The String Theory of Grandmaster Flash | A Slow, Relaxing Chat

In this episode of The Insomnia Project, hosts Marco Timpano and Amanda Barker ease into a wonderfully meandering conversation that begins with a simple question about the difference between thread and string. As with many moments on this calming podcast, that small curiosity opens the door to an unexpected chain of ideas. Their relaxing conversation drifts from everyday objects and language to surprising cultural references, eventually leading to Grandmaster Flash and even the big ideas behind string theory. The result is a gentle, unpredictable discussion that unfolds at an easy pace, perfect for background listening while you unwind or settle in to fall asleep.
Marco and Amanda follow the thread (or string!) of their thoughts wherever it leads, reflecting on how simple topics can spark surprisingly wide-ranging conversations. The tone remains soft and unhurried throughout, creating the kind of listening experience that helps quiet racing thoughts and ease anxiety at the end of the day. Like all episodes of The Insomnia Project, the goal isn’t to keep you fully alert but to offer calm companionship through everyday musings and curious tangents. Whether you’re listening in bed, during a late-night wake-up, or simply looking for a relaxing moment during the day, this episode provides a soothing conversation that may gently guide you toward rest.

​The String Theory of Grandmaster Flash
(Original airdate May 17, 2023)

Marco  Welcome to the Insomnia Project. Sit back, relax and listen as we have a chill conversation about the unextraordinary to help you sort of drift off and find your way to sleep. I'm your host, Marco Timpano.

Amanda: Channel the normal. I'm Amanda Barker.

Marco  Amanda, you know, I had great vision of what I wanted to, uh, talk about on today's show, and it's coming to us a little bit later than it usually does on this Wednesday. If you happen to be listening on a Wednesday. That's when we usually release our podcast episodes. But, uh, I was stuck on a ladder hanging lights earlier today and my back is a bit sore from that. But I hung up all these lights, outdoor lights that we recently purchased. They're, uh, LED lights. And Amanda, I think we may have too many lights out there.

Amanda: Yeah, because they're casting when they're plugged in. Quite a glow. We're just in a townhouse, so there's some shared space in a way. Shared light.

Marco  I think you can see our house from space with all the light. We have so much light that when darkness falls, it doesn't fall on our backyard. There's so much light.

Amanda: Because of those, I'm a little bit concerned that our neighbors are going to write Complaint letters to, um, Toronto Life magazine, like, Dear Toronto Life, like a real Toronto problem. Because there's a. It's my favorite part of Toronto Life, where people write their very Toronto specific problems, like dealing with their raccoons or dealing with the TTC or whatever, and, um, spec Toronto sort of problems. And I feel like that would maybe qualify. Like, my neighbors were in a freehold townhouse, and my neighbor has. So there's no board because it's freehold. I can't complain to anybody. And they have all these lights strung up. And so I'm not sure. I might get. And the response might be, hey, why don't you leave a friendly note on your neighbor's door? So I'm afraid of that kind of retaliation.

Marco  Well, the challenge was faced because I tried to string the lights around the perimeter of our backyard. And then I went, Amanda's yawning. What you're hearing in the background there.

Amanda: I was gonna stifle. I've already stifled one. I was gonna stifle this. But sometimes when you yawn, you make others yawn. And maybe that's relaxing.

Marco  Maybe. Maybe climbing up a tree and stringing lights around it and then finding out that you didn't have as much slack in the lights to connect the other set of lights. So you turn to your spouse and you say, what should I do? And she says, get another string of lights. So we have three strings of LED lights.

Amanda: More is more in this household.

Marco  But if you're concerned, people are. It's. It doesn't feel like nighttime when I turn out the back, when I turn on the backyard lights.

Amanda: Now I think we're going a little bit exaggeration. Okay, well, there's just a bright bunch of lights.

Marco  We'll see if we get a friendly note saying, our lights are too bright.

Amanda: Yeah, maybe. So we have. We went from you saying we only needed one strand.

Marco  Right.

