Bec went to an opera with the famous drinking song. Everything was great, except the story.
Matt and Lucie (his wife, who is a solar physicist) are going to see a solar eclipse. To see it, you have to be on a ship close to the Antarctic. It's a rare eclipse that goes the wrong way (East to West) because you're on the other side of the pole and thus East and West are flipped. The ship have a science lab, which Matt is excited about. He's not allowed to catch an Antarctic krill from episode 018 (update), but they might wash up dead on the coast of Antarctica.
Matt requests ideas from listeners for what problems to solve while he's in the Antarctic circle. Matt mentions a few plans he has, but hopes for good suggestions. He'll be on the ship when this episode releases, so he can't take anything special with him.
If everyone in the world gave me one in their local currency, how much money would I have in Euros?
Some countries accept multiple currencies, in which case Matt is using the most local currency with an ISO abbreviation. He then wrote some code to google the exchange rates. The worst case is Indonesia, which is the 4th most populated country with one of the worst value-per-unit rates. The best exchange rates are Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman.
The overall result is 1'229'461'715 €. The average person would give you 0.158 €.
A "ding" and a "ka-ching" from Bec
Building on 017-1: How many Beck's fit in Bec Hill (both by consumption and theoretical total volume)?
By consumption: Bec and Matt drank as many Beck's as they could and recorded the process. Some of the beers they drank were non-alcoholic ones. Bec complains that Matt was a terrible control. Once you use the bathroom, the experiment stops. In the end, both drank 6 bottles, which comprises a third of what they bought.
By volume: Bec has looked at X-Rays, but the max amount of bottles were one. She also asked two sword swallowers, Snookie Mono and Snake Fervor, about this. Both said "don't swallow bottles, you will die". Conclusion: Don't insert any bottles in any way, it's not safe. She also reached out to two doctors, Adam Kay and Doctor Xand, who said that skin is very stretchy and suggested surgically implanting the bottles.
To measure her volume, Bec had a bath at Matt's house. Matt then calculated the volume of the displaced water, which was 56.5l. In beer, that's the content of 205.5 bottles.
Eric replied: So cool that you answered my hole-in-pumpkin question. My initial thought was as Bec mentioned, as it came to me while carving a pumpkin. However, Matt was right with his answer to the stated question. Of course a pumpkin is not a Jack-o-Lantern.
Matt's companion video had several unimpressed commenters, who said it was obvious because you can move a door through its own frame. He reckons this won't work with anything with a spherical cross section.
Matt's pumpkin hole has been turned into a somewhat pathetic Jack-o-Lantern.
A "full ding from me" from Eric
The current episode is recorded with Bec outside the cupboard in Matt's office. A few people felt bad that they sent Bec back to the cupboard, and replied on Twitter. There was no supermajority vote (⅔), so there will be no big changes as a result of the poll.
After thanking 3 randomly selected patrons, Bec reminds listeners that they have until 2021-12-07 to subscribe if they want this year's christmas card.
It is not Bec's card.
Bec requests a Christmas gift from the listeners: Reviews on iTunes. Apparently, they really help.