Factually! with Adam Conover - The Big Bang of Numbers with Manil Suri

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

Can you create the universe with nothing but mathematics? This week mathematician Manil Suri joins Adam to explain why and how math is fundamental to reality, and how to fall in love with a subject that many of us hated in school. Check out his new book at http://factuallypod.com/books Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know, I got to confess, I have always been a sucker for Japanese treats. I love going down a little Tokyo, heading to a convenience store, and grabbing all those brightly colored, fun-packaged boxes off of the shelf. But you know what? I don't get the chance to go down there as often as I would like to. And that is why I am so thrilled that Bokksu, a Japanese snack subscription box, chose to sponsor this episode. What's gotten me so excited about Bokksu is that these aren't just your run-of-the-mill grocery store finds. Each box comes packed with 20 unique snacks that you can only find in Japan itself.

Plus, they throw in a handy guide filled with info about each snack and about Japanese culture. And let me tell you something, you are going to need that guide because this box comes with a lot of snacks. I just got this one today, direct from Bokksu, and look at all of these things. We got some sort of seaweed snack here. We've got a buttercream cookie. We've got a dolce. I don't, I'm going to have to read the guide to figure out what this one is. It looks like some sort of sponge cake. Oh my gosh. This one is, I think it's some kind of maybe fried banana chip. Let's try it out and see. Is that what it is? Nope, it's not banana. Maybe it's a cassava potato chip. I should have read the guide. Ah, here they are. Iburigako smoky chips. Potato

chips made with rice flour, providing a lighter texture and satisfying crunch. Oh my gosh, this is so much fun. You got to get one of these for themselves and get this for the month of March. Bokksu has a limited edition cherry blossom box and 12 month subscribers get a free kimono style robe and get this while you're wearing your new duds, learning fascinating things about your tasty snacks. You can also rest assured that you have helped to support small family run businesses in Japan because Bokksu works with 200 plus small makers to get their snacks delivered straight to your door.

So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the truth. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me once again as I talk to an incredible expert about all the amazing things they know that I don't know that you might not know. Both of our minds are going to get blown together.

We're going to have so much fun doing it. Now, I want to remind everybody that I am on tour right now. If you are listening to this episode the day it comes out and you live in the fine city of Philadelphia, well, you should know that I am going to be there this weekend at Helium Comedy Club, November 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Don't miss it. And two weeks after that on November, let's check the date here, 17th, 18th, and 19th, I will be in Raleigh, North Carolina at Goodnight Comedy Club. If you want tickets to either of those events, head to adamconover.net to get tickets. And if you want to support the show, well, you can do that on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash adamconover.

For just five bucks a month, you will get every episode of this show ad-free. You will get bonus podcast episodes. You can join our community Discord. We even do a community book club every now and again. Come join. It's a lot of fun. Patreon.com slash Adam Conover, and I will be so grateful to see you there. I'll even say hi in the Discord when you join. Now, let's talk about this week's episode. This week, we are talking about math. Math, you know, is kind of weird from a philosophical standpoint. Mathematical truths are what's called in philosophy a priori. That means that you don't need to experience the world to figure them out. You just start with first principles and then you make deductions from those principles to reach all the incredible discoveries that mathematicians have made. You

don't need to observe anything. You just need to think. So in some sense, mathematical truths feel like they're separate from the outside or natural world. But at the same time, numbers and the formulas that we've derived from those numbers and the truths about mathematics that we've learned through centuries, even millennia of research, well, they seem to describe the natural world over and over again. The circles, spirals, and fractals we see all over, you know, just go for a walk in the woods and you'll see them. Well, they can be represented in mathematical terms, and you can use mathematical thinking to figure out what things are going to do in the real world. And that's a connection that's, you know, somewhat mysterious. that's, you know, somewhat mysterious. Now, real philosophers, actual philosophers, have been writing on the nature of mathematical truth compared to science or other forms of truth for literal millennia. They've been an object of fascination for exactly this reason, because it

seems somehow that mathematical truth is deeper and more universal than other truth in some way. Well, to help us think through these heady issues and to help us understand just how far math can take us in our understanding of the universe, our guest today flips the script just a little bit. As opposed to looking at reality and figuring out, you know, what we can learn about math from it, in his new book, he starts with just math

and then tries to build a universe out of it. So to find out what the hell he means by that, you're going to love this conversation. Please welcome Manil Suri. He's a brilliant mathematician, a novelist, and most recently the author of The Big Bang of Numbers, How to Build the Universe Using Only Math. Please welcome Manil Suri. Manil, thank you so much for being on the show. It's such a pleasure. Thank you. So you wrote, I want to start here,

you wrote a piece for the New York Times a number of years called How to Fall in Love with Math that argues that, you know, the way that we're taught math in school maybe doesn't emphasize all the things that are so lovable about it. Certainly a lot of people don't often feel that they love math. Why do you find math to be a lovable topic?

I think what I really like about math are the ideas behind it. What happens in schools is you're constantly struggling with trying to figure out arithmetic and percentages and square roots and things like that. And that's what I suspect can turn people off. But that really hides the fact that math is really about ideas, more than it is about calculations, strangely enough. It's a lot more than arithmetic, which is what most people actually deal with in their daily lives. It's this whole world out there. And once you're introduced into it, you really want to explore more. Do you have an example of an idea in math that made you

fall in love with it or that you love? Or is that too difficult to explain over a podcast because it's a mathematical idea? No, actually, that's perfect. And I'll tell you, I know the exact moment that this happened, where I was a, I think I was in college at that time. And this professor was teaching us about how numbers can be constructed out of nothing. There's a famous saying by the mathematician Kroniker, who basically said, God gave us the integers and the rest all is the work of man. In other words, that humans, mathematicians actually created everything in math just given the numbers, but the numbers are really God-given. Well, this professor said that, hey, wait a minute, you can actually construct the numbers as well. And he proceeded to show us how with just emptiness, you can make the number zero, then one, then two, then three. And it was really like sitting there, and this was in Mumbai, I just felt like, you know, the

walls and everything were just disappearing. I could actually feel these numbers coming at me just from the blackboard from this professor. And I was just saying, hey, my God, this is creation. This is the beginning of the cosmos. So I think that was just almost a religious experience. Wow. Let me just say, before we dive into that, I've had that experience myself with things that I've studied in school. I remember learning through my own reading,

