A Problem Squared - 126 = Temperature Levels and Special Vessels

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

🧊 Why doesn’t the coldest day fall on the shortest day?🥂 If you don’t drink, what can you use fancy drinking glasses for?🏊 And we take the plunge into some Any Other Brrrrrrrness.If you��d like to read about defibrillator testing using a turkey, here’s the paper sent in by Hans: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12879378/If you’d like to see Matt and Bec - alongside Steve Mould and Helen Arney and more - at An Evening Of Unnecessary Detail in London on Monday 26th January, you can get tickets here:https://www.universe.com/events/an-evening-of-unnecessary-detail-tickets-TFK426?ref=ticketmasterIf you’d like to see Bec at the Adelaide Fringe in March, you can get tickets here: https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/bec-hill-creates-the-perfect-show-work-in-progress-af2026 And if you’d like to see Matt on tour, all the dates, venues and tickets can be found here: http://standupmaths.com/shows If you’d like to ask Matt and Bec anything for our special 2^7 episode in February go to the Problem Posing Page at aproblemsquared.com - select ‘Problem’ and start your message with AMA! Please get your AMA questions in by Friday 23rd January 2026!Join us on Patreon for early releases and our monthly bonus podcast I’m A Wizard!If you’re already 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, share the podcast with 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.

Hello and welcome to a Problem Squared, the problem-solving podcast, which is a lot like cold water swimming, in that it's a hard sell to the mainstream public, but once you get into it, you won't shut up about how much better it makes your life. I'm here with Matt Parker, a comedian and mathematician whose tone is like a towel after a cold water swim, warm, dry and comforting. And I am Beck Hill, a comedian and creative, whose tone is like your swimsuit after a cold water swim. Squidgey. Klingy.

I was going to go for clingy. Funny, but not accurate. And together, as your hosts, we'll be like your teeth after a cold water swim, chattering. Yay. We did it. We did an analogy. And on this episode, I take the plunge into examining why the earth doesn't get cold

when we think it should. And I'll be looking into some options for. People who are dry. Non-drinkers. That's what I'm trying to say. Yeah. I'm trying to go with the water thing. You started the water thing.

I know. And we've got any other burr-ness. Nice. Hello, Matt. We're back in the room. Because we weren't for the last one. No. How have you been?

What have you been up to? Oh my goodness. So I got back from Australia. I see that they didn't detain you due to your white powder. They did not. Would you like to see the salt? Yes, I do. Add the salt. Let me get it.

I want you to look at this. Imagining you're a customs agent. Look at that. Okay. Since the last episode, I did follow through with what I said, which was I was going to come up with a dumb business name for Matt and a label. Yes, yes, yes. And I did. I came up with Salt of the Perth. Great. And so I came up with like a little logo. Matt has had it printed as a label.

It's a large label. It's much larger than I. Oh, is that not what the designer intended? Because you've gone for a... It's a lot of salt. You've gone for a large jar, a Legos jar. Yeah. Which, do they have Legos here?

It's like a Domio... Pasta sauce. Yeah. Stir-through thing. I did try to find a product with a blank lid. The goal was to make it look more like a real product. Now it looks way more like someone trying to disguise their suspicious white powder. It feels like you've double-bluffed yourself because you've done such a poor job of trying to just...

that it could only actually be salt. That's true. They're going to look at it and go like, no, mate, no one running drugs would be this slapdash trying to disguise it. The jar is only about a third fall.

Hey, which I think... It's a lot of salt. Which I think is also what makes it so suspicious. Give it a good shake. You really got to give it a... Yeah, I'm holding it upside down. And it is...

We're still having some caking issues. and some consistency concerns. Clumps like a real clumper. You got some moistness issues with your... It's not a moistness issue. It's a particle size issue. Shut up. It doesn't go on food well either.

Like it. You're really selling it. No, it tastes delicious. No, it is great on food. It's just not great at applying it to the food. It's due to the clumping. The problem is it's a very fine powder. Yeah, it's, I'm getting icing sugar vibes from it.

It's icing sugar consistency. Anyway, I thought maybe you would put it in like a receptacle that did have salt in it. Like, it's already a thing that exists. And you're like, pasta sauce. Bulk salt. Also, there's no way that would come out of a shaker. I was trying to keep my spend at pretty much zero. I spent 50 cents on a salt shaker.

You spent it all on labels. Well, this is almost the size of the jar. It's the problem with labels. It's not even a small label. Here's the issue. You can't buy just one sticker. No. Oh gosh.

I've kind of got a gift for you. You've got more stickers and you have salt. So I've got sheets and sheets. Salt with the Perth stickers. It's like 60 of these things. And you've gone, like, it's such a large circle. I want it to look legit. No, but that's not.

Big salt, big label. There is a size and consistency going. Your salt is too small. Your label's too big. On average, it's a great product. I mean, we're doing. an evening of unnecessary detail as a live show on 26th of January. We are.

Up the Creek in Greenwich. There will be a link in the show notes. I think if anyone comes up to us, but they need to say something. We'll just keep them on our person. You know when someone says, oh, blah, blah, blah, right? We can give them a sticker. Or we can have a more nuanced code phrase. No, I think blah, blah, blah, blah is perfect.

Blah, blah, blah. Salt of the Perth sticker. Yeah. So if you come up, if you come to the show, and you come up to either one of us and say... Or anywhere, just in life. Just in life.

We may have to carry them forever. Say blah, blah, blah. Until they run out. You can have your very own salt of the Perth sticker. No salt, but you can have a sticker. I haven't got that much. So should I try this salt? Yeah, try it.

It's really tasty. It's perfectly safe. There's a lot of salt. It's salt. It's good salt. Do you know what? It tastes like being dumped by a wave. It's an assault.

on the senses and I mean that in a good way. I don't mind the consistency. I can understand it's hard to sprinkle. The consistency is fine once you're eating it. It's just a apply, it doesn't sprinkle on the food. Like if you're mixing it into a dish, fine. It's not a table salt for adding after the cooking.

