A Problem Squared - 137 = Sound Advice and Electron Price

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

👂Why do some people hate the sound of whispering?💡 How much does an electron cost?😎 And there’s some Any Other BozonessOn THIS episode of A Problem Squared - which comes with our special No Whisper Guarantee - we’re joined by a special guest! The clinical psychologist Dr Jane Gregory tells us all about Misophonia. You can find out about her fantastic (and very helpful) book Sounds Like Misophonia, and you can sign up to her research mailing list here: https://soundslikemisophonia.com/ And here is Ava’s EPIC Spreadsheet - A Problem Squared Episode Catalogue: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nXmEH9BrCr6hEBBhHkfuciPEKimDgZjrwhi2oeyErog/edit?usp=sharingIf you’d like to see Bec’s Work In Progress shows, her upcoming gigs can be found here: https://www.bechillcomedian.com/tour-gigsMatt is bringing An Evening of Unnecessary Detail to New York! The Bell House, Brooklyn on Sunday 12th July. Tickets can be found here:https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/300064B84CCCF567And Matt has extended his tour - and he’s filming the show in London in October - all the dates, venues and tickets can be found here: http://standupmaths.com/shows 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.

Welcome to a Problem Squared, the Problems-loving podcast that's a bit like spring. In that, it's unpredictable and full of traditions where no one's completely sure how they started. I'm Matt Parker. I'm a bit like the people who are really into the iconography in symbols of spring, and that I'm often referred to as an egghead. and I'm joined by Beck Hill, a writer, performer, comedian who's much like the Spring Equinox in that she perfectly splits her time on the podcast 50-50 between in-depth, insightful research and fart jokes.

And on this episode, I've heard your complaints about our ASMR episode and I'm going to speak to an expert about it. I've calculated the charge per charge. And there'll be some... Any other business. Normally, I try and make that fit into the theme of the episode. Yeah. But considering this is the third episode that we've likened to spring,

and we are not in spring. The last two episodes were in summer. Arguably too many episodes themed around spring. That's the magic of spring. Any other boz-nosedness. There it is. So, Beck, how are you? I am good.

I wasn't expecting to answer questions. That was stupid. While Beck's thinking, I'm going to put in a plug for our Patreon special bonus podcast called I'm a wizard. And what we traditionally do is record an episode of that first, which helps us warm up and reminds us we're meant to be recording a podcast and having hilarious witty bans. And this time we're going to be. We're not doing that. This is a quick one and done remote recording, which is why you can hear Beck knocking the rust off her brain. Yes, it's morning here in the UK. Matt, it is late afternoon for you in Perth. What have I been up to? I've been doing some work and progress shows. Oh, really? It's been fun. I'm sad to have missed them. They've gone well.

Yes, they have. Considering just how rough my work and progress still is, they've been really, really nice. The audiences have been delightful. feel like the people who come to see me perform are too nice. Either that or I'm a better comedian than I give myself credit for, but I do keep thinking, wow, if they like this, imagine how much they'll like it when I've put more effort in. Look, you take work in progress very seriously in that. It's definitely in progress. But I think you've got the comedy chops to pull it off and you also do attract a very a fantastic audience.

Yeah, yeah, and I'm very grateful for it. I think part of the reason my brain's a bit broken is that, so I did exit a comedy festival, but the night before I was hosting a show at the Stables Theater in Milton Keynes and then had to get home. And then at 11 a.m., I was hosting Comedy Club for Kids at Battersea Park Comedy Festival in their big top. And then I, with my massive case of props that wasn't for that show,

was for my work in progress. And then I had to drag that from Battersea to Paddington to catch a train to Exeter to do my work in Progress in Exeter that night. And then at 11 a.m. the next morning I was hosting Comedy Club for Kids in Exeter. And then got the train home. And my brain has died? My brain is dead. You're telling me that just merely by doing four different gigs in a 48-hour period,

you're a bit mentally exhausted. Yes, yeah, funny that. Oh. Yeah. How about you? Have you been? I'm good. I'm living the Aussie life, which has been a lot of fun.

This is unexpected Australia time as I was meant to fly back to the UK last week. But I was asked if I could come and speak at like a training conferencey weekend for undergrads in Singapore. And I figured I may as well do that on the way home. It feels deeply inefficient and irresponsible to fly back to London and then back out to Singapore. Yeah. At the same time as I'm in right now and then back. So Lucy went back on the planned flight and I just thought,

I'll loiter out in Australia, see the family a bit more. And I've picked up a hobby while I've been here to fill the time. You're making pepper now. No, no. It's still in the kitchen, arguably. I've been collecting the 24 limited edition summer time Hungry Jack's glasses. 2024? 2024.

From two years ago. Yeah. A lot of people collect things that are really old and difficult to get. Like, folks, just if you collect something from two years ago, way easier to find. I just popped into a couple of shops. These are everywhere. They cost me between one. and two dollars each to pick them up.

I've almost got a full set. I'm having a great time. To quote Hungry Jacks, they are the Aussie summer limited edition glasses. And on the packaging, they explicitly say collect all four. You know, two years, I think it's the sweet spot for collectibles.

Yeah. Because they're still dead easy to get. It's super cheap. But, but it's not like you can just walk in to a hungry jacks or a shop and say give them to me. You still got to hunt them down. There's still some challenge there. I haven't got the purple one yet.

So I'm still, you know, still working through them. You have to come across it in real life. It can't be something that you've found online. No. I know a lot of people out there are like, oh, they're on eBay for like a couple dollars each. Or I've got some in my cupboard. No, no, no, no. That takes out the fun. Yeah. Go out there, find it, collect it, put it in the cupboard. What if someone finds one in the wild and is like... Oh, I know Matt would love this. Okay, that's interesting.

Because at the moment, I haven't been collecting duplicates until I've got a whole set. Although now I kind of want to have more than one set. I'm really getting into this as a hobby. I would say maybe the world's most enthusiastic collector of the Hungry Jacks, 2024 Aussie summer, limited edition glass collection. Certainly right now. Yeah, you're going to put up demand. I got a whole.

hoard them before I inflate the prices. Right. I'm not going to try looking for them at all. And I'm going to try and get the full set before you do. You're in with a decent. I mean, you're in the wrong country. Like, I don't think your charity shops are going to have a lot. No.

