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Oh, how I love German radio!
In the United States, your choice is basically that of high-brow radio (NPR) or low-brow music stations. The problem with this is that there is nothing in between. All the NPR stations are basically the same, and all they do is broadcast high-quality radio talk shows all the time, with little or no music. So you better listen and not be distracted. The alternative is rather annoying simple-minded radio that plays hits all the time and does not provide any quality contents.
In Germany, you get a set of choices in between: Good music, and good editorial contents. If they talk too much on one station, you turn to another. If they play too many simple hits one that station, you turn to yet another. This morning, when listening to Fritz, the moderator jumped in between two songs and announced. "And now a joke for the friends of non-Euclidean geometry: Oops, my ball just fell over." And then the second song started, as if nothing had happened.
Now, admittedly, this is an arcane joke for the mathematically minded (*). However, this is a professional radio station worrying about its listeners as much as any other station. It is not college radio or the like! My point here is that this radio station can afford to have a zany kind of humor rather than follow strict rules of mass-targeted radio broadcasting. Long live German radio variety!
(*) Now for the joke, here is my explanation. The simple high-school geometry we are used to is the so-called Euclidean geometry. Our senses are aligned with it. Moreover, in Germany balls (like in soccer balls) are generally assumed to be round, unlike American footballs. So in traditional Euclidean geometry a ball can't really fall over. It just rolls. In non-Euclidean geometry, which isn't a specific kind of geometry but in this joke presumably anything that is not Euclidean, a ball that moves falls over, because the ball is not round and does not have the complete symmetry a ball has in Euclidean geometry. Under these circumstances, a ball that is rolling in Euclidean geometry is likely to look like it is falling over, recovering, falling over again, etc. in non-Euclidean geometry.
Strictly speaking, the joke is not complete, because the ball can't just fall over. Rather it must keep moving. But that doesn't matter. I had a good chuckle anyway.
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