The speaker talks about their work on solving the issue of footnotes in multi-column sections, which initially seemed like a simple ticket but turned out to be a more complex problem. They discuss their debugging process and analysis of the frames related to footnotes, highlighting the importance of the footnote container frame in supporting multi-columns in display. The speaker emphasizes the need for users to have the ability to choose the number of columns for footnotes, while ensuring the consistency of display across the document.