Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs - Episode 222: From Stepanov to Euler to Shawshank

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

In this episode, Conor and Ben chat with Tristan Brindle about graph algorithm resources, tropical semirings, Stepanov stories, FM2GP, EOP, and veer off into a chat about TV shows, movies and more!Link to Episode 222 on WebsiteDiscuss this episode, leave a comment, or ask a question (on GitHub)SocialsADSP: The Podcast: TwitterConor Hoekstra: Twitter | BlueSky | MastodonBen Deane: Twitter | BlueSkyAbout the GuestTristan Brindle a freelance programmer and trainer based in London, mostly focussing on C++. He is a member of the UK national body (BSI) and ISO WG21. Occasionally I can be found at C++ conferences. He is also a director of C++ London Uni, a not-for-profit organisation offering free beginner programming classes in London and online. He has a few fun projects on GitHub that you can find out about here.Show NotesDate Generated: 2025-02-17Date Released: 2025-02-21Mazes for Programmers by Jamis BuckMaze Demo from C++Now 2019: Ben Deane “Identifying Monoids: Exploiting Compositional Structure in Code”A Very General Method of Computing Shortest PathsFrom Mathematics to Generic ProgrammingSpoils of the EqyptiansAll A9 PlaylistsElements of ProgrammingFM2GP Programming Languages Virtual Meetup (Next One)A Tribute to Euler - William DunhamPerfect NumbersAmicable NumbersCountdown ClipJames Acaster ClipJames Acaster's Classic ScrapesChariots of FireBrief EncountersHouse's Stalker ClipCasablancaIntro Song InfoMiss You by Sarah Jansen https://soundcloud.com/sarahjansenmusicCreative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/l-miss-youMusic promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/iYYxnasvfx8

We want to learn to compute shortest path and Again, it could be done using matrix multiplication over a tropical semi-rig. This is something you could use on a date And you are the weakest link goodbye Right, let's start with the headlines I Swear now Right, let's start with the headlines. I swear now. If you're not with someone your age, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. And for the rest of your life. Welcome to ADSP the podcast episode 222 recorded on February 17th, 2025.

My name is Connor and today with my co-host Ben, we chat with Tristan Brindle in part one of this four or five part conversation. In today's episode, we chat about some graph algorithm resources, the book from mathematics to generic programming, the mathematicians Euler and Galois, and some of our current favorite TV shows and movies and more. I had a couple of thoughts on your graph algorithms discussion with Bryce. What is that? This is a book that if you like graph algorithms you should read. Yeah this is Mazes for Programmers by Giamis book and that does sound pretty cool. It covers all that because you know constructing minimum spanning

trees is the same problem as making mazes. If you think about like a grid of cells you want to construct a minimum spanning tree across those cells that is a maze. And there are various ways to do that. There are like I don't know 20 different algorithms in here. Crimson Pruskals just what they say Prims and Kr crusticles, just scratch the surface. There's all kinds of interesting algorithms. One of the interesting ones is called Ella's. And Ella's algorithm is interesting because each successive row of the maze is constructed from the previous row only, which means that...

This is the one you showed in a C++ Now talk, yeah? Yeah, which means that it's an iterative process. You can iterate until you've had enough constructing each next row from the previous one for a given width of maze, obviously. But that's a really good book. And the other thing I wanted to draw your attention to for your consideration is this blog post from a while ago. It's called A Very General Method of Computing Shortest Paths. And it covers an algorithm, the Gauss-Jordan-Floyd-Warshall-Cleanie algorithm. That's four hyphens for those of you that didn't pick up. I did complain about the hyphenation of these, you know, specific algorithms.

That's four hyphens, five names in this algorithm. Well, because, I mean, that algorithm is, it's an amalgamation of other algorithms, right? But it's a method of computing transitive closures with using a mathematical structure called the tropical star semi-ring, which you may have heard of. So this is crazy we got a possible for a second so i'm not exactly sure where i start the edit of part one of this probably three parts you know in part conversation but we do have a guest with us tristan who i think is our second most frequent guess behind Sean parent and i think Ben I don't know how we count you anymore because you've been upgraded

So if Ben's now like an official co-host does that mean I move up in the yeah, I think After this you might already be in second because all of his co-host episodes don't count towards his guest count so I think you might be we'll just call you the second most frequent and They don't count. So I think you might be, we'll just call you the second most frequent. And we're gonna be talking about a bunch of stuff over the next couple slices of this conversation. But so we're gonna start off, I guess,

on follow ups to the graph algorithms conversation. It is crazy. Like the, what do you call it? Like the conflagration. Is that the correct word when you've got like ideas that pop up? A conflagration is a big fire, if that's what you meant.