People could definitely bring them to you. I don't want someone to send me like a full set. I think that that's cheating. Okay, right. The race is on. Okay, I'll tell you what, if someone got a hungry jacks 2024 Aussie summer glass and was able to get it to me and I'm not going to allow people trying to post it to me, you can't contact me and say I have to meet up with you that's reserved for occasional retro calculators.

If people can get a glass and intercept me and give me the glass, then I will add it to my collection. That would be acceptable. If people want to give them to you instead, I can only encourage that. It'll be a thing where there's like a whole bunch of us like trying to work out what charity shops you're going to. What my dream is is to get the one,

what is it the purple one that you need? Did you say that's the one you're missing? I want to get hold of the purple one and plant it in a charity shop near where you live. Get like 20 of them, but like two or three or three. three at every charity shop within a 10 mile radius. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Great. If anyone has the purple one, if you can get it to a charity shop in Godalming, because then there's still the possibility that you won't get it. But there is a chance that you will pop into the charity shop one day and see it. And it would just be there. That's also an option. Or they could tip you off and you could just be like, hey, we should pop into a charity shop.

Oh, I'm going to use that. Absolutely, just to get you to let us go to the charity shop on our lunch breaks when we're recording person. That's valid. That's valid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Next time we're in person, we'll do a charity shop run. Yes. That's how I've been filling my unexpected week in Western Australia. Well, that sounds good. Thank you. Speaking of sounds, should we get on with the episode?

Let's go on with the episode. Okay, here we go. First problem requires a little bit of explaining. It's not a callback or a follow-on to a previous problem, it relates to a previous theme. And I'm using the word theme very loosely. Beck and I take turns introducing the show. And each time we have some ridiculous, you know, conceit, which has been the concept of spring for a little while now. But back in episode 130, we talked about Skittles and why why a cold is called a cold. Beck was driving the show and picked the theme of ASMR, which involved. of whispering the introduction.

We then had a bit of a chat about that, and we opened it up to if people ever did want an entire ASMR episode. And we had an overwhelming. Well, we had a big response split pretty much 50-50 between people who were like, yes, do that, give us a whisper episode. And people who said, no, don't do that. But the people who said don't do that said it so emphatically. that we promised to never unexpectedly whisper again.

And I got to say, I'm in the latter category. It's not something I find particularly pleasant. One responder actually then packaged this up as a problem. So Julia went to the problem posing page at a problem squared.com and opens with, please no, no more ASMR whispering. Don't worry, Julia. We promise we won't. They say that they've got no idea why, but listening to someone whisper makes them irrationally angry.

I'm with you. and so they had to skip parts of that episode because Julia just couldn't listen to it. Julia's question, however, their problem is why does that happen? They want to know, does everybody, apart from them, find it relaxing? I can assure you, Julia, it's 50-50. Julia says whenever they come across something ASMR or whispering, it's worse than nails on a blackboard,

they could probably fall asleep to nails on a blackboard on reflection, but not whispering. So, Julia wants to know what's going on, and is it just them? And Beck, you've looked into this. I have. So I looked into it when we first received this message pretty much immediately after that episode went out and saw that the term that sort of covers this is misophonia when certain sounds trigger an almost irrational response, whether it's anger or sadness, frustration, that sort of thing, negative response. So I did a little bit of research into it and I thought, oh, I'll touch on that.

and talk about it in an episode. And then chatting to producer Laura, producer Laura said, oh, I've read a really interesting book about misophonia. You should check it out. It's called Sounds Like Misophonia. It's by Dr. Jane Gregory. And I realize that Dr. Jane Gregory is one of my friends.

And I had not known that she had written a book on this. I feel like I remember when she announced, that she had released a book, and I thought, that's a science book about something I don't know anything about, so I shan't pay any more attention than that, which admittedly makes me a terrible friend. But that's the opposite response to, like, a popular science book. The point is it's about a topic you don't know about, and then you read the book, and you learn about it. And you'd think I would have learned, Matt, I did that with you when you were doing

pre-orders for Humble Pie and I was like, oh, I'll help out my friend. I'll pre-order to help boost numbers. And then it was like a Sunday Times bestseller. And I was like, oh, you didn't need my help. And then this book arrived and I was like, ugh. Now I have to read this math book. Now I've got this book. It cost me money. I'm paying money to hear more Matt. It was reading your book that made me go fine. I suppose we could do a podcast together. Now, people might be surprised at a book that producer Laura happened to mention, and was written by a friend of Beck, and you're like, what are the chances? But I have a theory that over half of the human population are a friend of Beck.

So I think statistically it's not that surprising. Six degrees of Beck Hill, yeah. In my defense, I've known Jane since before she was a doctor. So I met Jane when I was living in Melbourne. She's an Aussie. And we met through the comedy scene. Beck? I'm not accusing this of being a recent part of your personality.

I'm saying you've had a lifelong addiction to friends. It's the duration of time that's led to the accumulation of this many friends. This is true. I need help you guys. I just need a little help for my friends. Yeah. Hey, wait a. So I got in touch with Jane and was like, firstly, let me just admit that I'm a terrible friend. and if it went for my producer, I wouldn't have realized this, and I'm very sorry.

I immediately remedied that by getting hold of the book. It's really good and very interesting, very funny. And so Laura did make a very solid recommendation there as well, even if I didn't know Jane. Well done, everyone. But I thought, well, rather than using Jane's book to answer it myself, why not go straight to the source? And so I'd a little chat with Jane

to see if she could help Julia solve her problem. I am Jane Gregory. I am a clinical psychologist and researcher and my particular topic of research is something called misophonia. Firstly, thank you so much for talking to us. I listened to your audio book and I found it very funny that right at the start, it's about like how some people pronounce misophonia differently. Yeah, I always said misophonia and then I started pronouncing it misophonia just because I liked saying it's not you. it's misophonia. So purely for the gag. I loved how funny your book was. I was not expecting.

