, what have you been up to?

As I mentioned on our Patreon bonus episode,

I'm a Wizard, you did, which is the exclusive content for our lovely financial backers.

We love them all very much.

Yes.

I recently was filming some stuff for the last few weeks.

You were.

And during downtime in the studio, I thought, well, what a perfect chance to work on something that I set up some time ago.

Right.

This is vague.

Gonna take something out of my bag.

You've brought a prop.

How exciting.

You ready?

Ready?

Yep.

No.

No way.

So, dear listeners, Beck has held up a well-worn, well-loved, but finally solved Rubik's Cube.

And it's the keyring one that you've done yeah i've been playing with your speed cube yep i can now do it in two and a half minutes no that's really good but i'm trying to learn the friedrich method it's the one where you do the two first layers at the same time yeah yeah after the cross that's the most dramatic speed up in your solving times you'll get yeah i can't do that method so you'll be ahead of me

that gives me more motivation it's the level i got to but the next thing i should learn is the two layer method yeah Also, two and a half minutes is, I could definitely do it under three every time.

Two and a half minutes has only happened a couple of times, but I'm counting it.

Oh, you just need to do it once for a time.

And I've got false nails.

I've got acrylic nails.

Imagine how fast I'll be when these babies are off.

All right, we should do an episode.

Okay, right, let's do it.

Our first problem is for you, Matt.

Yep.

It's from Scott, who wrote into the problem posing page, which is a problemsquared.com.

Oh, yeah, I know that place.

And Scott said, if Beck embarked on a trip to circumnavigate Australia, which direction, clockwise or anti-clockwise, would be longer given the side of the road we drive on?

I'm guessing that Scott is also an Australian.

If so, what's the difference?

So, this is a brave problem, by the way.

And I don't know if you factored this into your calculations, but I do not have a driver's license.

Oh, yeah, that's a good point.

Very good point.

So, um, assuming you've got a chauffeur, yeah, or like whichever direction, clockwise or anti-clockwise, would result in fewer crashes.

Yes.

Would be the shorter one.

Probably the correct side of the road.

So Australia, we drive on the left.

Same as the UK and like some other places.

And some other places.

As opposed to continental Europe and North America.

So that means if you're on the left, if you're going clockwise, you're on the outside of the big circuit.

Yep.

And if you're going counterclockwise, you're on the inside.

And so I guess the simple answer is, if you're going clockwise, you're going to have to travel a greater distance.

Yes.

And actually, I remember when I was a kid, not understanding why when they started a running race, all the runners are staggered.

Yes.

Yes.

I was like, that's not fair.

Yeah.

My parents are like, yeah, but the people on the outside have to travel further.

There's a greater distance around the outside than the people running on the inside.

It makes sense that you've got to stagger people in the race to make sure it's fair.

But if everyone was just running around a big loop and you're on the inside, you'll travel a smaller distance.

Yes.

That's that solved.

The question now is, how big is the difference going around?

Although, could I go faster being on the outside, like cyclists?

Could you go faster?

You know how you can go really fast when you're a cyclist in a Velodrome.

Right.

Because

you do that turn, you do, you lean in,

you know, as you turn.

So they can go far, they can ride faster if they're on the outside than if they're on the inside.

You'd need a road with adverse camber.

Yeah, we could do that.

I see what you're saying, though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I like what you're saying.

If Australia was a Velodrome,

then that would work.

So now we need to work out the length difference going around Australia, which I thought we would do together.

That's why I've got the paper and pens here.

Or because you're like, Beck's going to say something that I will need a diagram for.

You know what?

It came in handy.

We always tend to have bits of paper and pens lying around during the podcast.

Let's do a simplified version of Australia.

Okay.

Let's make it a very small circle.

What if you're just going like around a roundabout or something?

Okay.

What's the smallest version, easiest one to work out?

And then we'll work our way up to all of Australia.

Okay.

So here's my first question to you.

You've got one person driving on the outside around Australia.

So they're driving on the outside of the circuit.

Yeah.

Other person's on the inside.

What's the distance in from the outside to the inside?

What's the distance?

That's your job.

Well, because also it's going to be different widths.

The standard urban lane is 3.5 meters wide.

But we're not going to be using urban lanes.

