April 27, 2020

27. The Great Mongolian Potato Sack Yak Race

1 hour 3 minutes

Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

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.

https://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/squinsqu/

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Potato_Head

https://www.ashrita.com/about/

23:36 Hypothesis: a steadily tedious job becomes bearable when you procrastinate and then do it in short, frenetic bursts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder

Salmon cannon. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a28678200/fish-tube-video/

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunked_term

44:33 Theory: humans are unconsciously driving the evolution of some kinds of small birds toward cuter features and behaviors.

Samurai-lookin' crab. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heikegani

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dan-no-ura

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution

48:10 The "Please Call Stella" accent database

http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_language.php?function=detail&speakerid=145

WMAC Masters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqJSKeBKCM0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFL_(2020) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFL_(2001)

Slam Ball TOP PLAYS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PPuV7jK33k

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.

Support Topic Lords

...more

View all episodes

By Jim Stormdancer

4.8

1212 ratings