Disciplining Boys In The Park

 Disciplining Boys In The Park

This is Lex Education, the comedy science podcast hosted by Laura Lex

Laura: Hello and welcome to another episode of Lex Education. It's the comedy science podcast where comedian me, Laura Lex, tries to learn science from her normal nerdy younger brother, Ron, who's not here because he's in Sweden. So I've got the older version of Ron. It's my dad, Agony Dad.

Agony Dad: Oh, well, hello.

Laura: Hey, you might know, if you're a patron, you might know Agony dad from, uh, some of our bonus episodes, um, where we solved your issues using Agony Dad. And what else did we do? We did oceans and seas.

Agony Dad: Yeah, something like that.

Laura: Did we do another episode?

Agony Dad: Look, I've had a sleep since then. I can't remember that.

Laura: Yeah, but only about three hours. Um, how are you, Agony Dad?

Agony Dad: I am m. Very well, thank you, my girly.

Laura: Thanks for fixing my bathroom door this morning.

Agony Dad: Gotta do something.

Laura: Mackie, stop it. My stupid dog sitting in the window barking at passersby. Um, so Ron is off gallivanting. So, um, I've roped Agony dad in. Cause Agony dad is down to help me celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary. Um, my husband is not here, so I assume we're gonna watch some more Taskmaster this evening and have a takeaway.

Agony Dad: Seems likely.

Laura: Hey, how to celebrate 10 years of marriage. Fix the bathroom door with your dad.

Dad: What were we studying today, son? Son: Biology

Um, so, dad, today's episode. Ah, what were we studying? I literally edited this yesterday, so I should absolutely know.

Agony Dad: You did mention amino acids and protein. Proteins.

Laura: Yes. So I think we were discussing. Yeah, amino acids.

Agony Dad: Yes. I can, uh, tell you what I know in about 10 seconds.

Laura: Hey, it'll be 10 seconds more than I know.

Agony Dad: Amino m acids basically are, uh, organic compounds that, uh, is not basic chemicals, but complex ones that come out of nature, and they are the building blocks that make proteins.

Laura: Dad, that's way more than I know. And I've done a whole episode on it. Oh, well done, dad. So, yes, that's what we're covering today. Ron gets really into it. I think he likes this sort of stuff. And, um, and then there's a quiz, which I think I do much better than Ron gives me points for. Right. We'll listen to the episode and then we'll discuss afterwards.

Ron: Boom.

Laura: Bam, baby. It's biology. Biology. I need a pen, though. Tickly schnoz. I got a tickly little schnoz.

Ron: Can I read you just one bit of the.

Laura: God, it's been weeks for the listener now, Ron. It's been weeks and weeks and weeks.

Ron: I read you just one bit because it's gold.

Laura: It's great. Go on then.

Ron: The original Bridgewater celebrations Consisted of a large bonfire at the Cornhill built out of a large wooden boat. Around 100 tar barrels were added, together with just about anything else available which could be burned. This tradition was stopped due to a lack of old wooden boats to burn and because a number of good boats were thrown onto the fire and burned by over enthusiastic revellers.

Laura: Over enthusiastic revellers is a very kind way to refer to those, isn't it?

Ron: Yeah, just boat arsonists. Uh, a hundred barrels of tar. That feels like that's not going to be a pleasant, nice fire. That's going to be horrible.

Laura: Yeah, well, I can't wait on this.

Ron: No, I can't wait for the detention on this, Laura.

Laura: I feel like by the time we get to the detention though, you'll have read it out quote by quote.

Ron: Why don't we, um, do it, do the detention now?

Laura: Uh, I mean, we can do.

Ron: That's just me. I need to do proper research into this.

Laura: Yeah, we'll do it next week. Look, next week I'm in, uh, in Wellington Son's kids and have time and time and time to do work. So we can record all day.

Ron: Lovely. Um, I get to go to Dublin next week for work.

Laura: Well, that's going to clash massively with the time when I have got to record all day.

Ron: I'm only there for one night, so it'll be right.

Laura: Lovely. Do you get to stay quite central?

Ron: No idea. Haven't booked it yet. Oh,

00:05:00

Ron: it was a very last minute thing. I've never been to Ireland before. I'm excited.

Laura: Oh, you'll have a great time. It's beautiful.

Ron: Um, smashing. Right, Laura, let me close the. I'm gonna bookmark it and I will close the West Country Carnival Wikipedia page.

Laura: That's good for all of us.

Today we're going to do a lipids recap to just make sure

Ron: Um, Laura, what have we been doing recently in biology?

Laura: Triglycerides. Ronaldinho.

Ron: Yes. More broadly.

Laura: Fats.

Ron: Lipids. Yes.

Laura: Acids. Fatty acids.

Ron: 3.1.3.

Laura: Hey, fat ass. Sid.

Ron: So, Laura, we've. I think we've been, we've been bad on lipids.

Laura: It's been quite boring, Ron.

Ron: Yeah. But also, like, you know, I think, I think you did quite poorly on some of the quizzes.

Laura: Uh, that sounds right. Yep. It's a lot of drawing. The same little carbon caterpillars and then. Stop it. Expecting me to understand the difference.

Ron: So today we're going to do a little bit of a lipids recap to just make sure that we've got it.

Laura: Why though? Why don't we just have a fun time? Stop sneezing.

Ron: I'm sneezing now. Maybe we don't need to actually. What's next? Yeah, fuck it. Let's do proteins. All right. 3.1.4. I've not prepared anything for proteins, though. Um, you're right, though. Let's not do Lipids. Fucking hell.

Laura: Oh, God. Let's do something, though. This is disgusting. It's like you're breaking down now that you're not reading about carnival anymore. Uh. Oh, Christ. Stop. Do you need a minute?

Ron: No, I can power through. I just might sneeze loads more.

Laura: It's quite a sharp line on your beard you've got going on underneath. Yeah, yeah, always. You didn't even try on that one.

Ron: I held it in.

Laura: Held it in. I think it died on its way out. This is a good episode. This is nice. This is good for the listener.

Ron: The listener loves it. Uh, I've got good. Getting stuck with the listeners at the moment.

Laura: Why is our podcast so that. It's been three years.

Ron: I think it's because we never cut. We never. We never take a rain check and stop. God. It's not over yet.

Laura: Shall I start farting? Stop it. One way or the other, you can't be sniffing and sneezing.

Ron: Sniffing and a sneezing.

Laura: Push it out or suck it in. You can't do both.

Ron: Sniffing and a sneezing. Push it out or suck it in.

Laura: Ron, what's going on? You're not. You're just typing in snow. Sneezing. This is ridiculous. Do something related to the podcast, please.

Ron: Laura, shut. Uh, shut up. Just edit something.

Laura: I'm going to get a tattoo today.

Ron: Ron, are you.

Laura: Yeah.