reading more about like the theory of evolution and, you know, through Darwin's eyes. And I sort of got the picture of the enormous power and beauty of the theory, you know, and the fact that, oh my gosh, just chemical reactions happening, complex chemical reactions happening in biological organisms can give rise to such complexity and like everything that's around me in the sphere the sphere of life and i was dazzled by it and i was like how come my ap bio class in high school didn't didn't have right how come we were doing the krebs cycle we were doing like the chemistry inside the cells and it was very rote and why why was there no teacher who showed me you know i had wonderful teachers but why did i never get that um and and And so I think a lot of folks have maybe had that experience with something that they've

studied on their own, finding their love for it. But let's talk about your new book, which is about the creation of the universe via mathematics in the way that you described. I think that's such an interesting concept. So what do you mean by that? So usually when you think of the creation of the universe, you just brought up evolution. And, you know, science has a lot to say about that. We have the actual Big Bang, where everything is supposed to have started from a singularity where mass and energy perhaps were so compressed, you know, infinitely compressed.

And there was expansion and so on. So we have that account. We also have the account that religion gives us that, you know, God created the world in the biblical version in seven days. And you have things from Hinduism and Islam and so on. So you have all those versions as well. But what about math? Does that have a version? And when I tied it to that experience, I said, hey, wait a minute, we're talking about creation too. We're talking about the numbers, certainly, and we're talking about mathematical objects, but then could you actually carry this through

and keep going with it, you know, sort of taking the ball and running with it and saying, hey, can we actually go further and actually start creating, you know, the universe? And there's certainly some sort of background reality in that. I don't know if it's reality, but maybe a theory that says that, hey, when you think about the universe, the intelligence behind that is really mathematics. That, you know, if there is some sort of intelligence, it's a viable thing to think about it as being mathematics rather than God or a singularity. Wow. Are you talking about like an extraterrestrial intelligence

or a supernatural omnipotent intelligence, like a godlike intelligence being mathematics? Actually, I think I don't mean either of them. What I mean is, yeah. I mean, but that's, you know, that's what I should have put in the book, you know, a supernatural being that's a mathematician controlling everything.

And actually, I did have that. So maybe we'll come to that later. It was called The Godfather of Numbers, but that's a whole other story. But what I mean is the order in the universe, like what creates something rather than nothing, what creates order in the universe, what creates our laws, our physical laws? What perhaps even creates, you know, everything we see? And what I'm trying to show is that whereas

mathematics can't do bricks and mortar kind stuff, you know, you can't expect math or math theories to actually say, hey, somehow I've transformed these formulas into an actual living being. Maybe that's a little too much, but mathematics can explain how that happened. And it can give very logical ways that such complexity can arise from very simple ingredients.

So I'm trying to follow that chain of ideas right from the creation of numbers to the emergence of everything. intuitive sense that that makes to me because I've always known that there was an XKCD comic that I read years ago. Um, and I can't remember exactly what it was, Randall Monroe, the creator of the comics been on this show. Um, but, uh, it expressed the idea that like math is the only field that is, uh, of like human investigation, you know, science, philosophy, all of the chemistry, et cetera. Math is the only one that we like know is, what's the word? Like almost indubitably true. Like it's so fundamental.

It's like, it's almost entirely a priori, meaning that you don't need your experience to understand it. It starts from numbers and it all flowers from there. And it's like, there's a reason that math is what they put on the records that they sent to space for the aliens to hear, right? Because any intelligence we know must understand math. And so there's a way in which, you know,

we know that math sort of seems like the fundamental structure of reality in a way that is very clear to us. Does that make sense to you? Am I talking nonsense? No, no, no. In fact, what you brought up reminded me of this old movie that I saw called Phase Four. And it's about, I don't know, I forget if it was ants or something, they take over the world and there's some alien intelligence killing people. And then, you know, the scientists get together and try to transmit the equation of a circle, and they say that, you know, math is the only thing

that these other intelligent beings would understand. And sure enough, you know, they respond to that circle, and that's how the world gets saved. So, yes, math can be the savior of the world in that sense. But what you're saying is true that math is very logical. It's very deductive. You start with these axioms. So everything is clearly spelled out what you're going to start with. And then you proceed logically and you build up everything else. Now, there is something to that, though, that is very interesting and that is different from physics or creation or religion.

And that is that mathematicians are very careful preachers. We are not going to put our, you know, stick our necks out if we can't help it. So we always say that these are axioms. We can't actually prove them, but we can accept them. So we are starting with a set of assumptions. Take nothing, for example. You know, I've seen people like Neil deGrasse Tyson talk about nothing where they say, okay, you have some sort of space and then you remove some molecules and you still have some left and then you basically try to vacuum everything out and what you get is going to be close to nothing. So, you know, you can think of it as a physical

way, but you always have problems with that. Like, do you still have the laws of physics? Do you have this, that? So mathematicians know, we know that it's very hard to define certain things because you're always defining it in terms of something else. So we would actually start by an axiom, an assumption that there is something called nothing, that there is something called an empty set. And, you know, let's let the philosophers and the theologians and maybe the physicists figure out what that means to get to that step. But we are going to start at this step and then define everything. Wow. So I would love to do that. You said that your teacher back in Mumbai told you about how you could get one from nothing and that you could create everything else from that. So how

do you get one from nothing from that? So, you know, I think of it as a magic trick. So all of these are magic tricks, okay? So in this magic trick, in this mathematical trick, what you're doing is you're defining, you're saying that we're assuming the existence of something called an empty set. And that's just basically, you know, a collection of objects which has no objects in it. So it's empty. you know, a collection of objects which has no objects in it. So it's empty. Now, once you have that, then you can say,

okay, I'm going to equate that to zero. And this is actually not so different from what zero, you know, the number zero as it was discovered by the Hindus, like centuries ago, how it actually came to being. Because in Hinduism and Buddhism, you really look at the void and you try to get meaning out of it. And so historians have connected that to the actual introduction or discovery of zero. They looked into the void and said, hey, we see something.

We see nothing, but we're going to call that nothing something, and that's going to of zero. They looked into the void and said, hey, we see something. We see nothing, but we're going to call that nothing something. And that's going to be zero. And once you have this mathematical object zero, then you can say, hey, let's now consider a set. You know, we have something now. So that something is going to be

what you define as the number one. So we're going to take this. Wait, say it again. Yes, I know, I know. It's best seen in print or in a video or something. No, no, I'm going to get it. I'm going to get it. No, no, no, I know, I know.

