Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - The Number Zero

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by writer/podcaster Dave Schilling (L.A. Times Image Magazine, The New Yorker) and podcaster/activist Bridget Todd ('There Are No Girls On The Internet' podcast) for a look at why the number zero is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

The number zero. Known for being nothing. Famous for being nil. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why the number zero is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. This week I'm joined by Dave Schilling and by Bridget Todd, two amazing guests. Dave Schilling is a writer for the LA Times Image Magazine. He's also a tremendous writer and podcaster all over the place, everything from culture podcasting for Polygon to comedy pieces from The New Yorker. And along the way, you might

remember, Dave, from the episode of this podcast right here about socks. Bridget Todd is a new guest, and she's the creator and host of the award-winning tech and culture podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet. That's the title. Amazing title, There Are No Girls on the Internet. Amazing stories and interviews about what's happening right now on the internet in a way that impacts all of us. That show is over on iHeartRadio. Bridget also did a new mini-series within that podcast. The mini-series is called Disinformed, and it just won a Shorty Award. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples.

Acknowledge Dave recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Bridget recorded this on the traditional land of the Nacotchtank and Piscataway peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and today's episode is about the number zero. You know what that number is, you may not know, it is the top patron pick for the month of March. So many, many thanks to John Ford for that hit suggestion. Also, Greg Lewis, Jeremiah Bergstrom, many other listeners for commenting, letting people know that they support that, love that idea. It was a huge hit on the polls over at sifpod.fun over on the Patreon. Only other note

before we start, I'd say this is a history-focused look at it. It's a culture-focused look at it. It's less of a pure math show, partly because, you know, math, it really, really helps if you can see the math happening visually. So I think in a podcast format, it's most exciting to look at where this number comes from, where this number is going, and everything in between. And that's all the setup you need. So please sit back or leave my latest tweet hanging, because receiving zero likes will teach me an important lesson about humility. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Dave Schilling and Bridget Todd. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then.

Dave, Bridget, it is so good to have you. And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Either of you can start, but how do you feel about the number zero? Well, it's the absence of number. It's the absence of anything. Either of you can start, but how do you feel about the number zero? Well, it's the absence of number. It's the absence of anything. So I feel ambivalent, but I don't think podcasts are the home for a wishy-washy opinion. So I'm going to say I'm positive. I'm happy that we have a thing to explain nothingness. We have some sort of frame of reference for the absence of a thing. Yeah, useful tool. I'm into that.

So before we got started with this recording, I was talking to my producer and partner about, like, oh, I need to have an opinion about zero. And I was going to tell this story about how my brother and I, when we did sports, we were always, when you pick your number, we were always zero because they didn't have anything else to say. And he was like, the concept of zero is so fascinating. How can you not have anything to add? And he made me watch this Rick and Morty clip where Rick changes a currency to zero

and implodes an entire alien universe. And so he was very disappointed that I didn't have either a strong opinion or anecdote about my relationship to zero. And that is now my anecdote about zero. That is an expert way to fill time on a podcast without having to say anything. There's this, I had this conversation. It's great. I love it. I love any anecdote like this. This is perfect. Bridget, you helped me out because I think one of my main connections to it is the 1990s Bulls added a guy to the team who got double zero for his number. And it blew my mind.

I was like, you're allowed to just do zero? That's a thing? And this veteran center, Robert Parrish, who had done it forever, just joins the team and does it. That was one of my main things. Yeah. Yeah. So my dad was always double zero for his number and he said that like you know like number one is supposed to be the best but then isn't zero better than

the best and so that was like our kind of family thing i i realize now why like the anecdote is maybe not going to be the most solid for a podcast but that's the story i love it if one is the best zero is less than the best so unless we're're playing golf rules, I don't know if this works. You've just shattered my whole family ethos right there. Sorry to this man that is your father. Yeah, my connections are a few athlete numbers. And then also my whole life, if it's binary code, right? athlete numbers and then also my whole life if it's binary code right like it's half of all of the things i do and consume and use and depend on i don't know it's it's like the parts of a car that

i don't understand i think you know most of the parts i would imagine i don't know half the buttons in my car i feel like if i press one it might explode like a James Bond movie. So I just touch nothing except the air conditioning and the ignition. From researching, Bridget, I think your producer is right. It turns out there's a lot going on with this number, and I'm glad patrons picked it because it's a great thing. And we can start to get into it with the first thing we always get into, which is a set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called... Stats shining bright above you bell curves seem to show mean and mode to distributions in the statistical tree talk about some stats for me

some stats for me do you do this live every week? every week yeah you could record it and just play it as a clip but no you're dedicated to this gimmick you're gonna do it every week it's gonna be gorgeous it's all about the vibe in the room

folks I look exactly like that Peter Frampton cover where it's Frampton comes alive whenever I'm doing it. And my, my hair does that. The lighting does that. It's, it's a whole time. I'm coming alive when you sing. It's great. Alex comes alive. Thank you guys. Uh, that name was submitted by Jill Walker. Thank you, Jill. They have a new name for this every week. Please make them as silly and wacky as possible. Submit to SIFT pod on Twitter or to SIFTPod at gmail.com. And the first number here, this is an idea we'll come back to a lot, but the number is two.