Ron: What tattoo?

Laura: It's definitely going to be a kiwi. And then I think it's the fruit or the animal. The animal. I think it's going to be a little kiwi talking into a microphone.

Ron: Uh, oh, okay. Where?

Laura: I don't know.

You could sneeze on your hand, right? Okay. Where would the microphone go, though? On the finger

Ron: Cheek.

Laura: Just on my face.

Ron: What about, um, kind of like here in your hand? And then you could.

Laura: Where would the microphone go, though?

Ron: On the finger?

Laura: Probably not.

00:10:00

Ron: That would be good, though. Okay, I think, um, we're in the last, like, 20% of the sneezes, so we'll attempt to, um. Go on.

Laura: The sun rises in the east in the southern hemisphere

We're doing today, Laura, as we all knew, 3.1.4 proteins. Now, 3.1.4.1. General properties of proteins. Laura, what's a protein made of?

Laura: Amino acids.

Ron: Absolutely. What's an amino acid?

Laura: Uh, it's. I don't know.

Ron: Ron, correct answer. Uh, okay, Laura.

Laura: It's made of. It's Made of bits of DNA, isn't it? Well, DNA is made of amino acids.

Ron: Uh, no, if DNA was made of amino acids, it would be a protein. Um, no, we're going to draw an amino acid. Okay.

Laura: Love that for us. How big are its eyes?

Ron: We're going to have a, uh, carbon in the middle.

Laura: Okay. Garbanzo beans. Do you remember those heady days of the podcast?

Ron: That was a while back now.

Laura: That was right, Right. Early, uh, doors.

Ron: Right. Early doors.

Laura: Carnival.

Ron: Have you drawn that carbon?

Laura: I've drawn a C. Lovely.

Ron: We're gonna have an R group coming off that C, Laura.

Laura: Where do you want that, Ron? North, south, east, or west on the top?

Ron: North, north for R.

Laura: Oh, my God. I had a real, real dumb bins moment last night. This whole being in the southern hemisphere thing has been messing with my noodle quite a lot. You know, time difference, all that. And then I was listening to a guy do his set last night, and he was very, very funny. Uh, and he was talking about the suburb that he lived in and a company refusing to deliver his bed there. And then he said, it's in the west of the city. And he said what it was called in Maori, and it was like attitudi or something. And then he said, like what that meant, and he was like, oh, it's called the dawn dawn rising because you get such a good view of the sunrise from there. But he'd said it was in the west of the city. And I was like, does the sun rise on the other side of the sky here? And then I phased out for the rest of his set, trying to work out if the sun would rise on the opposite side in the southern hemisphere.

Ron: And does it?

Laura: Surely not, Ron.

Ron: Did he just get that wrong?

Laura: I don't know. Because isn't Japan in the southern hemisphere? And that's like the land of the rising sun, as in in the east. But then I was thinking about, no, it definitely, definitely rises in the east because our apartment faces north. And I'm sure it's been rising over there in the east and then setting in the west.

Ron: Yeah, it rises in the east in the southern hemisphere. Do you know how I remember where the sun rises?

Laura: How do you remember?

Ron: With our good, uh, friend Anthony Kiedis Line. And the sun may rise in the east. At least it settles in a final location. And I have to sing that to myself.

Laura: I have a real stupid way of remembering it. But it's when I was, like, getting going in comedy. There was a really lovely summer where I had a lot of west country gigs. But I just found myself driving to the west country during sunset quite a lot. And it was incredibly hard to drive with that much sun in your eyes. And now I just always think about the sun setting over the west.

Ron: Sets in the west country.

Laura: Yeah, everybody settles down in the west country.

Ron: It's lovely in the west country.

Laura: There were two people at my gig last night from Bristol.

Ron: Um, okay, Laura, so we've got the R group going off north.

Laura: Yep.

Ron: We're gonna have a hydrogen going off south.

Laura: Souths for hydrogen. I'm going to Hobbiton on Sunday.

Ron: Oh, uh, that's really cool.

Laura: Do you want to come out next year.

Ron: Maybe? Yeah, that would be cool.

Laura: There's two lab rats living in New Zealand. Maybe we could do a show for them.

Ron: Yeah. Just going to their house.

Laura: They live in different cities, but maybe there's a third. Are you the third lab rat living in New Zealand? Make yourself known.

Do you know how many bonds a nitrogen makes, Laura? 6

Okay, I've got an R and an.

Ron: H going off to the west where, um,

00:15:00

Ron: the sun sets. We're gonna have a nitrogen.

Laura: Whoa.

Ron: How many. Do you know how many bonds a nitrogen makes, Laura?

Laura: 6.

Ron: Why would that be?

Laura: I don't know. I just said a number really fast because if it was right, I'd have sounded great.

Ron: It's three.

Laura: Okay, I'm gonna put those off at diagonals.

Ron: Yeah. And we're gonna have two hydrogens coming off that all.

Laura: Ah, right. Nitrogen hydroxide.

Ron: Laura, what you've just run into is your latest functional group.

Laura: Whoa.

Ron: NH2. Like that. That's what we call an amine group.

Laura: Amine group because they're very religious group.

Ron: You got that there? Um, the mean is in, like, uh, that. Oh, that's. That's a mean stew you got. Yeah.

Laura: Um, I thought you meant, like, southern Americans. Amen, Father.

Ron: I like that. No, um, yeah, that's the Amy group on the other side. Laura, we're gonna have another carbon.

Laura: Oh, Thought you were gonna be the only carbon, buddy. But you're not. You're not special. Get over yourself.

Ron: And then coming off that carbon, we're going to have a double bond to.

Laura: An oxygen to the east.

Ron: Uh, oxygen. I'd do it like. Well, uh, I'd have those going off at diagonals. So a double bond to an oxygen at a diagonal, and then a hydroxyl group going off to the other diagonal.

Laura: And now a hydroxyl group goes down to the H and then align to the O. Or does the O bond to the.

Ron: How many bonds does a hydrogen make?

Laura: Oh, only one. So it must join to the O. Uh, yeah. And then that joins to the H. Exactly.

Ron: This is a functional group that we've run into before, Laura.

Laura: Hydroxyl group.

Ron: The hydroxyl group, yes. But the bigger functional group with the carbon, the double bond to the oxygen.

Laura: That is a, uh, conifer.

Ron: That's just saying stuff, isn't it?

Laura: Yeah.

A man came over and asked me how I could help his business

Um, I've got Alison June Smith's pen again, Ron.

Ron: Who's Alison June Smith?

Laura: Don't you remember we talked about her in Leicester? She's so lovely.

Ron: No, I don't remember that.

Laura: She does a really successful podcast called Women Talking Bollocks with Maureen Younger and Jen Brister.