Okay. It's definitely not conflagration is a big fire if that's what you meant. Okay, it's definitely not conflagration It might be conflation, but I'm pretty sure that's that's when you confuse things or put them in the same idea But you just said tropical semi ring and I literally yesterday was working through One of the exercises from the spoils of Egyptians journey one from Stepanov's lecture series that corresponds to FM to GP from Mathematics to Generic Programming. And at one point he assigns the exercise of determining shortest path using a tropical semi-ring

with matrix exponentiation. And then I have to implore the listener, if you have not listened to this lecture series, it is like 50% C++ and math and proofs. The other 50% is just listening to one of the world's most passionate people talk about history and mathematics and like stories of Pythagoras and Thales of Miletus and it is just like, half of these lectures you can literally watch as like a form of entertainment and and when he mentions the Tropical semi-ring he says and of course this is obviously amazing date material something you have to bring up on your next date and you say I'm implementing shortest path with the tropical semi-ring and my matrix multiplication mathematicians sometimes love to introduce really hot concepts.

So recently they introduced the notion of a tropical semi-ring. It comes from Brazil. It's indeed, I mean, it was sort of, it existed in computer science by the way for decades and they paid no attention and then a Brazilian mathematician started using this thing for algebraic geometry and obviously in a computer science application is just nobody cares. The moment they start applying it to algebraic geometry it became very cool and they they named, since he

was from Brazil, they invented this concept of a tropical semi-ring. So you should feel really samba or whatever they do there. We want to learn to compute shortest path. And again, it could be done using matrix multiplication over a tropical semi-rig. This is something you could use on a date. And then, you know, I end up doing this in APL, which is like it has an inner product primitive, which you can just replace each binary operation and it works on matrices and it's like a one liner. Anyways, back to you.

Sorry, is this the A9 lecture series? Yes. Yes. Have you seen them, is this the A9 lecture series? Yes, yes. Have you seen them Tristan? I know you know of them. I have, I know. It's the short version. I've watched bits here and there, but no, I've not sat down and watched the whole thing. But I always feel like I should. So... I mean, it's a hundred hours of material easily because between... There's Efficient Programming with Components is one of the series. The one Connor's talking about is the sports of the Egyptian... It's the algorithmic journeys, right?

Algorithmic journeys. Yeah, four algorithmic journeys and it's three journeys. The first one is the spoils of Egyptians and we haven't gotten to number two and number three. One of them is the successils of Egyptians and we haven't gotten to number two and number three. Like one of them is the successors of piano. I don't think that one is only a portion of the like the ones you're mentioning or other series, but I think this one grand total is probably going to be less than 30 or 40 hours. So it's I mean, that sounds like a lot, but if you're putting them on a two point time speed, because a lot of them is just like story time was stepping off. Like it's just it's just like, yeah, you'll feel I have to now tell you the story of Galois

You know the most romantic of the mathematicians and he's always commenting this mathematician had a sword this mathematician didn't have a sword And it's a he's it is and he does it all off the cuff like this guy's Capacity for memorizing like the history of stuff. It's unbelievable back to you though. Galois died in a duel. That's right He yeah, yeah 21 years old and he of stuff. It's unbelievable. Back to you though. Galois died in a duel though, right? That's right. He uh... Yeah. Famously... Like 21 years old and he like wrote down the entirety of group theory like the night before because he thought he was going to die in the duel, which he did.

That is the story, yes. That's the famous story. But Stepanov does the same thing with programming languages as well. Not only is he a great mathematical historian, he's also a historian of our field, of the field of programming. So he talks about, in some of the other lecture series, he talks about the history of Fortran and Lisp and languages from the 60s, I guess we would say. Which I think more people should be aware of, you know, because we think that lots of things do get discovered in computer science still, but a lot of what we use day to day in computer science was already known by sort of 1975.

