Are you lucky?

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. So, we can now listen to your podcast. tickets. On the way back, I noticed my ticket was only valid if I stopped at a station that my train was due to sail through. I bought an extra ticket. And when I finally boarded, it was Sunday evening, which meant the train was so packed that there weren't any seats. So I bought one last extra ticket, arguably an unnecessary one, which upgraded me to first class and meant that for the price of four cups of coffee, I was allowed to sit down. Bliss. I'm Marnie Chesterton from the BBC World Service. This is Unexpected Elements. This show is a round table coming to you from Cardiff in the UK, but showcasing some global science broadcasters. In Nairobi, Kenya, we have Phyllis Muwate. Welcome. Hello, Marnie, Hujambo, and thank you for having me. And in Austin, Texas, Iman Moin joins us. First time as a panellist. Welcome, Iman. Howdy, Marnie. It's nice to be here. This is the science show that looks for the stories lurking behind the news headlines. What we do each week is we look to the news for inspiration. And this week, sticking with tickets of a different kind, we're preparing to unleash a world of science. Take a listen to this. As tickets for K-pop concerts become increasingly difficult to secure, some fans in Taiwan have begun visiting temples famous for worshipping Yue Lao, the god of love and marriage. Often compared to Cupid in Western mythology, Yue Lao traditionally oversees matters of romance. But now Yang fans say they're turning to him for help getting concert tickets. Several told the BBC they believe their prayers were answered. Thank you to Evelyn Yang from the BBC Asia Pacific Chinese service there, who, along with Joy Chang, brought this story to our attention. Yes, train tickets may be difficult, but buying tickets to your favourite band is something else that increasingly, I think, turns into a rollercoaster of emotions that at best empties your bank accounts and at worst breaks your heart. So you need all the help you can get. And maybe that's setting alarm clocks for when the tickets are released, or getting friends to log on and double your chances of getting one. Or for some people, it's turning to the God of love to boost their luck in getting tickets. Have either of you, Phyllis or Iman, heard this story? I haven't. Yeah, me too. I haven't heard about it. But I feel for them. I too am going to buy tickets later today. And I maybe should be sending a prayer out to the God of love. No, we have our fingers crossed in a deeply scientific way, of course, for you. Phyllis, what about you? Any special or difficult measures to get tickets? So far, no, it's been smooth for me. But money and Iman, this concert ticket story got me thinking about our emotional response to music and why a song can make you smile or even for most of us, make us cry. So today I want to dive into the fascinating science of how music resonates in our brains and why live music especially feels so much more emotional. I mean, I have definitely cried at a few concerts. Phyllis, what's going on in our brains when we're experiencing all these emotions at a live music concert? So Patrick Whelan, who is an associate clinical professor of pediatrics, who, among other things, also instructs a cause on music and the mind at the Harvard Extension School, believes that the answer lies partly in evolutionary biology. So it's thought that most of the earliest mammals were likely nocturnal, which meant they had to rely on their hearing and sense of smell as defensive mechanisms. Now, they were hyper-focused and hyper-attentive. And according to him, Patrick Whelan, the modern experience of listening to live music can be viewed as, you know, a vestige of that primeval adaptation. One of the joys of theories in evolutionary biology is that no one can prove them one way or the other. But I do find that when I close my eyes, I am drawn more to the music. Yes, Manny, and that's because of the auditory cortex. Now, this is part of the temporal lobe in your brain. So that's located roughly around your ears, you know, and it's doing all the work and it's decoding all these sounds. So anything from pitch to rhythm to timbre, the hippocampus, which is deep within the temporal lobe, then links all these sounds with memories and past experiences. But then again, other parts of your brain get involved too. For example, the limbic system, especially the amygdala, handles emotions. Even the motor system jumps in, which explains why now we tap our feet or we sway along. Okay, so lots of different bits of our brains being poked. That's why the music moves us. You also said we'd be talking about why live music moves us more. And personally, I love live music. One of my closest friends really isn't that bothered by it. She complains that it's never as good as the CD. Are you a live music person? Does it get you more, Phyllis? Yes. I mean, sometimes I've attended these musicians who they'll have a concert in April and then they'll have a concert in June and I'll still attend. I mean, I love live music. I know that Iman's in the same group, right? Yes. I mean, I was just at a concert just a couple of days ago and it was like some local rock band and I've already got concert tickets for the summer for other people. I love live music so much. All this can be explained. In 2024, a study led by Sasha Fruholtz, who is a professor of cognitive and affective neuroscience at the University of