But so, okay, so you start with nothing. Nothing is, you know, again, mathematicians call it an empty set. And you equate that to be the number zero. Then when you have zero, you say, okay, you need something else. You need this ability to form a group. So you say, okay, I'm going to put some invisible brackets around that zero, and it's going to be a set. And now this set has something in it. It has the number zero. And that's what's going to be the number one. And then what you do is you say, now I've constructed two things.

I've constructed the zero and I've constructed the one. And so, you know, just by counting, you're saying, hey, now I have something where I can play around with these two mathematical objects. Well, what I've done is what I'm really saying is I have the number two. And you can keep doing this. So you're saying that you have, so you come up with the concept of nothing, of zero. Right. And then you say, well, now I have one mathematical concept, the concept of nothing. And that's what one is.

Is that about right? I've got one nothing. Yes, and that is correct. But I should warn you that, you know, this is the kind of stuff that you can really get lost in. And many mathematicians have enormous volumes. Like there's the classic example is this volume that proves that one plus one equals two using set theory. And it's hundreds of pages long. So we don't want to get into that. That's not the book I set out to write.

So we need to get to the next topic. Okay. We're not going to spend the rest of our lives figuring out why one plus one equals two. No, definitely not. Although it is, but I love the fact

that mathematicians have spent hundreds of pages proving that one plus one equals two. There's something that I find very delightful about that, that you'd want to, okay, I know one plus one

equals two, but how do I know? Yeah. Is it really, can I really prove it? Exactly. You know, you have to remember that all these are abstract objects. And one of the things that can turn people off from math is this idea of abstraction.

And people fear it. You know, when you say abstract, that's abstract algebra, abstract this. That can actually say, oh my God, I don't want to deal with this. But abstraction is something we use all the time. Anytime you talk about numbers, numbers are abstract objects, and you're basically using them in daily life to get about your business, trying to identify how many birds there are, how much money you have. So abstraction is very much a part of our lives. And if you think about just numbers, we are taught to accept that abstract concept and it can then be very, very helpful. And so the idea is, can you do that with other abstract quantities and how does that help you? Yeah. I mean, that's almost entirely the advantage that humans have

over other animals. Or what makes us distinct is that we are able to use abstract concepts and thought. That's almost the entire game of language and thought and everything else. Well, I want to learn more about how we, from here, create the universe using numbers. But we have to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Manil Suri. Back with more Manil Suri. Okay, so Manil, you've told us how we create numbers, how we can create numbers from nothing.

Zero, one, two, three, four, five. I assume you can keep doing that as high as you want to keep counting once you have the first few. What do you do next if you want to create the universe using mathematics? So I think we need to do something about space. You know, we need some space to move around. We need something. And now this is also something interesting because if you read the Bible, for example, God just creates things, you know, there's the first day of creation and so on. There's never any talk about, is there something called empty space that you have to create? It's just assumed. In Hinduism, Brahma, he

breathes out the universe in a single breath. But again, the assumption is that there's some space out there, some empty stage that's actually there to receive or nurture all these creations. So mathematicians need to actually create empty space. And what we need for that is we need some other, you know, we are really being very careful about what ingredients we need. So we need more ingredients. We need something like a point, like a point that is a location. So we need more ingredients. We need something like a point, like a point that is a location. So we need to assume that again. And once you have one location,

then you can assume, hey, maybe there's another location. And then you can start connecting those. You can think of lines as made up of a whole bunch of points, you know, an infinite number. And from lines, you can create planes and then you can create 3D space. And, you know, an infinite number. And from lines, you can create planes, and then you can create 3D space. And, you know, if you think about it abstractly, well, you don't have to stop at 3D. You can use the same process to go into higher dimensions. And for all we know, these higher dimensions might exist. We can't see them because we are in 3D, but they might exist. Now, one of the other nice things about this is you ordinarily would end up with a space we are in 3D, but they might exist. Now, one of the other nice things about this is you ordinarily would end up with a space we are familiar with. But let's say you have two points

and you say, you know, let's say a line is connecting them. Well, it could be a straight line, but it could also be the arc of a circle. Like, let's say you say, hey, I'm given two points. What if there's an arc of a circle between them? Yeah. Well, if you start with that assumption, remember I said math is all about assumptions. If you start with that assumption, you would actually not get a plane,

a flat plane. But if you kept doing this, if you kept generating these sorts of arcs of circles, what you would actually end up with is a sphere. So instead of getting a flat geometry, you would get a curved one, you would get a sphere instead. And this kind of idea can be, there's several ways of playing with this. So I go into that. And one of the neat things is that you can actually do this with crochet. Like there's a mathematician who showed how using crochet, you can actually create all these different types of curve geometries.

And these are, you know, mathematicians used to think this is impossible, but she actually showed it. Hey, look, I have it right here. And then they started saying, hey, you know, this kind of geometry has been used by all sorts of living creatures, like mushrooms. You know, the mushrooms have that chanterelle type cap. That's actually an example of something called hyperbolic geometry. And you can find this in all sorts of organisms. So, you know, even though humans didn't, mathematicians didn't know about this until about 100 years ago, all these other animals

seem to know about it like half a millennium ago. So, you know, that's kind of interesting. This particular type of geometry. Yeah, exactly. So that's one of the things that you do next. And, you know, these curved geometries later on would be the ones that Einstein used for describing what space-time looks like. You know, you've probably heard about space-time being curved. Well, the origins lie in creating these different types of geometry.

Rather than just a plain, flat geometry, a sphere or a hyperbolic surface. And that's what really gives rise to curved space-time much later on. That is so cool. I want to, though, go back to, I was so transfixed by your description of, you know, starting from nothing, getting the numbers from that. How do you then get your first point from that first process? Or can you draw that line? So the way I draw it in my book, and remember, I've also, you know, this book actually started as a novel. And yeah, you're a novelist. So I said, hey, how do you connect these things? The way I

draw the connection is that these numbers, they're just kind of existing. They need they need homes. You know, they need some condos or something. They need some some units to inhabit. So what I said was, OK, this first remember, it was an assumption that there is some point. So zero is going to be in that first room. And then, hey, once you have something for zero, one is going to say, what about me? I need something too. And so you need to get the second point. And then all the points in between, two, three, four, everyone starts clamoring for their own rooms. So that's when you start creating a line.