Like, I know you're a funny person and I know that you're a smart person. It was just really nice to see your humour within your work. I just really enjoyed it. I found it really, really fascinating. And I thought it would be really useful to get you to touch on some of the things that the book covers to help answer this listener's questions. I suppose I should ask you to define misophonia for the listeners and then we can go into it. So I define misophonia as basically an intense reaction to specific sounds. So not just all sounds are a problem, but specific sounds that are specific

to that person. And then there are some common threads across people. So most people would say they're bothered by eating sounds, for example, heavy breathing, tapping, typing, typing kind of sounds. pens clicking. It's usually something repetitive that causes this intense reaction and it can be, for some people as an intense as like a fight or flight type reaction. They feel panicky, they feel rage and have to leave the situation. For other people, it's a bit milder and it's like, well, for me, for example, I don't really get that rage reaction anymore, but if I'm in a situation where I'm trying to concentrate or I'm trying to relax and one of those sounds is present, I just cannot ignore it and it just stops me from doing whatever it is that I'm doing. So for me,

it's more now that I can't filter it out. And how it used to be for me was that I would get angry and I would have to leave the situation. And that's the case for a lot of people with dysphonia and at the more severe end. It affects them being able to have a job or a relationship or makes them move house over and over again because they're just in this constant state of distress because of the sounds that are around them. In the research, there's been lots of tests that have been done to try and see whether people have heightened hearing. And there's no evidence to suggest that in general people with misophonia have better hearing, but often people with misophonia say that their family members say,

how did you even hear that? I couldn't hear that and they've tuned into it. So some people with misophonia might have better hearing, but it's more that their brain would register it, but they would ignore it so quickly that they don't even realize they've heard it. Whereas with people with misophonia, their brain registers it and then keeps registering it over and over again. And so they continue to hear something that everyone else would have dismissed

before they even realized they'd heard it. And so it sounds like they're hearing something that other people aren't hearing. But if everyone was trying to listen to it, they would also be able to hear it. So it's more of an attention thing and not filtering it out. So it just keeps happening.

You've just reminded me of a time where a neighbour had an alarm going off, but it was just a short, high-pitched sort of beeping alarm that went off intermittently for, days and I was ready to kill someone but my partner at the time could not hear it he couldn't hear it and I actually went around to the house and recorded the audio and came back and was like this is it and he was like don't play it for me and it was like the ring like he was like I don't want to hear it I don't want to notice it right now my brain isn't noticing it and I like that I've seen how

it's affecting you and I don't want that to happen to me whereas I felt very abandoned in that moment. But that would have, I think, sent anyone, you know, mad who can hear that particular frequency. But it is interesting how your brain just can't switch off once you've switched on to them. Yeah. And I think you've described the sort of internal battle that lots of people with misophonia experiences, that they want to be understood. Like, we want people to get it and to validate what we're experiencing. But also, you don't want to inflict it on somebody else. So as I've gotten less annoyed by certain sounds, because I've done lots of work to try and sort of desensitize a little bit to them, now if someone mentions it and I hadn't noticed it, then I'll get annoyed that they've mentioned it,

because now I will notice it and then I get stuck on it. But also there's that need to have somebody understand that it is really annoying. And I say the word bothered. That's like the phrasing that I use because I'm sort of trying to minimise. it a little bit so that people will listen. I think that's the competing need of wanting people to listen to learn more about misophonia without sounding crazy. And it sounds crazy to get rage in response to whispering. Like it shouldn't elicit that kind of response. But it just does. That feeling of am I the only one or is this just me? Obviously, Julia very much lands straight in that area of like, wait, am I the only person that hates whispering? And I could tell from the amount of people who also responded negatively to that episode that, no, Julia's not alone. Julia, you are

absolutely not alone. Whispering, I find it infuriating. And I've got some theories on why whispering in particular is so annoying. And it's similar to when somebody's on the phone in public, like where you can sort of hear part of the conversation, because our brain wants to make sense of of things and our brain will automatically try to, if there's a conversation happening, where social creatures, it will try to listen to the conversation to work out what's going on, to make sure that everything's okay and whether we should be paying attention. And if you don't have the amount of information that you need to be able to establish that everything is safe, even if it's not rational to need to be safe in that situation, but if you

can't hear it properly, it's distorted, your brain has to work really, really hard and it's trying to fix the audio in your head and therefore it's exhausting to have to listen to it. So it's not just that the acoustics of it sound unpleasant, which I think they do. It's also that it's hard work to try and work out what it is that you're listening to. And then it's like you've got this fatigue or energy sap or attention pulled away from what it is that you're trying to do. And we know that if your attention is pulled away from what you want to do, that leads to frustration and that's a really normal reaction to not being able to do what you want to do.

And if that persists, then that naturally leads to a feeling of aggression because it's your body trying to protect you from the thing that's stopping you from achieving what ever it is that you're trying to do in that moment. That makes a lot of sense to me as someone. I struggle to hear lyrics in songs. So much so I've famously made good comedy bits about it. Which, by the way, my kids sing your lyrics. To your song, out of nowhere, they'll just start going, ain't nothing but a hard egg.

I'm so proud. I will not rest until I have ruined every single song for every human. And the thing is, that has been my way of coping with it, right? Of just going, well, to me, this is what the lyrics are, because it doesn't really matter if I'm wrong. So I really relate to the idea of not being able to fully hear something or understand something. and the amount of mental processing that that takes if you're trying to do that. I also realize that I think, I thought I like whispering, but I think I like whispering when it's in context. And I think I've maybe tapped into a potential partial answer for why that episode, the ASMR episode, made people so mad, is because nobody wants unexpected ASMR.

Like, I like ASMR, but I look for it and I'm expecting it. Would you find that context is a huge part, like plays a big part? Are people ever always angered by the same sound? Or are there instances where that sound is actually okay? Would they get angry at a mother whispering to her baby if they were there to visit the baby and they're trying to hush the baby down and it's all within the context of the environment? Or would that still anger them?

Context and control play a huge role in it. But also even within that, it varies. is so drastically between people. So there are some people where it does not matter who is making the sound. The same sound will always cause the reaction. For other people, it might be that sound only made by that one specific person in one specific context. And if they hear it in a different context, it wouldn't be a problem. But for a lot of people, it's exactly that when it's out of context or in the wrong context, it compounds that reaction. So something that is already grating or jarring is then leads to anger and rage because

it's happening in an environment where it shouldn't be there. So for me, the strongest example of that is if you're on the quiet carriage on the train and somebody's eating or talking, that makes me so much more angry than if I was in a noisier train. And the noisier carriage, it muffles out the sound a little bit, so that's already a little bit better. But it's about the behaviour. Like it's breaking the rules, it's out of context, and it's stopping me from doing what I want to do. So I'm usually on the quiet carriage because I want to read or work or relax. And so if someone's then breaking the rules and disrupting what I want to do, and it's a sound that would already be annoying for me,