Zurich, examined exactly this. The study used brain imaging to compare how listeners' brains responded to live versus the recorded performances. Now, it found that live music triggered much more stronger activity in the brain's emotional center. Remember, that's the amygdala, right? And it stimulated a more active exchange across the whole brain. But do we know, are there any reasons why this is? Yes, there are a few reasons, Mani. So first of all, when you are at a concert, as you've said, you have real-time interaction. Even the tempo, the intensity and expression can all vary compared to what you may hear on a static recording. And so your brain responds to this real-time variation more strongly. Well, there we go. That's the scientific justification I need for splurging my next paycheck on more live music. Go money. For me, this is the perfect excuse. I would really, really love to attend a Beyoncé concert. So anytime she's anywhere near Africa, I'll do whatever I can. Yes. Iman, do you have one specific musician or band that you would do anything to go to their concert? I really like Taylor Swift's music. When she did her last Big Heiress tour, my mom and I were driving and we were fighting the tornado warnings that were happening that day. A tornado wasn't chasing us, but it felt like it. I did keep checking the back window to make sure the storm clouds weren't coming. Oh, fantastic. I'm going to tell that as you braved a tornado for Taylor Swift. I was willing to. Iman, you're speaking to us from one of the world's live music hubs, right? Where are you going to take us next? Since we're talking about the luck needed to get some concert tickets, I wanted to ask y'all, do you feel lucky in your day to day life, Marnie and Phyllis? So I checked the Chinese New Year's coming up and I thought, I'll just see what they've got to say about whether it's going to be a lucky one. And apparently Fire Horse Year will be an auspicious year for personal growth and career advancement. So presumably we're all going to be very lucky for the next year. Yes, Mani, I agree with you because I also recently read that as an Aquarius, you know, and this being the year of the host and all, career wise, I might be lucky. But then again, it means that bold decisions will pay off and they will pay off fast. I feel like at this point on a science programme that I ought to put some sort of health warning that there is absolutely no science backing luck. But Iman, you're going to tell me whether I'm right or not. Well, we can use math to sort of see how lucky you are, because we can use math to study the probability of special events, coincidences happening. Wait, if it's maths, I'm assuming there's some sort of formula to luck. Oh, yes. We have a formula to look at the relationship between the number of opportunities where this really cool lucky event can happen, and the probability, the one in n chance that this is going to happen. So the probability is one minus parentheses, one minus one over n, where n is the chance of this event happening. Close that parentheses and raise it to the power of the number of events where this thing is happening. That sounds like absolutely nothing. I mean, yeah. Welcome to Unexpected Elements. We will give you algorithms over the radio. So go on, decode that for me. Yeah, so in real life words, which isn't just numbers in parentheses, the more opportunities you give for this event to happen, the likelier it's going to be. I really enjoy tempting fate. So I will walk under ladders, which you're not supposed to do just to prove that I'm not scared of walking under ladders. But presumably, the more I walk under ladders, the more chance I have of someone dropping a paint pot off the ladder onto my head. That is, that is true. But there's maybe a less grim example. For example, did you know that in September 2009, the Bulgarian National Lottery drew the same set of six numbers twice in a row? Like the exact same set. Suspicious. It sounds suspicious, but the statistician David Hand, he actually did the math and he figured out that the lottery would only need to run for 43 years before it had over a 50% chance of this back-to-back same draw happening. And by the time this happened in 2009, the lottery had been running for 52 years. So it had passed the 43 mark by a lot. Okay, so we're learning that just keep running something and lucky coincidences are more likely to happen. Because I'm also getting it that then luck isn't magic, right? So it's the probability and how often maybe you're showing up and the timing. Yeah, there are a lot of factors at play which determine the probability of an event happening. So if we can apply as many factors as we want to, to getting the magical concert ticket, which I believe is something that you're going to do straight after this show, Iman, any top tips? Well, I mean, if we think about that formula, right, we said to increase the likelihood of something happen. You have to increase the number of opportunities. And if concert ticket buying is sort of a one opportunity for yourself then what you need is to get lots of people in on the game So everyone clicking for tickets at the same time which is what I done My friends and I we got a group chat going We've got a plan. We have a strategy. And we're hoping that one of us can secure the tickets. Thank you, Iman, for giving us the maths of being lucky. Listeners, any woes or lottery wins that you need to share with us, do let us know. You can email unexpected