Ron: Um, so I was at this, um, conference or whatever today. The guy came over and, um, chatted to him about how I could help his business. Ah. A bit. And then, um, usually, uh, it's about, you know, we scan their badge and then we reach out to them afterwards. Um, but he was really insistent that he wanted to speak to me later on. Didn't want to book a meeting there. There's something I really don't fucking get about people is I was, like, having great conversations with people. Like, we really help their business make them quite a lot of money. And it's like. And so. And then you're like, oh, do you want to book a meeting? Then they're like, no, no, no, no, no. Why? Just get in the fucking calendar. Anyway, so. Yeah, but. So he wanted to take my email address, so I wrote it down on one of the leaflets that we had. And then he was like, oh, can I use that pen for a second? And then he, like, made a note next to my email to be like, email this guy about this. And then he just looked at the pen on both sides, walked off with it.

Laura: Wow.

Ron: Power move. I'm pretty sure he thought it was merch, but, yeah, it was just really funny.

Laura: Um, I think what he's doing there is he's setting the tone, ready for negotiations with your business. And you'll find that when you come to set terms, that pen will suddenly appear again on the table and he'll be like, if I can take your pen, I can take a discount too.

Ron: Yeah, I don't respond well to that kind of hard balling, though.

An amino acid will form a chain of themselves to build up a protein

But anyway, um, Laura, what type of group is it?

Laura: Ron, I'm on the edge of my seat.

Ron: It's a carboxyl group.

Laura: Carboxyl, of course.

Ron: Do you remember where we've seen it before?

Laura: No, it.

Ron: We saw it before in the structure of a fatty acid.

Laura: Fatty Fatty acid, yes.

Ron: Um, so you've got the amine group on one side.

Laura: Yep.

Ron: You've got the carboxyl acid, the carboxyl group on the other side, which makes it an acid, hence

00:20:00

Ron: amino acid.

Laura: So, uh, okay, amine plus acid plus just these neutral guys hanging out in the middle.

Ron: Indeed. That's an amino acid, Laura.

Laura: Yes.

Ron: Amino acids, um, will form a chain of themselves to build up a protein.

Laura: Okay, so.

Ron: With the carboxyl group, where do you think that chain is going to form? Where do you think? Like the. The bond will break and open up to make a chain?

Laura: Uh, the hydrogen in the hydroxyl group.

Ron: Exactly. Yeah. Because we know, because it's an acid, there's a high propensity for that hydrogen to drop off, isn't there?

Laura: Yes. Because of, um. Polarity.

Ron: Exactly. Yeah. Good job. So the hydroxyl group itself is going to drop off.

Laura: Oh.

Ron: Um. And then one of the hydrogens from the UM mean the amine group is going to drop off. Um, and then that is what we know to be a condensation reaction.

Laura: Oh, yeah.

Ron: Because it produces a water molecule.

Laura: Yeah.

Ron: What's the opposite of a condensation reaction?

Laura: A, uh, reduction. No, oxidisation.

Ron: Hydrolysis reaction. Because we, um. Uh, because you have to put a water molecule in. I would like you, Laura, to draw me two amino acids joined together, please.

Laura: Can't do that right now. Busy.

Ron: What do you mean?

Laura: I'm just making notes.

Ron: Okay.

Laura: Um, so what now? What are you talking about?

Ron: Could you draw me two amino acids joined together?

Laura: No. I don't know how that happened.

Ron: Oh, I've just explained it.

Laura: No, you didn't. You said the H and the oh, drop off.

Ron: Yeah.

Laura: So I don't know then. Then you've got two spare connections.

Ron: Well, the carbon joins to the nitrogen because that's where the two spare connections are. Stop it, Laura.

Laura: No.

Ron: When you listen back to this, you'll see you're being a turd. No, you're being a turdy.

Family of the podcast go to park where a mean boy has been lately

Laura: Kids. No, no, no, no. Family of the podcast have gone to the park where a mean boy has been lately.

Ron: Why is he mean?

Laura: He called nephew of the podcast and child of the podcast a loser and snapped the toy of another child.

Ron: You need to stand up to this kid.

Laura: Well, that's why we've sent husband of the podcast along this time. I've never been to the park because, let's face it, I would not keep my tongue. But this, uh, time, it's younger sister of the podcast and husband of the podcast.

Ron: I can't imagine husband of the podcast, disciplining boys in the park.

Laura: I can. It's beautiful. Uh, but you know what he's like about Child of the Podcast. If anything threatened Child of the Podcast, he would lose it.

Ron: Yeah, that's true. Yep. That's beautiful, Laura.

Laura: I've done that perfectly.

Ron: I really like it.

Laura: What a clever day I'm having.

Ron: So, um.

Laura: And that's the beginning of a protein. Or is that already a protein if there's two of them?

Ron: So that's what you'd call a dipeptide.

Laura: Dipeptide. She sounds like the, uh, chairwoman of the local tennis association.

Ron: Di Peptide.

Laura: You need to get in touch with Di Peptide. She's the one that really runs things around here.

Ron: Di Peptide. Her sandwiches are all crusts.

Laura: Don't be stupid. She doesn't eat carbs. She hasn't eaten carbs since Margaret Wrigley said that they made your lips bluer around the Edge in 1984.

Ron: She smells like lemons.

Laura: That's because she has so much gin with lemon in it. That's all she's eating.

Ron: She does love gin. Dipeptide, um, farthest. That's called a peptide. A dipeptide.

Laura: Laura, why do you keep smacking your microphone today?

Ron: Oh, it's not this again, is it?

Laura: No, it's not rustling. It's definitely your microphone. You just keep bashing it.

Ron: I'm, um.

Laura: So.

Ron: I'm trying really hard, man.

Laura: You're doing beautifully, Ron. Look how much learning I've done.

Ron: Yeah. I've not talked about the carnival in upwards of 20 minutes.

Laura: Do you know who hates carnival? Di Peptide. She writes a complaint letter every year about carnival.

Ron: Yeah. Too many flashing lights. She doesn't even mind the noise. It's just a bit bright.

Laura: It brings on her migraines. You know what she's like about her migraines.

Ron: Yeah. And there's always Michael Jackson, and she can't separate the art from the artist. Um, do you remember recently, Laura, in, uh, biology, we've been talking about esters.

Laura: Yes. Don't really understand what they are, though.

Ron: It's just a functional group. It's a pattern of atoms that comes up. We're about to learn about another bond. Um, the C with the double bond to the O and the nitrogen with its hydrogen. That's what we call a peptide bond.

Laura: But they're so far away from each other.

Ron: What do you mean?

Laura: What do you mean? Both of them are a peptide bond?

Ron: So that whole little, um, area.

Laura: Oh, no, I see where they're connected There actually.

Ron: Yeah, in the middle.

Laura: In the middle. That's a peptide bond.

Ron: That's a peptide bond. Let me, let me just send you this little drawing. I like yours better because you've kept the diagonal.