then the whole reaction is completely intensified. But, what you're saying about a mum whispering to a baby, there's again so many complicated factors there because the role of oxytocin and that hormone it is there to make us love and connect with things that are vulnerable, it can override the feeling that causes the anger in misophonia. So lots of new parents worry that they'll be annoyed by the sound of their baby eating or crying and actually when they have the baby we've got all these hormones that force us to love and care for the baby a friend of mine her husband was making it an eating really loud eating noise and she just got that surge of rage and she whipped her head around to tell him off and realized it

was their toddler who was eating and it just disappeared instantly and the reaction was gone completely and so for her this is someone who had told me no it doesn't matter who's making the noise. It always bothers me. But actually for her, it absolutely mattered. And partly because it was her baby and she's got all of the hormones that help her to look after her baby no matter what, but also because a little kid doesn't have the ability to eat quietly. And so it's instantly more forgivable that a baby is making a loud noise when they're eating than a grown man who, you know, should know better. If there is someone in your life who feels that way, who, you know, something that you do or that you don't mean to do and it's automatic or things like that,

but it frustrates someone that you care about or you see on a regular basis. What steps can we take in order to make life a bit easier for those people? It is really, really difficult. There's basically competing needs there. So especially in your own home, you want to be able to just eat your food, breathe whenever you want and live your life. And if doing those things, like my husband and I joke, like, I get angry at the sound of him keeping himself alive, which isn't fair. But also, it's really upsetting when I'm also just trying to live my life.

And these noises are stopping me from being able to do that comfortably. But for some people with misophonia, just being believed and validated is it takes an edge. It takes one of the layers off. of complicated factors. So just being told, oh, yeah, I get it. Okay, yes, I can see that's really upsetting for you. I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm not trying to upset you. Even if it's just I really can't breathe any quieter, it sort of takes a little bit of an edge off. It doesn't fix the problem, but at least you can feel like, okay, they're not doing it deliberately. It's not that they're really disgusting or gross or whatever it is that your brain has

tried to tell you it's the problem with this person. it's just that their nose got hit by a football, as is the case with my husband. And he literally can't breathe quietly. Basically, we started talking about it, and it came from me saying to him, like, if you loved me, you'd breathe quietly. And I understand that that is completely unreasonable. But in my misophonia state, it felt reasonable. It's like, how can you not want me to be relaxed in our home?

and of course it's not fair. Now he'll do small things that helps me to remember that he does care. So I would say if they're telling you how distressing it is, believe them. Another one is that it's really hard to understand this if you don't have misophonia, but it's not in all situations at all times. And so just because someone is bothered by it in one situation and not in another, it doesn't mean anything necessarily about your relationship. It's not about hating you specifically.

It's just that sometimes it shows up. and sometimes it doesn't. And so also understanding that it's not a consistent pattern of misophonia and not to read into why it bothers them sometimes in one situation and not in another situation. So those, I think, are really important pieces of information. And the other is, if there are small things that you can do that make the person with misophonia's life easier,

then just do them, even if you don't get it. So it's just having music on while you eat food together, for example. or if you're eating food and watching a film together, then just sit further apart, things like that. For bigger things, it has to involve a bit more of a complicated conversation, I think, because there is that thing of competing needs. And especially if you've got somebody, for example, with ADHD, who relieves the energy in their body by fidgeting,

and then that fidgeting causes a reaction to somebody with misophonia, you're going to have to work out how you're going to navigate that. And then I would also say for the person with misophonia to understand that what looks like a small change for somebody isn't actually that easy because changing habits that you've had your entire life is really difficult. And the way I demonstrate this with clients is, I want you to just walk with your arm out to the side at like a 45 degree angle and just walk like that and we'll just have a chat.

The way you were walking is upsetting me. And so for a person with misophonia, yeah, I can do that because you've said it's annoying me and that's what I expect of the people around me. But of course, as soon as you start talking, they get distracted, they put their arm down. I'm like, no, no, put your arm back out. I need you to put your arm back out.

And it just demonstrates how hard it is to change something that you've done a certain way your whole life. And so it's not reasonable to expect that people will suddenly be able to change the way they eat. Even if they can eat quietly, it's not reasonable to expect that they'd be able to do that really quickly and to remember to do it every time. So with one of my kids who does eat quite loudly, I was trying to help them and just I was just doing it really gently, like just remember to eat neatly and quietly, and just in a way of

like trying to have good manners and not really trying to talk about it in a misophonia way. And after a few goes of trying to do that, they said, it makes me feel really bad about the way that I eat. And when I try and do it, it's really, really hard and I have to concentrate on it and it makes me not enjoy eating. And I was realizing, like, I don't want my kids to be preoccupied with food and eating and to create negative environments around eating either. And so, again, that idea of like competing needs. And so just recognising that that was actually really hard for my kid to change. And it wasn't

going to change overnight. And I do think that it's worth learning good table manners, but it's also maybe not worth it if that's something that is really, really uncomfortable, but physically uncomfortable for them to do. And it humbled me a little bit because I'd always just assumed that if someone was eating loudly, they could do better and actually I realized that the mechanics of people's bodies just don't all work that way. And some people's mouths are uncomfortable to eat with their mouth closed. And so it changed the way I approach things. I used to get told off a lot as a child for how loudly I ate until I was old enough to explain or even understand and then explain that I can't eat with my mouth shut because then I can't breathe. And then,

That was when my family found out that I had an issue with my nasal cavities and had to have an operation so that I could breathe through my nose. Because the entire time I assumed that everybody else just holds their breath while they're eating. It's really interesting to see that like sometimes just it was very nice to hear you saying, by the way, people don't do these things on purpose. There can be so many reasons as to why this sound is this way and understand. that sometimes it's just a lack of understanding between the two parties as to what causes it to build into something bigger than it is. Yeah, and I would also say that sometimes it is done on purpose

or sometimes the reason why it feels like it's being done on purpose is because when people with misophonia were kids, they did have siblings or parents who would do it to torment them. And that then is another, again, just this, layers of what makes it so intense is that if you've had the experience of someone doing it deliberately, you've said, ah, stop doing it, that noise. It really, it makes me so angry. And then they go, what, this noise, and they make it, that then becomes embedded in your memory of that sound. It's like, this is the thing that's called associative learning where your brain pairs these things

together. And then when the context and the situation changes, it doesn't unpaer it again. And so it always feels like someone is doing it deliberately, even when you rational, know that they're not. And so the emotion attached to it is entangled in those experiences from when you're a kid. Yeah. And it's funny you say that because when I got this question originally and was looking into it, I also realized that lots of people have different experiences with whispering. And whispering can sometimes be used as an intimate thing as a comforting thing. It's something that is done to you to help you relax and that sort of thing. But also whispering can be used when there is trouble and you don't want to be heard by something or someone who will cause