at bbc.co.uk or you can WhatsApp us. The number is plus 44 330 678 3080. Or you can write us an actual letter and there's a high probability that it will arrive. Unexpected Elements, BBC World Service, Cardiff, CF10, 4GA in the UK. Still to come, the Wild West of dynamic pricing and how it can help you book that cheap flight. That's coming up after this. Hello, Ella here, and it's time for this week's Unexpected Elements quiz. Since we're talking about luck this week, we wanted to test whether you can tell a rare occurrence from a common coincidence. For example, do you know how common it is to find someone else with your birthday? Say you're at a party, if we exclude leap days, how many people would need to be in a room for there to be a 50% chance of someone else having your birthday? Is it A, 23, B, 46, C, 92? Again, how many people would need to be in the room for there to be a 50% chance that two of them have the same birthday? Excluding those born on the leap day, is it A. 23, B. 46, C. 92? I'll be back in a bit with the answer. Good luck. You're listening to Unexpected Elements from the BBC World Service. This week we're inspired by K-pop fans who've resorted to the power of prayer in an effort to secure concert tickets. So far, we've discovered why live music has us all emotional and even why those fans who do get tickets might have the laws of probability to thank. Now, those of us who've been through the pains of buying a hot commodity like tickets to that very fashionable concert might have noticed that the prices don't stay the same. You might be buying the same thing, but the price will vary depending on when you buy it. This is because of something called dynamic pricing, and we're seeing more and more of it these days. Here to tell us about it is Marco Bettini, Professor of Marketing at Asada Business School in Barcelona. Welcome, Marco. Thank you. So first off, what exactly is the definition of dynamic pricing? Why do companies do it to you? OK, so the definition is actually rather simple. So dynamic pricing basically means, it's a fancy word for saying, the prices vary across time. and why do companies do it it's because at some point they realize that what people are willing to pay for whatever they're selling may change because of time and so they're thinking well if at some points in time my customers like it more and some other times they like it less instead of having like an average price why not adjust the price to that likeness right and therefore you know maximize the people who buy from me and maximize my returns i mean that makes sense. But do people like it? Do customers like it? Because in my experience, it does make people feel like companies are taking advantage of them. I think it's a tricky question, right? It depends on a lot of factors. Customers may have an initial sort of negative reaction to it because customers have been trained to think the worst. So when they see the word dynamic pricing, or they hear the word dynamic pricing, they're thinking, oh, I'm going to be paying more. And if it's true dynamic pricing, sometimes that's the case. But in other cases, it's definitely not true. In fact, there's many statistics out there showing that dynamic prices, on average, are lower than a static price. Marco, dynamic pricing, it's not a new thing, is it? It's absolutely not a new thing. In fact, if we take the long view, what is kind of weird and odd and new is having a fixed price. If you go back, wind the clock back 150 years, and there was no prices. There was no sticker prices, so nothing was static. It was all bizarre-like. You go to a shop or to a stand that sold something that you like, and you probably negotiated for the price, which is incredibly dynamic. It's a function of how long you're going to stay there and negotiate it out with the other person. And then what happened? Then we decided to have large stores, department stores. And when we wanted to have department stores, we kind of had to have, we cannot have haggling in John Lewis all day long. It just wouldn't work. So we're going to of a sticker price, which made things static. And so most of us, of course, it's 100 years, so most of us are used to seeing that. But then with technology helping us spot patterns, make connections between different sources of data, respond faster, then you start seeing with the technology comes the ability of companies to do it. And so you start seeing it in a lot more places, a lot more often. Phyllis, I just want to ask, because I've seen Nairobi has a good mix of there are supermarkets where the price will be the price, but then there's a lot of markets where it's whatever they reckon you pay. Okay, so there are goods that I know are regulated by the government, and that's why you'll find this thing costing the same in these supermarkets. And if it varies, it will be by a very small margin. And this brings me to my question to So, Marco, do you think governments should regulate dynamic pricing? Generally speaking, no, because the price is a signal that evens out demand and supply. Then there are always exceptions. Recently, we had this unfortunate train accident in the south of Spain where one train derailed and hit another train and there were a lot of casualties. And a lot of media attention came from the fact that other transportation providers, because they were using algorithms to set their prices, the algorithms realized that all of a sudden the demand for their services shot up because the train was not