Maybe highway lanes, yeah.

Most of it's going to be highways.

Still says up to three and a half meters.

Well, there you go.

You might have a median strip in the middle.

Sure.

We're going to call it five meters on average.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That feels really good.

If you seem confident with that.

I'm pretty confident.

Bear in mind, you're talking to someone who does not drive.

Okay, that's very true.

But you've been in a car on a road.

Yeah, but I'm never like trying to measure how far away we are from other cars.

What do you do when

When you're being chauffeured around.

Yeah.

Okay, so here's what we're going to say.

Let's say we're doing a tiny circle where the inside person is going around a circle with a middle diameter of 10 meters.

Yep.

And then you've got an extra five meters out to the outside person, but that's on both sides.

So actually, they're going to be going around a circle.

that's 20 all the way across right yeah so this is like an extremely small australia yeah so we're going going to work out our technique and then we'll scale that up.

So, Matt's just drawn a diagram which is a little bit like the London Tube logo, but without the bit through the middle.

I see that.

It's not to scale.

Well, a very simple target.

The circumference of a circle is two times pi times the radius, but we're doing everything in terms of diameter.

So, it's just pi times the diameter.

Okay.

Piece of cake.

So, piece of pie.

Piece of pie.

Like, I could probably do 10 times pi in my head, but

for completeness, pi times 10.

Oh, my goodness, 31.4.

So the inside person, they're going to do 31.4 meters.

The outside person is going to do 62.8 because there's 20 meters.

And you're sort of doing this based on if you're driving like right on the edge of the road.

Oh, that's well, I'm doing the center of one lane to the center of the next lane is three and a half meters.

But I'm adding in a meter and a half of median strip in between.

So it's five meters.

So the middle of your car is five meters away from the middle of an oncoming vehicle.

And having driven a lot of Australia, it's single lane each way for a lot of it.

Yeah.

I don't think that's a wildly inaccurate assumption.

Later on, we could change that number and redo the calculation.

We're just working out our formula.

Yeah, we're just kind of working out the equation for what we're going to do.

So actually, the difference here is 10 times pi.

That's quite nice.

So for our mini version, the difference is 31.4 meters.

Difference.

Let's do it on a much, much bigger.

How big is Australia across?

Yes.

Apparently,

the mainland extends from west to east for nearly 2,500 miles and then in brackets, 4,000 kilometers.

So let's just assume Australia is a massive, massive circle that's

4,000, which is 4 million meters, 4 megameters.

The inside person is going around a circle that's 4 million meters.

Yep.

And the outside person has an extra 5 meters on this side, not to scale, an extra five meters on that side.

So they're going to do four

million and ten meters.

Okay.

So pi times four million,

twelve, five, six, six, three, seven, zero point six one.

Now I'm going to do four million and ten

times pi equals, oh my goodness,

twelve, five, six, six,

four, zero, two point zero

three.

So slightly longer.

I'm going to subtract

12,566,000

370.61.

Okay, here we go.

So the difference is

between the massive circle and the other one is 31.4 meters.

It's pi times twice the

Australia was a circle.

Well, what happens if it's not a circle?

It's still the same answer.

Why?

I know.

So,

because what we could have done is taken our small one and imagined Australia.

People are like, but what about the straits?

Like, what if you, because if it's a straight road, it's the same distance.

Well, more so, I'm thinking there's a lot of times where there's a lot of pointy bits.

Yeah.

So there's times where the outside lane, the right-hand lane, will actually be shorter.

100%.

Yeah.

And they all cancel out and leave you just the one.

What?

360.

So, okay.

So imagine Australia is a massive triangle, long, straight, all the way across the bottom.

And then here you chuck 120-degree corner.

Yep.

And then both your roads go all the way up to the top, up to Darwin.

Matt's essentially drawing a

like the sort of sign, the triangular sign you see by the side of the road that might say

dip or yeah.

There, right.

So now you've got three straits and you've got three corners.

And each corner is 120 degrees.

If this is an equilateral triangle, which is

360.

Yeah.

And so you're just doing the same circle, but in three sections.

So all the

all islands are circles.

Yeah.

Yeah.

To a topological approximation.

Yeah.

All the backwards and forwardsness cancels out.