trouble and so you only whisper when there's danger around. Or someone whispers to be menacing, like so that no one else can hear the danger that they are in part of you. There's so many different ways that whispering can be used. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And not to say that that's what's happened to this particular listener or any other other listeners, but but I suppose that as you say, there's so many different things that could cause this and might end up manifesting as triggered responses. In my book, I talk about that being like the superguards in the meerkat group. Within a group of meerkats, there are some meerkats who, what they're called superguards, and they're the ones who spend the most time on top of the hill looking for signs of danger while the other meerkats

attend to the other responsibilities of the group. So it might be foraging or looking after the babies. and when those superguards are off duty, so they're not meant to be on top of the hill, if a noise is detected, they will still pop up, even though it's not their job that day. The fear is there are just some meerkats who are better at that job, and their brains, for whatever reason,

don't filter out information that could be a sign of threat but isn't yet. So like a rustle in the grass that could be a snake, that mere cat won't ignore that. It won't signal everyone to get inside yet, but it will keep paying attention until it has more information. And I can so deeply relate to that

when I'm listening to a sound and once I know what it is, I can relax a little bit. And the rest of the group trust those superguards more than they trust the other meerkats. So if that meerkat says, yes, it is danger.

All the other meerkats will get quickly underground because they know that those meerkats are more reliable at paying attention to and figuring out when it is actual danger. And so to me that makes so much sense that humans have survived because some of us don't ignore signs of danger. And some of us, our brains are more likely to pair sounds with danger and not just like harm from predators, but like social harm as well. Like for humans to survive, we also have to get along socially. So to me it makes so much sense that there are some people that's their job, sensory speaking, their job is to be aware of potential danger.

and it's just that now there's so many things that stimulate that, that it's exhausting, and it's obviously not that helpful to be on guard all the time. But it makes sense to me that in terms of natural variation within humans, that some of us would have that capacity to do that. Your book was very interesting for someone who just wanted to understand more about it, but it is also a workbook, an exercise book, and I would recommend to people wanting to find out more about this or looking to treat their own versions of this,

if they think they have it to buy the actual physical copy because you do actually have lots of exercises and things in there which would be useful to refer to. Because you're a cognitive behavioural therapist, you try to tackle it from so many different angles because it is a varied problem and the causes can be so varied. And so in some cases it is just about communicating with someone or removing yourself from the situation. But you also say that in some cases it's, there is element of exposure that is necessary. Do you have any advice? Let's make it specific to Julia. Do you have any advice for Julia who gets angry when they hear whispering? The first thing I would say is using the word exposure makes it sound like something different from what I'm actually suggesting. So when people

hear the word exposure, they just think, the more that I listen to it, the quicker I'll get used to it. And that just does not work with misophonia. That can work with anxiety. and phobias where by exposing yourself to the situation, you discover that the thing you're afraid is going to happen doesn't happen, and therefore the anxiety comes down, because you learn really, really quickly that what you predict is going to happen doesn't happen. With misophonia, because their reaction is anger and disgust and violation,

it doesn't habituate in the same way. And in fact, instead of desensitizing, sometimes you sensitize to the sound and the anger gets worse. worse. So thinking that you can just sit there and keep listening to it and it will eventually come down is probably not going to happen and actually may make you feel worse. And some people say it is harmful to do it that way because the anger just escalates and it keeps going and it doesn't hit that peak and then come down like it might with anxiety. So what we do instead, when I'm telling people to experiment with sounds, the really important thing is,

that only do it if you are in complete control of the sound at the point where you're trying to experiment with sound or play around with sound. And if you can do it in a way that you are in control, then that can help you to create a new experience with that sound where you feel in control and you can manipulate the sound in a way that enables you to tolerate the sound,

and then it might start to feel less intense. but for most people what we get them to do is to add another element to it so that you really are having a different experience with the sound in a way again trying to bring in a bit of playfulness and humour and some people are not into the playfulness and humour at all and if you're not and this sounds horrific then don't even try it because it's not going to work if it doesn't appeal to you it definitely won't work but we suggest if people are up for it is like try and pair it with something else

that sounds a bit like that sound so we just got some feedback from someone that the sound of a sniff, they heard a pepper grinder and they thought it was somebody sniffing and then they realized it was a pepper grinder. And so then when they heard sniffing, they tried to imagine that it was a pepper grinder. And by giving it a new, because we know that context has an impact, if you give it a new context, it can create a new reaction to the sound. And it's not like you suddenly feel calm and okay about it, but it just takes down the intensity of the sound and the more that you have interactions with the sound that are less

threatening and don't lead to those spiraling emotions, then over time what that can do is actually bring down the intensity of the reactions. And it won't make the sounds pleasant and it won't make it as if you can suddenly ignore the sounds. But what we want to try and do is bring down that fight or flight kind of reaction. So doing things like that, imagining that it's coming from something else can help to bring down the intensity. And even just, having an experience with that sound where you are in complete control of it can bring down the intensity because you're experiencing the sound in a safe way. Whereas when someone else is making the sound, it doesn't feel very safe because you have no control over it and you don't know

what's going to happen next and you don't know what's going to happen with your feelings. But if you know that you can stop it at any time, then it feels a bit safer to work with. The idea is that misophony gets worse over time, the repetition of it. And every time that you hear the sound, it's connecting to past memories where you've been distressed by this and where you've been overwhelmed. And so it's not just the sound that you're reacting to. It's feeling overwhelmed and feeling distressed and the memory of that and what might happen and any times that you've been told off for having strong reactions. So that's called associative learning where your brain starts to pair those things together and what you call inhibitory learning where you inhibit

that old experience by creating a new experience that has a completely different meaning. It creates enough of a new experience that it kind of inhibits the old one and so you don't start getting that instant really intense reaction anymore but it gives you something else to associate that sound with that is less threatening and anything that does it in a way that connects you with somebody else that can also help so if you're playing the game together because misophonia can be really isolating and disconnecting because it's happening from people that you really care about So if you can somehow unite over the experience like me and my husband trying to make jokes about it, I would get him and the kids to eat really loudly.