This is your cooking salt. Yeah. I did harvest some more seawater before I left Australia and boil it down to only a quarter of its original volume. So it's still all firmly in solution. As opposed to...

With this, I boiled it down to basically wet sand consistency and then dried it. Yep. And that goes super powdery. Whereas if the whole thing comes at a solution super slowly, you get big chunky crystals. Right. And I left it in a cupboard under the watchful eye of my brother. Oh, so not like on the windowsill or something. No, no, no, no, at the top of a pantry.

At the shelf that's too high to be useful in a pantry. And so I'm going to let it very, very slowly. come out of solution and dry. So the next time I'm back in Australia, I should have the new salt of the Perth now in crystal form. I don't know why it makes me laugh so much, but it does.

Yeah. That's good salt. Thanks. And have you been back? Not making salt. I know, it's a real shame. You're missing out. Well, if you believe it or not,

I have been cold water swimming. I thought that might be where we're going. Yeah. I, oh gosh, I think I've maybe mentioned this on the show before, but I've sort of been doing it regularly now. So how regular is regular? I go minimum twice a week. Oh. That was my rule.

Right. I have found, annoyingly, that it has improved. Uh-oh. But it has been really good for my seasonal affective disorder. And my theory is that it's because once you've been really cold, then you're like, well, it's not going to get any worse than this. Yeah, yeah. But I was very lucky. A friend of mine, a fellow previous performer and writer, Natlet Seema, she introduced me to it. And she was like, you go in for as long as Phil's right for you. And your version of swimming is whatever's right for you. I've been trying to do the rule of only as many lengths as there are degrees in the pool.

So it was five degrees. Yeah, it was five degrees in the water the other day. And I was like no more than five lengths. Not laps, lengths. Lengths. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's like two and a half laps. Because what I did discuss, is that if you go more than, basically as soon as you hit a point where you're like, oh, I'm comfortable. I'm through the wall. That is hypothermia setting. Yeah. You want to stay pre-wall.

Yeah. There was like one day where I did a couple more lengths because I was like, oh, this is fine. And then I could not stop shivering after my shower. And it was like, I could feel it in my chest. I was like, oh, that's not good. The thing is, I bring this up because I go to an outdoor lighter. And the showers are those like communal gym type ones where you push the button. And it only goes for a certain amount of time.

Nat was showing me, oh, did you know you can get these little doohickeys that you put over the button? It locks it. And it locks it in place. And I was like, oh, and she showed me. And I was like, that's a 3D print. Yeah. And I was like, I know someone with a 3D print. I need to go to the showers with a tape measure.

Maybe wait until there's no one. around. Yeah. Yeah, what I need is like a shampoo bottle that is actually a tape measure. Yeah, take off the lid. Don't mind me. Yeah, if you can get me the dimensions. I'm sure there's some online models we can adjust to match. Yeah. Because it's got a clamp onto the body of the button somehow. It locks onto the pipes that are connected to the button. Because those things just have pipes. I've heard other women in the showers talking about it. One lady said that there's a cabinet, you need the key to it, if you open up the cabinet, you can change the temperature of the water. We can also help you with that.

And we're all like, oh, how do we get into the cabinet? Really print you a key. Yes. All right. We should probably get on with the show. All right. Let's do an episode. Our first problem comes from Dom, who went to the problem posing page at a problemsquare.com

and selected problem in the drop-down menu and said, Hi, Matt and Beck looked up Matt after a brilliant YouTube video on the perimeter of an ellipse. Oh. Which I used in some development work with strain wave gears, which I've seen that. Several years ago, but there's no equation for the perimeter of an ellipse is the short version. Yes. I've already forgotten everything about it, but, you know, stellar stuff. Thanks.

Dom goes on to say, my problem is this. The shortest day is in December, winter solstice. So this is when our region of the earth gets the least heat energy from the sun. But the coldest days of the year are usually in late January slash early February. And the most common time to get heavy snow, at least in my experience, is early March. Why do these events not align? What's causing them to be out of phase? I've pondered this since childhood.

I'm now 52 and I've never got a satisfactory answer. Yes, Dom, I agree. That is, I'm always surprised here in the Northern Hemisphere. Yep. We have winter solstice, which means it's the shortest day of the year. So short. But it feels like it gets colder afterwards. Yeah.

Why is... Why is up with that? Yeah. Tell me, Matt. Yeah. Okay. Great question, everyone. There's two things we've got to talk about here.

Mm-hmm. The Earth and what's going on with us and the orbit around the sun. Okay. So, shall we do orbit first? Let's do orbit first. Just to get some terms sorted out. Yeah, explain it to me like I'm five. Here we go.

I may even have an inflatable Earth somewhere if you really want me to go. You have a small basketball Oh, I got a small basketball I should use a small basketball I'll explain what you're doing Wow, Matt's slam dunking all over the place He's spinning it on his finger Allie Uping

I'm Ali Uping I'm also focusing on the fundamentals Yes Nice I just get that reference Right Okay so I'm using the lines on the basketball As the lines of longitude

Yep. So we got the poles top and bottom. Cool. This cup can be the sun. We orbit the sun. So I'm moving the basketball around the cup in a nice circular fashion. Yep. Now, if this is all we did, we wouldn't have seasons and we wouldn't have long and short days.

Because you're not spinning it. Even if I was spinning it, we still wouldn't get anything interesting happening. Because if I was to spin this exactly up and down. Oh, sure. There's no difference into which pole is closer to the sun. Correct. So if you're on the earth up here somewhere, as the earth rotates, you come into view of the sun, so it's daytime, and then you go away again.