Amanda: And then hanging the second and saying we have far too many.

Marco  Right.

Amanda: And then going, it was actually you that said, we need a third strand.

Marco  Well, I was like, either I dismantle everything that I've done and put less lights on the tree.

Amanda: Right.

Marco  And, uh, you wanted more lights in one area. And it was becoming a challenge. And you're like, just get another string of lights. So we have. I think 48 times.

Amanda: I'm to blame.

Marco  3.

Amanda: What's funny is we didn't do the perimeter on the right side.

Marco  I asked you.

Amanda: No, I know. And I was like, no, I think it's crazy. But now I'm not sure. I don't know. I think we leave it like this and then if we want to change it, we change it. Uh, but you don't want to change it. You want it, um, done.

Marco  Well, my back is sore, so I don't want to change it.

Amanda: And we borrow the ladder from our neighbor.

Marco  Yeah. And it's, it's a lot of me twisting around the tree.

Amanda: I'm fine with that.

Marco  I'm sure you are.

Amanda: It's well lit for sure, but that means at night I can read in my hammock.

Marco  Okay, well, we'll see. We'll see if we get any friendly or not so friendly notes and we'll report back. We had a little discussion about string versus thumb thread the other day.

Amanda: We did. You needed string.

Marco  And I said thread.

Amanda: No, no, I said no, you said

Marco  string and you said what you need is thread.

Amanda: I think you said that because you got, you said, where's our string? That's what I said. I don't think we have any. And then I said, we have floss. Dental floss. Isn't that a kind of string?

Marco  And I was like, no, like a needle and string.

Amanda: And I said, that's thread. And so then it began.

Marco  That's what I meant, a discussion of

Amanda: the difference between thread and string.

Marco  So what is the difference, Amanda?

Amanda: String is made up of a series of threads.

Marco  Oh, I see.

Amanda: Yeah.

Marco  So string has more threads. Thread is its own little thing. Thing. I see. So we solve the mystery of string versus thread.

Amanda: Yeah, the mystery you didn't know anybody was investigating.

Marco  Well, do you know what string theory is? Because then I decided to look up string theory.

Amanda: You know, I don't think I do. I think you should explain it to me.

Marco  In physics, string theory is the theoretical framework in which the point like particles or particle physics are replaced by one dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and Internet, interact with each other on distance scales larger than the string scale. A string looks just like an ordinary particle, Amanda.

Amanda: Mhm.

Marco  With its mass, charge and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. In string theory, one of the many vibrational states of the string corresponds to the gravitation, or the gravation, I should say, or the graviton, actually a quantum mechanical particle that carries the gravitational force. There's the gravitational part. Thus string theory is a theory of quantum gravity.

Amanda: There you go.

Marco  Things you didn't know you were going

Amanda: to learn, didn't know you wanted to know them, or.

Marco  I still don't even know what I was saying there, to be quite honest

Amanda: with you, I kind of tuned out.

Marco  Fair enough.

Amanda: I find I do that when people do financial talk, which is not good because I'm listening to a financial book right now. And then I find I drift off and I have to rewind it and re listen. Which is fine. I did.

Marco  Sure, sure. What else do you drift off to?

Amanda: But we had a lull.

Marco  We had a little lull in there.

Amanda: We had a lull in a while.

Marco  Mhm.

Amanda: It's because we don't know who wants to speak. We don't want to speak over each other.

Marco  It's true. It's true. Today I got. I. I had some issues getting on our scooter and I think it was because the switch, the kill switch, was actually not completely off.

Amanda: Mhm.

Marco  And so it wasn't starting and I was having a little bit of a, uh.

Amanda: To come home.

Marco  Yeah. I was kind of like, oh no, what am I going to do here? And then I decided to use the screwdriver to tighten up this screw. That. That helps to. I m. Don't know what it does, to be honest with you, but when it's cold, it helps. I'm sure people listening who know scooters are like, he doesn't know what he's doing. But I was told to do this by the person who owned the scooter before us.