And so that's the way I approach it. And I think that's when you start creating a line. And so that's the way I approach it. And I think that's an interesting way of doing it. At some point, you know, once you've got space, then you have to go on. You know, we're still after the rest of the universe. So how do you go from there? Yeah.

Let me ask you first, before we go on from there, and this is getting into, you know, again, as I've talked about on the show many times, my very advanced bachelor's degree in philosophy. feel that this process that you're talking about, where you start from nothing and then you can build all of this out of it, is this something that you think can be done completely a priori, meaning without any, you know, could a mind that has no experience of the world, right, that is just sort of like, you know, someone with no sight, no hearing, you know, just a mind floating in space, contemplating the numbers, could you literally do this? Or do you feel that, hey, in reality, you would need the experience of space in order to have the concept for it? I mean, this is obviously a question philosophers have been arguing about for centuries. We could go back and read Kant or whatever. I'm just curious about your view. Yeah, that's a great question. And right in the beginning of the book, I kind of had to at least make some remarks to that,

whether, you know, you have all this in your mind and the fact that you know all this a priori, is that going to affect this thought experiment that we're doing? Can you create the whole universe out of just numbers? And I think the numbers themselves are pretty basic. I think the numbers themselves are pretty basic. I think that that part you're going to be able to do without the a priori knowledge. That's what I feel. Again, it's a matter of feeling.

Once you start getting to space, then you have these bifurcations. You know, you could create empty space. I mean, you could create flat space. You could create a sphere. You could create a hyperbolic surface. And that's where not knowing the fact that our world is probably just flat space, not knowing that you won't really be able to tell which path you were taking. So all of these possible... There could be eight dimensions. Who knows? Yes, exactly.

So that actually opens up a good question. And that is that the universe as we know it doesn't have to be the only one that can exist. They can be other universes. Certainly from this mathematical point of view, this philosophical point of view, because you are confronted with natural bifurcations. You know, you have these different choices that could happen and you could make them,

you know, you could be premeditated about it and make those choices or something could be happening and you couldn't really tell. You would have to follow each path. So I think that's where the key is. Once you start constructing space, you really see that. It's interesting. It's almost as though what you're describing, the mathematical process you're describing,

can describe how this world was created, but it maybe doesn't describe why this world exists as opposed to one with a different number of dimensions. Because it could equally well explain that eighth-dimensional universe. Exactly. this world exists as opposed to one with a different number of dimensions, but it, cause it could equally well explain that eighth dimensional universe. Exactly. And that's, that's something typical of math.

Math is the ultimate agnostic. It'll never really step in to say, you know, the math is that I'm going to try and explain this math. Math is something so abstract that you can create different types of math and then match that math to the model of something that you're trying to model. So you're trying to say, hey, our universe corresponds to this. So in this book, of course, since I am starting from nothing and I'm trying not to do the premeditated stuff, I do come across these

bifurcations, these different choices. And just to keep the narrative going, I have to make a choice. And so in that choice, I do use the fact that you alluded to, which is that I'm going to assume that somehow or the other, I always pick the choice that will be closest to giving us the universe that we want. I have to do that. Otherwise, you know, otherwise my book would have been 10,000 pages long and still going.

This is so cool though, because it really does illuminate something about math that I didn't quite like think about before, that math is agnostic about sort of actuality and very, very broad on possibility, right? What is theoretically possible? Um, it has a lot to say on that, but it has a little bit less to say on, Hey, what actually physically literally exists in the world. So, okay, let's get to, you said once you have created, uh, okay, So you've created

the number, you start with nothing. You created something out of nothing that gave you the numbers. Then you put the numbers in order and then you were like, Hey, they're in a line. That's interesting. And then there's points and then you start connecting them and then you start getting dimensions. And all right, so we've got space and numbers. There's still some stuff left out. What do we do next to create the universe? So then I had to kind of say, okay, you know, then it comes to this bricks and mortar type of stuff. And math is not going to be able to just generate matter. It can generate the design of matter. It can generate a sort of blueprint for it. But the actual construction, there has to be some other entity. And so that required some thought and some, you know, some novelistic type input. And so I finally settled on calling this, I call it a

contractor. You need a contractor to build, to do the actual building. And that contractor is going to be nature. Now, nature is an interesting word. It comes from the Greek, and it can mean both, you know, we think of nature as, I don't know, you have so many different visions. You can, if you look on the web, you'll see nature as a very retro kind of female figure who's very nurturing and so on. And that's the way it's often portrayed in some religions, certainly Hinduism. You can also think of nature as physics.

The word in Greek actually means is physis, which means physics. So whether you believe in God or physics, So whether you believe in God or physics, you can think of that entity as carrying this story forward and actually doing your bidding. But the problem that you immediately are confronted with is how do you actually tell this person what you want? How do you tell this contractor? And that's where the language of math comes in. And the language of math is, you know, every school kid's favorite subject,

algebra. So that's where algebra comes in, where you're actually going to use it to communicate with your contractor. Keep talking, keep expanding on this. So like, you know, like straight lines. Okay, you know how to construct straight lines, but how is your contractor going to do it? And okay, you can say, here's a point, here's another point.

How do you tell your contractor what are the points in between? Well, that's where you invent equations, and these equations will enable the contractor to actually draw these lines or draw these circles or draw these circles or draw whatever construct whatever you're actually you know requiring uh or whatever you're looking for um this by the way was one of the parts of of high school math that i enjoyed the most was getting a an equation using it to draw a line there's something very satisfying about the process of having having like, a line of characters

and then figuring out how this plots. And you're like, oh, I can draw a picture with it. Like, turning the one into the other is very fundamentally satisfying. Yeah, and the reason is that it's connecting two big branches of math. One is the, you know, formulas, algebra, and so on. And the other is geometry.