And that's the same every single day. We're going to have to say ignoring a bunch of things like the way the light goes through the atmosphere and the angle and blah, blah, blah. But to a first order of approximation, 12 hours of daylight because you spend half the time on the front of the basketball, and 12 hours of darkness because you spend half the time on the back of the basketball. Yeah. And doesn't matter where the basketball is around the cup, because it goes straight up and down. It's like nicely aligned. It's always exactly the same situation.

Yeah. So every single day you get the same amount of heat from the sun. You serve the tropics, though, because if you're here in the equator, you've got the sun blasting straight down on you. Yeah. And the surface of the earth is exactly perfectly positioned perpendicular to like normal to the direction the lights coming from to maximize energy per area. Just get full on dead sun, which is why when you have solar panels, they're always on angles to try and point at the sun to try and get more energy. And you can't get one that track the sun. Yeah.

And the extra energy you get is more than the motors take to track the sun. Yeah, because the light does change, like the angle is noticeably different. You get more of that sort of golden hour lighting in the winter, I find, because you're getting it sort of more at an angle. Yeah. Like during the day, I guess, comparatively to daytime. You're correct. If you think about it, if you hold a solar panel up at the sun,

you want to make the biggest shadow possible because if you had it like side on to make a tiny shadow barely any lights hitting the surface and the more it's aligned with the sun the more energy you're collecting. So even if the earth rotated perfectly up and down if you're up near the poles you're now on a angle compared to the sun.

Yeah. The lights coming in from the side and spreading out more, you'd have less energy per area. Yeah. So it would still be colder at the poles and warm in the middle. Well, yeah.

And you're like, you're further away. And you're further away. And you're further away. away because of the shape. That's like two rungs down the ladder of things that make a difference. Okay. So that would make a unnoticeable difference. That's

interesting. Yeah, because in my head it was colder because it's further away from the sun. Yeah. But what you're saying is it's actually to do with the angle that the sun is hitting the surface. Yes. Because we don't actually orbit the sun in a perfect circle.

We orbit in a ellipse. So sometimes we're close, sometimes we're further away. And I hear that you can't calculate an ellipse or something. You can't calculate. There's no equation for the perimeter of an ellipse. Yeah, that's what I said. But the different, I mean, the different sounds big.

It's like three million miles closer. That's three mega miles. Three megamiles. Three mega miles. Well done. Wow. The journey we've been on this podcast. You're making the mega mile joke. Or it's like 5 million, whatever it is, kilometers.

But that's like compared to an orbit of over 90 million miles. Like it's a tiny percentage. And so actually during winter in the northern hemisphere, we are closer to the sun. So we are getting more energy from the sun per area due to proximity reasons. But yeah, it's colder. It's not the biggest factor. Wait. Yep.

Let me calculate this again. We are closer to the sun. Yes. In winter. Right now. In the ellipse or in the angle of the earth? In the ellipse. Got it.

So the earth is physically closer to the sun by millions of kilometres. Okay. And as you get closer to hot things. Yeah. It gets warmer. Yeah. Because there's more energy per area because it's got less time to spread out before it gets to the Earth. It's flipping cold right now.

It's flipping cold out there. What's going on? Because the change is like, I think it's like, 7% or something in the amount of energy we're receiving per area because of the proximity change. And that's not anywhere near the biggest factor. So all the way down, you've got what you were saying, where you are on the planet changes how far you are from the sun. That makes like no difference. The next rung up, you've got where we are on the orbit because that's changing the distance way more.

That makes a little difference, but no much. Like it makes the winter slightly shorter than it would have been otherwise. But on the scale of a day or two, not a big noticeable thing. The big difference is the fact that the earth is on an angle. On a tilt. With tilted by about 23 and a half degrees over. And that does all sorts of ridiculous things. Because now we're getting more surface area.

Yeah, yeah. Well, actually, we're not. We can point towards and we can point away. Yeah. Because the tilt. The southern hemisphere is getting more surface area right now. Yes, because it's pointing at it. And what's interesting is the tilt, it's not.

like we tilt towards the sun and the tilt keeps pointing towards the sun as we go around. We tilt and that stays fixed. It doesn't matter where we are relative to the sun. We're always pointing in terms of like, let's say the galaxy. Yeah. We're pointing. Yeah. You know, up.

Galactic up. I know the galaxy is a disc and there is not, but shut up. Okay. So the tilt, because it stays fixed and doesn't care where the sun is, part of the orbit we're pointing at the sun and six months later on the other side we're pointing away from the sun and it's that pointing dead on or pointing away that makes a big difference to the amount of energy per area yeah and you had something to do with the tilt in my head i was like oh because we're closer or we're further away but it's not the distance it's the angle at which the sun

is hitting us that is making the difference yeah this is cool and it's twofold because it's both the angle it's hitting makes a difference. And now, if you're down here pointing at the sun, your day is way longer. Because in the extreme case, when the pole's pointing, you never go into the darkness. Yeah. Whereas now, so you get longer days when you're pointing at the sun and shorter days when you're pointing away. So not only is there more energy per area, you're having it for longer. Or if there's less energy per area, you get it for less time. So there's two compounding factors. which makes a big difference. And that's why we get seasons,

because it depends which way we're pointing, swings back and forth. Now, in the orbit, there's some fun moments. There's the equinox. That's when the point is sideways, perfectly sideways. Yes.

And that's when you get a 12-hour daylight, 12-hour darkness day. And we've talked about that. We have. We've talked about equinox. Yeah. Love a good equinox. You've also got the closest bit is the perihelian.

The was sorry? Perihelian. But isn't that the bit between Christmas and New? Yay, there you go. That's like a double joke. That joke had a perihelian. And then you've got, but the perihelian is when the earth is moving the fastest. Okay. Yeah, which is kind of fun.