And I would practice doing the opposite reaction because I'm just trying to have... So instead of glaring at them, I would like gaze adoringly at them and say, oh, I think he can do better than that. I think you can get louder. And because I'm now in control of the game and it's a bit silly and the kids think it's really funny that they get to make this noise that normally I guess. get really annoyed by it's a connecting experience instead of a disconnecting experience. This has been so useful. I feel that you've given us a ding. I think you've more than answered

the question. However, I would thoroughly recommend that people find your book. Sounds like misophonia. It is absolutely fascinating and I think could be very helpful and help provide many dings for many of our listeners. And I, as the host of a podcast, have learnt to maybe take into account the context of which I am making certain sounds and how that might be received. We shan't be doing that again. And obviously we will put links in the show notes for our wonderful listeners. I would like to encourage people to sign up to my research mailing list on sounds like misophonia.com. There is a mailing list for people who want to take part as a participant in research and also a mailing list for people who want to help design research.

and to interpret research, and that's something that we pay people to do to be part of the process of getting it right and answering the questions that people actually want answered. There is still so much to learn about misophonia. Research is desperately needed. All of the research is happening now. Now, our interview actually went way longer than that because Jane is so interesting, and both Laura and I were very, very fascinated to talk at length about it. We covered multiple subjects.

I think a lot of our listeners will relate to it as well. So if anyone is interested in listening to the extended version of that interview, we're going to pop it up on our Patreon, patreon.com forward slash a problem squared. So you can go and check that out. We covered misophonia and synesthesia, which Laura's spoken about her experiences with before on the podcast. We talked about misophonia and ADHD, misophonia and anxiety, loads and loads of interesting information. A whole second podcast worth, basically. Yes.

You've definitely covered this well. Because I hate the whispering, and so I think it's partly that the extra processing, you know, mental load. But also, I don't think it's traumatic for me, but it makes me feel like someone's invaded by personal space. Just talk to me like a normal person. Don't. There's no need to get all up in my ear. Maybe people like the fact it feels intimate. For me, it feels a little invasive, but not in a traumatic way.

Yeah, that's interesting. for you it's a it's a reminder of a physical imposing because you can't whisper unless you are close to someone and you don't always want someone that close to you.

Yeah, exactly. Mainly you find it when it's been recorded. I think it's a jarring change in the level of intimacy in the recording or whatever media I'm enjoying. So it's probably the abrupt switch which is why we now have

a no whisper guarantee here at a problem square industries. Guaranteed whisper free. Well, I mean, I agree with you. I would ding. But we'll wait to see what that all sounds like to our problem poser Julia, who can report back and let us know if we can ring the final loud, clear ding.

But not too loud. Next problem comes from autumn on a spring episode. Well, now I've heard everything. So Autumn wrote in via the problem posing. page and said, how much does an electron cost? To be more specific, assuming electricity is provided at some constant p pennies per kilowatt hour on a 240 volt network, what would be the price of a single electron? Matt, you are the best person to answer this because I didn't know what a kilowatt hour was. So your kilowatt hour is like your standard unit of buying electricity. I find it very funny

that we use kilowatt hour. Kilo just means a thousand watts. So kilowatt is one thing and the hours is the other thing. And I find it very funny because what you're actually paying for is energy. So when you pay your energy bill, you're paying for an amount of energy you used. But we don't measure it in energy. We measure it in power multiplied by time.

The unit is if you were using one kilowatt of power for an hour, you're paying for that amount of energy. From a physics point of view, it's a very funny way to specify it. But it kind of makes sense because it's just, you imagine using this much power for an hour, it's going to cost you however many pennies. Even not from a physics perspective, I find that confusing because I have one of those smart readers

that tells me how much money I have spent on electricity throughout the day. And I have noticed that it will jump up if I do a load of washing. I'm not looking at it thinking, how many things can I constantly run over an hour? Yeah, because it should tell you how many kilowatts you're using at any point in time. And then you know, if you ran everything the same for an hour,

that's how many kilowatt hours you've got to pay for. So I can see why they want to match what you see on the readout in kilowatts to what you're paying for, and you get a sense of if you turn on the washing machine or a heater or something or you open the fridge and the amount of watts goes up

the longer you do that for the more you're going to have to pay for so I kind of get why they then want to link it to kilowatt hours but the question we have from autumn here is if you're paying for your kilowatt hours how many electrons are you actually paying for which is an excellent question

and I'm going to answer it naively to start with, and then I'll add in some disclaimers afterwards. So there are two properties of electricity you've probably heard mentioned. You hear about current and you hear about volts. Yes. And people will use them in normal language fairly interchangeably to just mean more electricity. But they're subtly different things.

We're not even subtly different things. They're pretty seriously different things. So I've always sort of current as like the measurement of how many are passing through going in a direction, like a river. But voltage to me was like the amount that was being fed into it. So like how strong is the waterfall? Yeah. At the head of the river. Yes.

I think that's correct. Your current is definitely correct because it's just effectively number of electrons, how much you're moving. And voltage is how much, let's say, energy each electron has or how hard it's being pushed. So your measure of the head, the amount of, you know, water pushing it is excellent. I think about it in terms of something like, let's say you wanted to, stop someone with a marshmallow. Right?

I love how... I can see your brain going, what's an analogy that Beck would appreciate? Thank you, thank you. And you're right. Yeah, right. So, if you want to stop someone with marshmallows, you can either throw one marshmallow at them really hard,

but you're really going to have to throw it hard, which would be low-current, high voltage. Or you can just dump a million miles. marshmallows on them. And that would be high current low voltage. And it would have the same amount of power overall. So, yeah, okay, the point is, right, you can get power from either high current low voltage or high voltage, low current, or you can get a lot of power if you have both. But, you know, it's a trade off. And so power, actually, the way we define power for electricity is just the current times the voltage. It's how many electrons and how hard are we moving each one.

And that's what we pay for. We pay for power. Now, current is just the amount of charge moving per time. We measure that in amps. One amp is one unit of charge, a coulom, moving per second. So that's just the number of electrons flowing. So what we have, just to remind everyone of all the bits now, we know how much it costs to buy electricity in kilowatts that's power per hour, power times time.