Laura: Yeah, I see. The peptide bond. Yep.

Ron: Yeah. Um, when, as, as the uh, as the protein builds up, you just have lots and lots and lots of those. Um, that bit between the carbon and the nitrogen, that's um, that's where it will break if you were to do a hydrolysis reaction and build it up.

Laura: Gotcha.

Ron: Smashing.

Do you know how many different amino acids there are, Laura

So do you know how many different amino acids there are, Laura?

Laura: Four. No, seventeen.

Ron: Closer.

Laura: Three. Uh, hundred and one.

Ron: Laurie, you knew that would be far away.

Laura: Guess how many batteries.

Ron: Ah, you're not holding any batteries, right?

Laura: I'm not. Um, 24.

Ron: Further away than 17.

Laura: 19.

Ron: Closest so far.

Laura: 20.

Ron: It is 20, Laura.

Laura: There are 20amino acids. That's such a nice round number.

Ron: There are 20amino M acids common in.

Laura: All organisms that we know of.

Ron: There are other ones, but there are 20 in humans for example.

Laura: Common in all organisms. Did you say?

Ron: Yes.

Laura: God, this quiz is going to be awful. I feel like we've covered so much stuff.

Ron: We've covered only things very specific to amino acids and proteins.

Laura: Yeah. And it's loads of it. Uh, I can predict this quiz. You're going to say what's an amine group? What's a hydroxyl group? What's a peptide bond? How many amino acids common in all organisms? Where would the bond break on a hydrolysis reaction? Where is the chain gonna form when the amino acid turns into a protein? What's a dipeptide? And all I'm gonna remember is that she gets migraines.

Ron: Yeah, she hates gogglebox.

Laura: That's only because she applied for it and didn't get in.

Ron: I swear on Google you used to be able to just look, look at an image and now it takes you to the fucking page every time. I just want to look at the image, man.

Laura: I read an article the other day about how Google is intentionally making its service worse because it makes them more.

Ron: Money because you have to use it more because it's bad.

Laura: Yeah, you have to do multiple searches to get what you want. And paid search comes up to the top rather than organic search and all sorts of things like that.

Ron: M. They were, they were talking at work the other day about how um, like companies are having to completely redo their like SEO and, and um, search based marketing campaigns because of those like AI overviews at the top. Oh, those are just killing like people's appetite for clicking on links. So whereas before you might, um, search, uh, you know, just like, um, how can I do this for my business? Or something. And then a company like the one I work for would have a blog or a

00:30:00

Ron: video or something on it. You'd click on that, end up on the website, and then you're in the marketing funnel now. Now people are googling it and there's some shitty little AI extract at the top benefits no one. And then they leave. So having to completely, uh, rejig the way that they're doing, doing it. And weirdly, a big part of it is Pinterest. How's Pinterest coming back? That's odd, isn't it?

Laura: Yeah, that's really weird. Oh, I think Pinterest is big. The new business model. That's really odd.

Ron: Yeah.

Laura: Nobody has Pinterest unless they're planning a wedding.

Grindset is a slang term that often refers to relentless focus on achieving goals

Ron: No, but I guess now, like, you know, because I think, you know, like, grind set and manifesting things.

Laura: Grind set?

Ron: Well, you don't have a grind set, Laura. I'm actually not fucking surprised you haven't heard of it.

Laura: What's Grindset?

Ron: You don't have a grind set. It's when you get up and you hustle. Hustle all the time. You gotta grind at things. You gotta. You even a CEO?

Laura: Well, kind of, but I'm also the janitor. Uh, I'm everything.

Ron: Grindset is a slang term that often refers to a mindset of relentless focus on achieving goals, often to a point of exhaustion or neglecting personal. Well being, characterised by a never enough approach and a constant drive to work harder and longer.

Laura: That sounds like me.

Ron: Yeah. Anyway, Laura, um, I certainly neglect my.

Laura: Personal care, but it doesn't mean that I'm achieving anything at work. Lovely lab rat. Lindsay lent me a puzzle of the periodic table and I haven't even done it while I've been here.

Ron: Ron, is that the lovely lab rat that gave you those toys?

Laura: Yeah, some of them were for me.

Ron: That's such a nice thing to do. That really warmed my heart when I heard about that.

Laura: It's absolutely changed the game of being here because the kids are now occupied at, uh, home.

Ron: Did you say her name was Lucy?

Laura: Lindsey.

Ron: Lindsey. Lindsey. You're great.

Laura: Yeah, super great. And the other New Zealand lab rack, Georgina. Um, I feel terrible about this because we announced the Auckland dates first and she lives in Wellington, so she's coming to the Auckland show and then found out there was also a Wellington show, and now I feel terrible because she's Travelling ages to come and see Auckland and then I'm in Wellington anyway, but we're gonna go for a drink.

Ron: That'll make it up to you.

Laura: Or put her off our output forever when she realises what I'm like in real life.

Agony Dad: Foreign.

Ron: Yeah. We'll talk just a little bit about these amino acids and then next time we can talk about protein structures.

Laura: Okay.

Ron: Essentially the way proteins work is you build up these chains of amino acids and those R groups are variable. Okay. Now some of those R groups that. The R groups essentially fall into three different categories.

Laura: Right.

Ron: You have non polar side chains, grizzlies, non polar are, uh, groups. They're uncharged and they're hydrophobic. They're essentially like little fats that are attached to the, uh, the amino acid.

Laura: Right.

Ron: You have electrically charged side chains. They're almost like ions. They're missing, um, they're missing hydrogens or they have extra, um, electrons and they're physically charged. So they're going to interact with stuff, right?

Laura: Yeah, busy.

Ron: Um, and you have polar side chains, so they're uncharged. But, uh, the nature of the elements that are in that side chain lead it to have, yeah, to have polar bonds and whatnot. So they're going to be hydrophilic.

Laura: Now are they electronically charged ones? Are they hydrophilic or hydrophobic or.

Ron: Uh, they'll be, they'll be hydrophilic because they'll be attracted to the polar, the polarity of the water molecules.

Laura: Got you.

Different amino acids in a protein define its structure and where it lives

Ron: Um, the different amino acids that make up the protein then define its structure and where it lives. Um, so what, um, let me, uh, let me send you some figures. This is what a protein looks like, Right? Or at least this is kind of a diagram how we represent the structure of a protein. You can describe this to the listener in a second.

Laura: Whoa. It's like somebody's just popped a party popper and there's wiggles everywhere.

Ron: Yeah. So, uh, yeah. Do you want to describe what you're looking at in. With a bit more descriptively?

Laura: Um, well, it's literally like streamer ribbons. Um, you got red ones coming out the bottom. You got blue ones going up the top.

