Matt went to Disney World, where he met Alan (the intern from Captain Disillusion). Matt and Bec talk a bit about differen kinds of Disney theme parks and rides.
Matt and Bec are recording this episode in a studio in New York, with sound engineer Jody.
Bec was staying in Italy in Castrovillari with friends. Her friend's favourite reason for living there was billboard mountain, a mountain topped by two billboards that you can't see from the bottom.
How much do you increase your chance of catching the subway by walking to the nearest stop in the direction of travel? Where is the break-even point?
[Editor's note: The problem starts with an editing mistake, repeating section 045 (note) from earlier in this episode.]
There is a threshold point in-between two stations where it's faster to walk against the direction of travel. To calculate that point, Matt and Bec first walked between a few stations to measure their walking speed. The audio from that walk is part of the episode. During the walk, among other things, they wonder why police cars have different sirens. They also took the subway back and timed it.
On average, the subway is about 5.9 times faster than walking. While the average wait at the platform is approx. 2.5 minutes, it is independent of walking forwards and backwards. With this data, the threshold point is at 41.5% along the way between two stations, which Google Maps' path finding confirms.
A ding ding by Bec
How long is a New York Minute, really? People say it's the time between when a traffic light turns green and a driver starts to honk their horn. Is Lauren Armstrong-Carter the best producer of all time?
A New York Minute is a quick duration. Originally, it came from the suggestion that it takes a New Yorker a minute to do what it would take a Texan an hour to do, to suggest that New York is fast.
While in a bar, Bec and Matt stumbled across the movie New York Movie, which Bec and Matt watched and took notes on. Bec theorizes that one of the Olsen twins died, and the entire movie was acted by the other one. Matt thinks that they were never twins and there was always only one. Matt and Bec have recreated all the recognizable New York shots from the movie. The runtime of the film was 01:30:47, or 5437 seconds, or 90.61 times a normal minute.
There is no Any Other Business this episode, but Bec and Matt recorded one episode of the I'm a Wizard bonus podcast on their walk for problem 045-1. Matt was recognized live during the recording.
In this episode, one of the three patrons thanked was a repeat from a previous episode. They'll get a postcard from Bec.
Bec and Matt have forgotten to pick up twisties, but will rectify that for the next episode. Oh, and they got backstage access and hung out with Seth Meyers.