And our field is young enough that people can of 1975. And I feel is young enough that people can easily study the history. And it really helps to put things in context, I find. Yeah, he his anecdotes and I just can't even like I feel like there's someone should go and like edit out the math and C++ stuff and just stitch together the history parts as as just like a podcast because it is his anecdotes are... He's almost like part comedian because I find myself laughing when he's like, you know, the three rules of namings and of course, you know, I made the mistake myself and it's a tragedy because, you know, Vector, I violated rule number three and, you know, sometimes

mistakes they last a long time. And of course, like all of us used to vector today. And yeah, he is one of the best storytellers, if not the best storyteller in terms of like his not his knowledge that he's reaching from his own kind of comedic. But like edutainment, like doesn't do its service. It is it is so good. They even the proof stuff, if you're not there for C++ or for the math stuff, it's worth just like going through that for like the stories that he tells. And he's like, oh, now I promised you a story about Euler and now I will finally tell it. And then like

30 minutes later, it's like, all right, it's the end of the lecture. We'll get back to C++ in the next one. Yeah, it's fantastic. Anyways, I've totally derailed Ben's talking about what is it, four? We should say that lecture series for algorithmic journeys is the lecture series of really of the book from mathematics to generic programming. So yes that book some people view as a sort of sequel to elements of programming. I don't it's not really a sequel but it is another book by Stepanov after Elements of Programming. So yeah, I haven't actually mentioned, I think I did mention at one point in our conversation

a while ago, Ben, that I was going to be starting a meetup working through this book, but it's been like a month since we actually started it. So I mean, tonight, which will be in the past when this comes out, is meeting number three. But at the beginning of the meetup, in watching the lecture, Stepanov says that there's kind of a corresponding text, but not really, and that's EOP. But EOP was published before the four algorithmic journeys was recorded, and for mathematics to generic programming was published afterwards. So at the time he was recording it, he didn't mention for mathematics to generic programming was published afterwards. So at the time he was recording it, he didn't mention for mathematics to generic programming,

but it is completely clear after having like looked at both sources that they like one to one not in the same order, but they one to one map to each other like the diagrams and his slides are like copy and paste it to the textbook. So yeah, it's I think it's a great idea to work through both together. And if you're listening to this feel free whatever I'll leave a link in the show notes. Although we're already partially way through the book but yeah, it is I feel bad leaving it and not having gotten to it for so long because it's been on my list of things to do since like 2018 or 19 or something and

Just for like not even the education educational value just for the entertainment value. It is worth like going to and And watching yeah yeah I plan on going through everything now that I can find it's it's probably the same thing like I feel very sad that Ken Iverson like passed away before the age of online YouTube videos and stuff because I feel like he would have probably been the same kind of character in terms of his passion for his topic yeah right anyways links in the show notes for everything we just mentioned. Back to what we were talking about before.

I still don't know what a tropical sub ring is though. Ben, you want to describe it or should I describe it? Let's see. It's, so it's a ring or semi ring, right? So semi ring is another one of these mathematical structures, like a group, except it's adding on more stuff. So are you familiar with the ring? So maybe for the listeners, if you're not.

I did study this stuff, but quite a long time ago. Think of multiply and plus, right? That's the canonical example. So you've got two operations. It's like a group with two operations, right? And you've got like an additive identity, multiplicative identity, yeah. Yeah.

So- I don't know the semi bit. I forget what makes a semi ring versus a full ring, but it's similar to what makes a semi group versus a group, I expect. Yeah. A tropical semi ring, I think is a ring that uses plus and min, is it?

As the operations. Correct, yeah. Yeah. It's called tropical, I think, because the mathematician who introduced it was Brazilian or working in Brazil and mathematicians just have the sense of humor where they say, oh, let's call it tropical. Something of that nature. So you can-

Plus and min. So if you think of min and plus, and you think of their application to a graph, maybe you can sort of intuit that plus is adding up the weights between nodes. And min is finding the minimum path length. And so this ring structure when applied to graphs weighted graphs or otherwise

Allows you to compute shortest paths among among other things Transitive closures also come into it. I would have to take your word for that. That's not I can't intuit that It sounds like overwhelmingly complicated, especially given the fact that it's a tropical semi ring with matrix multiplication. And I was like, I put it off for a few days for the homework that I was doing. But then when I went to do it, literally in APL, an inner product is spelled plus dot for the inner product and then times. So your first operation is the multiplication and then plus is the second one.