We need to work out how many electrons that is. We know power is the current flowing. That's great. That's number of electrons per unit of time times volts. And thankfully, autumn is specified 240 volts. And I was like, few, because it would change depending on the voltage. So thankfully that's now fixed. and then what we need to do

is take our power equals current times voltage set the voltage to 240 volts multiply both sides by an hour which thankfully cancels out the time in the current and so it turns out one kilowatt hour is 240 times

360 seconds in an hour divide it by 1,000 because we want kilowatts and so it's actually just 864 times the amount of current in cooloms. And we know, because we know the charge on a single electron, we know how many electrons per coulom. Now, scientists specified a coulomb of charge before we really knew

what an electron was actually doing and how much charge it has. We didn't know how many electrons were moving. In fact, we have it the wrong way around because we looked at positive charge, going from positives to negative. It's actually the other way around. The electrons actually go in the opposite direction. The overarching thing, not to spoiler the end, is electricity is basically magic.

You heard it here first, folks. It's true. And it's magic we can understand. And scientists, humans, we worked out how the magic works in terms of just describing it. And therefore, we can build. circuits and lighthouses and do everything else separate to actually understanding what the electrons are doing. What? The mechanism behind it lagged by a long shot.

And it's not easy, but it's comparatively straightforward to look at current and voltage and circuits and you can analyze them and you can do the calculations and you don't need to know the physics behind the scenes. You just need to know the relationship between these different things. And you can measure them and you can control. them and you can design circuits around them. That's lovely. Like, it's a level of detail so abstracted away. You don't have to care about it. And we just didn't really know what electrons were doing.

We as like humankind for a long time, but we did understand the relationship between voltage and current and power and all these things. Now, because we named a coulom before we knew what electrons were doing, it's exactly like an ever-gadro number situation, but it's not an ever-gadro number. That was when we didn't know how small atoms were,

so everyone just went, you know what, this much carbon? Let's just call that one unit, a collection of atoms. We didn't know how many were in there, but we just declared that to be a bunch, and then we could compare different elements and compounds and chemistry in multiples of a bunch of electrons, even though we didn't know what that bunch was. And then much later on, science caught up,

and we actually were able to count how many atoms in a bunch, which was an avagadro's number. It's the same situation here. We defined a coulom as a bunch of charge. And we're like, it's a whole bunch of, I don't know, small charged particles. Now we know about electrons and we know how many there are, give or take. It's just over six quintillion electrons per coulom. Six followed by 18 digits, which starts 6, 24, 15, and then carries on.

Like, it's just a crazy, it turns out electrons are tiny. Like the marshmallows, you're fine. throwing are like the ones you get in a hot chocolate. Yeah. They're like the ones you'd roast on a fire, right? They're real, they're real small. And so electrons are crazy small. So it turns out there's just a lot of them.

So actually, they're going to work out quite cheap. So what I had to do was take that 864 times a coolum of charge and then multiply that up. And you end up with a ridiculously big number. So it turns out there's 5.4. times 10 to the 21. That's a, that's a sextillion. It's a lot of zeros. Yeah, it's just a ridiculously big number.

But we now have a number of electrons per kilowatt hour. And so I looked up what I pay for a kilowatt hour. And I'm with octopus in the UK and I pay 24.98 pence per kilowatt hour. That's our value of P. Not an ad. Yeah, they're good. They do good stuff. Not sponsored.

I then worked it through, and I worked out two things. I worked out pounds per electron and electrons per pound. So you can decide which you think is better. On the pound or the penny? On the pound. I can switch to pennies if you want. Well, that is what autumn asked. Okay.

Good thing I did in a spreadsheet. Fixed. I just moved the decimal point two places. Yeah, I was going to say. So it costs 4.6 times 10 to the negative. negative 21 pence per electron. So it costs 0.00000 and then you've got 20 zeros

and then a 4 and then a 6 and then a 3 and then a 2 pence per electron which means you're getting 2 times 10 to the 20 electrons per pence wow 200 pentillion electrons per penny which is a lot. So in conclusion, a lot.

Here's the problem. It was a fun bit of research to do it. I wrote some equations down and made a spreadsheet. The equations aren't easy to describe in an audio format. And then the answer is a meaningless sized number. I mean, technically I've answered the question. Yeah. But I don't think it's particularly rewarding.

And here comes the kicker. We get alternating current. Oh, yeah. So the alternating current, it's not just flowing into the house, it goes in and out and in and out, and it does that 50 or 60 times a second. You get the electrons and then they take them back and then they give them to you and they're take them back. So what I'm comparing to might be a bit more literal for DC current. It might be a bit more literal if you're buying a battery. But even then you're moving the electrons from one side of the battery to the other.

So you don't really, you don't use them up. So you're kind of electrons in, electrons out at the end of the day. Because they've always got to be moving those guys, don't they? They're always moving. And actually, electrons move pretty slow. For a standard current in a house, normal, let's say 13 amp on a standard sized wire, they move about a meter, an hour. What?

That's so slow. It's incredibly slow. How come you get an old? electric shock if you put your wet finger in the plug. Ah, they still pack a punch. The energy transfer is not the object itself moving all the way across the room. It's the wave of energy travelling through it, which is what transfers the energy. It's like, if you look at the ocean, a wave will come in quite quick and then crash on the shore, but the water itself is not moving in super fast.

It's just the wave moving through the water. It's faster for a Mexican wave. I'm not sure if we still call it that, but it's faster for that to go around a stadium than it is for one person to run around the stadium. Correct. This is by the by, because actually it doesn't matter. We can still use electricity without knowing any of this.

That's all fine. But once we got down to it, we're like, oh, dang, these things move slow. when they move fast for, you know, subatomic particle, and the energy moves fast, but the actual carrier, the medium the waves going through, moves relatively slowly. Relatively.

There's a lot of them. Huh. And most electrons don't go anywhere. They just stay in the atom. So that, you know, they don't move much at all. The more I find out, the more I realize I don't know. Yeah. I mean, the problem is I looked at the question.

I'm like, ah, I really like that because it's just a fun calculation I can do. Yeah. But I also like that it combines the kind of macro understanding of electricity with the micro, what the electrons doing. Yeah. And it would be a bit dissatisfying for me to just give you the number without then pointing out some... It's ridiculous once you get down to the electron level. They're pretty nuts. So just saying, what am I paying per electron becomes a little meaningless.

What I like about this podcast is that the conversations that the problems, bring up are just as important, sometimes if not more important, than the answers themselves. Yeah, let's go with that. I then did, just to round it out, I worked out what it would cost per electron, just looking at cost for charge, if you bought it as a AA batteries. Oh yeah? I went on to the very large online retailer who have their own basics range of things. They'll hook you up with 100 double A batteries.