Yeah. We had that day a while ago. It was like, I think it was the 3rd of January. Yeah. Fast day. That's the fastest the earth. Because as we go into elliptical orbit, the close bit we kind of whip around. And in the distant bit, we slow right down. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. So if you want to get off this planet, it's moving the slowest on the Apheelian, which will be six months from now.

Ah. And it just so happens at the moment that the Perihilion and the Apheelian are very close to the solstices, which are when the Earth's pointing directly at or directly away, depending on your point of view from the sun. And so there's no reason for them to be about the same time. And they drift. But at the moment, but at the moment, the being closest to the sun and pointing at it within like a week, two weeks of each other. Okay. Which is just a current quinky dink. So does that change?

Yeah, it drifts. The orbit processes on the scale of, oh, I want to say, hundreds of thousands of years. Oh, is this climate change deniers are like, oh, actually this happens all the time and it's okay. They're probably talking about there's a thing called, I think it's the Malenkovich sign. producer Laura will fact check this for me.

I've seen that film. It's where you go in the cupboard and you end up in his head. No, it's the one where you're in a big bath of milk and you can see the future. The Malankovic report. Being John Malankovic is a much better part. Oh, 100%. And you got there first, so I got the scraps. We can't all get salt to the Perth back.

So, anyway, the cycle, the name of which producer Laura's checking is the fact that the tilt processes as well. If you isolated the earth from going around the sun and everything else, you just looked at it, it's leaning over, but the direction of lean is independently wobbling around on the scale of tens of thousands of years. Yeah, and we've talked about that in terms of length of years and. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It is the Melankovitch cycle. Yes. M-I-L-A-N-K-O-V-I-T-C-H.

So if anyone does want to mock up the poster for being John Malinkovich, be my guest. On bigger scales, these things drift and move around. But at the moment, they happen to be aligned, which is a nice example to show that actually the distance from the sun and the orbit does make a small difference. And because it's lined up, it amplifies the pointing thing. but it's way smaller. The fact that we lean over and you have that combination of spread out light and shorter or longer days.

So what I'm getting here is a bunch of reasons that are not the reason that it's culture. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. So anyway, friends at the American Meteorological Society I went and dug up a nice plot. Now, they did the plot,

they picked where to do it for they did the plot for Antarctica, Singapore, and Brockport. Brockport. Brockport. I don't know where Brockport is. Well, I do know. I know it's a latitude of 43.5 degrees because it's on the diagram here. But Brockport has a swing in the amount of energy per area from the sun of like five-fold.

So it goes from in winter. It's getting five times more energy per day. average across the whole day. So that's also factoring in length of day. Okay. So with everything combined, you can have like a five-fold swing and how much energy you're getting from the sun every day per area. Go Brockport.

Exactly. Or other equivalent towns exist. Brockport does sound like a jock, like a football jock. How do you pass this to Brockport? Yeah. So this is a long way to say that there are things that impact how much the earth heats and cools, but the bulk of it is the angle. It varies by latitude.

But now the earth, when you put something in the fridge, it doesn't get cold straight away. No. Oh, it's like the showers. It's like the showers. At the, my lido. When you first put the shower on, it takes a while to warm up. Yeah. It takes a while to cool down.

As a warm water swimmer, I was back in Australia, so I started swimming at the beach in between salt harvests and I was swimming December, early December. Which is a fair way into the swimming season. Yeah. But the water was still, it was warming up, it's all a bit neppy, yeah. Yeah, because I'm going out to Australia. Little shout out, I'm doing Adelaide French again.

Everyone should go see. Doing a work and progress. A whole new show. Yeah. Stick a link in the show notes. Would you still have any salt in the purse stickers left by then? We'll find out. We'll find out.

Yeah. I might do. If there's any, you'll take them with you. Yes, I will. I will. So I'll be out there again. And I was thinking, oh, no, I'm missing all of the key hot points. And then I remembered, no, when I was out there last year, this was around the time, like February, March was when it felt at its hottest.

Yep. And it's the same as here, that's when it feels the coldest. So this is making sense. It takes a while to heat up a little while to cool down. So it's like when you go swimming, you can swim right through until, I think the swimming season. at least in Perth, goes to the end of April. And it's already pretty cold by then, but the temperature in the water is still pretty good.

Yeah. The lags. So you've got the kind of thermal lag going on because it just takes time to heat up and cool down. And the ocean's big. Like the thermal mass of the ocean's pretty serious. So the length of the days is directly like to do with that tilt in the sun and all that.

But the actual heating and the cooling takes time. so you get a delayed effect. So it's going to be colder later than when the shortest day is and it's going to be hotter later than when the longest day is. Because it just takes time to energy to go in and out and move around. So I'm simplifying a lot of weather things. Sure, yeah. So, I mean, the ocean's good at absorbing heat,

but then the temperature of the ocean, that's what causes your hurricane season when the water's warmer. And so that energy goes into hurricanes. and when you've got the water streams and currents in the ocean, because now you've got warmer parts of the ocean and colder bits of the ocean, so that's circulating around. And likewise, the air, so you've got these different streams of air. So in the UK, the weather's highly dependent on all the Atlantic water and air flow.

Yeah. Which is why we're warmer than we should be for the latitude. But we also do get sometimes wind coming down from the Arctic. Yeah, we do. And that gets real cold all of a sudden. Yeah. And likewise in Australia, in Perth, Christmas was like 42 degrees in Perth. And the next day it was max of like 24.

Yeah. And it swings all over the place because it depends where the wind's going, where the air is coming from, how hot or cold, etc. it is. This is why weather is different to climate. So the temperature you feel when you go, outside isn't just the amount of heat the sun's giving you directly. It's going through this complex atmosphere and ocean and everything else. And so that's why you don't just get this gradually smooth, warmer and warmer and warmer days lagging when you've got saucers.