Do you remember when I went on a Moto GP bike around Silverstone?

Yes.

I had a phone on me that was logging a bunch of data that was coming off the sensors of the phone.

One of which was the angle I was moving through.

So here's my plot.

This is from my trigonometry book.

Caption, your had to be there.

Your had to be there.

Your.

Your is when you're rotating in

that plane.

Yeah, that's your.

And I put your had to be there.

Yeah.

It's a very funny joke.

I honestly, I wrote that joke and I stood up and left the room.

I was like, do you know what?

As a fan of wordplay, I really appreciate that.

And the only reason I'm not giving you what it deserves is because I hate that I didn't know what the word was.

It's a dumb word.

It's a dumb word.

Because I just was like, oh, Matt's misspelt yaw, yaw.

That's embarrassing.

Because the bike, I was measuring the yaw of the bike.

Yeah.

Not the pitch, not the roll.

The yaw.

The days of yaw.

And so you can see here, turning to the right.

is positive increases my angle and turning to the left is negative so this is tracking my overall angle i'm i'm pointing at Okay.

As we do a complete lap all the way around the circuit, we're turning right, then we're turning left, then we're turning right, and we're going backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

At the end of the lap, we're 360 degrees higher up the plot.

Because no matter what you're doing along the way, if you do a complete lap around a circuit, you've got to do a full 360 rotation.

Ah!

Ha!

So no matter what your backwards and forwards are going around Australia, when you get back to where you started, you will have done one net 360 rotation because you've done closed loop.

Wow.

Around a circuit.

That's really cool.

Yeah.

So the difference is assuming an average separation between the two circuits of five meters

is 10 times pi or whatever the average separation is, it's twice that times pi.

Yeah, if we were to go for like three meters or different, all we have to do is

double it and multiply it by pi.

Yeah.

These are my favorite favorite things on this show.

It's a problem where I'm like, oh, there's gonna be so much mass involved.

We have to get work out the typography or whatever.

Not the type of, you know what I mean?

The layout, blah, blah, blah.

And then it's like, oh, this is a simple.

The journey

such that I can use terrible Python code to calculate the no, no, no.

This is.

Was this something you knew going into this problem already?

I looked at it and went, I bet it's a dumb circle thing.

Can we get that on a badge?

It's a dumb circle thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because there's like a famous puzzle where if you put a rope all the way around Earth and then you're like, oh, I'm sick of it being tight to the surface.

I want it to hover a meter above the surface the entire way around.

How much more rapidly?

How much longer rope?

Yeah.

It's 6.3 meters.

It's 2 times pi times the amount you're increasing the size.

It's a dumb circle thing.

And then I was like, oh, but I've got the plot of me doing that on a race course.

The only difference between the race course and going around Australia is going around Australia is such a big circle the curvature of the earth might come into play oh because we're adding a third dimension yeah huh and because of the curvature of the earth because you're the outside one's further around the earth you're you're going you've got to go slightly further again ah this is so now we're not dealing with circles we're dealing with spheres we're dealing with spheres and a triangle I could do this because I know the angles in a triangle add up to 360.

The angles of a triangle on a sphere add up to more than 360 because you've got to compensate for the curvature.

And so the total circuit all the way around Australia might, I don't think it's going to be a significant impact, but on a planetary scale, you might have to factor that in.

I have not done that.

If people wish to check that, I'd be curious to know.

There's an equation involves...

the ratio of the area inside the path compared to the total surface area of the whole planet.

And I think Australia might still be so small that it's not going to make a difference.

But the short answer is: if you're on the inside edge, you're saving two times the average distance times pi.

Not taking into account the curvature of the Earth.

Not taking into account the

curvature of the Earth.

Yeah, yeah.

I love that.

I really enjoy these types of moments.

It's fun, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Thanks, Matt.

My pleasure.

And we did it together.

Yeah.

I watched.

Yeah, it was a conversation.

No, I appreciate it.

I also like, I like being included.

It's a journey.

Yeah, it is.

To reveal that when you do a tiny circle and then you do the continent-sized circle and the different, like the numbers are all different, but the difference ends up being the same.

Yeah.

It's those moments in mathematics where you're like, oh my goodness, there's a link here I didn't realize.