A batteries for a mere 15 pounds 61 currently on sale. And they do not tell you how much energy there is per battery, which is pretty cheeky to my mind. Yeah, I think that's why they can sell you 100 for 15 pounds. Yeah. And I went through all the reviews because battery storage is millie amp hours, because it's fixed voltages at 1.5 volt battery. I went through all the reviews. and some people had tested them

and they got between 2.5,000 to 3,000 millie amp hours. So, at 1.5 volts, you could argue you're getting about

4.5 watt hours per battery. And you got 100 of them and you switch it to kilowatt hours and you realize you're paying 15 pounds 61 for the whole lot. You're actually paying 3,429

pence per kilowatt hour, which is 139 times more expensive than your power at home. So running something off disposable batteries costs you or everything else equal over 100 times more than plugging it in to a socket. Now rechargeable batteries is a different conversation. That's on disposable batteries. Expensive electrons is what I'm trying to say.

I'm going to give that a ding. Yep. But autumn, let us know. Yeah, autumn. How do you feel? Report back. And now it's time for any other bozos. And, oh, actually, the first thing up, not a bozo.

Ava. Oh my goodness, Ava. I don't want to pick a favorite listener, but check this out, everyone. Ava went to the problem posing page, pick solution and said, Hello, Beck, Matt, producer Laura, love the podcast, blah, blah, et cetera. A little variation on the standard blah, blah, blah there. Turns out one blah equals two. etcs, according to Ava.

Now, Ava actually clarifies they have a half problem, half solution. Many episodes ago, you mentioned, there's us, that you wanted to have a place where you and others can look at what problems you have solved in previous episodes. Now, this is a very real problem we have, Beck. The reason I have a problem with this is we kind of record the episodes in the style of two buddies hanging out chatting. And then I instantly forget what was our nose.

normal chat, what was podcast chat, what we've discussed. Then producer Laura edits the episodes. I have only a very nebulous understanding. And I know you listen to them back, but I don't. And so I have no idea. I haven't got a lot of podcasts listening to my life. I have really have the vaguest of senses of what's actually gone out in this podcast. Sorry, can I just clarify that you said you don't have much time to listen to podcasts, yet you will troll the local charity shops in search of two-year-old collectible glasses. That's why I haven't got time to listen to the podcasts. You know what you can do at the same time?

Record a podcast about the Hungry Jack's 2024 Aussie summer collectible glasses. Yeah, and then listen to that podcast while looking for them. Okay, good point. Ava says, do I have the spreadsheet for you with a few kind community members? they have put together an APS problem catalog a complete ish Google sheet of all our problems dings and episode themes but this is where Ava's solution is still half problem

they need help from people to fill in all the dings and themes they are asking if people could please help datalog are now 137 episodes They do have some stats for us along the way. They've so far listed 402 problems across 128 normal episodes, five milestones and two not normal episodes. Wow. Oh, and the most common emoji used in our titles is the briefcase emoji.

Now, I don't even know we were putting emojis in this. Producer Laura, are we putting emojis in the titles? Or is that in the description? It's in the episode description, the problems we solved. Each one has a tangentially related emoji. That's great. And for any other business, I suspect the briefcase comes up a fair bit. But now I know that that's the unoriginal thought.

I'm never going to use it again. No more briefcases. Them's fighting words. Ava has sent a link to the spreadsheet, which I'm just going to open up. Oh, nice, great, great spreadsheet. So the spreadsheet's got a bit at the top saying read the notices, please. And then an arrow. And then more arrows to say, keep going. And then they've got all the instructions. So if you're going to go in there, read the instructions before you start doing anything. Don't undo any of Ava's good work.

And then we've got the episodes currently sorted in reverse numerical order with the titles, the problems. Ah, this is great. I don't have a lot of fun with this. Links to them. Oh, what A-O-B things we referred back to. This is lovely. Ava. First of all, great work having a palindromic name. Secondly, great work on this spreadsheet. Yeah, I've just found some of the charts in here about, like, how the length of the episodes and how they've changed. Oh, that's terrifying.

Guests who have appeared. It is brilliant. It's thorough and comprehensive. And from a producer point of view, it is so useful. This is so cool. The data is incomplete. If people want to get involved, we're going to link to it. Behave yourself.

Check it out. It's pretty impressive. Yeah. And all hail Ava. I'm going to dub Ava the a dingaling. Oh, official dingaling. Yeah, because if everyone else is just a dingus. Yeah. I think. Have you just promoted our first dingus to dingaling status?

Dingling or a ding dong. It's more like ding don. That's it. Ava is the ding don. Wow. We also heard from Joanne Kaye who said, I owe you a huge apology. About time. About a year ago, I wrote into the problem posing page at a problem squared.com,

asking in a rather dejected whiny voice, how much smaller my chances of being thanked at the end of every episode are getting, thanks to the fact that you include all Patrions in the data set each time you randomly pull names, while the data set very likely keeps growing. Not fast enough. In the meantime, I encouraged my adult son to listen to your podcast because I know he would love it. Apparently, you took my advice to start listening. You're welcome.

Thank you. and thank you Joanne's son. Well, my son just said to me, oh, hey, you probably already know this, but I heard them call your name. What? I had no idea. Not only did you call my name already.

You called it on the first episode that you started calling names. I was the third name you ever called. In fact, we might have been actively pronouncing them correctly at that stage. I think we were trying to get them correct at that time. Yeah. Joanne did actually finish the message by saying, however, you'll be glad to know you mispronounced my last name.

So even when we were deliberately trying to pronounce them correctly, we still didn't. That's why we had to switch to make it fair that everyone gets their name mispronounced. That's right, yeah. So I guess that's a pretty good segue to thank everyone for listening. You're all legends, you dinghuses. And we would like to specifically pick three names. at random from the entire set of all our Patreon supporters and we reward those three names picked at random by mispronouncing them which this episode shall include

mm arc US ASM i taa Kalemit chal but that's it that's the episode everyone thank you for listening to our special Spring Edition episode of a Problem Squared, episode 137. And finally we should thank our producer

Laura Grim Spore. It's another pollen joke. There it is. Nice. Connect 4. It's Bexgo. It's me, isn't it?

Can you just tilt it slightly so I can see is the bottom row filled in? I can't tell. No, there's a hole here. And a hole here. Oh yeah. Okay. You don't have to

push your finger all the way through the hole, Laura. Yeah, I do. How else will you know? I will know. I would like to go to the far right again. Like, please don't take this out of context and play it. Interesting. Thank you.

I might switch strategies. Let's see what happens next time.