Amanda: Oh.

Marco  So I did that and it started.

Amanda: Oh, good.

Marco  But it had like a muffly noise. So I kind of.

Amanda: Oh no.

Marco  I kind of released a little bit of the screw and then it was better.

Amanda: Hey, if you want to talk cars, do you want me to tell you what we need to get done on our car?

Marco  Uh, sure. We had. We replaced our snow tires or changed out our snow tires not too long ago. Right, Amanda?

Amanda: That's the thing you have to do here. Yeah.

Marco  So. And usually we try to do it earlier in the spring, but, uh, we didn't get to it. So it happened in May.

Amanda: So here's what we need. I made a note on my phone. We need sway bar links and ball joints. Oh, I don't know what those things are, but apparently ours are worn.

Marco  Okay, fair enough.

Amanda: And I, uh, always write notes in my. Not, um, my Marco Polo. My uh, Voxer.

Marco  Okay.

Amanda: And. And I'm just looking. And somebody named Marcus Eric says, hey, Amanda, I know you don't know me and I don't know anything about you, but I'm looking to strike up friendship and possibly more.

Marco  Oh, I don't like this person.

Amanda: Should I Reach out to Marcus, Eric.

Marco  You just let Marcus know that you have a Marco in your life and you don't need any Marcus in your life.

Amanda: That's very forward. I have a lot of hello dears on here too.

Marco  Oh, I'm sure you love it when people say call you dear.

Amanda: Hello, dear.

Marco  Yeah, I get a lot of, um, uh, for some reason, Instagram, I've had a lot of scantily clad people reaching out to me, saying they need friendship and they want how loved we are, I guess. And I'm like, delete. I'm trying to block on our Instagram, on the Insomnia project. Instagram.

Amanda: That's where we really need the friendship.

Marco  The Insomnia Project Instagram account. People will latch on and try to like, like say, follow this link or sell this or something. And our listeners are like, I think you have a bot following you.

Amanda: And so I'm always trying to delete, hello, dear. Follow this link.

Marco  I'm sexy and I'm lonely.

Amanda: You know what I've been doing as a super sleuth?

Marco  Sure.

Amanda: Um. Um, like the string thread. Mystery solver that I am.

Marco  Yes.

Amanda: On Facebook, uh, community groups, there has been a trend in the last two months where people say they found. It could be a bunch of different things.

Marco  Sure.

Amanda: A lost dog, lost child, uh, various things. Anyways, they say there's no contact info, but it says, please bump, want to find owner or something like that. There's a few different versions, but they're mostly all the same. Or please help me find my uncle or whatever. Um, so what I've been doing is. Because they're all fake. What I've been doing is I've been taking the photo that they use, whatever they use, um, and doing a reverse image search.

Marco  Right.

Amanda: Which is pretty easy to do. You can just go into Google really, and plug it in to Google Images and then it'll show you where else it was used. I see taking a screenshot of that and then putting it on the thread, or if the thread is closed for commenting, then I'll just put it as the next entry into the group. So, for example, in the Aurelia buy and sell group, where this happens a lot.

Marco  I didn't realize you were in the Aurelia, uh, buy and sell group.

Amanda: I think I got into it because a friend, considering we live nowhere near

Marco  Aurelia, our cottage is like an hour away from Aurelia, so I actually think

Amanda: it was our friend David, um, David S. Who posted one of these in earnest. And we've had Other friends do this too, you know, sweet souls who go, oh, someone lost a dog or whatever. And so that's how. That's been my injury. And so then I go in and I post, here's. Here's where else this dog was lost. New Hampshire, four years ago, or whatever.

Marco  Sure.

Amanda: And I'll post that and, uh, you know, become the super sleuth truth teller that I am and tell people not to.

Marco  And do people appreciate it?

Amanda: Some do, yeah. But people just continue. Because you look at one of those bogus posts and they have like 4,000 shares.

Marco  Right, right.

Amanda: And you're like, come on.