operating and of course increased prices by a lot and this is probably even before the leaders of those companies realized it was happening and but the damage is done people were like you know you're exploiting us in a moment of tragedy which is true i mean it's not it's not nice that's interesting so that when dynamic pricing happens it's all done by algorithms is that what you're saying, unless humans intervene. Yes. Again, going back to John Lewis, they've always done dynamic pricing. Now you go January and July, you've got discounts, that's dynamic pricing, but it's manual. It's manually done, right? But the modern version is done with technology and you feed algorithms with the data that you think is relevant, including usually competitor prices. And so unless you set up the algorithm with certain rules that cater for potential shocks that have nothing to do with the daily running of a business, then you can get these surprise results because the machine all it's doing is optimizing based on the data that it has, right? So I'm a sucker for like a discount sticker, which feels like quite a manual, old fashioned approach, given that everything is getting a bit more algorithm driven. Is it going to affect supermarket prices, the digital world? Oh, absolutely. And it's actually one of the nicer examples of dynamic pricing. So first of all, big change, digital shelf tags, because if we have physical shelf tags, good luck dynamically pricing all the cans of tomato and all the packets of pasta, you know, in real time. So game changing sort of technology, digital shelf tags, then you connect them to all sorts of data. And then some of the best examples these days are things like prices varying dynamically as a function of expiration date. And this is a clear win, win, win, three times a win. Win because people get nutrition. They will eat that yogurt that is expiring in a few days. Win because the company sells the product instead of throwing it away. And win for society because we're not throwing away food. So supermarkets are a great example. Emon, you had a question. I did have a question. Do you have any hacks about how to best game the dynamic pricing system? Sure. As a consumer, what can you do? If you know the prices vary dynamically on the things that you're interested in, what you could do is first of all, track historical prices, because most likely historical data is one of the inputs into the model. So, you know, if you can track historical data and find patterns, which are always there, then you can purchase when that happens. Then if you believe the dynamic prices are varying also as a function of your personal characteristics, maybe like your shopping behavior, then the classic thing, clear your cache and your cookies, and never ever use Safari if you're on a Mac because Safari equals Mac equals you're richer. Firefox equals open source equals you don't have as much money. So make sure you change the browser. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So using Safari tells the algorithm that you've got Apple products and therefore that you've got more money. It has been shown in the past that some companies, traveling aggregators, I won't remain nameless. What they will cleverly do is if I want to fly from here to Nairobi to see Phyllis, for example, then I go to a certain website. And instead of giving me if I'm using a safari, you'll give me in the first five results, the more expensive ones, because they also know that we are lazy and we will choose from the top five. We're not going to go all the way down. So just they just reorder things such that they put the more expensive ones up front. That's gobsmackingly useful information. Marco Bettini, thank you so much for your wisdom and insights. Of course, you're welcome. It was a pleasure. So, BTS fans turning to the god of love to grant them some luck in snagging concert tickets has unexpected elements looking into any science that might help us. and Professor Marco Bettini has just helped explain dynamic pricing, giving us some top tips for getting a cheap ticket. And we've heard why your brain may prefer that costly experience of live music to just playing the tunes on your phone. Still to come on the show, that special dancing that you do that's due not to music but to your bladder. Why on earth would dancing help when nature calls? Find out when we return. Thank you. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. This is ASR for you and a sustainable community. ASR does it. So, we can now listen to your podcast. We always make space in this show for one of us to bring a story that they feel has gone under the radar of global news. A story that we give some much deserved airtime to and then we discuss it and we basically unleash it onto our global audience. So, Phyllis, you are up. What do you have for our show and tell this week? and bonus points if it relates to the theme, which of course is the luck that some concert goers have been asking for when buying a ticket. So I'll tell you this and then you will let me know if it relates to the theme, because the story that I want to bring today is around Kenya's big plans to move towards integrative healthcare. So that's integrating traditional medicine into to the healthcare system It really is the modern meeting the traditional Agree with me Oh I see So sort of the god of luck being the traditional and the modern being the algorithm that you're using to buy your ticket. Okay, some points for that. But we are definitely