A Problem Squared - 105 = Dated Primes and Dated Jokes

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

📆 When is the next Prime Number Day?🤣 What is the oldest joke?🪨 And we get to the rock bottom of Any Other BusinessYou can find Matt’s Divisibility Rules video here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pLz8wEQYkAYou can read more about the world’s oldest joke here:https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/08/05/sumerian-joke-oneAnd you can get your Philogelols right here:https://archive.org/details/philogelos-the-laugh-addict-the-worlds-oldest-joke-book/page/n21/mode/2upIf you’re on Patreon and have a creative Wizard offer to give Bec and Matt, please comment on our pinned post!  If you want to (we’re not forcing anyone) please do leave us a review, show the podcast to a friend or give us a rating! Please do that. It really helps. Finally, if you want even more from A Problem Squared you can connect with us and other listeners on BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram, and on Discord.

Welcome to a problem square. The podcast, which solves all of your problems and is a bit like limestone in that it's the result of things just gradually falling out over time. I'm Matt Parker, mathematician and would you believe writer? I mean, I feel like I should probably rescind that title at this point. I'm a lot like Limestone in that I don't I don't work fast, slow, slow, gradual pace. And I'm joined by Beck Hill, comedian, also writer, performer, and a bit

like limestone and that she has a lot of layers, many layers. You know, when I started mentally writing the intro, which I'm not going to lie was quite recent in time, I realized that I think I was actually thinking of sandstone. I decided limestone is way funnier sounding stone than sandstone. I just think of sand. Well, because sandstone sounds like it's just going to fall apart. Exactly. Whereas I wanted to do an analogy of us being like having a firm foundation of limestone. That's the podcast.

Yeah. Limestone. Is that the one that Bath is famous for or is that sandstone? I think that's sandstone. So sandstone's like silicon, silicates, and limestone is like dead sea creatures like lime, calcium carbonate. I like how you're saying this as if like, oh, yeah, that's right, the silicates. Look, I'm just saying, look, that's the extent of my knowledge. But I know limestone sounds funnier than sandstone. Oh, bathstone is limestone coming in from producer Lauren.

Wait, Stonehenge. Which one's that? All right. Producer Lauren's now looking up Stonehenge. Imagine if she was like, oh, it actually turns out to be rubber. It's foam. They bounced them there. Sandstone. There we go.

There you go. That's one each in Sandstone vs. Lone Stone. On this episode. I'm primed with a question for you, Matt. I'm going to tell some old jokes. You're taking my shtick. That's truer than you Matt. Oh I'm gonna tell some old jokes. You're taking my shtick. That's truer than you know. And they'll be any other bimestone. Bimestone? Wow. Any other business. Hey what's that really shiny rock? That begins with B. Beryllium?

Beryllium. Is it? Did I just guess it? I only know it because it's known as Beryl and I think that's very funny because that's an old lady name. That's like having an element called Ethel. Do you think Ethel is short for methylated spirit? I think so. I bet that's why old ladies are so good at cleaning. Bismuth is Bismuth.

Bismuth? Sorry, you were close. Any other cleaning. Bismuth is Bismuth. Bismuth? Sorry, you were close. Any other Bismuth? Any other Bismuth. You know, this podcast episode has gone a little off the rails in a geology direction I wasn't expecting, but I do like it because I've always wanted to learn more about geology. I've always been tempted to like start some kind of project.

I don't know if it's like a new YouTube channel or something called No Stone Left Unlearned, which is all about me learning geology. Oh, I like that a lot. That's really good. So one day you'll see you'll see No Stone Left Unlearned, which I imagine to be like me and a geologist traveling around and it's just me going What's that rock and then they'll teach me about the rock? Great, and I'll have a wonderful time. I don't know if it'll be good content for anyone else, but I love it

And then there's like the flip side where you take them to see like rock bands and you're like, oh That's the Rolling Stones. Oh, well done. Congratulations. I'd like to acknowledge a very good joke. It's all right. I've done better. Not with laughter, but just with acknowledgment. Are we still in the menu? We escaped the menu and now we're catching up with how we're both doing. So how are you, Bec?

I'm great. Guess what? Guess what? You didn't say anything. So I'm just assuming that silence is... Yeah, you haven't say anything. So I'm just assuming. I didn't guess. That silence is, yeah, you haven't guessed. Sorry. You've learnt to juggle. Do you know what? Close-ish. Also, I already know how to juggle. So I have learnt to juggle,

but that wasn't yesterday. You discovered a long lost unknown sibling. No, but I like how you thought that was close to juggling. I'm just getting the upper and lower bounds of the range we're in. Right in the middle. You've won a prize. Yes, if the prize is friendship. Oh. One of my oldest friends, Elise, she took me out for a driving lesson yesterday because I have my L plates in Australia. So I went for my first drive in a car on roads. That's exciting. Yes. I did some parking poorly. Oh no, I did all right. Turns out I'm very good at parking a car if there's no other

cars parked in the parks. Got it. Elise did have to point out to me after several times of me being like, oh, this is pretty easy. She was like, yes. However, if there were cars there, you would have like just sheared off their backs as you went into there. And I was like, oh, yeah. So let me just run through this. You're very good at parking a car if there's no other cars nearby and you're in a very large open flat space. And once you finish reversing the car, you can get out and draw a parking bay around it. That's not fair. No, I got within the lines. I got up to the curb. I was actually very good.

I take like 60% of that sass back. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. And I only killed two dogs. No dogs. I'm sorry. I don't mean to joke about that. It was only one and that had nothing to do with the driving. It's more of a sacrifice. You know, normal El Plata stuff. Yeah. So have you driven, normal El Plata stuff. Yeah.