Literally for doing a shortest path with a quote unquote tropical semi-ring, I don't know why I'm saying quote unquote, it just sounds very fancy. You replace the plus with a minimum glyph and you replace the times with a plus glyph and then that's it. And so you put a matrix, you put the same matrix on either side of that and then that's a single step of the calculation of shortest path. And then if you do that for n equal to the number of steps that you need to get from your starting point to your end point, in the matrix that is a representation of your

graph is the shortest path from that point to that point. It's incredibly simple in a language where you have a generic inner product where you can pass any two custom binary operations in. But yeah, it does sound rather fancy when he's explaining it. And then in the lectures, he doesn't actually give an example or anything. He just explains it in the abstract and is like, oh, and go do it for homework. It sounds like I've got some homework to do. Yeah. So you can do things like, you know, if you have an adjacency matrix. So I've done a few of these things to try them out. If you have an adjacency, just an unweighted graph, you have an adjacency

matrix that is basically a square, you can represent as a square matrix of bits, right, which you can represent as just an integral type if your graph is small enough. Or like n integral types, right, because it's bits. You can compute, if you take that as a matrix and you raise it to the nth power, basically it computes the transitive closure, where n is enough, basically until you stop, until it stops changing, kind of, right? Because at that point, you've computed the transitive closure of the graph.

You can then, there are various things you can do. I think you can use that to extract a topological sort of the nodes, among other things. And you know, when we say a graph, also this link I put in the chat, you know, a graph is very general. A graph, for example, this can be applied to regular expressions, right? The cleanly star in the regular expression is the same thing as transitive closure. The idea of transitive closure.

Ben's just, you know, he operates in the clouds when us mere mortals operate down on earth. I will say as well, like one of the exercises in FM to GP is, you know, working up to calculating Fibonacci numbers in log n time using also matrix multiplication or exponentiation. And I follow the lectures. It makes sense. I nod my head along. And then once again, I go to APL, which has the matrix multiplication primitive. And so it's super straightforward.

You build up this two by two matrix, put it to the nth power, and there's a kind of log n calculation where if it's even, you divide by two. If it's odd, you minus one. I implemented it. Do I fully understand, like at an intuitive level, how you get, you know, log n? Like I get it. We're splitting, dividing and conquer. I see it, but the math behind it, you know, I can say now that I can, you know, once again, if I'm ever on a date with my fiance, I'll say, I can do a Fibonacci calculations and log n time is pretty impressive But you know if if you actually asked me to explain the mathematics behind it or the intuition behind it I think it's very non intuitive. I mean stepanov said himself. He was like he didn't believe it when

He came across you know this statement said oh you can do it in log n 10 He's like of course he can't you know it's a it's dependent on the previous two things like how could you possibly do that? In log n time? I'm not sure if you have an intuitive explanation, Ben. No, I don't think I do for that one. But yes, if you just play with, like you say, if you play with the matrices, you get the hang of it, get the idea of it. Like you said, it's fairly easy to understand how raising a matrix

to the nth power can be done in log n steps rather than n, right? Because when you're raising to the power, if the power is even, you can halve it and do that multiplication after the divide and conquer. I just dropped in the chat, talking of enjoying history of mathematics, I dropped a link into a YouTube video in the chat, which is about Leonard Euler. It's called A Tribute to Euler by William Dunham. This is also, I think, a book. I think he's written a book on Euler.

But Euler is, Euler was amazing. You know, it may or may not surprise you to learn that all of Euler's work has not yet been published. Oh, wow. There are folks still going through his papers and publishing them and it's going to be a while before they'll get published. He has, I'm not sure if it's, if he's second to Gauss Gauss, but he might be first in a number of things that are named after him in mathematics.