00:35:00

Laura: It's kind of more shredded in the middle. Um, oh, wait, those are arrows. There's some wires. There's green bits. It's, it's basically curly. Curly, curly ribbons all coming out of like a central big bang.

Ron: Yeah, they're really cool. So, um, there's two, um, that different parts of the protein form into these like, common structures. So those coils, they've got in there. Those are called alpha coils. Um, proteins tend to coil up like that quite a lot. There's a specific structure to it where every four amino acids. The um. Is it will bond to the amino acid that's like along in the. In in the coil, if that makes sense. Like one sort of rung down and that gives it like stability. But then for it to have that bond you have to have those like um, electrically charged side chains. Um, ah, side chained amino acids every four. So they can form that. And those bits that. You notice that ah, arrows there, those are called beta sheets. Um. And uh, similarly.

Laura: That sounds like a teenage boy's dream.

Ron: Similarly those will have specific amino acids that they have in there. And then if I send you just this other picture quickly. So these are some uh, membrane proteins. Um, so they have different tags on them. Up there at the top, that one on the far right, the. That's got a um, green fluorescent protein coming out of it.

Laura: It's called Nigel Farage.

Ron: I didn't get that at all because.

Laura: It'S on the far right.

Ron: Right. Oh, uh. I was confused because it was green. So I didn't see.

Green Party accused of comparing Keir Starmer to Enoch Powell

Laura: I'm quite annoyed at the Green Party this week actually.

Ron: Oh yeah, do tell.

Laura: They've been really stoking the. The. So Keir Starmer did. Not a great speech but a speech that, that had a line in it saying we risk becoming a nation of strangers. Talk English language and stuff and some things about like immigrant policies and the Green Party really jumped on this bandwagon of comparing him to Enoch Powell because of his river speech.

Ron: Yeah. Ah, Enoch Powell used the word strangers.

Laura: Yeah.

Ron: Completely obfuscates the point.

Laura: Absolutely. And I think like, maybe it's a clumsy speech but why are you fanning these flames? Why are you being like this? Why are you jumping on this awful thing. Thread of politics that just seeks to divide everyone. It's ridiculous. I was really quite angry about it and um.

Ron: Because if you're. If you're attacking him for using rhetoric similar to um, you know£ um. Obviously that's not brill. But if you're doing that you're not attacking him for what he's actually saying and the points that he's making.

Laura: Yeah.

Ron: So yeah.

Laura: I just thought it was like needlessly divisive.

Ron: Yeah. The um.

Laura: Criticising for the stuff he's actually doing. That's not great.

Ron: Yeah. Because he sucks.

Laura: Well, I'm a bit divided. I'm following a few accounts that are like if Labour actually had a, a Good PR wing. Um, and they're listing off the stuff that is actually happening that's actually very cool that we're just not hearing about. And there's a lot of cool policies coming out that just are not hitting. Like Labour aren't making a song and dance about it for whatever reason.

Ron: I guess. I don't. I haven't seen those things. I have to see those things to comment. But then I still don't like him. I wouldn't give him credit for them.

Laura: Sure.

Laura: Ron, you have thrush of the belly button

Ron: Um, anyhoo, Laura, so those images that I've just sent over there, uh, those are membrane proteins. Which type of amino acid do you think is going to be on those alpha coils that's embedded into the membrane?

Laura: Say that again, Ron. I've lost interest.

Ron: Which type of amino acid do you think is going to be in the alpha coils that's embedded into the membrane?

Laura: Hydrophilic.

Ron: Why would that be?

Laura: Because there's water in the membrane.

Ron: What's a membrane made out of?

Laura: Should we stop?

Ron: No, let's just finish this point.

Laura: No, it's gone. I don't know.

Ron: What's a membrane? Okay, then let me just say there's no water in the membrane. Um, the membrane is made up.

Laura: They had their head stuck in a pool.

Ron: No, the heads are on the outside. You have the hydrophobic legs inside. It's like a thin layer of oil, basically. So you have a hydrophobic, um, amino M acids there. And that will literally embed that

00:40:00

Ron: protein into the membrane. It won't be able to leave because as soon as it, like, rocks out of the membrane a little bit, it'll get repelled by the water that's in the cellular milieu and go back into the. The membrane.

Laura: Right.

Ron: Fascinating stuff. Um, yeah, proteins are cool. Next time, enzymes.

Laura: Did you answer the question you asked?

Ron: Yes.

Laura: Okay, good. Glad we were all there for that. Good work, Ron.

Ron: All right, bye now.

Laura: Bye. I've got so many tabs open, it would give people a nosebleed. Simply so many tabs open. Okay, it's quizzin time, Ron. Stop pissing into your piss trough.

Ron: Never.

Laura: Never again. Never. Never. Oh, I, uh, had such blues yesterday and today.

Ron: I tell you, Laura, I've got such reds. And that's why I've got this can of Caniston.

Laura: Oh, no. Are you pissing blood?

Ron: No, I have thrush of the belly button.

Laura: What? I didn't even know you could get thrush of the belly button.

Ron: No, I'm. I'm perplexed by it, to be honest. It appeared after my fuck your belly button.

Laura: You always should pee after somebody fucks your belly button, Ron.

Ron: It appeared after my canoeing trip on the Y.

Laura: Were you canoeing in a giant baguette?

Ron: No, but I did get wet. Ba. Wet.

Laura: Maybe it was real yeasty river. What was the river called?

Ron: The yellow.

Laura: Uh, the Y East. Oh, the Y Bread. Like rye bread. Yeah, the white loaf. Uh, I'm sorry, you've got. What do you have to do? Just stick the pessary in your. In your tummy button.

Ron: I think I'm just gonna. I think I'm just gonna rub cream in there.

Laura: What am I going to have wrong with you?

Ron: I had to, um. So I tried to book a doctor's appointment this morning because it wasn't going away. And then they texted me back, and they were like, we need you to send pictures of it, and we need lots of pictures. We need you to send lots of pictures. And you need to circle, uh, it. Because obviously, like, when. Usually when you complain of, like, a skin ailment, it might just be, like, on the back of your shin so they wouldn't know where it was. But for me, it was like it was on my belly button, so it's, like, really, like, clear where it was. So I sent you just two of the pictures.

Laura: I really hope that you circled it in permanent marker on your stomach and then took a picture. You did. Ron, surely you're supposed to circle it digitally in the photo.

Ron: Not. Not there in the. In the. How To. That they sent. They. They. They didn't circle it digitally.

Laura: Uh, I will be putting these photos on the Instagram, Ron.

Ron: That's fine.

Do you know the most you've ever made your husband laugh

I think I've got respectable tummy hair. Not too hairy, not. Not too pink.

Laura: That tummy button, isn't it.

Ron: It is, isn't it?

Laura: Yeah. Oh, uh, sorry about your itchy little gash there, Ron.