So have you driven out on the open road or was this like car park practice driving? Well, ah, this is the great thing about Adelaide is that there's a lot of like estates being built, you know, and when I say estates, like, so, you know, the estates in Back to the Future, like in the, when they go to 1955 and he goes to where he used to live and it's just like a, it's being built. Oh yeah. It's called Lion Estates. That's what I realized.

Lion Estates. It's called L-Y-O-N-S. I couldn't, I remembered the fact that there's lion statues on either side, but they're, um, yes. I believe the target is to build 240,000 new homes a year in Australia at the moment. I may be misremembering that so. Oh well there was an estate. People got to live somewhere you know. There was all the roads with all of the signage, there were some car parks, but nothing's been built yet. So it was just like all the streets and like, and driveways and footpaths and like trees, but just the like foundations

for the houses that they're not up yet. And so that was great because no one was there, but I could sort of drive as if I was driving around there. And I did go on an open road, but in near an industrial estate where there was like no real traffic. I did manage to find the South Australian Homing Pigeon Association building, which is there's just like a bunch of shipping containers in there. And I'm pretty sure they wouldn't keep the pigeons in there. So I don't know if it's just like where the office is. It was not like a bird friendly. There's actually loads of barbed wire on the top of the fence as

well. And I was like, who's trying to break into the homing pigeon? And then, oh, do you know what? I'm going to send a photo. You can describe the photo for the listeners. Oh my goodness. I was going to ask you how you knew it was home of the South Australian Homing Pigeon Association Inc. But it turns out there's a massive yellow, I want to say sign, but billboard might be more accurate. That says South Australian Homing Pigeon Association Inc. Massive yellow board, picture of a pigeon right in the middle.

And it's the picture you would get if you Googled stock image of a pigeon. And then there's room at the bottom for some more copy. So they say, pigeon racing, a great family sport. But they put that in quote marks. Like, either it's a quote or it's just really sarcastic. Like if they just put the word great in quotes, it would be like, yeah, a great family sport. To me, I don't read it as sarcastic or a quote. I read it as like, this is a really bad cover for a drug trafficking operation.

It's like, it's a great family sport. Yeah. For the family. X-Nate. Yeah. It's like mobsters. They're like just actually, my friend Elise actually was saying, do you think that's how they do it? Like with pigeons? They're just sending the pigeons off with the drugs. Drug running pigeons. They're just sending the pigeons off with the drugs. Drug-running pigeons. Honestly if you said, Matt you got to design a massive board that makes its unambiguously look like a homing pigeon association but such that no one wants to visit, this is basically what I would have put together. And the fact that it's behind a chain-link fence with barbed wire I sing on the non-friendly cake. That's great.

I said it was giving me real Jurassic Park vibes like where's the goat? I think it's 10,000 volts. Yeah. Oh that's great. Anyway that's how I've been. That's what I've been up to. Mate I can't rival that as a how you've been story. I was late to this record today. Which is another remote record. I am out in Australia. You are in the UK. So you and producer Lauren were ready to go in the Zoom and I was still faffing around

making my coffee because I don't have my coffee maker at the moment. And this is not going to be a super hilarious story. It's just why I was late. It's because I bought that coffee maker. It's a mocker master for coffee people. That's already a funny name. Why do you mocker my master? Exactly.

Because it doesn't make mocker. It's not a master for making mocker. It's the Italian voice that Beck just did. You're making a Mokka out of me. Yeah, it makes a mockery of all other coffee makers. That's what I like to think. So I bought it with company money because I use it to provide free coffee to teachers when they come to my like school events I put on for school students. And I've had it for like 10 years now.

Like it's gone the distance. It's still light new. It's serviceable. Love my Mocca master. But for one month of the year, it's with my MathsFest event kit between shows. So I haven't got it at home. Like the rest of the year, I'm like, well, I shouldn't go to waste when I haven't got an event on.

So it just lives in my kitchen. So I realized I've become so dependent on it. I didn't have any other real means of making a bunch of coffee. So I had to balance a V60 funnel on a water jug. Okay. When you say V60, you say that as if that is a standard of funnel that everyone is... V60 is a coffee maker that you traditionally put on a single cup and put like a filter paper in it. I took a photo of the setup, hang on.

I've seen these. It's like a porcelain funnel and then you put some filter paper in there and the coffee and you... Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then gravity does its job. It's basically a manual filter coffee machine. Like a manual filter coffee machine. But it's designed to go on a single mug and I'm not sitting there making individual coffees because I'm making a coffee for Lucy, one for me. And so I balanced it on a water jug. Lucy's like, that doesn't look safe.

I'm like, no, actually it wedges in quite nicely. Uh-huh. This is my new coffee system. Oh, wow. That is... It's, look, it's more stable than it appears. Okay. This looks like the sort of equipment that they would be hiding in the shipping containers at the South Australian Pigeon Homing Association, Inc.

This is exactly what's happening inside the shipping containers. Have you gone breaking bad? I know you used to be a teacher, but... The recent becks gone straight to this is it's also balanced on a set of scientific scales like you would have in a chemistry lab. Yeah. Because you're making some... Because I buy my kitchen.

You're exagerating. This is pure ethyl and bismuth. It's because the problem is I buy my kitchen scales from scientific lab equipment supply stores, because I like like sub gram precision. That's exactly the excuse I would use if I was using them for legal purposes. So I can, I can make my coffee accurate to point one of a gram when I'm pouring the water in. So it may look janky as all get out, but there's still a lot of precision going on there. And that's why I was late this morning. Like limestone, I can't be rushed.