There's a lot of noise. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And but also it means it takes time for heat to accumulate in the system to change things. And so there's several reasons why everything kind of chugs along behind the orbit, which just takes time for things to adjust. Well, that is a very concise answer. I think you allowed for the nuances of weather. Look, I knew about the tilt of the earth. I knew about all that.

It is wild that all of these conditions exist. There's a lot of fun, but it's, it's, don't panic if you don't get your head around it. It is very complicated. But because it's very complicated, we do have a fun planet to live on. And we exist. Man we exist.

Arguably, might not without all the seasons and whatnot. Correct. Who knows? That's deep, man. So Dom, I hope the 52 year wait's been worth it. Let us know. Give us a ding if that felt like a satisfactory answer. Yeah, it took a while to get there.

But eventually, even though it was quite some time after the start of answering the question. It always lags. You've got to build up the knowledge slowly. We got there at the end. Great. Our next problem comes in from Peterer, who says via our problem posting page at a problemsquare.com, me and my partner don't drink alcohol anymore. But through our wilder years, we've accumulated a collection of nice drinking vessels.

They've got things like fancy wine glasses. They say they've got champagne flute, some shot glasses that a grandma brought, wow, brought from the USSR. They've also got Saki bowls from they bought in Japan, and so they feel like it's a bit of a waste to just let their collection of phenomenal drinking, but alcohol-specific vessels collect dust. And they also don't want to just drink Pepsi out of a wine glass while working from home. I mean, it's a look, but they deserve more than that. And so what Peter, an unnamed partner, would like from Beck, is an answer to the problem. What beverages can we drink, or what other things can we do?

with our glasses to make the occasion feel sufficiently special. And then they got like, thank you for putting smiles, a lot of faces, twackly, blah, blah, blah. Wow, well done, Peter. Peter. Beck, what do you got? What delicious or significant contents have you got? I come in from this from the opposite direction because I was so annoyed at that when you stop drinking alcoholic drinks,

people stop giving you drinks in fancy glasses and I would get really annoyed at parties when people would give me even if it was like a non-alcoholic wine like it's still technically meant to be they would give it to me in like a normal cup or a normal glass and I'm like excuse me

I would like a champagne flute why do I have the children's sippy cup yeah and I did make a point where I was like when I have my own place I'm going to change all of my cups for champagne flutes. And I did spend far too much time online trying to find if anyone makes ceramic champagne flutes

that I could put coffee in. Didn't have much luck on that. If anyone knows of anyone making champagne flutes that I could put coffee in. Stop not giving us nice glassware. I really appreciate being treated like an adult. Thank you very much. And I want my coffee in a champagne flutes.

So your first. The first solution is invite background and serve drinks. Yeah, because... In a respectful, fancy manner. You know, I understand not wanting to drink Pepsi from a wine glass while working from home. But I do think... Yeah, yeah. Drinking Pepsi from a wine glass during a celebration, absolutely fine.

If I was serving cocktails and someone said, I'll just have a Pepsi thanks. First of all, I'd say, this is a Coca-Cola household. And then I would say, absolutely, and I would serve it in the same glass as everything else. Great. Because that's the time and place for Pepsi. or cola of some form in a fancy glass. Yeah. It's more about the glass than the drink sometimes.

Yeah. So I would argue just any drink in a fancy glass makes it a special occasion. Or if you're a fancy pants like me and wants to drink from champagne flutes, even when it is highly not convenient. I mean, if you're on a bus. Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, I could only think of a worse glass to put coffee in, and that would be, a martini glass, but espresso martinis are a thing. That's a real thing. Yeah. I think I've talked about

the non-arcoholic espresso martinis that my friend made, which was like, she basically made a cold brew coffee with loads of fresh peppermint in it. And then a bit of like, it might have been an agave syrup or something like that. The fresh peppermint, because it was stewing all night, she did the shaky thing and with the syrup and served it, but it meant that the peppermint, you didn't drink it as fast as you would a normal. Got it. Same as alcohol, it slows down. Yeah.

It was a really, like, it was a great choice, and it did feel like it was a special drink. So there you go. That's fine to having your martini glasses. I had a night where I didn't want to have a drink, but I still wanted to sit in front of the telly. And I felt like I was relaxing after work. So I still went and got a pint glass and filled it with ice, proper, loads of ice. But then, like a giant cocktail. and they just had like apple squash.

Yeah. And it made all the difference. Did I tell you about my adventures in non-arcoholic mold wine? No. Okay, okay. Strap it, everyone. So Christmas was recent and I really miss having mold wine at Christmas. When I smell it, I walk into a, you know, a pub or something and I'm like, I do, you know.

It's good stuff. I would really like to have a mold wine right now, but it doesn't. feel like it's a significantly special enough occasion to to warrant that. Yeah. So I decided to make my own, what I have dubbed, nulled wine. Nulled wine. Yes. Very proud of myself.

Big fan. I think I crashed the recipe. Oh. If anyone would like to recreate this at home. So I use non-acolic red wine and then I use like your traditional mold wine spices. I've got cloves, sticks of cinnamon, orange. You assembling this from scratch or you got like a syrup or a Flammar. Oh, okay, yep.

Yeah, I used a local honey that was very dense, almost like a... It's in like, not like treacle, but it's like something... The honey was almost your tree. Yeah, because it's like crystallized as well. Got it. That wasn't on purpose. It's just I've had it my comments from inches. But it's got real dense flavor.

Step one, buy it three years ago. Forget about it in the cupboard. So I used that to like sweeten it, but also because it was a dense honey. It's got like a real depth to it. Here were my little key things. Back secret number one. I did a dash, just a dash of Magi liquid seasoning, which is basically liquid MSG.