Easy number two. That is how many jobs the digit zero does in modern math. I never really thought about this, but the source here is a video by University College London math professor Hannah Fry. She talks about how zero has two jobs these days. One is to be a number, right? It's the number zero. It's the one between one and negative one. But the other job is to be a placeholder inside of bigger numbers. We can do 30 without like coming up with a whole new set of digits. We just do a three and then a zero to make it bigger and then 300 is bigger with another zero like this is intuitive but once you hear it you know it you know i'm fascinated by this i didn't realize honestly i had no idea that zero was so

versatile he's a five tool player of the of numbers game, which is funny because he's zero, so having five tools is kind of weird, right? Should be zero-tool player, but no. This is a baseball reference. If you don't know, a five-tool player is like, oh, you do all the things on the baseball field. Yeah, speed, power, fielding, arm, everything. Yeah, that's zero.

Cute butt. Right? Looks good in jeans. Looks good in, yeah, looks good in a nice, tight pair of baseball pants. That's the sixth tool. It has a good face, and Billy Bean ignored that. He ignored that. He rose above it.

That's why they never won a World Series, those Oakland Athletics, because they didn't have enough tight buns. But yeah, we have ten digits. Zero's one of them, and it's the one that kind of accordions out our big numbers and our long decimals and everything and it's carrying a lot of weight it's just telling us there's nothing here but in a purposeful way it almost sounds like a like a meditative thing there's nothing here but in a purposeful way i kind of like that. Nothing with intention.

Very Buddhist. Yeah. Yeah. I put away my Frampton gear. I'm now under a very large tree, and it's going great. This is going to be a somewhat mind-expanding episode, I think. It's very exciting. But the next numbers here, this is a very long number.

You don't need to track the details the number is 48.8534 degrees north and 2.3482 degrees east so that this coordinates many degrees north and just a few degrees east that is supposed to be the exact geographic center of paris france and bringing that up good tattoo idea just get those numbers tattooed on your arm i was like what is that coordinate on there oh that's that's paris my favorite place in the whole world somebody has that tattoo some couple that met in paris you just got in the eiffel tower nah baguette no i gotta get the coordinates baby in case i get lost plug that into google maps and you're there I got to get the coordinates, baby. In case I get lost. Plug that into Google Maps and you're there. I like the idea of someone using that to get back to Paris, but they've never learned French.

They never did the easier way where you just talk to people. No, I need to go here. You see this? I need to go here. Can you help? No. No. And then it's like's like oh you don't speak english i'll say it louder in english like just the thing four seven three six point nine

huh they have their own numbers by the way they have their own uh you, their language. It's not one, two, three, four, five, six. Yeah, you... No. Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six. Etc. Down the line. There we go. Look who knows their numbers in French. I'm so impressed. I took French in high school. I can see.

I can tell. Oh, you grew up in California. You got to take Spanish. And I said, hmm. But what if I learned the most useless language possible for America? I learned French. So I could watch movies in French. I don't know anything else about French.

Was it really to watch movies? I lost it all. Was that the goal? Yeah. Wow. Cool. Yeah. And to get chicks.

No, I'm kidding. Picking up ladies. I would be hella impressed if somebody could watch Amelie, no subtitles, no dub, just in French and tell me what was going on. I would find that impressive. Raw dog in French cinema. Yeah, turn those subtitles off. Not necessary. I got this.

If you have any questions, you know who to ask. Anyway, Paris, France. Bringing up the coordinates of the center because there is a monument there, and it's called a Zero Stone. And it turns out a lot of cities have these, but a Zero Stone is, it's usually a marker on the ground saying this is the geographic center of our city. And the one in Paris gets visited by a lot of tourists in particular, because it's basically next to Notre Dame Cathedral.

So they can just kind of knock out both things at once. And so there's like a bunch of superstitions around it. People will kiss somebody on top of it to make love last. It also dips into the ground a bit. So they'll throw coins into it like a wishing well. It's a fun thing going on. Oh, that seems like a lot of work. Thank you.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm not a superstitious guy, personally. I don't believe in all that stuff. But I do appreciate the cultural quirks of other places where they're like, oh, yeah, we have this thing in the middle of the city where if you rub it five times a leprechaun appears. Like, that's cool, I guess. That's nice that they do that stuff. Yeah, now I'm thinking of Springfield, Illinois. State Capitol, also famous for Lincoln stuff.

And there's just a bust of Abraham Lincoln where the nose is all rubbed down because people just decided it's lucky if you rub Lincoln's nose, but it just really makes it look funny. No, it's because he did too much cocaine. Yeah, the devil's candy. Stay away from it, kids. Come on now.