First problem was sent in by a listener named Beck Hill, who you may know from also hosting this podcast. Yes. And Beck said, I found a blog posted on the 29th of November, 2013, which said, and you know what, just looking at this, I can almost imagine it being read out in Beck's voice. It said, Whether you write the date in American, month, day, and then the last two digits of the year, or European day, month, last two digits of the year, or ISO 8601,

four digits for the year, month, and then day, you get a prime. So this was on the 29th of November, 2013. So that is 11, 29, 13 and 29, 11, 13 and 2013, 11, 29 are all prime numbers. Then the blog went on to say that the next international prime number day, that's when all three of those formats match up, would be August the 11th, 2019. I wanted to know when was, or is the next one and how do you figure it out? So first of all, ISO, the International Standards Organization, I think, they're the people who set the standards and the ISO format, ISO standards, they just have a number for this was whatever standard they were releasing at the time. And so they kind of said, here's the official way to write dates.

So they're unambiguous and it's in decreasing order of time size. So all four digits of the year and then all two digits of the month and then all two digits of the day. So that's our standard time. But then I guess this blog post has also put the American and European ones, but only with two digits for the year. So I mean, that's a choice. Yeah, that's true.

I would normally put four digits for the year personally. Yeah. And we could add that in the mix as an option, but I think maybe we solve it as given they've already declared the official rules for international prime number day, who are we to try and change them now? True. Over a decade in, well, there's two options. One is think about it very hard. Yeah.

And the other one is write some terrible Python code. Cause I don't really know how to work out prime numbers other than just count upwards and ask myself, can I divide this by any? That's kind of it. Well, I know what I can't use. I can't use any even numbers. So any of the numbers that fall into that format that would end on an even number, So any of the numbers that fall into that format that would end on an even number, they're out, right? So we don't have to worry about any of those. We know upper and lower limits in terms of each of those formats. So we know that if you are going to go like day, day, month, month, year, year, for instance,

well, if it's the first, that's a zero. As in you're only working with five digits instead of six. So you don't have to look at anything that is less than five digits. Correct. And you don't have to look over anything that is more than eight digits. Yep. You cross it, you get rid of anything that is an even number. There's probably other parameters that you can put in there as well to help in

terms of like in each of those formats. For instance, in the ISO one, you're never going to have something ending with like, it's never going to be 1300 and something as the final two dates because you're never going to get a month over the 12. So then you can cut out any numbers that are after. Yeah. And you can automatically know that this year is not going to work.

There won't be any international prime days this year. No, because the year ends in five. Yeah. So anything could be divided by five. Are there any other numbers that are like, I guess, 10, anything that ends in 10 as well, like, or zero? Yeah. I mean, the, the, the last digit checks only work for two and five.

And fun fact, that's because we use base 10 numbers and two and five both divide into 10, so because they're factors of the base, you can check for divisibility just by looking at the last digit. Hmm. But you could exclude all the ones which are multiples of three because if you were to add together all the digits across the year, the month, and the date, if the sum of the digits is a multiple of three, then the whole original number was a multiple of three. Oh, could you explain that? So the current year, ignoring the month and the date just for now, if you add together two zero two five, you get nine. Hmm.

And nine is a multiple of three, so you know 2025 is also a multiple of three. What? Isn't that great? And I know that 2025 is a multiple of three without even knowing how many times three goes into it. I've not had to divide by three, but I can prove that fact a different way. Does that work for any number?

That works for any number. Whoa. How did I not know this? This is like magic. It works for nine as well. Those sorts of methods, adding the digits to see if it's divisible by the same number, that works for any number which is a factor than one less than the base. So 3 and 9 both go into 9, which is one less than 10, and so that's why those techniques work. Wow. Now for other numbers, there are other ridiculous tricks.

So something is divisible by 4 if the last two digits are divisible by 4. Well, so, 2025, we know it's not divisible by 4 because it's not even, but hypothetically, we just have to check if 25 is divisible by 4, not the whole number. You just go check the last two digits. For people who watch my YouTube channel, I did a video about these recently. All the easy ones are kind of simple to use, but there are ridiculously complicated divisibility rules for any number you choose to think of. They're just not particularly human friendly, and so I wrote some terrible Python code to generate all the divisibility rules. Like I just generated the first several thousand of them and some of them are ridiculous,

but they all work. So if you want to learn more about divisibility rules, we can chuck that in the show notes. Cool. But to go back to what you were saying before, you're right. You're trying to rule out all the numbers we don't have to check because either they're not prime because they're like even or multiple of five, or they don't match a date. So what I would do, if I was going to write code for this, I would combine a bit of both, but I wouldn't worry about being completely thorough. I would just like, what's the most efficient but easy way to generate a list of possible dates that could be prime by taking out the obviously either non-dates or non-primes? I'd give it the list of all 12 months.

Cause we have to use all of them. I'd give it separately a list of the days that aren't even or zero or five, and then give it a list of years. Like around now, maybe all the ones from 2020 for a while, but take out all the evens and zeros and fives, and then write some code to just generate all the combinations of those and each of them in all three formats. And then see if any of them match. We would get some non-real dates because we'd get like the 31st of February, but we can

take them out later. I would then use a prime checking function to just go through all that entire list of combinations and check for the ones where all three formats are prime numbers and then just print those to the screen to generate a list of candidates and then take out the non dates manually. That's probably what I would do. I mean, I can do that. If you, if you want to wait, would you, while you do that, everyone else who is sitting there going, I would do this differently to that should pause time, how long it takes them to do the thing.