Just a dash, just something to cut through the sweet. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Then a tiny, like, well. Back secret number two. A pinch of cayenne pepper. I think you're saying homemade sea salt. No, no. I would. I would have used that instead of the MSD.

The cayenne pepper, I realized you want to get the amount right. I think I used like half a teaspoon in two bottles worth of red wine. So that. And then this was the third secret, which absolutely made a world of difference. Like this is what will make your mold wine go from tasting like tasty juice to like, oh, what is that. this. Yeah. Chuck in, while you're stewing it with all the other stuff.

Everything else is going on. While you're mulling it, chuck in a bag of prunes. And you're not like, you're stewing the prunes in there. You take the man afterwards. Oh, okay. You're not like mushing it, but just chuck a bag of prunes in. Like dried, dried. Dry prunes.

Yeah. Well, otherwise they're just plums, aren't they? Yeah, well, yeah. Well, you're turning them back into plums. Yeah, yeah. It gives it like a port flavor. Uh. Anyway, what I'm saying is, uh, this is a really nice opportunity for you to experiment.

Good. Make some special drinks that go in your fancy glasses. You can have non-alcoholic special drinks in which the same level of care, attention, and elaborate, elaborate steering. Great. Now, so that was that. Do you feel like that solved? No. I have other options.

Great. Of course I do. So if you're bringing them out for special occasions, desserts. serve a dessert in a fancy glass. Like a Sunday. Yeah, make yourself Sunday. You can make a little parfait, like a little layered dessert thing. Jelly.

Jelly? Yeah, exactly. Literal jello shots. No alcohol. Just jelly. Literally jelly. Then you could, if you want, I mean, wrong cocktail. If you're going into savoury, be inventive, not just with your drinks, but with your foods.

You've got these wonderful fancy glasses. So it's all about, like, what is a nice celebratory thing? that you could create to go hand in hand. We had all of Lucy's family staying this Christmas, and they all brought snacks. And my literary agent sent me a handful full of snacks. So we'd have so many snacks. But what we don't have lots of is serving dishes.

Oh. So I then had, I wanted some snack churn. Like I didn't want everyone to leave, and I've got like a million snacks. But I'd never, I couldn't serve that many at once. So I started using the widest mouth. mugs I could find because I got some Frustum shaped mugs. And so I was like serving like flavored peanuts in mugs. What I should have done is looked for like, yeah, martini glasses.

Yeah. I don't know, shot glasses, you wouldn't get much of a snack in there. But you're right. As a serving vessel. Yeah. They're great. Peanut wine glass? I should have thought of that.

Yeah. You should have done that. Way fancier. It's just, you need the ones with the wide mouth. Yeah. You should get a stack of martini glasses like they do for a shot. champagne waterfall, but doing peanuts. Do a peanut waterfall.

Just make sure no one has any allergies. It's a bit like an hourglass. Yeah. Then I start going from like, okay, what are different ways you could use these glasses if you want them to get used but not necessarily for special occasions. So shot glasses make really good egg cups. Oh. If you like a nice softballed egg for breakfast, I know this because I kept breaking my egg cups,

but I have loads of shot glasses. Also, I've got these really tall, long shot glasses, which are very slim. They're really good for, if you're picking like little bunches of flowers, like Jasmine or something in summer. So like little vases, what better use for a little shot glass

than storage for some fine salt? USSR, more like unbelievably salt serving receptacle. We did it. We did it. End episode. Okay, I'm on board. I'm on board now. And then finally, because I think sometimes with nice glasses, you do want to display them somehow.

Yep. And so I was thinking more in terms of the sake bowls, things that are not necessarily glass themselves that maybe are ceramic or something like that. Succulents, small, like, pop plant things, things that you can pop in there that just give it a really nice. Yes, like you can put little plants in there. Yeah. Little things like that. Candles? Candles.

Yeah, very nice. Yep. Yeah. I'm hoping that amongst all of those options, there's something there that has answered. Sure. Well, Peter, I feel like you're not lost for choice here. I think if you could try out every single one of these in order and then report back to us.

Because we are. I'm going to say choose one. Nah. You don't need to do all of them. All of them. because we're throwing a lot of untested ideas out there. In about a year, we'll hear from Peter. Yeah, give them time to.

Yeah. Peter, try them all. We'd love to hear from you to help inform everyone else what they should do with their glasses. And we're on to any other business. Matt, do we have any other business from our listeners? So, two people with seemingly relevant credentials, wrote in about the problem you dealt with, can you cook a chicken with a defibrillator?

Oh yes, this was from our quick fire episode. Yes. Yep. Hans. Hans says following up on your defibrillator chicken cooking question, I'm a non-tie wearing high school math teacher. That's a reference to... It's a good way of telling us you're cool.

Yeah, he's tied several things together here. But I used to help to sign defibrillators. I love our listeners. I don't think there's anything we could ever discuss that there's not multiple niche experts listening to this podcast. I love our listeners so much. This is a real community that we have found and you're all incredible people. I feel like we are worth less than the sum of our parts.

Oh, 100%. So they also, as well as normal defibrillators like ones in a hospital, they do the automatic ones. The AEDs, automated external defibrillators that anyone can just use. I mean, not on a whim, but in an emergency. So, Hans, their friends and co-workers, did a study using turkeys to see if an AED, that's the automatic one, was safe to use around a swimming pool. You might enjoy reading the paper. And they've given us a summary of the paper.

PubMed, wow. It was like proper published research. They give us a too long didn't read. TLDR, it didn't cook the turkey. That feels like for a lack of trying Hans, not to get ahead of the paper. Methods. A raw processed turkey was used as a patient surrogate.

The turkey was placed on a cement floor while pool water was applied to the surrounding area. You know what? They've gotten to the point a lot quicker than most online recipes. I give them that. Okay, so they then shocked the turkey and used a probe to measure the voltage, making it into the water at different distances of where the operator and bystanders may be. And they did it with fresh and salt water. And just people know, the maximum voltage occurred approximately 15 centimeters away from the turkey.