Marco  We. We saw something very. Or you saw something very funny on a Facebook post today and you shared it with me and some friends.

Amanda: We haven't seen one like that in a long time.

Marco  M. It just made me laugh.

Amanda: But what made me laugh the most was it was a pretty well known actor. And we're in the middle of a whole acting thing now, a dispute, and that involves our union. And it's, you know, uniony stuff. So I won't bore you with that. Unless you want me to.

Marco  The commercial agreement.

Amanda: Yeah, the commercial. Very fascinating stuff. The, um, Producers association and commercial agreement. And I was on a very long union call today listening to all of that. So anyway, a fellow actor post her thoughts on the ratification and the agreement and then.

Marco  And she was none too pleased about it.

Amanda: No, she wasn't happy about it.

Marco  Fair enough.

Amanda: So she was trying to rally her people to not support this amendment or

Marco  whatever, as is her right.

Amanda: As is her right. But. So people are weighing in however they will. But one person in particular, and it's one of Canada's top playwrights. That's what made me laugh about it.

Marco  Wrote, I've so just set the scene. This fellow friend actor is like, the ratified agreement is not working in our favor. We need to, um, you know, not support it. And please, M. Um, consider.

Amanda: Vote yes.

Marco  Consider that it's 20% less, blah, blah, blah. And then this famous playwright writes, writes,

Amanda: I've just put beyond meat burgers in the oven. And then. And then some people kind of made different comments or different, like question marks or laugh. And then she wrote, oh, no, I can't delete. I'm sorry.

Marco  So the post just lives there, Waiting lives there.

Amanda: Uh, so it begs the question, why would you put beyond meat burgers in the oven?

Marco  Um, I don't know. In the oven sometimes.

Amanda: Who cooks burgers in the oven?

Marco  Maybe that's why it was an emergency. And she had to also ratify This, I guess. Oh, my goodness.

Amanda: Her vegetarian option for dinner tonight went into the oven. I don't know where. Where. This playwright, she's one of Canada's most famous playwrights. That's what's making me laugh about it. It's not like this person's mom or whatever.

Marco  It's like we have a friend who accidentally posted on a, um. Like a memorial, um.

Amanda: Oh, God.

Marco  Like.

Marco  Like a memorial Facebook tribute page.

Amanda: Okay. Do you want me to explain?

Marco  No, we don't want to get too far into it.

Amanda: I won't get specific, but it was for a very famous nautical disaster more

Marco  recently than, like, a memorial for that nautical disaster.

Amanda: It was, like, 20 years ago. It's well known. It's not well known in the world, but it's well known in her area.

Marco  Right.

Amanda: And my friend does know people that were affected by this nautical moment. And so people were saying, finally they've. The post was finally they've. The plaque to honor our people, everyone affected. And my friend, who's very closely tied to those people and personally affected and, uh, has good friends and wants to support.

Marco  Sure. Sure.

Amanda: Herself.

Marco  And this friend happens to be one of those people that you can always rely on who, if you need a, um, helping hand or support, they're there for you.

Amanda: And she's needed that support, too. And different things that have happened in her own life.

Marco  Sure.

Amanda: So she's drawn on her community, which is these people. Anyhow. But inadvertently, she posted a woman eating popcorn, rolling her eyes in bed to this memorial. Finally, um, the memorial for.

Marco  For this nautical issue for our men

Amanda: kind of thing, and didn't realize that that's what she had posted until dinner the next night. So it had been up there an entire day of. Oh, please. Eating popcorn and rolling her eyes. So that was a blunder. You know what? One of my favorite Facebook blunders, since we're on that now, is, uh, and I think it still exists, if you Google it, people who try to tag their grandparents and things, but instead tag Grandmaster Flash as you do.

Marco  As you do. And if you don't know who Grandmaster Flash is, he is a famous, uh, rap musician. Right, Amanda?

Amanda: I think so. One of the originals. Emojis.

Marco  Oh, my goodness.

Amanda: Um, I'm gonna read you some if I can find it.