Yeah, it's like me realizing that I don't need to go by the length, the average length of a piece of spaghetti.

I can just do like, what is the diameter of spaghetti?

Yeah.

Which, by the way, one of our listeners, Caleb,

said, huge fan of the show.

However, I was disappointed in your recent spaghettifying human episode that you didn't say the singular form of spaghetti is spaghettis.

Spaghetti is not.

Yes, never spaghettis.

It's a circle thing.

Yeah.

It's a circle ding.

Oh.

Well done.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Beck.

Gilles.

Aaron here.

went to the problem posing page.

They took all the effort of typing in at problemsquare.com.

Well done, Aaron.

To ask, what did we call dragonflies before there were dragons?

They do build on this.

They assume we had a name for these flying insects that you and I would call dragonflies before

we had a name for the mythical beast that is a dragon.

So they want to know what do we call them before and when did the name change?

I'm glad they specified mythological because at first I was like, what did we call dragonflies before they were dragons?

And I was like, I think we're still living in the pre-dragon era.

Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah there's that and it's and it suggests that dragons i'm because to me dragons are an old concept well yes yes but i can imagine like they've just been invented for game of thrones you know that's true that's okay cool

it's an old concept yeah but i'm like what if a rogue genetic experiment in in the 2300s produces dragons then human history will very much be before actual dragons yes and after actual dragons and then in the future people will be like what did we call dragonflies before they're dragons

and someone will be like

actually the mythical concept existed before yeah our fiery overlords

uh i like this question i mean i say this every time i i love a i love a problem like this i saw this one come in and went that's interesting yeah and then i'm kept scrolling for a maths one see that's how i feel when i look at it but the maths ones like i saw because it had my name in it i saw the one about me driving the circumference and was like

not for me

not for me thank you let's look at words so I can absolutely answer the second part when did they get the name so the name is derived from old English and Old English was spoken between the 5th and 11th centuries okay yep 600 year window uh well I'm getting to it Matt

so the word dragaon in Old English refers to the mythical creature.

How would you spell that in Old English?

That is D-R-A-G-O-U-N.

oh a u yes uh very english to add an extra u in there another cheeky you

yeah so that referred to the creature it's usually a large serpent or sea monster and then the old english word fliog fleog fleog it's spelled f l e o g e o that could be anything i mean now it's fluff yeah sure

that referred to flying insects and so when they combined they used to be called dragonflous or dragon fliog ge which meant dragon-like flying insect, which became dragonfly.

Dragonfly became standard in the early 17th century.

There's your answer.

There you go.

So there you go.

Time in the 1600s.

Yeah.

Aaron also wanted to know what they were called before this.

Now, obviously, in other languages, they're not necessarily called dragonfly or still.

But I wanted to look at what it was in the past.

So an old Japanese word for dragonfly is akitsu.

And some of the classical names of Japan are akitsukunu, Akitsushima, Otoyo Akitsushima.

And one of the interpretations of Akitsushima is Dragonfly Island.

And it's attributed to a legend in which Japan's mythical founder, Emperor Jimu, was bitten by a mosquito, which was then eaten by a dragonfly.

And for these words, is the literal translation still dragon-related or are they whole different words?

No.

Right.

I don't think it is.

Yep.

They got their own names going on.

Some other English vernacular names are horse stinger.

Horse stinger.

They sting horses.

Like a horse fly.

Devil's darning needle.

The devil's darning needle.

Which I think sounds like

it's like what you would call a penis.

The devil's darning needle.

The devil's darning needle.

And ear cutter.

Ear cutter.

Yeah, there's another.

These sound more like names of spiky plants.

Yeah, they do.

than a dragonfly.

But the dragonflies, the Norwegian name for dragonflies, I'm definitely going to mispronounce this.

Apologies, is Ofenstiker.

Olfensticker.

It's one of those cool looking O's with the cross through it.

And so it's spelt like oven with a cool O and then S-T-I-K-K-E-R.

Yeah.

Eye sticker.

Which translates as eye poker.

Eye poker.

Yeah.

In Portugal, they're sometimes called Tira alhos olhos, sorry.

Tira alhals,

which translates as eyes snatcher.

Eye snatcher?

Or is it with eyes?

I guess maybe people found that they would start like flying near their eyes and they'd be like, ah, stop trying to steal my eyes.