Start playing again. And then we'll know how long it took Matt to put this into into play and come up with a solution and we can see who wins. Hi. I made coffee and I knocked code together. Oh and what was my time? 16 minutes says producer Lauren. Wow that's faster than I expected. Hi. I make coffee and I knock code together. Oh, and what was my time? 16 minutes says producer Lauren. Wow.

That's faster than I expected. I would argue it would be slower if you hadn't had like your fifth pot of coffee for the day. It definitely helped. I'm going to tell you. So I sent you a screen grab of my code. Oh. Yep.

Oh yes. That's code all right. Now, I, thank you for verifying. I haven't looked at the results. As soon as I saw results where I could spot the 2013 date, I think that, that you'd said, I was like, right. Oh, I won't have a closer look at them. I haven't manually taken out the non-existent dates. So we'll have to do that as we go.

But it did give me a massive list of dates, one of which seems to be that one. So there may be additional debugging, but I'm pretty sure it's working. Okay. So the code, it's not good. Hey, it's, I can't comment on it at all. If I judged this, it would be as it exists. You can judge it on an aesthetic level and you could judge it on a readability level. Oh, I like the colours. They're really pretty.

They remind me of the colours, the pinkish colour of bismuth. It is a bismuthy colour scheme. Well, actually, if you look at that code, is there anything you can make like normal human sense of? Uh, yes. You've put in all the days of a month that for months you've put list is range one to 13, I'm guessing it doesn't count 13, it's like a fence post thing. Got it.

Correct. You've done all the dates of a month that could like a fence post thing. Got it? Correct. You've done all the dates of a month that could be a prime. And I just did that manually. I just typed them all out. I thought that was the quickest way of doing it. That tracks. Well done. You've got Y.

I'm going to say that's year from 2000, year to 2100. So we're not going to find out when the next prime international prime dates in a Busted's 3000 year will be. But the reason I pulled those out is so for the months, I just typed the beginning and the end of the range I wanted into the actual line of code. But for years, you can see I've written those out separately, I named them and defined them separately, and then put those names in the next

line of code and that's so it's much easier to change those. So if we want to change, when we go from and to, I can just very easily change those two numbers and then rerun the code. Okay. Cool. So half of code is because I'm using single use terrible Python code. Half of it's like, what do I just hard code in and what do I actually define separately to make it easier

to update? Then because I did years as a range, I haven't taken out the even years or the ones that end in five. So there's one more line, which is just me taking out the even years, but I couldn't be bothered doing the ones. The end in five. Cause at that point I'm like, well, what if I did threes or sevens? And I'm like, I forget it. I'll take it and I'll move on with my life.

I do like that you've given something the name, or is this thing prime? Yes. Yes. Yes. So, so what I've been done for people who don't want to ever look at this code, I've then in Python, you can use effectively code other people have written. So people will write something what's called a library, where they kind of pre code a bunch of functions or things that you can then just use. So you can see I'm relying on two other bits of code people have written.

There's something called iter tools, which are iterative, um, bits of code, which are really nice if you want to generate a bunch of combinations. And sometimes I'll write my own combination bit of code. If I want to have a bit more control over it. But I know there's a tool, which is they call it the product of lists. I can just feed it the three lists, the years, the months, the days, and say, Hey, give me back every possible combination where you take one from each of them. And so that's what I've done. And that's just saved me having to combine all the dates myself.

I've just used code someone else has written because I know I can give it three lists and get back all the combinations where there's one from each. The other one I've used from SimPy, SimPy, SimPy from SimPy is a symbolic maths library and it's way overpowered for this, but I know they've got a prime checking function. And again, sometimes I know they've got a prime checking function. And again, sometimes I write my own prime checks here. I was up against the clock. I just, you got to catch them once someone else has written.

Yeah. But I did mean they named it is prime. Great name for that function. It tells you what it's doing, but in Python you can rename stuff. So I've got from Simpy import is prime as oi is this thing prime, which makes the code worse, but funnier. I thought that would be a little bit of a treat for everyone who had to slog through reading my terrible code. Or listening to this. I then make a candidates list and within each candidate date I

Come up with the three options which are the three different ways of writing the date and I could have got a lot more clever With this I've just hard typed in The multiples of how to combine the numbers into those dates. I should have done that in a more flexible way Which would make it easier to try other ways of writing the date, but I couldn't be bothered. But that would be the most obvious upgrade to this code would be to make that a more flexible. Okay, Matt. All right.

Stop trying to put caveats in so that people don't call you out on some stuff. Oh, they are. They're going to dunkle over this. But then the fun line is the real bit, the, the real bit of proper heavy machinery in this code is the line that says if, or is this thing prime the first option and, or is this thing prime the next option and, or is this thing prime the third option. So I'm doing an if statement with three clauses that all have to be true. So I'm saying if this is prime and this is prime and this is prime, then it says print those options.

So just prints out those three dates. And so then I set that running for everything from the year 2000 to year 2100 and it's about a massive list. OK, it's found 63, 63 dates. Yeah. And we've got a few that go up to 2013, so we can discount those. There's the 2019 one that was mentioned in that blog. Then we missed a bunch. There was the one that was promised in 2019.

There was one in 2021, and then there were three in 2023. Oh my goodness. But, oh, there's a new contender coming up in a few years. Your Spidey sensors were spot on. How many are coming up in 2027? One, two, three, four, five! up in 2027. One, two, three, four, five. Five in 2027. That's so many. We've got five in 2049. That's the next one that we have five. Okay. So 2049 is the next big batch. For people who have their diaries out, you want to mark down the 23rd of March, the 27th of May, the 29th of June, and the 11th of September and the 9th of November. There you have five dates in 2027 that are all triple prime. That's pretty special.

