27. The Great Mongolian Potato Sack Yak Race
April 27th, 2020
1 hr 3 mins 11 secs
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Lords:
- Jesse is @thefringthing on Twitter.
- Avery has a Facebook somewhere and if you find it you can ask him whether he's playing any live shows.
Topics:
- 2:03 Math problems that are easy to explain but unsolved or unsolvable.
- 13:28 The list of Mr. Potato Head's accomplishments on his Wikipedia page makes him sound like a real person who was perhaps an ambassador.
- 23:36 Hypothesis: a steadily tedious job becomes bearable when you procrastinate and then do it in short, frenetic bursts
- 35:25 Kaz asks: your conversation about language changing to people's misunderstandings reminded me of how "pitted" olives have no pits in them, and how "inflammable" is confusing, so "flammable" was coined.
- 44:33 Theory: humans are unconsciously driving the evolution of some kinds of small birds toward cuter features and behaviors.
- 48:10 The "Please Call Stella" accent database
Microtopics:
- Writing a song and realizing that you just wrote Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies by mistake.
- Not the coolest thing to accidentally be ripping off.
- Rapidly shutting down the entire idea of introducing yourself.
- Continuing to talk about about how mysterious Jesse is.
- The question of whether a problem that has been proven unsolvable is as solved as it can be.
- Asking two people to simultaneously explain Goldbach's Conjecture.
- Four followed by more zeroes that would be in a trillion.
- Determine whether the RDA of Iron is a multiple of two primes while choosing a can of soup.
- Hitting the last prime number and running out.
- Paul Erdos' advice for dealing with aliens who request Diagonal Ramsey Numbers.
- Avery's favorite math proof.
- Explaining to your bosses that your current task is technically uncomputable.
- Not being able to elaborate on packing arc segments because biotech analysts might have you killed.
- Yelling excitedly about graph isomorphism at the gym and tripping the Lunk Alarm.
- Disappointment that Mr. Potato Head doesn't have an honorary doctorate.
- Mr. Potato Head's presidential physical fitness award.
- Potato cannibalism.
- Most Votes For Mr. Potato Head In A Political Campaign.
- Everyone who has finished Super Mario Bros. 2 in front of a Twin Galaxies representative.
- A strange man lurking behind you while you play Mario, writing down your score.
- The guy 120 Guinness World Records, or 119 if you don't count the "Most Guinness Records Held At Once" record.
- Potato sack racing a yak across the Mongolian desert.
- Most Yaks Raced Through The Mongolian Desert. (1)
- The near worldwide tie of Most Guinness Records Not Held At Once.
- Walking using shovels as stilts.
- Most balloons inflated to inches in one hour. (671)
- Slicing potatoes while hopping on a shovel.
- Inheriting two shovels from your uncle's estate and trying to figure out what world records you can set using them.
- Longest distance continuously somersaulting. (12 miles)
- Whether cartwheeling for 12 miles is more strenuous than somersaulting for 12 miles.
- Jumping on a pogo stick until your O2 tank is depleted.
- Sleeping holding a brick.
- Most Injuries Not Incurred Trying To Break World Records.
- Trying to remember Fish Ladders but being derailed by the Fish Cannon.
- Taking a break from counting fish.
- Not performing any medicine for 10 hours and then in the next hour frantically performing 10x as much medicine as you normally would.
- Buying a short-range electric car to teach yourself to plan better.
- Being really confused by the turtle appearing on your dashboard and then the car turning off.
- A dashboard light that's like the no smoking sign except instead of a cigarette it's a picture of your car.
- Sneaking onto a billionaire's estate to furtively charge your Nissan Leaf.
- Looking at security cam footage and seeing that you gave electricity to Doctor Who in a time of need.
- The incredible variety of charge ports on a Nissan Leaf.
- Having trophies ready to distribute as soon as you're allowed to leave the house.
- Ordering yourself a "best attitude" trophy.
- The gradient of a trophy's meaninglessness.
- Ordering a bunch of trophies from Crown Awards and subsequently every ad you see being for Crown Awards.
- Delving too deep into what a trophy is until it loses all meaning.
- Realizing you could've ordered trophies better and throwing your existing trophies in the trash.
- Passions being both flammable and inflammable.
- Words that have changed meanings because of persistent misunderstandings.
- Having a story about corn husks.
- Holding a corn husk in the grocery store and saying "Ah! Corn husks!"
- Explaining to schoolchildren that they used corn husks to wipe before toilet paper was invented but the children don't know what husks are so they assume you mean corn cobs.
- Not eating the crabs that look like your forefathers.
- Paying more attention to cats who cry at the same frequency as human babies.
- Not eating the moths that look more like the soot-covered trees they're hiding on.
- Sphinx Of Black Quartz, Judge My Vow except for the IPA.
- Comparing accents visually.
- Inventing new accents to compensate for accents merging into each other.
- Having a particularly grating way of speaking and blaming it on being from San Francisco.
- Your dead relative not listening to this podcast.
- Whether or not Dragon's Lair is a pun.
- Yelling like a soda jerk when the order is ready and nobody coming to pick it up because they can't understand what you're saying.
- The British TV show that Sanford & Son was based on.
- Memorizing your favorite carnival barker pitch and reciting it unprompted at family gatherings.
- Field recordings of carnival barkers from the 1950s.
- Pro Wrestling somehow retaining its weird 19th-century carny-speak for over a century.
- Channeling the dark energy from your urn while you fight Hulk Hogan.
- WMAC Masters, the martial arts tournament series with health bars on the screen.
- If Undertaker and Hulk Hogan were trucks.
- Hockey except you play it with a basketball and there are trampolines on the floor.
- Taking basketball and making it extreme.
- Sitting around until one of you thinks of a way to end the show.