So you're actually connecting, you're making this amazing connection that you're saying, hey, everything on a sheet of paper that you're drawing on has a counterpart in this equation that you've written down. So it's amazing. You know, the whole idea of algebra is pretty amazing. When you think about X, you know, like it gets a bad rap, but X is an

amazing invention. Think of it, when you say X, X can be anything. It can be one, two, three, it can be fractions, it can be decimals, it can be irrational numbers. So with that one symbol, you're actually encompassing a whole infinity of numbers. I mean, where else can you do that? You know, just one. And then when you say y equals 2x, you're talking about the equation of a line. Imagine if you had to plot each and every point in that line by hand. You know, if you had a machine that was actually darkening each point. Well, no one could do it. That would take an infinite number of time, of time. But with the single equation, y equals 2x, you actually, you know, created this line in some sense. Yeah. I also really enjoyed algebra in high

school. It was the last piece of math I did enjoy. When we got to calculus, I became baffled. And that happens to a lot of people. But I lost my feeling for it. But algebra I also enjoyed because algebra homework was fundamentally like problem solving. It was like solving puzzles. And there was something game-like about it that I enjoyed. That like, okay, you have to solve for X. Oh, that's like, oh, there's a problem and there's a solution and you can figure out what it is.

There was something pleasing about that and there's also something pleasing about knowing that like okay those those like equations do exist out in reality that that uh you know you can use equations to uh you know algebraic equations to like learn the to predict something that might happen in the real world to, you know, once you start taking like high school physics and seeing that like, okay, I can make a prediction about the world that will come true if I, if I do the equation correctly. There's a lot of cool, like aha discoveries there that like are the, those are the times that I felt most connected to math in my life. And it's interesting because you've actually summarized several different reasons why

people like math. One is this puzzle type thing, you know, you're solving problems. Another is just seeing how these things can be useful. A third is just the, you know, even when you're writing, like if you have a fraction of one number over another and you find common factors and you cancel them out, just that action, it can be very relaxing, mind-pleasing. So anytime you're feeling tense, maybe that's what we should all do. Take a big number, divide it by another number, and start finding common factors. I mean, it makes you wonder why the New York Times in the back doesn't just have some algebra that you can do. They've got crossword puzzles. They've got Sudoku. Why not just a little bit of algebra to do, you know, because it can be relaxing.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that often like the Sudoku, I think that's very mathematical. Oh, yeah. And there are papers written on it. and their papers written on it. So I just wonder if we somehow feel that, hey, this is too much out there, that math is, you know, people, our readers will kind of fly away in droves and we need to protect them from this. They should never see an X symbol or an equal design.

It might drive them to misery. So, you know, I just wonder that there's some of that going on. They have to hide it a little bit. Hide the math in the Sudoku. Right. Well, okay, back to how we use this to create the universe, though. So tell me more about, yeah, the process of using algebra and how it interacts with nature.

So here's the problem. You tell nature all these things, and you never actually, nature actually never obeys you. Like you tell nature to draw a straight line and you'll see that there are no straight lines in reality, you know, in the universe. There is no perfect triangle. There is no perfect circle. So what's going on? And I feel that this contractor that you have, you know, hey, anytime you've done anything with a contractor, try to build a house, remodel a kitchen, you're going to run into problems. And that's what's happening with nature. Nature is putting its own stamp on it.

Nature is capricious. She can only deal with probabilities. So that's nature's intrinsic form kind of appearing in the way she translates what your instructions are. And this, you know, it's something that even religion would have to kind of say, hey, how come there aren't any triangles, any perfect triangles? In fact, in the book, the Pope is someone who keeps recurring in the book. I use him to kind of think of some of these things. So in one part, he really says, hey, how come there's no perfect

triangle in the universe? And that's a real something that we have to deal with in this book. And so that's the way I deal with it. But what also happens is nature has its own needs and its own patterns that it really wants to play with and it's attracted to. And so that's the next section, you know, where you start looking at what patterns can be created with the math that you've come up with so far. you've come up with so far. Yeah. Do you ever feel that it's a challenge for the idea, the idea I expressed earlier that math is the one field of human inquiry that is just sort of like indubitably true out in nature? The fact that nature has no straight lines, that when you look at all the straight lines

on planet Earth, they're all created by people, right? We're the ones who like straight lines. And in the same way, we're the ones who created the equilateral triangle. You know, like we'd love to believe that the perfect equilateral triangle is just a you know, it's it's it's in God's eye and it's just sort of out there in the universe because of its perfection. find one in the pages of the math books that humans have created. Is that at all a challenge to the idea that math is somehow fundamental to the universe, rather than it just being something that, you know, exists in our, in our, you know, weird, meaty brains? So that's a, that's a great question. And the answer that I give, that I would give to it, is that math is in fact, it is that math is in fact central to the universe. It's nature that's the problem, because nature is trying to get this right and is doing the best that nature can. So it can't quite get it right. So math is the ultimate reality that nature is trying to follow.

is the ultimate reality that nature is trying to follow. And that's a reversal of the way math is usually presented in the sense that here is what nature does, here are the models, here is physics and so on, here's the actual observation that you have, and then math is going to approximate that by trying to get as close to it as possible. So I just flipped that, and I've said that math is the true reality, and nature is trying to really evoke it as best as she or they can.

Nature is the sort of messy expression of the pure reality of numbers. This is almost, it almost reminds me of platonic forms, Plato's cave a little bit, that math is the pure version and that reality is the messy expression of it that of course can never be as perfect as the perfect mathematical object original. Yes, exactly. All these thoughts go back to Plato. And I think he was the one that first expressed

just what you just said. And I think most mathematicians are probably platonic in the sense that they really believe that, you know, math is the perfect essence and then everything else is, you know, can never be exactly the same. They're neoplatonists in a sense. Do you put yourself in that group? You're certainly expressing what I guess what we would now say is a platonic idea. Well, I mean, being a mathematician, I want to hedge my bets a little. I'm never going to put myself in any group if I can help it.

So I will also say that, again, being the agnostic type, I would say that, hey, that's certainly a very valid way of thinking about it. But this other way also has, you know, thinking of reality as being imperfectly modeled by mathematics, that is also a valid way. So, and actually, this is a duality that ultimately takes us all the way through the book. And at the end, I kind of took that to be a very central idea of existence, that there are going to be things that you really can't tell which one is the more, let's say, correct way of thinking of things. And in some sense, math shows us that, you know, you can't, there are going to be things, I mean, math is the most perfect subject that we know in some sense. But even with math, you can't be sure about certain things.

And that's almost a lesson to us about our own existence that we are never going to be sure. There are some things that we are never going to know. Are we here just, you know, are we here just for by a fluke or is there something that is actually driving us? Is math something that is just out there and we find, or is it something we create? So that's, yeah. What a beautiful answer. And I'm not, by the way, trying to pin you down. I'm really enjoying the exploration of this as being a way to look at the world.