Oh, maybe.

Do you know when you're in the bush, though, in Australia, and just normal flies flock for like

the

moisture parts of your face, which is why Australians don't open their mouths very much.

Right.

So they go for those.

I wonder if, because dragonflies are always hanging around water as well.

That's a good point.

So maybe they fly for people's eyes sometimes.

I caught a dragonfly as a kid.

That's my whole story.

Oh, you're like karate kid, but yeah, yeah, but it's a bigger target, so it's less one of the best Christmas presents I ever got was a bug catcher thing, which is basically a chamber with a funnel attached.

Oh, yeah, every kid got a bug catcher at some point.

So good.

Not every kid thought it was the best present.

It was the best present.

And I also had like a butterfly net.

I somehow managed to catch a dragonfly and get it into the bug catcher.

It barely fit.

My mum was unimpressed.

It was her second least favorite thing I brought home.

What's the first?

It was a scorpion.

Was not happy I got a scorpion into the bush.

Where did you get a scorpion?

From the bush.

I didn't know there were scorpions at my bush.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

It was an angry one.

Yeah, I mean.

Well, it wasn't to start with.

Then it was in the bug catcher and it had opinions.

In Welsh, the name Gresinidre.

That's definitely.

I'm definitely mispronouncing that.

I'm so sorry, Wales.

That translates as Adder's servant.

Adder's servant.

That's not far off dragonfly.

No.

In the southern United States, terms snake doctor and snake feeder refer to a folk belief that dragonflies catch insects for snakes or follow snakes around and stitch them back together if they're injured.

Wow.

That's cool.

So the category seemed to be obviously dragon.

Being poked.

or injured.

Something with the eyes.

Yep.

And snakes.

Yeah.

Oh, there's more.

There's more.

Yeah, yeah.

In ancient Swedish folklore, the dragonfly is called the Skamsbesman, which translates to devil's steelyard.

Devil's steelyard?

Yeah.

This name is derived from the shape of a dragonfly's body.

So its body shape looks a little bit like a weighting tool in steel yards.

Yep.

And so people believed that the devil used the dragonfly to weigh people's souls.

The dragonfly would circle a person to get the measure of their soul.

If your soul was found wanting, you could expect to be seriously injured in the near future.

Yeah, dragonfly to the eye.

Yeah, that's right.

Go get him.

Get him.

Ah, my eye.

Yeah.

Sick him.

Why does that snake look so happy?

He's got like all these stitches

put back together.

Yeah.

So

really interesting.

It was a great question.

Yeah.

I had a lot of fun looking into all the different temps.

I didn't realize how much folklore was attached to dragonflies specifically.

I guess it is quite an unusual shaped insect.

Yeah.

In fact, there's reports that dragonfly watching in the same way as like bird watching, is becoming a bigger and bigger thing because there's different variations and people really like

trying to fight.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, so there you go, Aaron.

I hope that helps answer your question.

Well, I'm gonna give you a ding.

Also, dragonflies are you've already got the ding back.

I know, but one more fact: okay, fine.

There's dragonflies on every continent except for Antarctica,

which is way more common than I thought.

Okay, you've not lost the ding, you still got ding.

Yay!

And now we're to the AOB section, which stands for any other

business in a.

Don't you say it like

any other bays?

Any other bay?

Oh, bays.

Like my bay.

Yeah, like a boyfriend or a girlfriend.

Got it.

Your bay.

Well done.

We hit 2 million.

2 million downloads.

For our new listeners, I tried to predict when we were going to get to 2 million downloads.

We had a lot of fun with 1 million.

We're making commemorative plates.

We regret nothing.

I then tried to predict.

It took some time for them to go.

It did.

It was not a quick process.

We then tried to predict 2 million.

I had one model where I tried to factor in exponential growth of the podcast.

Yeah.

And I was too optimistic.

So then we switched to more of a linear model, which predicted Valentine's Day, which is in two days after this podcast comes out, but a couple of weeks in the future at the time of record.

And that was too pessimistic.

It was split the difference.

Yeah.

So, thank you, everyone.

Two mega thanks to everyone for listening to this podcast.

Thank you so much.

And we want to celebrate with another weird item.

Yeah.