Ron: Do you know the most I've ever made older sister of the podcast, Sarah's husband laugh?

Laura: Yeah.

Ron: Um, it was when we went on that little camping trip.

Laura: To the Cotswolds.

Ron: Yeah, to the Cotswolds. And I can't remember why, but I really. I vividly remember this. I was sat with the family, and I remember saying, I don't have a lot of body hair, but boy howdy, is it long. And Tom. M. Tom cracked the fuck up. It's the most I've ever made him laugh.

Laura: And when he laugh, he gets giggly.

Ron: Yeah.

Laura: Yeah, he's a giggler.

Laura, what's an R group? An R group is a representative

Ron: Anyhoo, Laura, we're here for a biology quiz. Do you Remember what we did in the bulk of the lesson?

Laura: Uh, oh, it was amino acids becoming proteins. Please don't ask me to draw

00:45:00

Laura: anything because I can't do that bit.

Ron: No, no, we're not drawing anything today, um, because I wanted to talk more about sort of functional groups and stuff like that. So. Laura, my quizzes, my quizzes, my quizzes. In the sheet they tell me that this question has been in the, uh, in the quiz for the last three episodes. And you've noticed gotten it right yet? But I continue to ask Laura, for the love of God, what's an R group?

Laura: An R group is a representative in a drawing of a specific group. But it's like a placeholder.

Ron: Yes, you'll still get the mark, but can you give me some more? Why do we use R groups?

Laura: To simplify? Um, maybe.

Ron: Maybe use amino acids as an example to explain why R groups are useful.

Laura: Yeah, because if you're drawing an amino acid, it might connect off to four or five amino acids to make a protein. But also it might branch off to a different functional group that is irrelevant to what we're trying to show in this diagram. But you need to show that it's going off and connecting there.

Ron: I'm so glad I asked you to expound because. What, what are you talking about? No, like, I feel like that has revealed that you don't understand the function of R groups. Oh, uh, amino acids all have the same base. Okay. But, uh, I see a ship in the harbour and if it wasn't for your misfortune, I'd be a, uh, heavenly person today.

Laura: Um.

Ron: No, so amino acids, they have the same base, uh, at like the, the bottom of it, but there are 20 different amino acids, um, and it's almost like there's 20 of them and they're all wearing different hats. And the R group just represents the hat.

Laura: Well, that was not my understanding of what an R group was.

Ron: Nope. And we'll try again next week and we'll see if you get it then.

Laura: Good, uh, luck. Ron.

Ron: Laura, what's a polypeptide?

Laura: She's the head of the pta.

Ron: No, that was Di. Oh, that was, that was Di Peptide.

Laura: Yeah. Polypeptide is her daughter who's actually rebelling with a nose ring.

Ron: Yeah, um, Di Peptide is really wary of the Chinese, but she actually knows quite a lot about their trade policies, so she's hard to argue with. With.

Laura: Oh, die. Um, polypeptides are, ah, multi amino, um, acid proteins.

Ron: Try again.

Laura: I can't. That was a real scrape of the wall.

Ron: Poly peptides are just proteins.

Laura: Yeah, that's what I said.

Ron: Yeah, but you didn't know that. No, that was.

Laura: It doesn't matter if I didn't know it, if I said it. I get the point.

Ron: But no, if you tell me the.

Laura: Examiner is not gonna know that. I've just written down anything.

Ron: Who do you think the examiner is? I am examining. I'm m examining you right now.

Laura: You have to accept them.

Ron: No, but you don't know. It doesn't matter. You admitted that you scraped the wall, and, um, those are the lead paint flakes that came off.

Laura: If I said it, I know it.

Ron: You're not getting earmarked. A polypeptide's just a protein. Uh, a peptide, a dipeptide is two amino acids joined together.

Laura: Ben, I got it absolutely

00:50:00

Laura: right.

Ron: By accident.

Laura: So what?

Ron: No, if you only find your own.

Laura: You were starving to death in a forest. You don't get home and go, oh, well, I'll still kill myself because I didn't know which way I was walking.

Ron: Have higher standards for your learning. Stumbling home through a forest.

Laura: Look, I don't know how I got into the forest of science, but all I want to do is get out, uh, before Don Minnie feeds me to the gruncher.

Ron: Look, and in an exam, when the grunches come in at you, fine. But when we're doing, you know, gruncher tests with the min pins, then we're gonna expect you to do it right, and we're gonna drill that into you. You're not allowed to stop and grab your bag. You're not allowed to take the lift. You gotta get it right.

Laura: I just don't understand what more you wanted there. You asked me a question. I gave the correct answer down to the T. And you're cross about it.

Ron: I wanted you to know it, not guess it.

Laura: But I put it together using logic.

Ron: Ron, you literally said afterwards, you don't know where you scraped that.

Laura: Listen, poly means many. We're talking about amino acids and proteins. Did you do logic?

You use context to work it out. That's what I'm saying

Ron: Exactly. Yeah. So you use context to work it out, but you didn't just know exactly. That's what I'm saying. You use context to work it out. You knew that this was a, like, protein, uh, was basically just the thing to say, but no, it's not good enough right now. This is a level.

Laura: God, you're hard work, Laura.

You haven't gotten any of the questions right. You are going to get pilloried for this

Ron: What's an amine group?

Laura: An amine group is a. This is the seesaw, I think. And it's got an acid on one side of it and something else on the other side. No, an amine is one half of an amino acid. So it has the molecules that make up an acid on one side and then the amine group is a group of a molecule. It's. It's a type of group of molecules that fixes onto an acid to make an amino acid. And it dictates what the amino acid is.

Ron: No, you're close.

Laura: Yeah, it's like it's one half of the seesaw bit, isn't it?

Ron: It's one half of the backbone. It's what gives the amino acid the amino bit. An amine group is a functional group, which is some terminology that you need to lock into. An amine group is a functional group. It's a nitrogen with two hydrogens coming off of it.

Laura: Gosh, you wanted a very specific answer there.

Ron: Yep. Because I asked a specific question.

Laura: Thank God I got the first question right.

Ron: You haven't gotten any of the questions right. You were asked what an R group was. You couldn't tell me. You asked what a polypeptide was. You said words and they happen to be right. But I know for a fact.

Laura: Fact.

Ron: You didn't know it, so you didn't get a mark there.

Laura: You are going to get pilloried by the listenership for this.

Ron: Uh, yeah, I mean, I already got pilloried for. By. By certain listeners for, um, for using Chat GPT to write the episode description. And then they're like, oh, if you're gonna use ChatGPT to write the episode description, delete the bits that come around the text. It was like. No, that was. That was obviously on purpose. You were called fucking Lila in the description and the description doesn't match anything in the episode. That's just top bands. Yeah, it's why I left the extra bits in. That was. That was on purpose and funny. Um, Laura, what makes an amino acid an acid?