Marco  And then I'll tell you one incident that I had, uh, with a text to my boss instead of Amanda.

Amanda: Yeah. Grandmas keep accidentally tagging themselves, so the grandparents. Grandmas keep accidentally tagging themselves as Grandmaster Flash on Facebook. This is pretty old, but, um, I mean, it's a couple years old, but it still makes me laugh. Um, so here's just a handful of the examples. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Timothy. Happy birthday to you. How old are you now? Love, Grandmaster Flash. Hi, Gabrielle. I loved our Ladies out day. You have my love and best wishes. Love, Grandmaster Flash. Um, let me look here, Logan, Grandpa and I are praying for you as you embark on your college career. Grandpa says to keep your nose clean in your spirits up. Love Grandpa and Grandmaster Flash.

Marco  They're good like that, those two are.

Amanda: Our youngest granddaughter, Ruth turns six years old today. She will be starting first grade soon. Happy birthday, Ruth. We love you. Love Grandpa and Grandmaster Flash.

Marco  It's great. Yeah, sure, because you want to type in grandma, but because Grandmaster Flash is probably so utilized that it just.

Amanda: And then Kathleen Thomas wrote to Grandmaster Flash, I didn't mean to hit the Grandmaster Flash, whatever that is. That's great. My grandson Jack's turning the big three today. I would like to wish him a happy birthday. Love you, Grandmaster Flash.

Marco  It's great.

Amanda: Oh, uh, it makes me so fun.

Marco  It's so. It's so endearing when these things happen

Amanda: and Grandmaster Flash apparently loves it as.

Marco  As. As they should.

Amanda: Right.

Marco  Um. I once was, um, doing a corporate gig and I meant to text Amanda. I was in the. And I was. I was in the US doing a corporate gig and I. I wanted to text Amanda that I was having some intestinal issues, but I accidentally.

Amanda: Which. Which just gives you a little window into our relationship. That. That's. We share those types of details.

Marco  Well. But I. I wanted some sympathy. Instead, I texted my boss, Ann, about my intestinal issues and she wrote back, I hope you're okay, because she knew I was about to perform.

Amanda: It was an urgent moment for you.

Marco  I guess it was. My goodness. Anyway, well, this podcast episode certainly took

Amanda: a turn I wasn't expecting from Thread to Grandmaster Flash.

Marco  As. As it happens. As it happens, you know, we really cover the gamut of. Of topics.

Amanda: How did we get on to that?

Marco  I don't even know. Sometimes. Sometimes the turns that we take. Only when I, uh.

Amanda: Talking about, uh, the playwright that put pian meat burgers in the oven.

Marco  Such a funny moment.

Amanda: Yeah. Anyway.

Marco  Oh my goodness. And we had something interesting happen to us this week too. Amanda got a parking ticket.

Amanda: Mhm.

Marco  And she had paid for the parking, so she wasn't too happy about it. I said, don't worry, I'll take care of it. Because when it comes to fighting tickets or dealing with that, usually I'm the one who takes that on and found, uh, out that they put in the wrong license plate number. And so they have no way of tracking our car. And you did pay for it because I have the receipt. And so when I called them, they said, don't worry about it. And so that. That was no longer a worry. But someone who has our license plate with one number off may be getting a ticket for parking, uh, near a restaurant you were at.

Amanda: Yeah. It's going to be as unexpected as a birthday greeting from grandpa and Grandmaster Flash.

Marco  Have you ever gotten anything that you didn't expect in the mail that you may have ordered or that you.

Amanda: Um, I went through a phase where I kept getting aviator sunglasses. And I don't know from who or from what.

Marco  They just kept coming.

Amanda: I got, like, three sets of them. Yeah. I don't know who was sending me aviator sunglasses. They weren't good ones. They were cheap ones.

Marco  Right.

Amanda: I don't know if it was from Amazon or what, but it was like, I just kept getting these weird aviator sunglasses. We still have some around.