How does Euler rank compared to von Neumann in terms of his, I don't know what you call it, like polymath status? Well, I couldn't say, but it's certainly true that Euler just blew the lid off multiple fields of mathematics. For example, perfect numbers and amicable numbers. So, perfect number is a number where the proper divisors sum to the number, like 6, 28, 496, I think. So, we know up until oiler

We had known a few of those were known to the ancients right and amicable numbers are numbers where? It's a pair of numbers where each numbers devises some to the other number wait say that again Amicable is when a pair of numbers. Oh some to each other So you know the sum of the A's divisors the divisors of A sum to B and the divisors of B sum to A. Okay. The proper divisors. So, 220 and 284 is the canonical example of a pair of amicable numbers. Euler, you know, so basically there were a handful of these perfect numbers and amicable

numbers known since antiquity. And I mean like two or three in perfect numbers and amicable numbers known since antiquity. And I mean like two or three in the case of amicable numbers. I forget things. Euler comes along, does a bit of work in this area and is like, oh here I've generated another two dozen. You know, the kind of impact he had on multiple areas of mathematics was like that. Anyway, it's a great video. We need some Apple TV or Netflix shows on, you know, the greats.

There's a TV show that just came out on, is it Apple? I don't know, called Prime Target. And it's it's based in Cambridge partly. So I'm not it might it may or may not be of interest to you. Did you do? Where did you go to school Tristan? I think I should know this. But is it Cambridge as well?

Gasworks Polly? No, no, no. Where did you go to school, Tristan? I think I should know this, but is it Cambridge as well? Gasworks Poly? No, no, no. I, an ordinary university for me. I was an undergraduate at Southampton in the UK and I did a post-graduate Bath. Oh, Bath is a nice university. Bath is nice.

Yeah, yeah, it's a good place, yeah. And the city itself is amazing. The university is kind of 1960s modern thing at the top of the hill outside the Outside the city itself, but yeah bath is a fantastic place. You're gonna say something Connor Oh, no, I was gonna say I thought I got recommendations from from both of you of where to go When I was there, so maybe that's maybe I'm just miss Yeah, spent spent time in Cambridge. Okay.

But anyways, it's this TV show that it's about this, you know, genius math guy that is trying to find a prime finder and everybody's worried that, you know, supposedly all the NSA and all these organizations are killing off math people because- I think I've seen the trailer for that. It's on like Apple TV Yeah, yeah anyways, we need more shows like that with less killing and more just like the the true story of

You know cuz you know, you could probably I don't know in this day and age There's a lot of tech people that I'm sure would be interested in math people that would be interested who knows though Not everybody's favorite show and they were a kid was Numbers like me. Talking of TV shows, I don't know maybe this isn't for, this won't be so interesting for the listeners maybe, but I had, before Christmas I was thinking you should do a Christmas special of this podcast. Right, so we're now going to have to wait until December again. But Connor, have you ever heard of a TV show called Countdown? A British TV show. Countdown?

I don't think so, although I have watched a bunch of, I know Ben, you've recommended me some quiz shows. I'm not sure it's the big quiz of the year, and there's other ones that are, some of them are funny, and some of them are actually like Mathlete, Olympiad. Countdown does not ring a bell though. Okay, so Countdown's like, it's been on TV since I think 1980 or 1982 or something. It's

a very long time. Wasn't it the first show on Channel 4? I think it was the first show on Channel 4. And like it's deliberately very, like they haven't moved with the times at all, like it's deliberately really old fashioned and it's kind of like an institution on British TV. But anyway, the goal of Countdown, they have two, they have letters rounds and numbers rounds and letters rounds you have nine letters. Oh! You select nine letters, vowels and consonants and you have to make the longest word you can. So two contestants, each one tries to get the longest word. And numbers rounds,

you pick six numbers and you're given a three-digit target, and you have to use the usual four-hour binary operations to reach that target. So I thought this would be right up your street. And I thought it would actually make quite a fun thing to do on the podcast. But December's a busy time. This sounds amazing.

And I just finished cutting in the inception, the audio from the inception movie when they were dream building, which people may or may not have gotten the reference. I am definitely going to find the clip. I don't think it's countdown because this was like a comedy show and I'm not gonna remember the comedian's name.