That's right. Don't be like Abraham Lincoln. That's the tip. Notorious coke fiend Abe Lincoln.incoln hey where's the president right now we're got we got the civil war going on oh he's skiing in the summer you know what i mean that guy can't help himself he's been up since four in the morning so obnoxious at parties this guy he's yelling everybody about nfts parties this guy he's yelling everybody about nfts pitching screenplays come on man tone it down read the room hey blinken you and me we're gonna save the union we're gonna do it we're gonna do

it dude okay do it slavery it's terrible let me tell you why first of all everybody no matter what has a soul. Okay? Right? Anyway, this guy is weird. Oh, yeah, I have a lot of black friends. I have so many black friends. Sure you do. Liar. And these monuments that are all around.

I'm going to link an article by Kurt Kolstad for the website of 99% Invisible, which is an amazing podcast. But he's got an article documenting a bunch of these. They're in Rome, Tokyo, Santiago, Chile. Not a lot of American cities. I think they're relatively new, but many cities in the world, you can go find one of these and enjoy it. The next number here, this is another city thing. This is a date. The number is September 6th, 2011. September 6th, 2011.

That's the date when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked the public to stop calling the site of the 9-11 attacks Ground Zero. Wanted to rebrand it. He was like, you know, we get it. Stop calling it Ground Zero. Let's move on. There's more grounds. Ground one, two, you know. Is the Pentagon Ground Three?

Right. Field in Pennsylvania, Ground Four. Yeah, there you go. Ground Four. Did he offer another name for it? Was he like, we need to stop calling it Ground Zero. Let's call it this instead? Or was it just, let's stop perceiving it altogether?

That's an excellent question. Reuters covered it, and he said, quote, We will never forget the devastation of the area that came to be known as Ground Zero. Never. But the time has come to call those 16 acres what they are. The World Trade Center and the National September 11th Memorial and Museum. That's a mouthful. Yeah, come on, man. We had a really tight name for it. It sounded futuristic, and now you're like, that's too cool.

I get it. I mean, I understand. It's no longer an active disaster site, so I get that. But, you know, some nicknames stick yeah i i live in brooklyn now but only moved here pretty recently and then i lived in new york like 2012 to 14 or so and only ever heard it called either ground zero or like the world trade center nobody ever did this whole long thing you know and then also we visited recently and there's like a mall there now there's a beer garden there now it's very i've been to the mall oh yeah it's creepy it's shaped

like angel's wings which is disturbing hey you know you want to go to sephora and also be reminded that 3 000 people died in a fiery terrorist attack is this this heaven? No, it's Cinnabon. Yeah. It is a little weird. What do you think about it? Like it being a commercial space, but then also trying to incorporate, sort of trying to be kind of like a respectful marker of people who lost their lives.

It's a very weird cross section of things happening in that mall. Very weird. I tell you what what those people would all want you to be able to get the deals at the art of shaving which i did buy i did buy something from the art of shaving there and i still get emails from them never forget the art of shaving they say oh that's not that's tacky man come on cut that out uh it's it's a terrible terrible place the gift there's a gift shop still do you want to get knickknacks to also remember um you get little little toys world trade centers and like mugs and hats and t-shirts and stuff you know for all the

people who really love the police department in new york city and you feel like you're in some kind of um movie um where they're depicting heaven like i don't know if you've seen the albert brooks movie defending your life but oh yeah this is the kind of place where he would go um in that movie he dies and you know he's in kind of purgatory it's really really just like just like, what if nothing was there? What if nothing was there? Yeah. I just feel like it reminds me that as Americans, I feel like we have so few ways to sort of engage with things other than commerce. Like we don't understand how to commemorate something if it's not something that you can buy, like a t-shirt or a tchotchke. I think that we really don't have a lot of imagination as it pertains to how we engage with things, if not via commerce.

Yeah. Yeah. Also, you know, going back to my idea of nothing being there, we don't really like the idea of nothingness or the absence of something, which is why we should be talking about the idea of zero more often because some things don't need to be developed some things we don't have to add more things to the world we have enough things and yet we we can't be alone we can't uh you know just be in in a field without you know wondering where the starbucks is like it's it's a real shame yeah it's it's absolutely like a lack of comfort with absence like this bloomberg quote later on he said the rebirth and revitalization of lower manhattan will be remembered as one of the greatest comeback stories in american history

end quote i don't know the patriots beat the Falcons and they were down 27-3. Talk about a comeback story. Yeah. Yeah. Geez, that was great. Tom Brady. All right. You don't got Tom Brady beat.

No, sir. Golden State Warriors up three games to one. You know what I mean? Like now we're talking. LeBron James, the GOAT. I mean, lower Manhattan ain't got nothing on the king please yeah if you're not getting those good good deals at art of shaving and cinnabon the terrorists win you know this is what this is what they would wouldn't want right yes they would not they would not want us saving

me getting a treat and a thing. That'll show them. A little treat. A little tasty treat. Yum, yum, yum, yum. Tasty treat. Yeah. And then, and last thing about this story, the other reason they were saying, hey, please stop calling it Ground Zero,

is apparently Ground Zero began its life as a phrase, as a technical term, because Ground Zero was coined by people testing US atomic weapons in the 1940s. And it specifically describes like the point on Earth's surface that is closest to a detonation. Like if you blow it up on the ground, that's just where the detonation is. But if it was in the air, ground zero is the spot below it, you know. So since then, we've borrowed ground zero to mean all sorts of other things, usually tragic, usually explosive.

But the other reason they gave to stop calling it that was this wasn't an atomic thing. It was a disaster. Right. Yeah, that's fair. The way we appropriate language is interesting. You know, things start to lose their meaning at some point which is why this show was important because we you we learn the meanings of things i didn't know that about ground zero yeah you know i had no idea so good on you alex thank you thank you yeah for adding some meaning to language again yeah i mean i mean i think it

really it demonstrates that words mean things and i also didn't know that history of Ground Zero, what the term actually meant. And so, yeah, if we just strip everything from its meaning, nothing means anything. And words should mean things, you know, we should have an understanding when we use something as a moniker that we're trying to describe a specific thing not just any old thing yeah let me ask you this alex do you know why they chose the term zero i ground zero i think it's like either a zero distance thing or a coordinates thing you know like the middle of an x y is the zero zero yeah zero oh okay i'd have to google to actually be confident which of those it is but it's a zero distance. We can cut this out. We can cut this out. Okay. No,

no, no, no, no. We can cut this out. That's a good question. Yeah. Cause it's,

it's a little bit arbitrary and maybe cool. Why does it sound cool to me? I don't know. It feels like. I think zero is cool. Like, like, like you were saying,

Bridget, like picking the number zero in a, in a sports context is kind of cool. Zero is cool. And like, like the other thing I remember about zero is how Billy Corgan would wear those shirts that said zero. When I was young, I thought that like, he's reclaiming the concept of zero to be like, he's not even playing the game, man. Come to find out it's just the name of a skateboard company, but you know, it sounded you could you you know young me could project so much onto the concept of zero it's just a cool idea yeah you're you're somehow above it all you you don't need to show off with a fancy number a long

big number zero is apathy in some ways and i think apathy was so popular back then that using that number and it's got a z in it z z's are cool these are putting z's and everything back then yeah there were so many z's that were replacing s's or x know, those, these sorts of, uh, like low, low on the alphabet, uh, letters are kind of tight. So apathy and then just the extreme nature of culture at that time made zero pretty tight. Yeah, I did like a month or two ago, I did a whole episode about the letter X and we, I think we got to the idea that Z is one of the letters like it, like it's at the bottom and it has that same vibe. It feels hardcore.

Very hardcore. Absolutely. Yeah. Like back in the day when you were like, I remember screen names, it would always be like X, like lowercase X, uppercase X, and then whatever the word you wanted to say. And then another two Xs. I don't know. I don't know know what we were i don't know what we were trying to say or demonstrate but it just was cool to have x's i don't know also the game of x's and o's like these these num these these sorts of like now obviously that's the letter o which is not zero but it's the same, you know, when you see an O out of context of a word, oftentimes you think it's a zero. The opposite of a shout out to every state where they use zeros and O's on the license plates. Really tough.

I don't know how to tell it apart. It's so hard. I have zeros in my license plate and I don't know. I just kind of put it in and i assume they they figure it out but imagine if there was somebody who had the exact same but it was an o and not a zero and i had zero and i get pulled over for selling abraham lincoln cocaine oh boy i'm done they would have a lot of questions yeah you can do the trick where you put the line through the oh isn't that something

i don't know what that demonstrates that i think becomes a zero if you put the line through it yeah i think yeah and then i'm confused what people do in like sweden norway like the alphabets where that's a letter of some kind you know like that means something oh those aren't real languages it doesn't matter oh good okay yeah that's cool only french on this show okay it's pronounced way that's got an o in it too yeah that's a no not a zero yeah well uh guys we have a couple big takeaways for the main episode here so let's get into them, starting with takeaway number one. Humans usually understand zero sometime after they understand all the positive numbers.

This is a thing with, it's across cultures developing and across child developments. across child developments. It seems like people need a mental framework of counting all the other numbers before they can build a mental framework for the number zero as its own number. Yeah. I have a four-year-old and he's just understanding how numbers and things work. I don't know if he understands the absence of a thing. Oh, wow. Yeah. I think he's learning it now because he has he's attached to me and my ex wife significantly and when we are gone he notices now but he never used to notice before he's like oh okay bye dad oh now he's like dad don't leave please you know i'm not going away forever just

i gotta go to the store to get some cigarettes just kidding you know how there's that like oh yeah dad left for cigarettes he never came back no i always come back when i get my cigarettes you want you want some i got enough for both of us just kidding such a supportive dad my four-year-old doesn't smoke not yet he's soft. He'll work up to it, yeah. Yeah, and this is in particular with the development of cultures. In the modern world, modern math that's become international, people know zero. But there's two key sources throughout the takeaways this week.

They're a pair of books. One of them is called The Nothing That Is, A Natural History of Zero. That's by math educator Robert Kaplan. And the other is called Zero, The Biography of a Dangerous Idea. That's by New York University professor Charles Seif. But they collectively say that zero is relatively advanced for the human mind to process, mostly because zero, when it's its own because zero when it's its own number when it's its own thing it's abstract like you're giving a name and a value to nothing it's much

easier to process one thing two things three things everything else that's tangible so we have to work a little harder mentally we have you know yeah we have to put together i'm working as hard as i can right now i'm sorry i'm a capacity this you're giving me too much information here and my there's steam coming out of my ears um nothing is a scary thing i noticed that you were talking about it being a scary idea in the title of that book yeah it is scary because uh one day you will be nothing you will turn no not me just no into dust. No, not me. No. I'm good.

No. I'm going to be here forever, baby. Yeah, that's right. Me and the cockroaches. Yeah. I'm just going to be Dr. Manhattan walking around on Mars by himself. You know, that's going to be me. Completely nude.

Yeah, well, you know, when you're blue, you know. You might as well. why not yeah private plan off yeah anyway and and modern math we all pretty much have a zero we all just learned it from somebody else but there's evidence of counting and mathematics going back to the stone age charles seif writes about an archaeological dig in Eastern Europe where they found the bone of a wolf. And then the bone of the wolf has notches carved into it for counting. It's from 30,000 years ago. And he says it's just one of many, many ways we have evidence of ancient math and in many cases don't have evidence whether or not they knew about zero.

Because unless they did a different notation for it, they don't do notches for zero, right? Like they're not writing down, yep, nothing here. It's just something we're missing from a lot of the record. Well, they weren't advanced enough to understand it. In a lot of cases, yeah. They weren't advanced enough to understand it. In a lot of cases, yeah. With the development of zero, we have some evidence of language being an indicator that zero comes along slowly.

Charles Seif says that as far as how old various words are in records, most societies start with just two words for numbers. They have a word for the number one, and then they have a word that means many or much or just anything like plural, you know. And then they tend to develop the word for the number two, then the number three, and then a bunch of other numbers after that. But usually all that happens before they start having a word for zero. It comes later down the line. And he also says that there's like modern evidence of it because there are some relatively isolated peoples in South America, in particular the Siriano people in Bolivia and the Yanomami people in Brazil, who don't have words for amounts larger than three. So they have words for one, two, three, and then the concept of many.

After that, it's many. You get it. Oh, I get it. I think it makes sense that you would have to start with the concept of a lot before you could even grasp the concept of nothing, none. I'm trying to think back to how I even, you know, Dave, you're talking about your child. think back to how I even, you know, Dave, you talking about your, your child, I'm trying to, I guess it's probably with little kids. Like you've got three cookies and you eat three cookies and then you're sad because there's no cookies. Like it as a concept, I think it has to start with some before you can get to none, I guess is what I'm saying.

Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Yeah. That makes sense. Because the sum is tangible still, even if it's like a thousand sheep on your property or whatever. You know, that's you can see that zero sheep you have to like invent, basically. And the other indicator of this is child development stuff. Apparently, there are some neuroscientists who've looked at this. And there's a great Vox.com article by Brian Resnick. neuroscientists who've looked at this and there's great vox.com article by brian resnick and he talks to elizabeth brannon a neuroscientist at penn and she says that kids younger than age six can understand the concept of zero but she's done experiments where you take kids and you ask them

which number is bigger zero or one and she says kids often think one is smaller oh god kids are so stupid because they're adults that's the upshot folks uh kids together kids big dummies no wonder we don't let them smoke cigarettes they're not cool enough or or they're like i should have the fewest possible cigarettes. And then they smoke one cigarette. Then it starts, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

That's interesting. Is there a reason why they don't see that zero is less than one? Yeah, I think they think it's partly because they start learning just the positive numbers. think it's partly because like they start learning just the positive numbers and so they like hold on to a rule of thumb that one is the smallest number because it's the smallest whole positive number it's just that there's stuff below it that you learn later and maybe that's not top of mind yeah negative numbers for me didn't come in until probably boy um fifth grade sixth grade i don't know they're laying they're laying the groundwork for algebra and and maybe kids now are learning them you know in the crib because they've changed math but but uh before yeah like start a middle school i think

yeah yeah somewhere around there yeah is when you start to come up with these ideas that are counterintuitive like how can you have less than zero? How can you have less than any, like that? I, it's not, there's nothing in the natural world that is the, the less than nothing.

Right. So how do you understand that if you don't have a physical, tangible representation of what that is? Yeah. I remember this distinctly. Seventh grade, starting algebra, that was when my GPA began to really suffer, specifically because I could not grasp the concept of negative number, like the start of a lot of academic trouble and concerning talks with my parents, my inability to figure out algebra.

I lost all of that algebra stuff. I retained none of it. It has never once come up in real life. I don't know why we bother. It's true. Why do we learn this? Why is this mandatory for every child to learn? Oh, I think Dave's just pushing French again.

He wants you to quit math and take French. Yeah, why not? I mean, it's more valuable than learning algebra. No one's going to ask you to do an algebra equation when the check comes at the cafe in Paris. Algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus. But why is a high school kid learning this? You know?

They got stuff to do. Yeah. Yeah, high school kids have stuff to do, like make it out. Doing cocaine with Abraham Lincoln. Call that. Hey, hey. And speaking of growing up, the last, last thing here is that not only is there that child development phenomenon, but also the same researcher, Dr. Brannon, did the same question with adults. She took adults and was like, what's the smaller number, zero or one?

Or sorry, what's the bigger number, zero or one? And she says they get it right, but there is a slight delay versus like other questions about math that should be equally easy and she thinks it's because that way we learn these numbers so young kind of lingers it's still hard to grok interesting i guess there's just a lot of things that um you don't ever lose you know there's some things that are ingrained because you learn them too early you don't want to that's why you don't expose your children to hardcore pornography Don't ever lose, you know, there's some things that are ingrained because you learn them too early. That's why you don't expose your children to hardcore pornography. Right, stick to cigarettes. They won't forget.

Yeah. All right. You've gone too far. That's too far. All right. Off of that, we're going to a short break followed by the big takeaways see you in a sec i'm jesse thorne i just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes.

I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie,

Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Well, there's a next very quick takeaway here. Let's get into takeaway number two.

A few animals are familiar with the number zero. This is quick. It's pretty amazing. This is also that Vox.com article, but they talk about how we think a few animal species at least understand the basic concept of the number zero. What are the animals? How do they know? Do they ask them?

Hey, squirrel. Come here. I've got a question for you. Do you know what zero is? And they're like yeah of course i'm not i'm not a dog right in perfect french they say of course i understand yes and uh yeah this is they the main species you're talking about here are some species of monkeys and also honeybees and it's because they

were they've put these animals through some of the same basic experiments used to test how quickly and rapidly humans can tell whether zero is smaller than other amounts and they found that both those species have a basic understanding that if there's nothing there that's smaller hmm what about dolphins i feel like dolphins are smart they gotta know something like that let's ask a dolphin let's ask darwin from sea quest remember that okay you could talk bridger darwin hungry nobody remembers this show except for me jonathan brandis was on it. Oh, rest in peace. Yeah. Oh.

The article talks about them doing the experiments with, like, cards that have dots on them. And I'm imagining them not wanting to bother to laminate the cards to put them in the water. That's just me making stuff up, but that's my guess. Why would it does the... So the cards just turn to mush when they put them in the water? Yeah. You don't want to get a laminator, though, you know, just for one thing. Like, how lazy are these researchers?

In my head, very. Yeah. Come on, get together. And then they also talked to cognitive scientist Andreas Nieder, and he describes a few levels of understanding zero. And he said, monkeys and honeybees are at the second highest level where they have a basic understanding of it. Only humans are at the top level where we've taken zero and used it as a tool and a part of math and like used it to figure out other stuff from there.

So we're still on top as far as zero goes. Hell yeah. USA. USA. gear out other stuff from there so we're still on top as far as zero goes hell yeah usa usa we you can't top this this human brain good luck yeah we invented the show elf try to do that honeybee and we were first like if a bee tried to pitch elf they would get laughed out of the room like that all right come on dumb what no we already did that one you want to reboot it maybe but we're not gonna call it something else an all bee reboot of elf i will watch that come on i will watch that yeah that's pretty that's a pretty good idea hey listeners don't use that idea that's mine yeah that's a freebie that's out in the world no don't use it no i That's mine. Yeah, that's a freebie. That's out in the world. No, don't use it. No. I will sue you. This is proof. My idea. Well, and there's one more big takeaway for the main episode, and it's a longer one. Let's get into it.

Takeaway number three. world's idea of the number zero developed from many interactions between Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, Arabs, and Italians, to name a few. I know that was a very long thing, but the development of the number zero in math came from all kinds of cross-cultural exchanges all over the place. Wow. It's kind of beautiful. Yeah, that's cool. Sort of like a writer's room. wow it's kind of beautiful yeah that's cool sort of like a writer's room i feel like if somebody pitched zero in a writer's room it would be like that original seinfeld pitch right like it's about nothing and then everybody's mad what do you mean nothing no it's it's nothing so what happens ah yeah nothing but like how many is it no no get this it's it's not any how's that possible well you know sometimes there's just nothing on a table it's just blank

nobody wants to hear this this pitch died in the room stinky just larry david getting more and more resentful because no one will buy zero from him. Come on, look. Look at how cool it is. It surrounds the circle. Oh, my God. Your Larry David impression is like, that was pretty good. That was excellent.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Look at it. I don't know. Can we workshop it? What if we put a line through it what a line why linda and this takeaway it's those same books from before also a piece for smithsonian magazine

by bridget cats are the sources here but this is a it's a somewhat fuzzy story because there's no single inventor of the number zero. But going back to the start of the podcast, talked about how zero is a placeholder and it's also its own number. It's those two different things. Scholars believe most civilizations independently or collaboratively came up with counting systems, they came up with some way to do, this is a space in between the digits or symbols we have to create new numbers. For example, in ancient China, they had a system of counting rods where you put rods in a set of boxes. And so if you left a box empty, that was a placeholder that showed you, oh, this is the next place over in the the set of digits which are rods which is cool it's amazing that they all have like not everybody but like

you know a lot of cultures have that same idea at the same time yeah i think like everybody figured out we don't want to have a whole new drawing for every number that you could possibly think of like it's it's not fun to do that they they came up with this laziness is what allowed us to develop into the beautiful species we are today this i don't want to write anymore what am i gonna come up with another number i don't have time for that come on no who's got time for that i like the rod idea a box of rods let's bring that back yeah i wouldn't have to count on my fingers anymore i just bring my box of rods to the store and i try to figure out how much uh something costs or like oh how much is a tip on this bill i'll get my rods all right let's see it'll be nine rods i'll rods. I'll just add that to the old check there.

Like they're not bringing the check quick enough so you get out your rods to get their attention? Like, let me just shorten my rods. Shake your box of rods. Like a maraca or something. Oh, God, I'm sorry. I can't join you for lunch. I left my rods at home

i'm not making fun of the idea you know the chinese civilization has been invaluable for the development of the human species and they came up with a lot of great things that we still use today it's fun like a little gucci box of rods yeah i got this for my wife for valentine's day she loves it and then there were other placeholders elsewhere and the start of modern zero it's mainly ancient sumeria which was in mesopotamia and i've seen ghostbusters i know where it is yes and they had a base 60 counting system where they just used wedges to do numbers and there were a bunch of placeholders to separate different numbers. And then that ends up stacking with Egyptian math and calendars because Egypt has a base 10 system. The counting you and I are used to is a base 10 system.

And then Egypt also had a 12-month calendar with 30-day months. And that stuff got adapted by Greeks and by Romans. So then we end up with a step where Greeks get into Babylonian astronomy based on the Sumerian stuff and also a lot of counting from Egypt. And I know we're stacking a bunch of different peoples and places together, but this next convergence is the Greeks, who start to have placeholders because they borrow it from Babylonia's astronomy, but are also scared of zero. It's scary. I get it. Yeah. And a lot of the earliest Greek math came from a group called the Pythagoreans.

If people have heard the Triangles episode of the podcast, we talk about them being a school and a cult possibly led by someone named Pythagoras. But I've heard of his theorem. It's great. Maybe one of the best theorems of all time. I think it was in Pitchfork's top 100 theorems of the 9th century or whatever. Their actual most famous development was not triangle stuff. It was music theory.

The Pythagoreans were some of the first people to figure out longer and shorter strings give you different notes if you pluck them. And so then a lot of their math was based on like physical stuff you can see and deal with, because they're coming from strings that you can measure out. And so based on that, they didn't really deal with zero. They were like, that's not a string. That's not a thing I can handle. That's not an object. And so Greece and later Roman Europe end up way behind on the zero concept, Greece and later Roman Europe end up way behind on the zero concept because the Greeks were like, that doesn't really make sense other than this astronomy we're copying.

That doesn't really add up to us. I mean, it really seems to go back to this idea of like how you conceptualize something that's not there. That having been like a challenge in all of these different cultures across the world, like still today, just that grappling with that as a concept and being like, oh, I can't kind of wrap my head around it. So it doesn't exist. It's almost instinctive. It kind of makes more sense than the math I have proceeded to learn that does totally make sense.

You know what I mean? It's really strange to be a person. It is so strange. That should be the tagline of the show. It's really strange to be a person. It is so strange. That should be the tagline of the show. It's really strange to be a person. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. But yeah, and so then these Greeks, they borrow Babylonian astronomy, which has the placeholder version of zero. And then what happens next is Greece gets conquered by Macedonia,

which led by Alexander the Great conquers a bunch of the world, including India. So Alexander the Great brings Greek stuff to India. And then from there, Indian mathematicians really, really run with the placeholder zero. And they're the first ones we think to develop the number zero, other than the Mayans who we'll talk about in the bonus episode. And I know that's a whole nother culturing group. We're doing this story very fast, just series of like new cultures popping in all the time just to get this one number.

But yeah, but India is seen as probably the birthplace of like the number zero, with help from several other places. It was a team effort. Let's be real. We all contributed. Thank you for that. And it's also believed to be the birthplace of negative numbers. They say that in the year 628 AD, the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta laid out rules for negative numbers. There are also texts that might have it earlier. And then Smithsonian says recent carbon dating of a text called the Bakshali Manuscript mentions something like the number zero in the 200s AD. So really early. And Indian scholars develop this new system with a set of numerals. Initially,

there are nine digits, then they develop the 10th digit, which is zero. And that's the direct ancestor of Arabic numerals, because then the Arabic people come into this and the progression continues. But we've kind of, we figured it out now, right? There's not going to be any more numbers, right? We solved solve that now we're good yeah i feel i guess whole numbers right we did it figured it out let's we got fractions decimals i'm good let's stop this okay no more repeat in 200 ad let's stop this conversation is reminding me how many different little, I mean, I

have forgotten most of everything I learned in math and algebra, but how many different little ins and outs there were to numerals and just numbers in general. Remember remainders when you would do division? Yeah. Stacking that up. Remember that? Yes.

Boo. No more. Square roots? stacking that up yes square roots come on i'm busy no who's got the time i'm trying to learn all the different baseball players i can't do this here's how here's how many i give zero sorry i had to curse once it was just too easy it's the correct curse for that. I just had to curse on this show. But yeah, and then because the rest of the progression, Arab Muslims invade India in the 700s AD. They adapt those numerals. They spread them east into Asia and also west all the way to Spain and France and Europe. And then it still takes more centuries, but around the 1100s, you have people

like Ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi creating algebra and writing texts about that. And then also there was a key Italian mathematician who we know today as Fibonacci, who wrote a book encouraging people. I know about his numbers. Yeah. And his book encouraged people to use Arabic numerals, maybe partly because then you can do Fibonacci sequence stuff more easily. But that's where the two numbers before add up to the next number and so on. So it's around the 1100s, really, when we start to get a relatively global zero, at least in sort of the eastern hemisphere of the world. And then the other caveat with all this is the Mayans came up with both versions of Zero independently in the Yucatan,

and that's going to be the whole bonus show. But that's the main show. That's what we got. That's the whole thing. That's it? That's Zero. Yeah. Well, you got to stick around for the bonus show then, guys. More to do. I do feel like I learned a lot about the concept like, I guess you were my, my producer was right. The

concept of zero is very fascinating and sort of how we grapple with it and understand it or don't understand it or are afraid of it. It's, it is a lot going on. I get, I get why there's a fear of zero of nothingness of absence. Yeah. glad patrons picked it because i it's way more complicated than other numbers somehow even though it's round it's very round like it's it's just zero like i get it so round so round oh sorry that was gross oh look at the curves on that. Just one curve. Just the one.

Baby got no back because it's just a curve. Or all back, depending on how you look at it. Two zeros do look like two cheeks. You learn something from me every day, guys. That's the real thing you need to take away from this. Two zeros make a butt. Or if you type them into the calculator the right way, you can write boobs. Remember that?

Boobless. That's true. Talk about a placeholder, folks. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Dave Schilling and Bridget Todd for validating my interest in Boston Celtics legend Robert Parrish, who was also briefly on the Bulls. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com.

Patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the year zero and the Mayan calendar. You know, the supposed apocalypse calendar from like 10 years ago. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than seven dozen other bonus shows and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring the number zero with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, humans usually understand zero sometime after they understand all the positive numbers. Takeaway number two, a few animals are familiar with the number zero.

And takeaway number three, the world's idea of the number zero developed from interactions between Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, Arabs, and Italians, to name a few. And then separately, the Mayans. That's the bonus show. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Dave Schilling writes for Image Magazine, which is a very cool, very new publication

of the Los Angeles Times. Dave is also all over the rest of the internet, and I am particularly excited to link you to his New Yorker humor piece, which is all about Austin Powers' gold member. And then Bridget Todd is the host and creator of There Are No Girls on the Internet, a podcast from iHeartRadio. She's a digital activist, she's a wonderful interviewer, creator, everything else. It's just excellent stuff. And I hope you'll check it out and be more plugged into what's going on in, you know, the main communication method we all use that is half zeros, half ones. Many research sources this

week. Here are some key ones. Two wonderful books underpinned all the takeaways this week. And I highly recommend both. They're also just very fun to read. One is by mathematician Robert Kaplan. It's called The Nothing That Is A Natural History of Zero. And the other book is Zero, The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by NYU professor and science writer Charles Seif. Also lean on resources from Vox.com, National Geographic, Professor Hannah Fry of University College London. Find those and many more sources in this episode's

links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating.

So how about that? Talk to you then.