I'm not a philosopher who's going to come at you and argue with you on these points. I'm exploring this as a way to look at the world that's very fulfilling to look at. Yeah, I mean, as a mathematician, I will never be pinned down, hopefully. I'll always slip away. Well, this is also fascinating. Let's talk more about nature right after this quick break. We'll be right back with more Manil Suri.

Okay, we're back with Manil Suri. I'd love to talk more about some more complex mathematical ideas that we find expressed in nature. How do you get to things like there's a lot of talk, for instance, I remember reading growing up about how fractals are expressed everywhere in nature. How do we get to there from now we've got nature

following the lines of algebra, following the instructions of algebra as our contractor? So remember games? Nature likes to play games. And with fractals, you kind of can generate them by very simple games. It's like you, for example, if you take a number and keep squaring it, you know, 1.5 squared is 2.25, and that squared is something bigger, something bigger, well, that number will go off and will become infinite eventually. If you take some other numbers, which are smaller than one, then those, when you keep squaring them, will go to zero. You can use this game to actually, just variations of this very simple game to generate, you know, all those wonderful pictures that you see of fractals.

They all come from some very simple rules like this. So that's an example of great complexity arising from an extremely simple rule. I mean, we're just talking about quadratics here. That's a way that you start coming up with these fractals. And what is a fractal? Fractals usually have two characteristics to them. One is that when you blow them up, they are more or less repeated at every scale. So, you know, you blow up a fractal and you see the same picture emerge, and then you blow that up and you see something similar emerge at a smaller scale and so on. So it's this self-similarity.

The other main thing about fractals is that they don't quite fit into what we think of as one-dimensional or two-dimensional or three-dimensional objects. They're somewhere lurking in between. And this is often characterized by their boundaries. If you look at the fractal boundaries, they're really complicated. I mean, you know, you keep expanding them and some of these boundaries, when you think about them, are actually infinite. So there's a lot of complexity in there and lots of boundary, and it's all packed into this little form. Why would nature care? Well, nature actually wants to create things. Let's say you look at your lungs, for example, or your circulatory system.

In your lungs, you have all these air passages that need to interact with blood and so on to have an exchange of oxygen. And you want to maximize what boundary you have between, you know, you want to maximize the boundary and you want to minimize the size of your lungs. You know, you don't want enormous infinite lungs. Maximum surface area for the size of your lungs. You know, you don't want enormous, infinite lungs. Maximum surface area for the space in your body. Exactly. And so that's where fractals come in, where the use of these fractals come in. So, again, nature has all these different needs that it's going to have as it builds the universe.

needs that it's going to have as it builds the universe. And you want to give it a really good catalog where it can go through this and riff through it and say, hey, a circle, I need that. Or I just need a sphere. Oh no, for this application, I need something much more complicated. And that's where fractals, I feel, come in. They're not as simple as spheres or cubes. They're much more complicated, but also very simple to generate. Yeah. I've noticed this recurring theme in what we've been talking about, of the idea of enormous complexity coming from something very simple. You know, like that was what fascinated me about fractals when I first discovered in the 90s. There was a fad for fractals really at the time.

They were everywhere. when I first discovered in the 90s. There was a fad for fractals really at the time. They were everywhere. But, you know, I remember on my old Macintosh I had, I would, you know, download a fractal, like a Mandelbrot set program that let me zoom infinitely into it. And I could zoom as deep as I wanted

and continue to find more and more complexity, even though I knew the rules for creating the shape. It was very, very simple. If you've never done this, like go find on the internet. I'm sure there's, you can just find probably some website somewhere that'll let you just dive into the Mandelbrot set. It was very, very simple. If you've never done this, like go find on the internet. I'm sure there's, you can just find probably some website somewhere that'll let you just dive into the Mandelbrot set. It's very fun.

I talked about, you know, being fascinated by evolution because of this very, very simple process that gave rise to this incredible complexity and beauty. And you're describing now also an entire, your entire system for creating the universe out of math is also following that, that, you know, you just start with nothing. And then from that, you created numbers and then lines and then space and all of this. There's something to us that's very deeply moving about the idea of creating something very complex from something very simple.

Do you agree? I think so, yes. Because that gives us hope that we can come to these basic building blocks and we can actually understand how this long progression could take place and how it would explain our existence. I think that's the really good message that math offers us. It shows us a way, it shows us the possibility. It might not actually go in and say, hey, this is exactly what happened. That's left to physicists and chemists and so on.

But it does lay the tracks and shows you how that could have happened. Yeah. And this to me, when I contemplate that, that's when science and math and logic starts to feel spiritual to me, when I contemplate that, that's when science and math and, you know, logic becomes starts to feel spiritual to me because I start to like just become in awe of the fact that, wait, so, you know, such simplicity that I can understand gave rise to such complexity that I can't begin to encompass in my mind. encompass in my mind, that's where I start to feel like very strong emotional feelings about it that to me, like get close to a religious feeling or I set them next to each other. Do you feel that connection at all? Well, again, I don't know what religion, you know, how I would define a religious feeling. I just mentioned that with the numbers. Certainly in history, there has been a kind of correlation between the two.

And the best example of that is George Cantor. He's the one who first started looking at infinity. And he was actually quite, quite scared that since he was dabbling in things that the church had questions about, you know, Galileo had just been a few centuries ago. He didn't want to end up as another Galileo. So he kept actually sending what he was doing to bishops and cardinals and so on, trying to get their approval, and actually wrote to the pope himself way back then. and actually wrote to the Pope himself way back then. But his stuff, his work, I think is truly the cap for math, and it really brings this discussion into the next phase,

which is, what is infinity? Do we ever encounter that? Do we encounter it in our lives, or is it just some phantom kind of effect that is shaping our lives? And in many ways that we don't even realize. And remember, I said that this novel was this this book was originally a novel. And so the name of that was The Godfather of Numbers. of that was the godfather of numbers. And, you know, a slightly shady character, the godfather, I thought of infinity as fitting that role. And so how does infinity affect everything? Remember,

right from the beginning, when we talked about the numbers, we said that we're going to create all the numbers. Well, that's an infinite process. And so how does that actually happen? These are very difficult questions, and mathematicians are divided about them, too. But at some point you get to the fact that we need to really understand infinity to be able to see how this story, how this narrative, you know, kind of comes together. how this story, how this narrative, you know, kind of comes together. We talked about fractals. And fractals are, if you look at a mathematical fractal, it's going to be something that is repeated an infinite number of times. You talk about a fractal in nature,

that's only going to have a finite number of repetitions. And eventually you get down to atoms and molecules. Yes, exactly. of repetitions. Eventually you get down to atoms and molecules. Yes, exactly. So the concept of infinity is something that constantly pulls us along, pulls along this mathematical train of thought, but we don't necessarily experience infinity in our lives except for one thing. And that thing that I feel is, and again, physicists will disagree,

and there are different ways of looking at it. Let's say you look at time and you say, how many instants of time have I lived through? Now, what do you mean by an instant? You know, if you think about time being completely infinitely divisible, then yes, you have lived through an infinite number of instants of time. Quantum physicists might argue that, hey, there's a minimal, you know have or mass that you can have in the universe, beyond which you can't really have a meaningful discussion of what you're talking about. There's similarly a minimal interval of time that you can talk about in many of these physical theories.