That is special. So there you are. Matt, going back to your code. So if you were to change it so that the years displayed were always four digits rather than the two digits. Yep. Is that an easy, is that an easy to change thing? I think that's an easy fix.

Yes. Okay. So I did all of these. So we only have two years at the end and I was very lazy. I don't know if you can tell how I turned them from four digits into two digits. It's, it's, it's hidden in the code there and it's awful. I have merely subtracted 2000 off the years. So I'm going to delete the bits that subtract 2000.

Oh, there's two more. There's 65 of them. There's none in 2027 now. We've lost them all. Yeah, because now, and also these are now bigger numbers because instead of having six digit numbers for the American and the European ones, we've now got full-on eight digit numbers. So, you know, everything's changed. We're waiting till 2029. Yeah, the 7th of March, 2029 will be the next one. Yep. So in 2041, on the 3rd of March, all five date formats will be prime at the same time. Two and four letter years, European and American plus

the ISO format. All prime. That's amazing. And then not again till 2093 and 2097. Wow. That's pretty exciting. Oh by the way this was a problem you posed. It's like you have four authorities to ding it. Oh yeah, I get to ding it. Yeah, no that definitely is... I mean you answered it too technically. So you know. Hooray! Well done is. You answered it too, technically. So, you know. Hooray! Well done, Mary. Who will ding the dingers? I'm going to give that a date international and that's inter-national date international

prime number. It's got a silent G at the beginning. That's what a ding stands for. Love it. Yeah. Silent G. This next problem is not from me. It's from Patrick who says, what is the oldest known joke? It's concise.

They haven't said why it's a problem. No. Perhaps Patrick is a very, very old comedian who's trying to work out if their joke is the oldest joke or not. Or maybe they're having an argument with a friend where they told a joke and their friend's like, oh, that's like the oldest joke in the book. And they're like, hang on, I don't think it is. Hang on. I'm going to go ask someone.

And you and I both looked at this problem and thought that's interesting. Yes. And well, I did. And then I did my version of researching, which is to compare Google results to see if across the board I'm getting the same answer. They're pretty similar. Yeah. Yeah. There's kind of'm getting the same answer. They're pretty similar. Yeah. Yeah. There's kind of a, just as answer.

Well, there's an answer from 2008. That's not when the oldest joke was. Yeah. That's when Dave, the TV channel commissioned the University of Wolverhampton to put together like the 10 oldest jokes. And the oldest joke is basically a fart joke. But a slightly misogynistic fart joke is, I think we both hit the same thing where it turns out humans have always been crude and sexist for a very long time.

Yes. And so actually, basically it's a carry on terrible jokes. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what it was? I think I saw the answer and went, I don't think it's a joke. Yeah, exactly. So I had the same dead end as you. And then I was like, well, hang on, wasn't there like the world's oldest,

um, walk, you know, walks into a bar joke. And I knew there was like this ancient Greek composition of jokes. But what I kind of half remembered was there's a bunch of jokes where they're clearly jokes. They've been written as a joke, they're in a compilation of jokes, but the meaning has been lost to time. Whatever the cultural hook was that made it funny has gone. And so I think that's different to there's a bunch of old jokes where you're just like, is it really a joke? I think it's just being mean or being

unpleasant. As opposed to I think this was once a genuinely funny joke and we've just lost it. So I came up with two ways to answer this that I think are actually kind of fun. And one is I I'm going to read to you the world's first walked into a bar joke. And the meaning of this is lost. So I thought we could see if we could reverse engineer the joke. Okay. So by the way, this is an ancient Sumerian joke. So this would have been written in cuneiform.

It's about 4,000 years old. It may actually be, it's up there with the quote unquote oldest joke. It's all that kind of first ever writing system, phenomenal stuff. I didn't realize how old bars are. Well, beer is the source of civilization. I mean, we have the Sumerians were writing stuff down. So the proto cuneiform was largely used for tracking like stock and things that were being stored and it was the ingredients for beer. So I mean, we have civilization and writing because we had bars in my humble opinion.

I buy it. So a dog walks into a bar. So far, hilarious. Yeah, that my humble opinion. I buy it. So a dog walks into a bar. So far, hilarious. Yeah, that's already cute. The dog also talks, so get ready for this. Whoa, I love this. I can't believe like 4,000 years ago, humans had talking dogs were a thing, like in terms of like stories and jokes.

Yeah, take that family guy. Exactly. Humans don't change. Family guy is fan fiction on ancient Sumerian jokes. A dog walks into a bar and says, I cannot see a thing. I'll open this one. There you go. That's the whole joke.

That sounds like a joke. Have I told you about the first joke my brother made up and told me? It rings a tiny bell, but I couldn't tell you what the joke was. So let's do it. It's knock knock. Who's there? Farmer Bob. Farmer Bob who? Farmer Bob, your house is on fire. And at this point he would like burst into

laughter. And I was like, I don't, I remember being like eight, I think he was about five and I was like, I don't get it remember being like eight, I think it was about five. And I was like, I don't, I don't get it. Like, why is that funny? And like through tears, you know, he's, he's laughing so much. He's really, and he just, he just goes, don't you get it? Farmer Bob is in his house. He's watching TV. He's just relaxing and it is on fire.