sidestepping from from concert buying to healthcare. Tell me more about this integration move. OK, so this move marks a very huge shift in national health policy. And really, it's all quite ambitious, you know, because the Kenyan government has announced a plan to integrate traditional medicine into the formal health care system by the year 2028. And when you say traditional medicine, what does that actually entail in Kenya and who's using it? OK, so traditional medicine here, it's, you know, herbal remedies and indigenous health practices. and it has really been the cornerstone of health care for many Kenyans, especially in rural areas. And I would say growing up in the rural area, I have experienced this or I have used this. So there was a time I remember, I think I was 11 or 12 years. And, of course, I live in the coast province, yes, but sometimes when you travel to the lower coast region, so if you're from the highlands and you travel to the lower region, you are bitten by mosquitoes and all that. And so they say you have malaria or something, but then it wasn't malaria. It's just high fever. So what my mom did, I think all of you know the neem tree. No, tell me about the neem tree. OK, so the neem tree here in Kenya, we have we actually have a name for it. It's called Morobaini and Arobaini means 40. And what the people in the rural area believe is that it can cure over 40 diseases or 40 illnesses. and so my mom looked at me because she said, okay, you have a fever. What I'm going to do is dress you lightly and give you the neem tree. So what they do is they take the backs of the neem tree, boil it, and you drink that solution. And, I mean, the next day I was feeling better, so I have come across this. Now, you know, also research shows that between 60% to 80% of people rely on traditional healers or medicinal plants as their first point of care. And, you know, that's huge. But until now, these practices have remained very unregulated, as my mum did. She just took the box, you know, boiled that and gave it to me. They are not part of any formal health care systems, which impacts lots of things like, you know, quality control, safety. Also, there's no training and legitimacy. So how is this integration going to work? It's going to be a busy two years. And already there are several key steps to get there. First being the creation of national policy, you know, on traditional medicine. And also they plan to have a dedicated department for that. Then there comes the legal bit where there are plans for a new bill, which now will set rules for things like practice, the quality of the product and also safety standards. And then on the ground, there's also now the integration, you know, with the health facilities. And this is the interesting bit because it includes patients now will be able to consult both conventional medical doctors and accredited traditional practitioners in the same place. And then now all the treatments, they say that they will be recorded and shared in medical records. I mean, that definitely seems like the safest way of integrating these things, both in one place and everyone gets access to the same notes. I know at the end of last year, the WHO announced a plan to integrate traditional medicine into formal health care systems. So is this part of that? Yes, Manny, it is. In fact, in December last year, the WHO announced a traditional medicine strategy. This is for the year 2025 to 2034. And it encourages countries, you know, to harness traditional complementary and integrative medicine as part of a universal health care, especially where now conventional services are limited. So Kenyans can expect to see integrating traditional medicine into general health practices, you know, national health insurance schemes and strengthened financial protection for patients. So crossing fingers, we hope this works. I mean, it's a really short time frame. You said 2028, right? Yes. Because, you know, I remember the average time it takes to get a drug from drug discovery through all the patient testing in Western medicine is about 11 years. Well, it is for cancer treatments anyway. So meanwhile, traditional medicines are going to be essentially fast-tracked. There's so many things I'm thinking of, one of which is that you know what dose you're getting with the medicines that have been through very long medical trials because it says on the packet. Whereas the thing with plants is that if you're chewing some willow bark to get your salicylic acid, which is in the aspirin. It depends on the strength of the salicylic acid. It varies from tree to tree. So talk me through some of the challenges, some of the other challenges that you can see in making this work, Phyllis. There are so many challenges because while the policy does promise, you know, the regulation, the integration, there are concerns, you know, as you say, around ensuring scientific rigor, while also respecting cultural practices. That's one. So it's a balancing act because it's important to avoid the spread of unsafe or ineffective remedies. The government will also need to be very careful not to exploit or misappropriate indigenous knowledge. However, there's also the cost of it all. Now, you can imagine the training, accrediting and monitoring such a vast number of traditional practitioners. this will be very, very expensive for the government. However, if it's done well, this move really could enhance healthcare access and protect patients. Okay, so that's one country's approach