Sorry, simulator patient was a 14 volts with a peak current of 14 milliamps. and for pool water it was a bit higher. So there you go. So they say 30 volts may result in some minor sensation by operator or bystanders, but it's unlikely to be hazardous under the circumstances. So don't fear using a little mac defibrillator in a pool environment. They do say, though, it is not recommended. No.

No. Yeah. If you've got other options, go with them first. Yeah, yeah. If you've got a chicken. I'm glad that they do. I'm glad that they do these tests. Richard is a parish counsellor.

That seems less relevant on the face of it. You didn't invent a defibrillator, did you? Exactly. But he does maintain an automatic refibrillator at the village hall. There you go. They've recently replaced the battery, not because it was used, thank goodness, because they last five years. And so you really should replace them after five years of standby.

And the battery, so Richard, his red, the battery for us and it says it contains enough energy for in quotes at least 200 shocks of 150 joules which quick quick bit of quick math is 30 kilojoules. Richard's then done their own independent research and worked out that chickens apparently considered cooked once raised to 74 degrees Celsius and so if we start at 20 degrees Celsius you know your room temperature and you to raise it by 54 degrees, and it's got a specific heat capacity of 2.72 kilojoules per kilogram per degree Celsius. Ah, great work, Richard. With 30 kilojoules and 100% efficiency, Richard thinks we can, in theory, raise approximately 200 grams of chicken by the necessary 54 degrees. So Richard's held the temperature

change constant and then varied the amount of chicken to work at what would be possible. Sadly, the smallest whole chicken I could find at my local supermarket. Right. 900 grams is apparently this most. Richard points out, you'd get a quarter of a warm chicken before depleting the battery. Then they're by saying, I definitely recommend doing a training course.

They're often free. Just a little bit of first aid advice. Yeah, I didn't know that. So maybe it is time. I do need to do a first aid course in general. But it's probably, probably no harm learning how to use a defibrillator. Yeah.

Thanks, Richard. Now, we've also, we had a lot of people respond to our church music organization problem. It's amazing how many of you work in organizing church or choral music. I mean, there are still a lot of you who ignored me saying, I only want to hear from you if you are qualified as a church music. or music organiser. Yeah, there's a lot of people who were like, I think this.

And I was like, well, you haven't given me your credentials. So. Go shock a chicken. Go shock a chicken. But we did get a lot of folks who wrote in with their credentials. Now, it was episode 1-24 that this problem was posed in. This completely blew me out the water. So someone wrote in to say, Dear Beck and Matt and producer Laura.

That's all. That's us. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Oh, thanks. Thought I'd chip in about the church music. Great. None other than Dr. Ben Wittle, our etymologist. Oh, what the hell, Ben?

Because as well as liking etymology, stop sneaking up on us. I work on Sundays as the music lead for a church in East London. Of course you do. So I lead the singing, organize the band and play some instruments. Great. I can't believe the answer was right under under...

Does Ben also dabble in dentistry? Yeah. This is just a Dr. Ben Whittle show now. Yeah, I know. I bet you make different bilators too, don't you, Ben? Ben says, due to a desire to keep the music flowing, I organise my list of music by the usual key I play it in,

so I can work out how to move easily from one song to another without it being too jarring. Beck, I do try to make the song singable for everyone, but if they're too high, it's my fault, sorry. Okay, we then had quite a few folks right in. I'm going to read out from one because a lot of folks said a similar thing. And this one I found to be the most succinct way of explaining. So we heard from Derek, who said, hi Matt and Beck.

I'm a band and choir teacher. I used to work as a church music director. And I managed the choir library at my university when I was a grad student. Now there's some credentials. The best library system I found was probably the simplest. Number each piece starting from one or zero if you're mad. Thank you. And each time you acquire a new piece,

give it the next index number. Write that number nice and big on every copy and on the enclosing folder. Prepare this for the spreadsheet that keeps the pertinent information, composer, number of voice parts, accompaniment, additional instruments, challenge level, etc. So benefits. Number one, adding a new piece doesn't change any other part of the library.

The new stuff just goes on the end. Yep. Number two, limits confusion. In church choir music, you'll find literally thousands of pieces called Gloria or Agnes Day. Right. And then in rehearsal, you'll realize half the choir got the wrong composer, wrong addition, wrong number of parts, wrong anything.

It's so much easier to say, if your copy doesn't say 203 on it, you have the wrong copy. Yeah, great. Number three, with a searchable spreadsheet, it doesn't matter if the pieces are in any sort of visual order. You can use the fine command and search by whatever you want. Find a piece that fits your criteria and then find it on the shelf using the lookup number. Hope this helps. Derek also just adds separately, I have a friend named Matt Beck. So every time you guys say Matt Beck, I get a little chuckle.

So thank you, Derek, and thank you Matt Beck. That's a good system. So they're just stored in numerical order. Yeah. And then the whole lookup has done separate via a spreadsheet. Yeah. And it reminded me of that's how I used to. So I do morning pages.

I think I've talked about this before, which is like stream of consciousness writing in the mornings. And normally that's just for me to ramble in the morning so that I'm less rambly during the day. Can you imagine? So, but sometimes I come up with like jokes or poems or little bits of material. They just pop up when I'm doing it. And so what I started doing was I started another notebook where let's say I wrote a poem. I would then in the index write poems and then have a column for page.

And I would say like page 43. And then later if I wrote a poem further down, I'd be like, oh. and I'd add like 86. Yep. And then just keep like adding the pages. Page numbers. Yeah. I do the reverse system for writing a book.