His name's is I think Richard Yeah, yeah, I think is it is it from the IT crowd where he's on countdown I'm not sure but it's it's this old grumpy lady who's like hosting this quiz show I think and And you have to like unscramble the word which sounds exactly like it is and then he Supposedly finishes it in like three seconds flat but like you can clearly tell that these nine letters are not forming a whole word and And so then he just starts humming a little jingle like and he's making fun of this lady being like I can't remember if it's like don't be grumpy or whatever And then she's telling him to be quiet and it is it one of the funniest clips I've seen

Yeah, anyways, I'm not sure if this sounds familiar at all I will find it once we're done recording and I'll send it to you in advance. So you guys Hello All your countdown Don't interrupt me. Tell Rachel your letters. What's happening Rach, a couple of Bs, Qs, N, J. Just pick a letter. Bit serious on this show, innit? I'll tell you what, put whatever you want up there. Alright, ok, we've got... Help yourself, like a pick-a-mix. C, L, L, U, D, B, R, A and T.

Okay. Start the clock. Start the clock. Mr. Gaser, put the cares in the freezer. Anne Robinson. Anne Robinson, have a breather. Okay, okay. Okay!

We don't do that. Well, can't you do that? No. Robison and Robison ever breeze up okay, okay? Okay, we don't do that Shirley and Lisa gonna have a pizza. Oi oi! Okay. Fantastic, okay. Boom, I've got all the letters, Susie.

Blood clot. Fantastic, so I win, eh? That's not a word. That's a word? You're a bit moody, aren't you? Come on, give us a smile. That's not a word. ****

And you are the weakest link goodbye Don't need to wait Okay, but I mean some of the I think my favorite comedian right now. What's his name? Oh, no He's a very skinny nerdy James a castor. Yes. He is hilarious. Yes He he is great. James A. Castor. His special on Netflix was very funny. Is that the one where he comes out and he starts swearing for the first time?

Oh my God, because he's this very straight-laced guy and all his comedy stand-ups or whatever are very kind of, you know, yeah, straight-laced, doesn't swear and then in this one, he comes out and just starts cursing and he's like, I found out all my viewers and fans are old moms and young Harry Potter readers and he's like, I'm done with this, you know? And it is... Right, let's start with the headlines. I swear now. Started swearing in my stand-up comedy. 10 years in the game I've been a pretty clean comedian

and I f'ing Jeff that much and as a result I've attracted a demographic who to be frank I hate. It's a bunch of old people and Christians every goddamn show. I'm sick of it. Gotta ditch these crizzos ASAP. Seriously man, after every single gig, something from mum comes up to me. Oh, me and my daughter love that! Well I may as well quit now then. If you and your daughter are enjoying it on the same level, the fuck am I doing? Yeah, he's hilarious. I think he's my favorite comedian right now. Anyway, so I do find the UK humor and a lot of that, a lot of it's, I don't want to say classier, but just more intelligent than some of the stuff going on in North America. You should read, I read his book, it's called James A. Castor's Classic Scrapes.

And is that good? It's worth a read? It's worth it. If you like James A. Castor, you will laugh out loud when you read that book. Any other any other while we're off topic TV show recommendations, book recommendations, movie recommendations? I've been watching the old midway through the second season of Severance if you haven't seen that. Oh yes yes yes.

On Apple TV. I'm up to date as well. Yeah it is, you know, I just think it's some of the best TV that's around at the moment. Very very weird but, great program. Sorry, you were gonna say. I was gonna say, I made some movie recommendations to you, Connor, a while back, because you had said that you and Shima

were going through the AFI Top 100. I will say, here, I'll pull it up right now, if I can find it. We did watch Chiots of fun Do you have a spreadsheet of these? Not only do I have a spreadsheet I have a spreadsheet that is Conditionally formatted because I let I gave it access to my sister and her partner one of my sisters and her partner because they're big movie buffs and we put our after

She might I watch it we each rate it and Then based on whether there's a rating there because some of us, you know before we met each other had seen it and others So there's you know, both have seen it one of us has seen it The other has seen it and then there's a very fancy, you know rating Chariots of Fire was on the recommendation list. Mm-hmm We were not a big fan of Chariots of Fire as a running movie. I can't remember. Well, it's not a running movie. It's a movie that contains runners, but...