to this WHO recommendation. Anything you've seen in Texas, Iman, about integrating the two? Not necessarily, but something that I'm reminded of is the nutritional supplement industry in the US, where it's not necessarily regulated in the same way that pharmaceuticals are. I believe that a lot of like, you know, vitamins, minerals, they're regulated by the FDA, but not in the same way that they look at like medicines. Instead, I think they treat these nutritional supplements closer to food, but they're also like a pretty standard practice of like American nutritional diets. Like everyone in my family takes vitamin D supplements that we just buy from the grocery store. I mean, this is a fascinating topic and definitely one that we'll come back to on future Unexpected Elements. Thank you, Phyllis. I think I'm going to give you some points, but not all the points for potentially tenuous link to concert tickets and linking via the bringing together of ancient and modern traditions. Now, as luck would have it, we've been reading all of your wonderful messages filling up the Unexpected Elements inbox. So let's take a moment to hear some of our favourites. In a recent episode, we talked about the viral app Are You Dead, which was designed for young people living alone. And you check in with it and just tell it regularly that you're fine. Kristen from Maine in the US thinks that it could help another group too. When I haven't heard from a friend for a long time, I email or text them saying, Are you dead or are you on vacation? In the largest possible letters so they have to scroll. I always get a giggle response, thank goodness. I think it's a great app from China and useful. I am getting older and so are most of my friends and people that I know, and we could use it. I like my inquiry as it softens it a bit as a possibility of being away. Oh, thank you, Kristen. Clearly, your friends appreciate you checking in on them too. Phyllis, Iman, have you heard of this app? Yes, I've heard about it. And I think it was, I mean, there's a lot of controversy around it. But I thought, you know, sometimes the scariest signal is no signal at all. So, yeah, I've heard about it. I think it's a good idea. Iman? Yeah, I heard about it. It reminds me of a lived experience. I was living alone for a while and in a different country from my parents. Despite being an adult, they would check on me every single day. If I hadn't texted them or anything, there would be at some point by the night time a call. I mean, there is possibly a correct number of hours to leave it before checking in again. Just a reminder that sometimes no news is actually good news. But worth checking in on people, right? People check in with your friends. Why not? Now, last week, we talked about the science behind the Winter Olympics. And I did catch a terrifying bit of the luge racing over the weekend. People travel down on these horrific little sleds at 134 kilometres an hour up to. So anyway, we were talking about how there was a rather unexpected discovery of dinosaur footprints close to the Olympic site, which prompted David in Belgium to get in touch. Phyllis, can you read this one for us? Of course. So David wrote, as I heard in the most recent episode that Manny has a lot of photos of which she wonders if they are DinoTracks, I wish to let her know I've recently heard in one of our Belgian science podcasts there is now an app to check those. It's called DinoTracker and supposedly can identify Dino footprints footprints by using AI. Wow. So we've gone from the app that I'm pretty sure I didn't need to the app that I never knew that I did need, Dino Tracker. So you upload your photos, presumably, and it tells you whether they're a yes or a no on dinosaur footprints. Brilliant. That's what I'm going to be doing after today's recording. Listeners, thank you so much for all of your messages. And if you have any stories of luck, chance or coincidence that you'd like to share with the gang, please do get in touch. The email is unexpected at bbc.co.uk or you can send us a message or voice note on WhatsApp and the number for that is plus 44 330 678 30 80 or my favourite, you can go old school, send us a postcard. The address is Unexpected Elements, BBC World Service, Cardiff CF10 4GA. Still to come. Why do we do a little dance when we need to pee and the great British art of queuing? That's all coming up after this. Hello, Ella here again. Earlier I asked you how many people would need to be in a room for there to be a 50% chance that two of them have the same birthday? Is it A, 23, B, 46, C, 92? The answer is A, 23. This is called the birthday paradox, as most people assume you'd need a large group for there to be a shared birthday. You need to compare all 23 birthdays with each other, which gives 253 comparisons. With 253 possible pairs, each pair has a very small chance of matching birthdays. But when you add up all those small chances, the overall probability of at least one match becomes about 50%. This is excluding leap birthdays. Sorry, leap babies, unfortunately, you mess up the maths. Very well done if you got that right, and if not, better luck next time. Now, on Unexpected Elements, we don't just ask the science questions. We like you to ask them too. It's time for Ask the Unexpected, and this week's question comes from Stephen in Utah. And we've been talking about concerts for much of this show. And yes, that's a space where people love to dance. Sometimes, though, it's not because you're enjoying