So we discussed when we weren't recording that on Monday this week, I sat down to start writing my fourth book. It was day zero. Because I'd promised my publishers that I'd start writing in January. With my system, so part of it, because it was the first day writing, I really enjoy setting up all the admin for book writing. So I made a new spreadsheet. and label all the columns. I put every idea on a post-it note, and then I write an index number on the post-it note, just like Derek writes an index number on every bit of music, but I assign the numbers at random. So I generate a whole list of random four-digit numbers in the spreadsheet.

Okay. I then, each time I get a new post-it note, I'll see the next available random four-digits. write them on the post-it note and then write the idea on the post-it note and stick it on the wall and then that row of the spreadsheet is where I keep the file name where I've written about this concept if I want to find it later links to resources,

extra little notes, everything that I might want to know in the future goes in that row. Then later on I can rearrange the post-it notes into chapters, they come on and off the wall, they go over the place, but whenever I want I can just look at the index number and in the spreadsheet it'll bring up

all the information about that concept and what I've written about it. And I find that the random allocation of the numbers means there's no meaning, there's no worrying about what the first concept is, there's no, it's pure index. Yeah. And because obviously I love numbers, this just means it doesn't matter. They're all equal. I'm just putting a random number on every single one.

And I really embrace the randomness. I like that. What I'm saying is index numbers and spreadsheets is a very zen way to live your life. They go hand in hand very well. And I think even if you didn't want to use a computer, you can still just create a physical spreadsheet. Yeah, you're doing that physically in a notebook. Yeah.

You're like index cards. But I do like the idea of adding a spreadsheet that makes it much easier to search. I found that to be my favorite answer from everyone. There are so many of you that wrote in, you gave your credentials. So I want to give a shout out to everyone. You've all explained very well. I just particularly like the one. one, two, three benefits list.

But thank you to everyone who wrote in because it is really nice. But I want to give a final thank you to Joron, who was the person who wrote in. They're back to say, thank you so much for the effort you put in. I really appreciate it. The joy when I had my problem on my way home from work was ecstatic. And far be it from me to tell you how my name is pronounced. You are right. They said they should have been more descriptive of the shelving because that was one thing.

we realized that we might need some more, we were trying to guess. You were trying to guess the shelving situation, yeah. So they've specified each piece is in a file box between one and two inches wide. They're about seven shelf units, each with six shelves that are about 2.5 feet wide. A is in the top left and goes across the top shelf,

then down the unit, then to the top of the next unit and so on. So if I get more Zed music, not a problem, but the earlier letter music pushes the pieces from the shelf to shelf. They said, well, I think Beck's rotating shelf is my favorite. the current hardware doesn't lend itself to that. Fair enough. After hearing your ideas, what I'm going to do is sort by church season, then by vibes. Even though my wife says, I am very, very bad with vibes, so I'll get her to help.

Then by letter. D-ding, thank you so much. So I think, hopefully, now that you've heard from some of our other listeners, that this might help as well. I think, you know, sorting by vibes is good, but yeah, maybe get yourself a little spreadsheet in there. It'll take a moment, but once you've done it, then you could just put the music wherever you want. Yeah. It said, P.S. Beck, church music sounds high now because our tuning used to be lower.

The pitch we call F once sounded like what E sounds like now, a half step lower. This has to do with how people tuned. And the fact that it was only really standardized internationally in the 20th. century. So there you go. We're singing the wrong, we're singing the wrong key, or the wrong pitch. It's inflation for you, mate. That's it. That's right. And finally, in any other burrowness, we are due to medium demand doing an Ask Me Anything episode, an AMA, which will be two episodes from now. It'll be two to the power of seven, episode 128. And kind of nowish is your last chance to get questions in

because we've got to get them, sort them, answer them, edit and get it out. So you can't leave it too late. Head on over to the problem posing page at a problemsquare.com. Make sure the first three letters are AMA. Can that be the beginning of a word or sentence? Well, some people. Oh, that's already happened. Some people have been funny.

Producer Laura, has got some feedback for y'all. Someone has set a question. about their llama drama. So in short, keep it up, everyone, good work. And, well, thanking you for being the most you, you guys ever could be. We also want to give a special thanks to our Patreon supporters who are making. this podcast possible. We like to thank our Patreon supporters by mispronouncing three of them at random at the end

of each episode. And in this episode, those Patreon supporters are... Use OK? Kay. Evan Dobb. Ish. Creeping. Dr. Eid.

Thank you very much. for supporting us and thank you, Matt Parker, my wonderful co-host for being the refreshing. The abrupt. You get our listeners hearts racing. I jolt them to their senses. Yeah, but not on a cooking sense. To myself, Beck Hill, or be chill, like cold water swimming. And our wonderful producer who is much like.

Person at the gate who sells the tickets to the swimming. We always make Laura's role. It's the most boring part of the analogy. It's either that or pool cleaners. Exactly. And the person who tells you to stop running. Oh, yeah. Lifesavers probably, I'm not sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. To our poolside lifesaver who sits rain or shine just to make sure that none of us drowned. Laura Grimshaw. Goodbye. All right, Beck. Okay. We have heard from a listener. Oh, complaining about the numbering system.

Yeah. I agree. Tin Hoy, who says, please, please, please, please change your connect four access labels. Numbers for the rows like floors of a building and letters for the columns would make picturing this audio game so much easier. They're right. I don't want to pick a side. Look, they are right. Team Tin Hoy.

I've already written on the... I don't feel like that's irreversible. Packer's pointing at the silver sharpie on the Connect 4 game in front of it. It's sharpy. It's permanent. It's not permanent. Okay, fine. For you listeners, I will change it.

You guys are going to be like, Becker can't believe you folded so quickly. Yeah, I know. Well, too late. We're folded. Where would you like to go? I'm going to go. Okay, I can do this.

E1. Oh, well played. Are you happy tin, if that is your real name?