So, we do.

We don't have a plan at the moment.

Yeah.

So,

we were floating the idea of commemorative teaspoons, which is funny.

But the thing is, you can we had a quick look around, and you can get ones where they'll engrave things on a spoon for you.

Yeah.

Which is fine.

But we kind of want like the little enamel souvenir watches of like us or something yeah but i don't know how if anyone's got suggestions doesn't have to be a teaspoon no no my only suggestion for that was because we have the episode about keeping the sparkling wine yeah sparkling wine

it's nice it links in because before the plate linked into our plate bowl debate which was but also we've been meaning to do a follow-up to the sparkling wine one where we do it on a much larger scale and we will see whether our findings are correct that was one of the post-it notes at the Yoi Planning Day.

Oh, you're going to cross it over with a

100% has got to be a YouTube crossover.

But I think maybe if that's the case, it makes more sense to wait until our next announcement, which will be for 4 million downloads.

That's a good point.

Because the plan is to do 1 million, 2 million, but then the pattern is doubling, not adding one.

We're squaring because it's a problem squared.

Oh, we could, but squaring one doesn't give you two.

Damn it.

We should say we're squaring doing one over and over.

I like what you're saying, though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We needed to start

with a number bigger than one and then squared it.

Yeah.

It was not too late for Fibonacci.

Yeah.

Assuming we skipped the...

We did one twice.

We did plates and bowls for one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think two, then four, then eight, then sixteen.

Yeah.

I'm a different.

Vote.

What do you want?

Fibonacci or powers of two?

We can only have one poll on the episode matt ah just ex

express your opinion via pros and we'll decide yeah because we're split down the middle on that one if we do save spoons for four million once we've concluded our spoon and the champagne journey

let us know what we should do for two yes yeah or whether you don't want any like well because you just have to buy it what are you willing to pay oh yeah we're then going to sell this thing to you so bear that in mind most podcasts release merch as an extra form of income you know we don't we like

and we we quite often do these at a negative oh it's such a stupid at a loss and effort

where we undercharge we are the worst at business yeah we're awful but but we like to have fun feel free to take advantage of that and suggest a stupid thing yeah or something that we could be money on that would that's also good

I've got some any other business, Matt.

Yep.

You mentioned in one of our episodes that we recorded in Australia

that you had some

crisps.

I've got a bag of things to give you.

Yes.

I grab it now.

It's over here.

Pop it on this side table.

Okay.

First of all,

long time listeners will know that Becca's a huge fan of the Australian snack, the chip, the crisp, that is Twisties.

Yeah.

We need to get them to sponsor us.

We should.

I managed to get, with the assistance of my brother, Twisties that are Donut King cinnamon donut flavored.

I'm so excited.

There you are.

And Twisties, these were the harder ones to get.

Twisted raspberry

flavored.

I have not tried those.

I did try because I could still buy donut at the time.

Right.

I ate a pack of the donut ones,

but you couldn't get more of the twisted raspberry.

They've come and gone.

So I don't know what they taste like because that's the pack I have.

Yeah, because the twisted Twisted Raspberry best before date was 19th of November last year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I think considering how out of date some of the Twisties have been that we've eaten in the past.

Very true.

We'll check.

We know the taste of stale Twistie pretty well.

Yeah.

We'll be able to identify that separate to the Twisted Raspberry.

Yeah.

Now, I know people don't like listening to people eating on podcasts.

No.

So we're going to open these and try some now, and we'll report back in what will seem like no time at all.

Do you know what?

It feels like it's covered in freeze-dried raspberry.

Yes.

It's like an unflavored twistie covered in freeze-dried raspberry.

Very moorish.

There's no savory to be heard, but it's definitely...

Next up, we've got the Twisties Donut King cinnamon donut flavor.

Flavorless Twisties that have been rolled around in some sugar and cinnamon, which I'm going to guess is one of the tastes.

You may have cracked the secret sauce.

Yeah.

It tastes like

a crunchy part of a donut.

Who would have thought?

I thought I was going to be so angry at sweet twisties, but instead I'm delighted.

And all right,

we have a stump date, which is an update about the stump.

Yes, I've realized there was ambiguity in the hilarious portmanteau of stump date.

