NO PROBLEM!
Joseph Herscher builds wondrously complicated machines to solve mundane problems. Karl Puschmann met the inventor to see how he does it and to get a sneak peek at his new show What’s Your Problem?
Joseph Herscher has a problem. He has to catch Santa. This, he tells me, is not going to be a problem. In an orange folder stuffed with drawings is a cartoonishly detailed illustration that shows his plans for a needlessly complicated and ridiculously convoluted Santa Nabbing Machine.
To function correctly it needs patience, precision, good fortune and, lastly, time. It’s this last one that’s his problem.
He leads me over to a workbench where a candlestick sits below a steel ramp. On the ramp is a block of butter. The idea is when the candle is lit, the steel will heat up, melting the block of butter which will then slide down the ramp. This is just one part of the Santa trap. He doesn’t say how the candle will light or what the butter will trigger when it reaches its destination. Instead he says. “I’m trying to make this machine. I’ve spent almost two weeks on it because I only get to work on it for 10 minutes a day because I’m trying to do a million other things at the same time.”
Instinctively, he nudges the butter down the ramp, his mind whizzing and whirring with the possibilities that action will cause. He wants to tinker with it, get it made. But as creator, star and brains of new kid’s
show What’s Your Problem? he has a lot to do. He really needs his own machine to get through his daily tasks.
For years Herscher has been making wondrous Rube Goldberg machines and making videos for YouTube. His channel, Joseph’s Machines, has over 600,000 subscribers. Now he’s scaled up to a TVNZ production, working in a workshop behind Whoa! Studios in Henderson with a small production team to make ten episodes of his new series.
“We’re solving Kiwi kids most annoying everyday problems,” he explains. “The most common request we had was for a machine for tidying your room. Because kids hate tidying their rooms.”
He picks up his folder and starts flicking through the reams of paper stuffed inside and says, “I’ve got a picture right here. Hot off the press!”
Handing me his hand drawn picture he explains what I’m looking at.
“It’s multi-purpose, it works for any room,” he beams. “The way it works is that the whole floor lifts up on pulleys, then tilts and pours everything on the floor into a laundry basket. There’s cut-outs for the bed and any furniture.”
He pauses, looks at the picture again and says, “That’s the theory anyway. I’ve got no idea if it will actually work.”
We go into the production office where he shows me a couple of episodes of the show. One features actress Madeline Sami pretending to be a school bully and getting a very messy comeuppance. Another has sunscreen being applied at the beach in the most wonderfully convoluted way possible. The show’s rammed with inventiveness, a sense of play and is very funny.
“It’s important to me that we make something that someone of any age will appreciate and enjoy,” Herscher says. “Everybody wants a machine to tidy their room, right? We’re solving universal problems that need to be solved.”