And Father Bob is so stupid. Someone has to come to his door and knock on it to tell him. You know what? Now that's actually very funny. It does get funnier. Yeah. I, what I like about that is it fully embraces, like often the knock knock format is just a by the by conduit to get to the joke, whereas this is actually

part of the setup and payoff is the fact that it's a conversation happening at a door. That's great. A dog walks into a bar and says, I cannot see a thing. I'll open this one. says, I cannot see a thing. I'll open this one. I mean, I can kind of see the structure of, obviously in a bar, you're opening

like barrels of beer or whatever. So the opening things make sense in a bar, but I can also imagine the word open is often used in languages to mean start or turn on. So I can imagine there's like a wordplay on I'll open this versus I'll turn on a lamp or something. It would be like a dog looks into a bar and says, it's a bit stuffy in here. I know I'll crack one open, which both means open a drink and open a door or a window. Right? So I don't know. That's, you know, that's the best I got. Yeah.

My instant thing was like, I can't see a thing, meaning like I can't see out of like one eye. So I will open the other eye. Oh, nice. Yeah. And maybe being one-eyed was like Sumerian slang for being drunk. So it would be extra funny. I don't know. Yeah.

I mean, neither of our answers have anything to do with the fact that it's a dog. Like, is it just funny fact that it's a dog. The dog must be... Is it just funny because it's a dog? Is that the joke? Does it not matter what the dog says? Is it the fact that... is the joke the fact that the dog walked into a bar and just said a thing? That doesn't make sense even. Because that's the other one where a dog walks into a bar and says, I can't see anything.

I'll open the other one. And someone says, holy crap, a talking dog. Like, is that kind of set up? Yeah. Maybe we're missing the other half. Yes. There's like a sausage being cooked nearby. Like imagine 4,000 years from now, people are trying to reverse engineer a horse walked

into a bar and the bartender says, why the long face? Yeah. Yeah. They don't realize we use that to mean looking sad. And that's totally been lost. Yeah. I mean, you hear jokes from like other countries now that don't make sense because it's a phrase that we don't use.

Exactly. So that brings me to, and I'm not good at pronouncing ancient Greek around the second century, give or take. So coming up on 2000 years ago, we have a surviving compilation of ancient Greek jokes, and we know there were older compilations of jokes, just they're not, we haven't got copies anymore. And so we've got a book of 265 ancient Greek jokes. Wow, one for every day of the year, except for 100 days.

Exactly. As long as you take 100 days off. So the moment I knew this might be a good problem to solve, was I started reading the jokes in... It's called the... I want to say the Philogalus? Something like that. Which is the lover of laughter. Like, Philo is in like... Like Numberphile, the channel. We love numbers. It's like that, but it's like Jokophile. Or Laugh-a-phile.

But they wrote it Philo...o-gul-ous. Philogulous? Philogulous. Let's go philogulous. More like phil-ol-gous. Philologous? There you are. It has got, you can't spell philogulous without lol-gulous. So I started reading the jokes and the first two I was like, they're just terrible jokes.

They're not terrible jokes, they're jokes lost to time. And then the third one made me audibly laugh out loud. Okay. And I was like, oh, okay, I've just actually laughed genuinely at a joke that's 2000 years old. So they're going to be hit and miss. So let me read the first three. But the first one, a student buys a lamp from a silver Smith. Oh, these are all student jokes, by the way, they're in sections. These are student jokes.

And the student is like a classic, not very smart character. So it's like a dunce. A student orders a lamp from the silver Smith. How big a lamp do you want me to make? Asks the silversmith. And the student replies, big enough for eight people. There you are. So the number one theory that I can come across as to why this might have been funny.

It's funny anyway. Is that the word for like, lantern is a bit like a word for a fish and the students ordering the lantern as if they were ordering the size you'd want to fish to cook a meal for friends coming over, but they're ordering a lantern the same way. I mean, I'm looking at you with a, well, for me, the way that it's being interpreted, and this is fun. I like seeing how our minds are different. I mean, I'm looking at you with a, well, for me, the way that it's being interpreted. And this is fun.

I like seeing how our minds are different. I like it because to me, this suggests that they would like the lantern to light up enough space to see eight people. Yeah. But it also sounds like they want something that would fit eight people in it. Right. Like a genie.

Yes, yes, yes. Yep, yep. That could work. Yeah, that's pretty funny. Because they've given an answer that is too vague to make sense. Like they're missing the vital key piece of information that actually... So now it can be interpreted in many different ways and that's the joke.

What we're kind of assuming, both of us, is that the joke is there's a double meaning to whatever has been said and that's funny. Yeah. The second one, I just don't get it all. A student went swimming and almost drowned. So now he swears he'll never get into water again until he's really learned to swim. That's a good joke. Is it? What do you mean you don't get it?

He can't learn to swim if he won't get in the water. That's a good joke. You're right. That's a good joke. So he'll never get in the water again until he's learnt to swim. Yeah. That's funny. I just didn't get it.

Solid joke. You're right. I think that's like me saying I'm never getting in a car again until I learned to drive. That's great. It's, you're right. I'm sorry. I was so expecting to not get it. I didn't put the effort in. Yeah. That's a good joke. That's actually hilarious. Solid joke. That's a good joke. Are you ready for the one that made me laugh? Okay. A student goes to the doctor. There's doctor jokes. Like humans, we haven't innovated in a long

time. A student goes to the doctor and says, doctor, when I wake up, I'm all dizzy and then after half an hour, I'm okay. Well, advises the doctor, wait half an hour before waking up. And that made me laugh. Yeah, that's really good. It's really dumb. It's not as clever as the one you found funny that I didn't even get, but you know, it's definitely a joke. No, I like it. It's like anti-humor almost. It's really fun.