Laura: They're the acid on the other side of the amine group.

Ron: What acid?

Laura: Huh? Hydroxyl group.

Ron: Try again.

Laura: Two hydroxyl groups.

Ron: A, uh, carboxyl group. Oh, yeah, close. The hydroxyl group is part of the carboxyl ah group.

Laura: But Carbox Hill sounds

00:55:00

Laura: like somewhere in the Peak District.

Ron: Yeah, it sounds like where Jimmy Carr's from. Um, Laura, what's a peptide bond?

Laura: Oh, God. It's ah, where a peptide joins on to some other stuff.

Ron: Need more.

Laura: I don't have more, do I? I give you everything I have at all times, Ron.

Ron: Doesn't mean I don't need more.

Laura: Um, Let me have a quick look in my notebook. The peptide bond, Ron, is the carbon, nitrogen and oxygen in the middle. And it's where it would break in a hydrolysis reaction. Where the protein dipeptide would break in a hydrolysis reaction.

Ron: What's joined together?

Laura: The carbon and the nitrogen of. Of, um, two amino acids.

Ron: Which bits?

Laura: What are you typing?

Ron: I'm not, I'm just clicking around a spreadsheet.

Laura: Carbon and the nitrogen. I just told you that.

Ron: Give me more fucking. Because I can tell.

Laura: What?

Ron: I can. I can tell. You're reading this.

Laura: I'm looking at my diagram and the carbon is.

Ron: Yeah, which you shouldn't be doing. This is a closed book test.

Laura: I told you I was having a look in my notebook.

Ron: It doesn't mean you're allowed.

Laura: You didn't say no.

Ron: I'm saying no.

Laura: Now move on, because that's all I have. That's all you taught me.

You get zero marks on this quiz because you didn't answer correctly

Ron: All right, zero marks.

Laura: Well, teach better.

Ron: Is the bond between two amino acids from the amine group of 1 to the carboxyl group of the other. You could have said that, couldn't you?

Laura: Don't have that written down.

Ron: No, but you made those notes, so don't fucking blame me because I made.

Laura: Notes on everything you told me.

Ron: No, you didn't, because then you'd know what a fucking R group is like six weeks on from when we've been doing this. Laura, what are the three categories of amino acids?

Laura: Oh, fuck off, Ron. There's 20 of them in. In each organism.

Ron: Yep.

Laura: God, we covered a lot in this episode, didn't we? This is going on forever. Um, what was the question?

Ron: What are the three categories of amino acids?

Laura: Um, polar, non polar and electronically charged.

Ron: Did you read that off your notes?

Laura: No.

Ron: Swear on child of the podcast life. You didn't read that off your notes.

Laura: I can't do that, Ron.

Ron: 0 marks. Though this might be the first how.

Laura: I banged my head on a television.

Ron: This might be the first time you've ever just gotten zero marks from a quiz.

Laura: Which is bullshit because I've answered several questions correctly. You just don't like that I got them right. Didn't get them right. The right intonation for you.

Ron: The last two you did get some bits right. But you read that off your list.

Laura: The last one I absolutely smashed. And just because I'm not willing to jeopardise my child's life, you. You won't, because I. I did read it out of my notebook, but in the image of my notebook that's in my memory.

Ron: Bullshit. Absolute bullshit.

Laura: Shut up, Ron.

Ron: No. First zero ever. That's quite like. Like you. Sure, you did get the what's a polypeptide? Right. But I think we can both agree you don't understand it, which is the point of these quizzes. To get you to understand things.

Laura: Any?

Ron: No. So you should get 0 marks in all quizzes.

Laura: Fine by me.

Ron asks me a question and I guess it by accident

So there we go. So, dad, you haven't heard this episode, but, uh, there's a question that Ron asks me. Right? Okay. I get the answer completely right. And then Ron refuses to give me the points for it because he says I didn't know it. I just said the right words by accident.

Agony Dad: Okay.

Laura: How unfair do you think that is?

Agony Dad: Well, did you or did you know?

Laura: Of course I did. I haven't learned anything. It's so boring. But that doesn't matter.

Agony Dad: It's a lucky guess.

Laura: So here was my argument. If you're lost in the woods and you find your way home, you don't kill yourself because you didn't know which way you were going. You found your way home. Fine. Take the wind.

Agony Dad: Yes, but this is called lex education, and the idea is that you get educated to have the knowledge and therefore.

Laura: But if the words were in there, then surely

01:00:00

Laura: that's a form of learning. I had to know it to be able to say it.

Agony Dad: No, it's a lucky guess based on some key words that have sunk in without actually understanding what the meaning was.

Laura: If Mum was here, she'd agree with me.

Agony Dad: Your mum would be looking at your curtains.

Do you know what an R group is? No. I still don't know the answer

Laura: Okay, dad, do you know we had a question that came up for the third consecutive quiz today, and I still don't know the answer. Do you know what an R group is?

Agony Dad: No.

Laura: No. Okay, me neither. I'd love to now be able to explain it to you, but I still don't complete. I swear to God, Ron's changing the answer every time he asks me. Today it was something about hats the other week. I'm sure it was just. It's a placeholder for, uh, other things.

Agony Dad: Tell me what you think it is.

Laura: Okay, so today, Ron's explanation for it was. So if you're drawing out an amino acid or a protein, you've got all your carboxyls and hydroxyl groups joining together in your chain. And then an R group is like a compound or something that comes off the amino acid that it's. You use the R as a placeholder. That can mean lots of different functioning things. And the R group changes what the amino acid does. And, um, Ron said It's like lots of different hats that the amino acid can wear.

Agony Dad: Okay. Sounds like it's a rather complex version of valency which you get in inorganic chemistry where certain atoms can stick to each other and the, the bond matches if you like. So maybe it's an R group can stick to another R group but can't attach to an S group or something. I don't know. Total guesswork. No idea.

Laura: Don't know.

What future episodes would you like to cover in the podcast

Um, and your final question in your pop quiz. Um, who's better, me or Ron?

Agony Dad: That's very subjective. Depending on. On. In which way? Better.

Laura: Yeah. Uh, just a joy to be around.

Agony Dad: Probably. You?

Laura: Yes.

Agony Dad: Marginal.

Laura: Suck it, Ron. I'm better.

Agony Dad: I will quantify that by the fact you've got a three year old for me to play with and he hasn't.

Laura: No. Well, he's got a girlfriend of the podcast, Judith, but.

Agony Dad: Yeah, but I.

Laura: She's not as interactive. No, she never comes to visit anymore. Goodness sake. Judith, um, what future episodes would you like to do.

Agony Dad: Well on? Lex Education.

Laura: Yeah. Um, what specialist subjects do you want to cover in the future? We're trying to entice people to become patrons and sign up.

Agony Dad: Alternative energy sources.