the music. Iman, would you like to read what Stephen has asked us? So Stephen asks, a few months ago, y'all explained that our urge to urinate intensifies when we approach certain places due to conditioning. Here's a related question. Sometimes we dance when we really need to pee. Does the dancing do anything? Why do we do that sometimes? Great question. Iman Phyllis are either of you familiar with this type of dance Yes I very familiar with this type of dance especially when I have gone for these concerts you know or these are parties So places to relieve yourselves are full. So now you have to queue there and wait. I'd rather just start dancing. It doesn't help. It just postpones. I mean, postponing is better than the alternative, I would argue. So to find an answer to Stephen's question, we spoke to Dr Bob Yang, who is a consultant urologist surgeon at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in London. So why do we dance when we need a wee? Here's what he had to say. So what a very interesting question. So the dance itself, I think we need to look at that first of all. it's not a gentle dance it's a very very tense dance and so if you next time you have the sensation that you desperately need to wee and you're wriggling just have a look and feel what your pelvic floor and your lower abdomen is doing it is not relaxed like you would do in a normal dance it is very very tensed up it's the tensing of these muscles that actually helps prevent you actually weeing yourself by accident it sort of almost overwhelms the spinal cord which then connects all the signals that goes up to the brain with lots and lots of signals and so therefore distracts your brain from wanting to wee. So it is almost like a gait theory where essentially it is overwhelming the signal that you need to wee with lots and lots of other signals which therefore stops you having a wee. But there's also a secondary point to this. We in urology use a device called a nerve stimulator and that actually sends signals through either your leg or through your back up your spine into your brain for patients with a very overactive bladder. What that does is it controls the bladder, calms it down, stops it being so spasmy and stops people leaking. In the same way, by jiggling around and moving, potentially, and this is much harder to prove, potentially you're sending the same signal up the brain, telling the bladder, calm down, you don't need to wee, and just buying yourself that extra bit of time for you to get to the toilet to actually wee into the toilet as opposed to weeing in your pants. That's fantastic. Thank you, Dr Bob Yang. Thank you, Stephen, for your question. If Stephen's question has inspired you to get an answer on anything scientific, you can email us. The email address is unexpected at bbc.co.uk or send us a message or voice note on WhatsApp at plus 44 330 678 3080. I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but we've spent much of this show talking about tickets without mentioning the field of queuing for your ticket. Queuing, I have to say, is one of my favourite subjects. It's possibly because it's one of those things that really intrigues me. It's kind of tied in with the British character, right? Phyllis, are Kenyans known for their queuing? These days I see a lot of queuing, especially in bus stops. Before that, we were very impatient, lots of people, I think, because we would just get into our buses, famously known as matatus, just, you know, first come, first served and push and shove. But these days we are disciplined. My favourite queuing story was during the Edinburgh Festival and I walked past this really long queue and I overheard a woman say, it's disgusting, I've been queuing for nearly two hours and no one's told me what I'm queuing for. Saw a queue, joined it, it's a disgrace. Brilliant. When it comes to getting your tickets, increasingly those queues are online. For certain concerts, the way if you're running the concert to meet the supply and demand is money. and so you say to your fans, OK, if you want that ticket, you have to expect to pay. If you want a better seat, OK, that's going to be double. And, you know, economists would say that pricing that way is a fair way to distribute the tickets because those who want it most are most willing to pay. But what if there was another way to pay for your concert ticket? what if the ticket was subsidised but you pay with your time welcome to the uk summer concert series known as the proms the regulars are friendly it's just the odd argument can break out i first came in the 1980s and that's where i met one of my best friends the first day i was here and we've been friends ever since you met in a queue yeah what happens if someone comes early gets a ticket and then just goes away to go and do a day's worth of shopping. We're not very happy. They can't really do it. It's not really allowed. You've either got to be here or not. Well, we turned up at five and waited in line. And you're allowed to leave the queue at some point? Yes. Yes. We were told we could leave it to go to the poetry prom. Just rejoined the queue and found where we were in the queue by this raffle ticket. And here we are now. I love that that concert goer, when he paused, I thought he was going to say, you leave to go to the toilet. And he said, no, poetry prom. So this is some tape that I collected over a decade ago now because I was interviewing people in what a friend told me was a self-regulating queue. This is a phenomenon