Marco  Yeah, we had a bunch of aviators. Yeah. Uh, which I don't really wear.

Amanda: Nor do I. So they weren't maybe as well received, but.

Marco  Sure.

Amanda: I don't know if somebody was. I think it was just a mistake, like an accounting thing where somebody just kept sending them to us. I don't know.

Marco  Sure, sure.

Amanda: I ordered shoes once, and I thought. I deleted them, and then two pairs showed up.

Marco  I got soap. Remember when I was all into toilet soap? I had ordered toilet soap, which is soap. Uh, what we refer to as soap is actually toilet soap. Remember we had this conversation. You said, don't refer. You didn't like me referring to it.

Amanda: I don't like it. That's what it is. It sounds like you take a bath in the toilet.

Marco  No, no. It's toilet soap. That's what. Anyhow, Anyways, I wasn't expecting a second package of toilet soap to come in, and I got a second package, so I had to write them to say, stop sending me toilet soap or regular soap.

Amanda: Well, I have to tell you, this episode has kind of put me to sleep. I'm kind of tired.

Marco  Are you?

Amanda: Yeah.

Marco  You still have some work to do, don't you?

Amanda: I'll do in the morning.

Marco  I have a little bit of work of the podcast that I had to do to get this episode up tonight.

Amanda: Stress everybody out about the work we have to do.

Marco  That's true. That's true. It's all work that I enjoy. It's not even work. It's. It's pleasure. And, uh, we like to watch our Jeopardy. So we're gonna watch episodes.

Amanda: Oh, yeah, we have Jeopardy. To watch.

Marco  Yeah. Jeopardy. Masters, which we're really digging.

Amanda: I don't know if I'm gonna make it through. Oh, no.

Marco  Well, that's Amanda yawning. I guess I'm gonna. I'm gonna call this shine off. I'm gonna call the show. We've. We've got four minutes left. But I just figured, you know what I'll do, Amanda, while you're yawning, I'm gonna read a little bit more about string theory for people to fall. To fall fast asleep in case the episode was too exciting for you. So where did I leave off on the string theory? Well, I think I'll just take it from. String theory is a broad and varied subject that attempts to address a number of deep questions of fundamental physics. String theory has contributed a number of advances to mathematical physics, which have been applied to a variety of problems in black hole physics, early universe cosmology, nuclear physics, and condensed matter physics. And it has stimulated a number of major developments in pure mathematics. Because string theory potentially provides a unified description of gravity and particle physics, it is a candidate of a theory of everything, a self contained mathematical model that describes all fundamental forces and forms of matter. Despite much work on these problems, it is not known to what extent string theory describes the real world or how much freedom the theory allows in the choice of its details. String theory was first studied in the late 1960s as a theory of the strong nuclear force, before being abandoned in favor of quantum chromodynamics. Amanda maybe I'll leave it there. Some of these words are really big to read, and I'm taking that from Wikipedia. If you look up string theory and it's not a theory, there's also M theory. Amanda uh, mhm. Prior to 1995, theorists believed that there were five consistent versions of superstring theory, type 1, type 2a, type 2b, and two versions of heteronic string theory. The understanding changed in 1995 when Edward Wittenberg suggested that the five theories were just special limiting cases of an 11 dimensional theory called M. M theory. Witten's conjecture was based on the work of a number of other physicists, including Ashok Sen, Chris Hall, Paul Townsend, and of course, Michael Duff. His announcement led to a flurry of of research and that research activity now known as the second superstring revolution. And with that, I will end my conversation about string theory.

Amanda: Amanda uh, sounds good.

Marco  And that pretty much brings us to the end of today's episode. I hope you learned something, Amanda. I hope you're taking something away with you.

Amanda: I think I'm taking sleep. All right, so to bed with me. That's what I'm taking.

Marco  That's where Amanda's going. Wherever you go on this podcast journey, I want to thank you for being here with us, and we really value you as a listener, and, uh, we hope you were able to listen to this particular episode, relax, maybe giggle, and hopefully even fall asleep.