Yeah. Yeah. But also it's not just double meaning. These aren't double meanings. These are actual logic, logical jokes. They're jokes because there's some logical disconnect which I love back I've sent you a link to on archive org. There is a publicly available free copy of a modern translation of all

265 jokes. I don't think it's necessarily the best translation I've been rewording them as I go because I feel like I can try and punch them up a little But it is a very good English translation of all these ancient Greek jokes. We haven't got time to go through all 265, so I don't know if you want to pick a number between one. Well, we've done the first three. We've done one, two and three. Don't you want to pick a number and we'll look up the joke and then see if it's funny or not? If you want to pick a number and we'll look up the joke and then see if it's funny or not. Well, should I just randomly pick a page? Or randomly flick.

Lauren, you can take that bit out if we do this a different way or flick through at random and pick some out. Okay. It says a stupid astrologer. These all seem to be about idiots or cowards. Yeah. A lot of punching down. Carry on. Hey, but none of them are about, um, wives.

So well, so far. There you go. That's a big, yeah, big step forward. A stupid astrologer tells someone's fortune. You are not fated to produce heirs, but I have seven boys, objects his client. Well better keep an eye on them, advises the astrologer. They're gone die. I think that's the joke.

I mean, they're clearly jokes. So we'll provide a link to this book if people want to flick through. I mean, they're clearly jokes. So we'll provide a link to this book if people want to flick through, read some ancient Greek jokes. Maybe if people find any that are really hilarious, let us know. When we'll put them in a future, any other business. Bec is still looking through the book, I can tell. I am. He's still flicking through pages.

A fellow approaches a stupid prophet and asks if his enemy will come to town. The prophet responds that he's not coming. But when the fellow learns a few days later that his enemy is actually in town now, the prophet remarks, yeah, the the guy's outrageous isn't he? Bekah's doubled over with laughter by the way so that's why we can't hear from her at the moment. Bekah's struggling to compose herself. Okay so here's the thing right? I don't know. Beck is struggling to compose herself. Okay, so here's the thing, right? When you do comedy as a job, you know this, man, we see a lot of comedy. And so you kind of get a little immune to how jokes are written.

And it means that quite often you'll watch something and you'll think that's a very good joke, but you don't laugh because it doesn't surprise you because your brain kind of started to half put together the answer anyway. Already. So like you just don't get that same little kick of the surprise that the rest of the audience gets. Doesn't mean you don't get it. Doesn't mean you don't enjoy it. It just means that you know, surprises in as big. It's a little more intellectual enjoyment than visceral. Yes. But what this means is that it now takes we do and we do things to surprise me. Yes.

And to really tickle my funny bone. And I think just the fact that this guy, well, first of all, they say he approaches a stupid profit, right? Which firstly, I'm going to say, see a smart one. Don't go to a stupid one. Yeah, exactly. Like the clues in the name. Yeah. The good ones are expensive, alright? And then, like, his question is, will my enemy come into town? Which I just think, again,

is a great... I've never asked that. I love the fact that that's on this guy's mind. And then the prophet makes him feel better by saying like, no, no, he's not. And then the guy finds out, no, his enemy is in town. Oh, no. The prophet's response is, yeah, the guy's outrageous, isn't he? I guess it's his fault. That's so good. Like he went against what I said. He's like, yeah, I know, I can see why you hate this guy. Yeah, yeah, the guy's outrageous,

isn't it? Like it's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's sort of, and that's why it kind of, to me, it gives me farmer Bob vibes. It's so good. So if people find other ones, let us know. Given at the moment, if you Google the oldest joke, it is a Sumerian joke.

These Sumerians are hilarious. They're pretty good for peelable oranges. Something that has never occurred since time immortal. A young woman did not fart on her husband's lap. So I guess it's a riff on the women don't fart. Cliche, which is still, I guess that still exists as a... Is it a joke because that's definitely not true? Yeah, I think maybe. Yeah.

Like definitely, because definitely people have farted on people's laps. And that is objectively very funny. Either, either on purpose, either by accident. Yep. I didn't tell you, I should have put this in our catch up. We had to go in, I was making a large, a bank transfer large enough. We had to go into a branch. And so Lucy and I popped in while we were in town, we were walking the dog,

but the dogs allowed that West is like, you can bring dogs in. So all three of us go in and while they're doing the- And then the dog says, I can't see a thing. Cause the dog says, I can't see a thing. Why we were in there. And the, the teller is doing the serious scam speech to make sure I've not been coerced into sending money. The dog did the loudest, longest, highest pitched fart I have ever heard this dog do. It was like, and the dog was just sat there like a good dog wagging

her tail and just this eye pitched and no one, no one, and an eye was battered. It was the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. I went into a phone shop to get, I don't know, like I had a SIM card thing I had to sort out while my co-host Sam from Enemy in Paris was in London and I was like, I just need to pop in the shop and sort this out. We're on our way, I don't know, somewhere. And while we were sat there and the person was doing the tk tk tk with the keys, the chairs are like those metal sort of ones that are just scooped and Sam farted and it reverberated the whole chair like there was no way it wasn't like it was just a perfect fart sound like a perfect fart sound. And I looked, but it was with the sort of veracity of someone who was comfortable at

home. And I think he tried to act like it definitely wasn't like, he seemed so, he didn't see, you know how normally if that happens, he'll even be like, oh, that was louder than I expected. And you sort of, your eyebrows do a twitch or something. Cause you're like, I hope no one else heard that, but we definitely all heard it. And, and he was so, he kept such a, a step, like such a clear face, like as if nothing had happened until at At like a second later. He made eye contact with me and then he could not not smile like it was like, Oh,

you did hear that. Like he really wasn't sure if I heard it was so obvious. And look, I'm very happy to say that because I think a couple of times now on enemy in Paris, his farts have been loud enough to be picked up by the mic. So, um, it is on brand. So far jokes. I mean, that's very funny. Yeah.