where the tickets need to be cheap because they want a certain proportion of the tickets to be accessible to anyone who loves classical music. but they pay with their time so you turn up early and then you have this bunch of hardcore fans standing around for hours and hours before the concert with this little raffle ticket and then at a certain point they're allowed to swap that for actual concert tickets and that's where the self-regulating aspect of this comes in because if everyone's got a queue then the queue has its own rules it's a club but woe betide anyone who tries to cheat the system we have more problems with people coming very early and then running off and then coming back just before the concert starts saying oh i'm at the front of the queue and everything we have challenged people we send them back to the end of the queue normally we can do all of this ourselves take care of everything ourselves but if necessary we'll call one of the stewards i mean you can't get away with everything here oh i loved interviewing these people so that was the self-regulating queue at the proms from a decade ago and i believe that people are doing things slightly differently now the thing is This kind of standing around is also inefficient. And economists, for one, really don't like inefficiencies. And so it inspired Danish academics to come up with a different way of queuing. Queues, it's a wonderful example of a waste of time. That's Lars-Peter Osterdal. The problem with the regular queue where you serve first those who arrive first is that people tend to arrive too early. The traditional queue rewards people for showing up early, and in extreme cases, you get people camping out overnight to be first in line. So what's the alternative? We study an environment where we have a facility that opens and a large group of inpatient users that want to use this facility. And here we consider the problem of what is the best possible queue discipline in terms of reducing the average queue length. And it turns out that in such a situation, a queue discipline called the last in, first out is the best one. This is a queue discipline where you give priority to those who arrive latest. So the most efficient way to manage a queue is by serving the last person first. Mind-blowing stuff. Well, fairness is most definitely an issue, and I asked Lars-Peter how realistic the use of this last-in, first-out system actually is in the real world. In practice, it would be very hard to implement a principle of serving the last in most physical queues where people physically queue up, for example, when boarding an airplane. It's simply too difficult to manage for practical reasons. But you could imagine, for example, a telephone queue or an internet queue. And you need to, I guess, keep track of people so they don't hang up and then dial back in. Yes, precisely. Otherwise you could manipulate it. We've heard this person before. Because you can't keep this a secret from people. It's important that people know the system and they're able to adjust to it. This is where it induces less queuing time. That's Tim Harford from more or less on the BBC World Service. I think this is the best theoretical way, but clearly, you know, in time wise, but the practicalities. Iman, can you see this working? No, I'm not convinced at all. Serving the last person in, I just feel like everyone's going to mob all at like nine o'clock. If it says whoever's last at nine o'clock, come in. It's just a mob. What cue is there? Well, I've been digging into the literature and there are modelers galore who are exploring the science of queuing and searching for the perfect one. And it really is something that scientists fight over because what defines the perfect queue? Is it everyone feeling the happiest about the time they spent queuing or is it having the least queue possible? I leave the final word to one of those hardcore queues, David from Germany. cueing is part of the palms it belongs to the palms and we do it because we want to we come here to cue see friends talk that's part of cueing you don't just sit there and that may be one of the things why the cues work is because people know each other basically so there you go that is possibly the perfect cue where it's just a bunch of friends who all know what they're doing and the queuing is part of the social experience. That's us out of time. So we started this week's Unexpected Elements with the headline of fans of K-pop who have been praying to the god of love for luck getting a concert ticket. And that has led us to the science of why we prefer going to a concert versus listening on CD or streaming. We've had the maths of how to get lucky. And we've heard about dynamic pricing from the professor who taught me use a different browser, get a cheaper ticket. Plus science of queuing. Obviously, I was going to do that. Thank you so much to this week's panel in Austin, Texas. Thank you, Iman Moyn. Thanks, Marnie. See you later. And in Nairobi, Kenya, Phyllis Muarte. Thank you. Thank you, Marnie. I'm Marnie Chasterton. The producer was Margaret Cecil Hawkins with Ella Hubbard, Lucy Davis, Immy Harper and Tim Dodd. Join us next week, hopefully, for more Unexpected Elements. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. If there was a big red button that would just demolish the internet, I would smash that button with my forehead. From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday life. And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.