Eh, it's a movie about running. I suppose. You could look at it that way. I can't remember why, because we watched it a few months ago. Maybe it was just, you know, we weren't born in the right decade. Maybe. What was, because you said it was one of your favorites of all time oh absolutely absolutely top five no doubt about it I can watch it any weekend oh yeah no I

think I did tell you uh oh no I didn't I didn't give the remove the review you had just mentioned it yeah you said number one chariots of fire the story of two athletes competing in 1924. Brief encounter, the UK's equivalent of Casablanca. Yeah, I have not seen that one yet. Well, so again, brief encounter and Casablanca, you need to see both because they are referenced so, so much in other media.

Like, I guess it's sort of waning these days, but there was a time when you can't reasonably digest pop culture without running into references to both of these movies or respectively sort of US and UK. And it's still somewhat the case. I think I'm terrible just when it comes to pop culture. In general, I don't do great at trivia, like pub quizzes and stuff, unless if it's like a math or science category.

And for instance, I was just telling Shima this yesterday is that we watched the, or me and my buddies watched the Super Bowl a week ago and Kendrick Lamar performed at the halftime show, I thought it was okay. But I like to go and watch these like breakdowns of like everything you missed and like what it meant. I did not pick up on a single like cultural political reference in that half. Right. Like apparently it was just littered with them and I didn't I didn't understand any of it. So like when it comes to understanding like the cultural significance of like, you know, oh, this is a reference to that or this is a reference or like this had this.

I'm like the most ignorant. I'm just watching it like at surface level being like, oh, does this song sound good? It's like, yeah, this is pretty catchy. Did anybody do a flip? I'm just yeah, I think maybe that's the problem though is I haven't seen enough of these. My brain just doesn't work that way. I'm not able to stitch things together. Yeah, one of my weakest It's probably what makes me bad at cryptics as well, too It comes up less but there was there was an episode of house which referenced Casablanca I've seen all of house never well, it was years ago though. So I'm not gonna remember if I remember

There was an episode of house where there was like a 17 year old girl who was coming on to him. She ended up having something wrong in her brain that he diagnosed the end, but the end scene of that he came into the office to talk to her and he was basically recreating Humphrey Bogart's speech from the end of Casablanca. If you're not with someone your age, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. Right. Which to anyone who had seen Casablanca was a great reference.

And if you hadn't seen it, it would just totally pass you by. I was one of the people that had passed by for sure. The Simpsons does that with so many things. Right. You can watch an episode of the Simpsons as a kid, right? And then years later, you'll watch a movie and you're like, oh, that's what they were referring to. It's like, yeah, now I get it.

I was just going to say you didn't like Characters of Fire. You may or may not like my other top, my top three movies. Characters of Fire, The Sting, it's a great, it's a great American movie. Shawshank Redemption. That's one that everyone likes. Oh, I love Shawshank. I love Shawshank.

Yeah, yeah. That's a recognized classic, I think. Yeah. I was wondering if the third one was going to have like an incredible soundtrack as well, like an iconic soundtrack, because the first two. Yes. Oh yeah. The music is such an important part of both of those films.

I mean, I would argue it's the same for Shawashank like I can I can like hum in my head I won't do it on the podcast But like that final scene in case someone hasn't seen shashank I won't ruin anything, but there's a final epic scene where one of the main characters kind of does something significant will say and like That scene when it's raining I can like, the soundtrack for that is just, yeah, fantastic, fantastic. Love Shawshank.

And I love watching Shawshank with people that haven't seen Shawshank. I've probably seen it like six times because like anytime I find out that someone hasn't seen Shawshank, I'm just like, well, we got to watch Shawshank. It's like one of the most enjoyable movies to watch With people that haven't seen it and that it haven't haven't like don't know the plot of it Obviously anyways, alright. Well tie a bow. I'll let for the listener. I will watch Ben's other favorites and we will let you know There's hope though because I do like Shawshank Be sure to check these show notes either in your podcast app or at adspthepodcast.com for links to anything we mentioned in today's episode, as well as a link to a get up discussion where you can leave thoughts, comments and questions.

Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed and have a great day. I am the anti brace.