And you can think of time as just being those minimal pieces lined up one after the other. Or you can think of it as a continuous line. Again, these are questions that I can't answer. I'm going to think of it as a continuous line, in which case you and I have lived through an infinite number of instances of time. Yeah. So that's kind of interesting. Now, the other question that Cantor then considered was, if you've lived through an instant, infinite number of instances of time, can you number them?

Can you say, aha, this was my first instant of time. This was my second instant of time. This was my third. This was my fourth. This was my fifth. Can you do that? You would then come up with, you know, you would come up with infinity, but you would be able to number them. And what Cantor showed was that you couldn't do that. So that's an interesting kind.

In fact, what he showed was there are different sizes of infinity, and these sizes of infinity keep going on. And I take that as a great metaphor to show you that math will never stop. You'll always have more questions. And that's very reassuring. You know, there are mountains out there. We can just see the tops of these mountains. But they're for us to scale in the future. And so math keeps going on in that way.

So math itself is infinite. It is. If you look at the number of different questions it has, and in fact, it has an infinity of infinities. There's a whole bunch of infinities, which is maybe more infinity that we need than we need, certainly. I'd be happy with just the infinity of the numbers and the real numbers. There's something that when I talk to you and I talk to, it reminds me of when I talk to people who work on fundamental physics. I feel that you have a certain amount of ease or comfort to you because no matter what is happening in, you know, the real world, the human world is a messy place where all of our problems either seem insoluble or we solve them and then we slip backwards, you know, we make progress and then, oh, hold on a second, are we losing progress? And how do we really know what is true about ourselves, about the rest of the world?

But when it comes to math, and I would put physics in this same bucket, it's like, oh, when you are really investigating something that is so fundamentally true and that there is largely agreement on in the community of people who are exploring it, you know, you can, the goal is very clear that you can see those mountaintops no matter what is happening and you can say oh well tomorrow I can always take another step towards them that seems to me that that would be deeply reassuring to have that be your vocation in life

do you feel that way? I do, it is very reassuring and the other thing that's very reassuring is just to look at ordinary scenery, to look at you know like mountains and think about like the curves that describe them or to look at ordinary scenery, to look at, you know, like mountains and think about like the curves that describe them, or to look at landscapes and think about fractals. So that's, you can really, and you know, anyone can do this. Once you start looking for it, you know, that old cliche,

math is everywhere, you do see that. So in fact, it can be a little weird sometimes where you're suddenly spouting these mathematical things. Certainly my partner has not been happy with that sometimes. Is your partner not a mathematician? Well, he's actually an engineer, but a lapsed mathematician. So he did everything, calculus, differential equations, but didn't actually use it. So he actually was a great help in writing this book because a lot of people that I showed it to weren't mathematicians and were hesitant to say, well, I don't understand this. I don't understand that. And just said, hey, this is great. He, on the other hand, took me to task

for every little thing. He had no compunction about saying, hey, this is great. He, on the other hand, took me to task for every little thing. He had no compunction about saying, hey, I don't understand this. And if I don't understand this, your readers aren't going to either because I've had this math. So that was a great thing to help. Yeah, you don't want to write one of these popular science, popular math books where sometimes I, as a reader of a book like this, will go, oh, yeah, man, cool, cool,

and I'll sort of keep turning the pages, and I'll enjoy the prose, but I might not actually understand the concept. If it's, you know, okay, this is a very smart person who's writing about what they know, but it's not really, I'm not really getting it yet. But the really powerful thing is when you can explain it in a way where, where anybody will understand and they actually do get it. That's what, when I was reading about, you know, do my own reading about

evolution in, uh, uh, in college reading, reading the work of Richard Dawkins at the time, I was like, Oh, I'm finally understanding something very deeply in a way I never did before it actually penetrated. Um, and that's, that would be your goal as a popular writer, I would assume. And it sounds like he helped you do that. He did, very much so. And that was indeed my goal because I think that, again, these ideas take some time to really access, but it can be done. And I think the joy or the feeling that you get that you were just describing

of that aha moment that, hey, this is what's happening. I think that's really worth it. So the key is, I think, to stay away from too many formulas and so on, which is what I tried in this book. Try to minimize any Xs, any Ys, you'll find very few of them and try to bring it down to the realm of ideas rather than calculation. Yeah, that is really cool. Well, where do you think we're coming to the end of this interview? You were talking about those mountaintops that are sort of off in the future. What do you think, you know, we've talked about how math has been used to create the universe, but we're also,

or how math can be used to create the universe, but we're also pushing forward in a new frontiers of human knowledge, trying to understand the universe better and trying to improve our place in it. What new frontiers can math help us explore? Is that a good question to end on? Well, you know, I just did the whole universe and you're asking

for more? Wow. Boy, you're a tough crowd. No one told me it would be that difficult. My God. I'm sorry, Manu. I'm sorry. You're right. I'm a very demanding podcast host. I require life, the universe, and everything from every single guest who comes on.