Laura: Oh, okay. I'm putting it on the spreadsheet. M. That's probably a detentron, isn't it? That's much more scientific than our, um, last thing that we added to the spreadsheet, which was Bridgewater Carnival.

Agony Dad: Right.

Laura: Ron is fascinated by the fact that not all towns have carnivals. That it's quite a West country thing. And he didn't really find that out until he moved away. That not all towns just randomly have a night in November where loads of floats parade through. But I'd never really thought about it until he brought it up because I haven't really thought about carnival since I left home. But yeah, were they. Why did west country towns have carnivals?

Agony Dad: I really don't know.

Laura: Yeah, we're going to do an episode on it.

Agony Dad: Yeah. Should, um, do. Yeah, research it in the meantime.

Laura: I think Ron did a lot of research during one of our science episodes. Um, okay. Alternative energy sources. I'm in.

Agony Dad: Um, what else is there? Uh, that would be actually interesting.

Laura: Well, you're saying that like, some of our episodes aren't actually interesting and that feels really.

Agony Dad: No, but they may be just a bit too highbrow.

Laura: Oh, I can make anything lower brow, dad.

Agony Dad: But not impacting or uh, actually on people's lives where, you know, hydrogen powered cars or so on and so forth will actually impact on people's lives in the future. I mean, my generation has totally screwed this world.

Laura: Thanks for that.

Agony Dad: Oh, we didn't know we were doing it.

Laura: Our generation are continuing to screw it. And they do know they're doing it. Yes.

Agony Dad: Um. I mean, it. It scares the hell out of me that the. The amount of oil being burned and fossil fuels being burned is still increasing, despite what we know. And so we have to find alternative ways of supplying it and quickly, or else it's all buggered.

Laura: Dad, you're. You're telling me this as if it hasn't been my waking nightmare for the last seven years.

Agony Dad: Yeah, no, sorry, it was a topic.

Laura: Yeah. No, I'm interested. Maybe you and M. Ron can do that episode, because I think I just sit in the corner and cry through most of it.

Agony Dad: Yeah, well, that's every second Thursday, anyway.

Laura: Yeah. Other episodes we've got coming up that we're planning to do, which you're welcome to come to if you like. We've got epigenetics. That's on the list.

Agony Dad: What's that mean?

Laura: Don't know. I can't remember. Um, magnets, because I don't really understand how they work.

Agony Dad: Magnets are fascinating, as is gravity. Yeah, they're sort of similar in that we can measure them, we can use them, we can do all sorts of them, but we have, as far as I know, uh, no real idea of why they exist and how.

Laura: Yeah, it's just force, isn't it? Like it's a magnetic force and you just have to trust that that force is a thing.

Agony Dad: Yeah. I mean, if we can discover anti gravity, as we have north and South Pole magnets.

Laura: Yeah.

Agony Dad: Which repel each other. If you can instil anti gravity into something, we could float above the Earth. We could do all sorts of things.

Laura: I mean, that would be a good answer to alternative power.

Agony Dad: Oh, yes, absolutely. But we don't understand it fully enough. We know it exists.

Are there theories as to why big things attract other things

We can measure it. We can predict what it will do in any given circumstance.

Laura: It is a bit mad, isn't it, that just a big thing attracts other things to it.

Agony Dad: Yeah. We don't know why.

Laura: No. Are there theories as to why? I suppose there are, yeah.

Agony Dad: I listened to a thing on Radio 4 on M My way down the other night.

Laura: All right, show off.

Agony Dad: I'm bored to hell with radio, too.

Laura: You've aged out of radio too, dad.

Agony Dad: Yeah, well, it's all bloody Radio one, Joss. Dickies from. From way back.

Laura: Yeah, that's what's meant to happen.

Agony Dad: No.

Laura: Yes.

Agony Dad: No, they can stay on Radio 1 or invent a new one. Radio 1. One and a half or something. Yeah. There's also. There's all sorts of interesting stuff. But they were talking about matter and antimatter and dark energy and so on and so forth, which I hear these people going on about it and they're obviously understand it an awful lot better than I do. But it almost seems like, oh, we can't make the sums quite add up to what they should. So we'll invent something we can't see.

Laura: Yeah.

Agony Dad: But we know it's there because. Because other things aren't behaving as they should. So it must be there.

Laura: Yeah.

Agony Dad: Being. Being the rest of gravity, or I.

Laura: Guess that's what you're trying to do there is go, why doesn't that sum add up when maths should always add up? So you're going with the most likely thing that must be there that you don't know about.

Agony Dad: Uh, yeah, I'm sorry, but I. I equate that to religion. We've no idea how we got here. So we'll invent a God.

Laura: Well, no, but I think it makes more sense than religion if you're. If you're. Because it's almost like maths as a religion, isn't it? Going, I trust maths so implicitly that if these sums don't make sense, you have to have a reason why they don't. And so you're not saying it's definitely this, but you're putting in the most likely placeholder.

Agony Dad: Yeah, possibly. But there are so many instances throughout history where we've assumed things.

Laura: Yeah.

Agony Dad: The Earth is flat until we discover it's round and so on and so forth that this strikes me as potentially another occurrence of that. And suddenly the answer will become apparently go. Oh, oh, okay. That will make sense. Now, maybe, you know, Mars hasn't got the gravity it should have because it's hollow and there's. There's the Wombles living inside it.

Ron: Or.

Laura: But that's what I quite like about science, is that it changes its mind.

Agony Dad: Oh, yeah.

Laura: I think that's what's fun about it. Uh, I don't.

Agony Dad: I wouldn't disagree. The science is not absolute and it admits it's not absolute.

Laura: Yeah. So we could do that episode. Or we have got one planned on flaked almonds.

Agony Dad: Yes. I'm an expert on toasting flake diamonds.

Laura: Yeah.

Agony Dad: On top of my curries.

Laura: Yeah. Well, we watched some really interesting videos on how you flake an almond. You know, like that. How it's made. TV show you used to watch. Have you ever watched videos of flake diamonds being made?

Agony Dad: Probably on.

Laura: It's fascinating. Dad. We're gonna do a whole episode on it. So listen, um, if you want to hear any of our, uh, upcoming fantastic episodes, or indeed any of our past episodes on what is laughter, or our pop quizzes, or our episode on seahorses or Frances Galton or Crete or cricket, or what is a bayou, then, uh, do sign up to our patreon patreon.com lexeducation. But for now, we'll let you go. Enjoy your week. We hope you've had a lovely time. Please don't forget to like and share the episode. Thanks, Agony Dad.

Class dismissed. But do an impression of Ron. My pleasure. Class dismissed.

Agony Dad: My pleasure.

Laura: You have to say, class dismissed. But do an impression of Ron.

Agony Dad: Class

01:10:00

Agony Dad: dismissed.

Ron: It.

01:10:06