Yes, it's not a date with a stump, in a sense, it is.

Although, in this case, it is because I have

there it is

the clock, wow, and a thermometer, and a thermometer, and I can see that it's it's 20 degrees in this room right now.

There you go.

Which is why I haven't taken off my jacket.

It's an old building.

We've been through this.

This is great.

And you've still got the axe marks and stuff in it.

Look at it.

It's so good.

The clock has stopped.

I took the battery out when I put it.

Oh, you can take the battery out.

Yes.

Because I was just looking at the battery.

I managed to pull it apart, take the battery out because I was putting it in my suitcase.

I figured a suitcase that techs audibly.

I mean, I know life is not a cartoon, but I don't want to stray that close to the edge.

No, no.

The next thing you know, you just see people out on the on the tarmac on the tarmac hitting it with comically large hammers yeah or just like a SWAT team

and they just explode it yeah yeah yeah controlled explosion my twisties

that's again another euphemism

swinging an axe into a root to try that's really I love that they've kept that yeah and the other one the other one's got resin doesn't it uh but this one's got a bit of resin as well but not as much so the other one I left in Australia yes so it would have one for Aussie recordings and one here for our

UK recordings.

I love that.

I'm going to pop that.

There's now a new member of the desk.

Beautiful.

Great work.

Yeah.

Well, great work to everyone who made that possible.

Yeah, thank you.

And we do still have another massive chunk of stump root that I dug up on a later occasion.

Oh, yeah.

And people have suggested cutting it into cubes

for their cube roots.

Yeah.

Very funny.

That's the current winner.

Yeah.

I guess you could turn them into little desk.

Like dice or little desk things or something.

Yeah.

I mean, my dad will explain to you.

Turn them into dice and give them to me as a reward for when I eventually guess how many die are in the...

Oh, I don't know.

I feel like you're going to guess the number of dice before we do something with the rest of the stump.

Yeah, well, you know.

And on that note, we're at the end.

We want to thank.

All of you for listening, especially people who share the podcast and tell other people to listen, whether you're doing that on your chosen social media platforms or in real life.

We really appreciate it because the more listeners that we get, the more we feel like this is worth doing.

We also want to thank the people who financially make this possible because a lot of work and effort goes into this and we like to compensate people appropriately.

So, with that in mind, we're going to choose three of our Patreon supporters at random and read them out incorrectly, as is the way.

I will say, as a little added bit of any other business,

we did have one come in and say, you mispronounce the names of random supporters.

Oh, I saw this comment.

Why don't you mispronounce the names of the problem senders?

And the person who sent this in has entered their name as Jonatan.

That's cheating the system.

Unless that's really their name.

I loved it.

Thank you, Jonatan.

It really made me chuckle.

I don't know what.

Do you know what?

I think we probably do mispronounce the names of some of the problem senders.

I think we made it a thing just to make our lives easier because we felt bad getting people's names wrong.

And on this episode, those lucky Patreon supporters are

Becky Ren Olds,

Ruian,

Saldur,

Ryan Salter,

Mang us

to

Roussette.

Margness.

You just make the vowels longer.

To Rousset.

In one syllable.

Mars Rousset.

We also want to thank ourselves, the hosts.

We're great.

Hooray.

Matt Parker.

Thank you very much for being my Valentine.

It's not been easy.

Myself, Bekhil, and our unrequited love who never returns our calls, Lauren Armstrong Carter.

She's too good for us, man.

So true.

We just have to love her from afar.

I'm glad she was third wheeling today.

Yeah.

She's also our producer.

I shouldn't say that.

Oh, yeah.

She's not someone we're obsessed with.

It could be both.

Goodbye.

Back, we're back in the same room as the Jaredice.

Oh, yeah, it's behind me.

I have here in the notes

that Lauren left us before she quit

from sexual horror.

Yeah,

your previous guess was 453 and I said higher.

And your previous, like the closest guess above that, was 486.

So that's the band you're working in now.

Yeah, so my original plan was to like go in, go and halve it each time.

Yeah, it makes sense.

But I can't because I'm left with an odd number.

Yeah, yeah, you have to pick one.

Yeah.

So

let's say

400

and

74.

lower

interesting.

I mean, it was 50-50.

Oh, I should have said 50-50.