They have to solve every problem of humanity in one hour. Well, the big thing that's happening that really, I don't know what to make of it, is that there are now computers that will prove things. So, you know, automatic computer proof, automatic theorem proving. And this is one of the big joys in mathematics

that you do a proof and you actually see how it works. And, you know, it's like what you were describing of really solving a puzzle, solving a problem. The new thing is that computers are going to actually prove these things for us. We're going to put in these basic assumptions that I spoke about in the beginning, the building blocks, the axioms, these basic assumptions that I spoke about in the beginning, the building blocks, the axioms, load them into the computer and the computer will churn out proofs, theorems, whatever, and will continue by itself. So then the question becomes, is this what we want? Is this what mathematics is about? I mean, where is the human part in all of this? And this is still very much in the future. And from what I understand,

it's going to be an interactive way, but things are going to change. So I think the mathematics, let's say 50 years from now, is going to look very different perhaps from what we have now. Well, it does seem to interfere a little bit with what we want from math, or at least what I enjoy from hearing you talk about it, is a that we feel when we're understanding mathematics that we're we're gaining understanding of something fundamental about reality um and that means we want to be the ones to understand it we don't want the computer to understand it we as humans want to understand how the universe works. And so there's something unsatisfying about seeing, I mean, this reminds me actually of the,

I made a reference to Douglas Adams earlier, but the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books where they ask the computer, what's the answer to life, the universe, and everything? And the computer says 42. And they say, well, that's useless to us, right? Like, okay, I mean, the the computer did something but how does this help us at all um and it also kind of breaks that chain of seeing the complexity come from the

simplicity because the joy and the pleasure of math is seeing okay you start with nothing and you end up with fractals and we can see how you got from one to the other but if you plug it into a computer at some point you miss you lose, you miss, you lose the chain of custody, you lose the chain of simplicity becoming complexity if you just sort of see it come out of the other end. And that is what strikes me as a little bit problematic or disappointing about that. Or maybe it would, does it disappoint you as a mathematician to sort of not be the person who's learning how the math works? Well, on one hand, I'm certainly a little apprehensive about it. On the other hand, if I look back,

let's say 30 years in the past, people were talking the same way about how computers were ruining math because people had started using computers to really solve very complex problems like those that you encounter in climate change or microstructure and so on, rather than trying to prove theorems. So, and that, those theories have turned out to be more or less unfounded. So I can see that, you know, I think as a mathematician who's been trained in a certain way, that's my first thing. Oh, my God, they're going to take away my livelihood.

They're going to prove theorems themselves. But I assume that there will be enough challenges along the way that people will still find the kind of enjoyment that you were talking about. So I'm still hopeful. Again, I'm not going to be pinned down to anything. So that's the key. Yes. hopeful. Again, I'm not going to be pinned down to anything. So that's the key. Yes. Let's end here because this conversation has really given me an appreciation for the beauty of math and how fun it can be and the joy it can bring. I'm never going to be a mathematician. I'm

a comedian and that's what I spend most of my life doing. But if I want to spend a little bit of time enjoying math and playing around in it, what's something I can do? What's a way that I can sort of participate in math other than just finding an old math book and doing some algebra for fun? Well, that is a problem because if you wanted to listen to music, I would say go to a symphony. If you wanted to see art, I would say go to a museum.

With math, it becomes more difficult. And I think that's why you need more of, you know, books on math or the show that you've been nice enough to do with me. And other, you know, this was something I talked about in that first article in the New York Times. We need more methods for society as a whole or as individuals to really experience math, to really enjoy math, to be exposed to it, not in the classroom setting, but something that shows it as the fun and alive

process that it can be. So let's hope that there are answers to that. Well, I really appreciate you coming on and giving us a little bit of taste to that here. Thank you, Manil Suri, for coming on. The book's called The Big Bang of Numbers, correct? Yes, The Big Bang of Numbers. And if you want to get a copy, you can get it at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com slash books. And where else can people find your work, Manil? You mean the book, for example? Oh, no. Are you on Twitter or anything like that? Oh, yeah. I'm on Twitter, Manil Suri, at Manil Suri. I have you on Twitter or anything like that? Oh, yeah. I'm on Twitter. Manil Suri at Manil Suri. I have a YouTube channel that I'm just starting up. So I've made a few little little vignettes, animated vignettes in math on math. So but that's just starting up.

So that's that's going to be fun. And Facebook. So those are the three mainly. I can't wait to go check those out. Manil, thank you so much for being on the show. Well, thank you for having me, Adam. Well, thank you once again to Manil Suri for coming on the show. If you loved that conversation as much as I did and you want to check out his book, The Big Bang of Numbers, you can get it at factuallypod.com slash books. That's factuallypod.com slash books. If you want to support the show on Patreon, you can do so at patreon.com slash adamconover. And I want to thank everybody who supports this

show at the $15 a month level there. That's Adrian, Akira White, Alexi Batalov, Alison Lipparato, Alan Liska, Anne Slagle, Antonio LB, Ashley, Aurelio Jimenez, Benjamin Birdsall, Benjamin Frankart, Benjamin Rice, Beth Brevik, Kamu and Lego, Charles Anderson, Chase Thompson-Bowe, Chris Mullins, Chris Staley, Courtney Henderson, Daniel Halsey, David Condry, David Conover, Devin Kim, Drill Bill, Dude with Games, Eben Lowe, Ethan Jennings, Garner Malegis, Hillary Wolkin, Horrible Reeds, Jim Myers, Jim Shelton, Julia Russell, Caitlin Dennis, Caitlin Flanagan, Kelly T, Kelly Casey, Kelly Lucas, KMP, Laysen Tyganoff, Larry Stouter, Student Mund, Lauren Sanburn, Lisa Matulis, Maggie Hardaway, Mark Long, Martin Tithonium, Marvin Weichert, Miles Gillingsrud, a mom named Gwen, gotta go to page two here, we're getting a lot of backers, Mrs. King Coke, Neil Gampa, Nicholas Morris, Nikki Patelli, Nuyagik Ippoluk, Paul Mauck, Paul Schmidt, Rachel Nieto, Richard Watkins, Robin Madison, Rosamund Sturgis, Roya Ziegler, Ryan Shelby, Samantha Schultz, Sam Ogden, Senior Bolsa, Scooper, Spencer Campbell, Susan E. Fisher, Vincente Lopez, and WhiskeyNerd88.

Thank you so much to all of you. I want to thank our producer, Sam Rodman, our engineer, Kyle McGraw, Andrew WK for our theme song, the fine folks at Falcon Northwest for building me the incredible custom gaming PC that I'm recording this very episode for you on. You can find me online at AdamConover.net or at Adam Conover wherever you get your social media. And once again, head to AdamConover.net for tour dates. I would love to see you in Philadelphia or Raleigh until next week. Thank you so much for listening and we will see you next time on

factually.