But I would propose, I feel like, and I haven't done any great research into the exact dates, but these are all the same kind of cuneiforms. I think the dog walks into the bar and says, I cannot see a thing. I'll open this one. That's my favorite world's oldest joke. It's contemporary as far as I can see. And it doesn't make any sense. And it's been lost to time.

But I bet it was pretty funny. I wonder if it's the ancient Sumerian version of the everything's fine dog. Yes, the everything's on fire dog. Yeah. I can believe that because there's one thing that looking at these old jokes is reinforced is that humans haven't changed. We're still telling exactly the same jokes, finding the same things funny, walking into bars. So I reckon they had their equivalent of the this is fine dog and maybe this is that dog, maybe we found him. So Patrick, great question even though we both dismissed it initially but I'm glad we did dig into it and we

will provide a link if people want to check out the full list of 265 ancient Greek jokes. I'm going to keep reading it. This is great. And now it's time for any other Bismuth. What do we got? Well, we heard from Alex who said, hi Matt and Beck, just listen to episode 102, 102, sorry, Matt. And was very excited about the fact that episode of Saturday Night Live with Daniel Craig and The Weeknd was the first to air on February 29th in 50 years of the show.

Since it's the one that spawned the meme gif of Craig saying, ladies and gentlemen, The Weeknd, which I still use almost every Friday evening with my friends. I bet his friends love it every time. Yeah, I've got a friend that every Friday sends me a GIF of a minion gyrating and it says it's Friday. It was an accidental GIF sending once and now it's become a weekly tradition. Brilliant. But the gif of ladies and gentlemen, The Weekend requires very specific cultural knowledge for right now that that's like a music act but also

it's being repurposed because it's actually The Weekend. So I think that would age out, you know, historians a century from now, it'd be like, why was that so funny? Uh, I think you'll find that historians would understand because the weekend is the most streamed artist for a single. I mean, obviously they'll listen to our episode talking about that, which will be one of the many important. And they'll know which century it was because we'll have the date in so many different formats.

OK, so Alex said I was ready to run around and tell everybody this fun fact, because I'm that kind of annoying person. Yeah, we know we know from when you taught us about GIF. But before that, I went and double checked and the Craig episode was actually on March the 7th, 2020. Something must have slipped in Matt's spreadsheet or he just had a wrong glance. Well, they were absolutely correct. So I said it was Daniel Craig in the weekend. And that's because when I was looking at my spreadsheet, because I went and opened the spreadsheet to see what went on, Cause I went and opened the spreadsheet to see what went on.

Cause initially I thought, Oh no, during the process of like copying all the data off the internet and then ingesting it and analyze like tidying it up and processing it, I was like, Oh, it's often quite easy to accidentally shunt things out of alignment if you're not very careful. So I was like, Oh no, I've accidentally misaligned the acts with the dates. But actually I'm just a doofus who can't read a spreadsheet. I love that music number. Doofus who can't read a spreadsheet. I'm just a doofus who can't read a spreadsheet.

You know the song. So as I was just skimming across, I looked down a row and the correct one, my spreadsheet says it was John Mulaney as the host and David Byrne as the music act. Yes, Alex also told us this and said, I can't use Gifts of Them for weekday punnery purposes. Welp. Sorry. Thank you for the podcast and have all kinds of interesting days. Sorry. Thank you for the podcast and have all kinds of interesting days.

I just like the fact that Alex knew before to use a fact from this podcast that should be correct. Yes. Uh, I think you could pun it. I think you could say,. I think you could say, I'm David Ber... Ber... ...ning the house down this Saturday. John...

John Mundayley. Mundayley. No, no, no, you're right. You're right, Alex. You're right. You're right. Yet again. Why can't we just learn to trust you? Here after here, Jack, who asked the question has written in again to say both.

They are shocked that their question got picked. I mean, fair enough. A lot of people ask questions. We don't get to them, but they wish to give me a ding live from North Carolina. Yay. That's where Jack is. Thanks Jack.

So you do know Jack. Very funny. Um, I'd like to acknowledge that was a good joke. Um, I'm- See, this is what I mean guys. The surprises stop. See? That's it for this rock solid episode of A Problem problem squared. Thank you so much to everyone for listening

Thank you for everyone who reviews the podcast shares it with their friends and a specific. Thank you to the firm limestone beneath our feet patreon supporters upon which this This podcast rests and every episode we like to thank three of them picked completely at random and their treat is to have their names mispronounced which this episode shall be insolent insolent talking backwards I like to insolent sonnet I like to insulnet, soulnet.

I like to not insulnet, soulnet. I like insulnet, soulnet. I like insulnet. All right, I'll stop now. Yonar fans eat. And illyq. And illyq. C'est chic.

Well, thank you to those three supporters and everyone else who supports us. And thank you to you. Yes, you for listening to this episode. I've been Matt Parker. You've also heard Beck Hill. And a huge thanks to our producer, Lauren Armstrong Carter, who much like Limestone has snake eyes. That's my favorite most recent joke. Good joke.

I have the battleship physical game. Well, you can't look at mine. No, no, no. Well thankfully we labelled them. I'm opening the matte one. And I'm ready to respond to your unprovoked attack. Okay. I am going to go with A2. A2? Miss.

Bam. Now, last time I tried to be great and I missed, but g7 was a miss. Okay, g6. Hit. Yeah. Not sunk? Not sunk. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay.