Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Triangles

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians/podcasters Amir Blumenfeld (‘If I Were You’ podcast, ‘Buckets’ podcast) and Negin Farsad (‘Fake The Nation’ podcast, ‘Birdgirl’ on Adult Swim) for a look at why triangles are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Triangles. Known for being shapes. Famous for three sides. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why triangles are 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. I am joined today by Amir Blumenfeld and by Nagin Farsad, two amazing

guests. I'm just real glad about it. Amir Blumenfeld is phenomenal. He's known for many things, and I hope you know him for podcasting, because he and Jay Kerwitz have a fantastic advice and comedy podcast. It's called If I Were You. Amir also hosts an NBA podcast called Buckets that I really enjoy and is relevant to today's show. I also am just glad I got to know him when I worked with College Humor. He obviously did much more there, but I don't know if everybody knows that I got to work there and work with them. And he was one of my favorite people there when I got to do stuff with that team. So I hope you know and hear how excited I am

to get together with Amir on this podcast right here. I'm also very excited to get together with Nagin Farsad. She hosts a wonderful podcast. It's called Fake the Nation. That is a comedy podcast breaking down the latest political news. Amazing guests join in on it. She's also a stand-up comedian and a writer and a voice on Adult Swim cartoons and so, so much

more. Just an amazing comic and thinker and podcaster and everything else. So really glad to have her on as well. 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 Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Amir recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Nagin recorded this on the traditional land of the Lenape people. 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 triangles, a shape you know of, a shape I have read widely about and researched intensively. I even got some consulting help. Special thanks this week go to Dr. Jean-Bau Young, who's a mathematics professor and associate dean at the University of the Incarnate Word. Thank you for that, Dr. Young, and thank you, the listener, for checking this out, because this topic is going to get much more historical and mystical and 1990s than you're probably expecting. So please sit back or listen to your coach as he tells you how to fit into an offense with two Hall of Famers. Either way, here's this episode

of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Amir Blumenfeld and Nagin Farsad. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Amir, Nagin, it's so good to see you and have you. And I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Very curious to learn how, you know, either of you can start, but how do you feel about triangles? you know either of you can start but how do you feel about triangles i mean oh you i'll go first um so i have a two-year-old and when i saw the word triangles as the theme of this show i immediately thought of the many toys that try and explain shapes shape names and shapes to babies and toddlers and and i also thought because i speak to my kid in farsi not to brag but she's growing up with a couple of of course um and uh and the thing with with farsi is that the word for triangle it's

kind of like i guess triangle is maybe a latin word or something but it's it's similar like it's like just it's three ears so like like all of the shapes are like four years three years five years like that's or points. I don't know. I can't really translate that word, but I think it's like ears. And so the word for triangle is three ears or segush in Farsi. And so I say that word so much now. And I probably went like a decade not uttering the word triangle, you know, and then and now I say it all the time. And now here we are with a podcast about it. So I, I'm just inundated, you know,

Triangles are such a school thing. And then also if you're a small child, it's like it's on the front of the newspaper of being a small child or like a trending topic or whatever. Like shapes. Yeah, we're talking shapes. Shapes, of course. Yeah. Totally. Totally.

They're always talking about shapes. Let me tell you. They're obsessed with them. It's disgusting. Colors, too. It's like enough already. Get a life, you know, is what I always tell my daughter what sound a letter makes yeah my two-year-old can do that hopefully well and amir how about you with triangles i'm pro triangles i'm staunchly pro triangles, actually. Yeah, I'm outwardly pro triangle. I

mean, you'll see like, Google my name and triangle. It's like the entire internet is riddled with quotes about me and geometry in general. Very pro. I actually took I took high school math very seriously, because it was like, that was my lane. I love math. I was obsessed with math because I couldn't read well, write well. And that's how you become a comedian. Yeah, exactly. I basically, I'm the opposite of every comic where it's like, they all did English and history and like the whole arts of it all. And I was purely math and science. So I really liked geometry. I really liked algebra. I really liked numbers and sports analytics and all that stuff. So triangle fits in that. Also, like as a Laker

fan growing up, the triangle offense was a very big deal. Phil Jackson instituting it, bringing it from Chicago, Alex knows, to the Lakers. Absolutely. Won 11 championships with the triangle. So the triangle felt personally very rewarding for me as well as a Laker fan growing up. Amir, I'm excited to bring up the triangle offense because that's the end chunk of the show. We'll talk all about it. Whoa, teaser. So very exciting. Hello. God, I don't even know what that means. I bring everything back to basketball. That one was an easy one, but I would have force fed literally any topic back to basketball. But I'm glad we did triangle. That was like a semi easy segue for sure. And in the meantime, we can get into

the first chunk of the show. On every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week that is in a segment called, right now I'm going to share my stats. These numbers going to teach you things. Well, yeah, I got to say statistics. What was that supposed to be? Something like it sounded like a song, sort of.

Mostly singing, mostly talking, actually. What was that? Sorry, do you want to try that again? Can you lean into it this time? And I really want you to hit the falsettos. Actually, Nikki, why don't you give it a try? You clearly know what he was trying to do. I'll remember any...

Now I get it. Now I get it. That was good. There it is. Thank you. I don't know the lyrics in either version of the song, for the record. Nobody Gonna Break My Stride? Is that what it is?

Oh, there it... No, that's what it is. That's right. Nobody Gonna Break My Stride. who sings that song some guy it was like made for a car commercial it seems it was made to be come out in the 80s and then in 20 years to be on a car commercial this was the 80s they didn't have any like problems to sing. It was just like, I want to write about walking, going places. There's no issues today. It's fine.

Hey, let's go buy some junk bonds and take a stroll, you know, is what they would say. The rich get richer and walking people walked. And that was good. It was great. Such a good time. Yeah, I feel like in 80s pop culture, it hadn't rained in like 10 years. Everyone was just like, yep, it's going great all the time. There's never been a bad thing.

And then the 90s were even better. Nothing happened until 9-11, I think. That's another thing I bring up on every podcast is basketball and 9-11. All right, we're in. We did it in seven minutes this time. Hell yeah. Yeah. Amir, why are there balloons and confetti dropping behind you?

Really strange that that would be happening. Every time I bring up the two things, it just sort of appears. It's a very expensive thing that you've concocted for yourself that every time that you say 9-11 and basketball, like confetti has to fall to the sky. Very expensive. But worth it. Ultimately worth it. I mean, Alex, if you had that kind of commitment when you were singing your theme song,

then this would be an entirely different podcast. I should credit Kelly Matula suggested that. Thank you, Kelly. You can submit yours to Sip Pot on Twitter or to Sip Pot at gmail.com. And yeah, I'll probably just edit mine out and put in the gains because much, much more everything. A lot more ferv, a lot more force. It was great. And it was, yeah, it was Matthew Wilder's Break My Stride is the song from the 80s.

Matthew Wilder. That song wasn't even written. The 80s just generated it. They just lived carefree for eight years, and one day it was on the radio. It was born of the era. Is there a saxophone in that song? There should have been a saxophone in that song. Can you add a saxophone to your remake just in honor

of the 80s thank you i appreciate that as well yeah thank you i appreciate it thank you for adding the sax retroactively so if you guys are confused we didn't hear the sax you guys probably did because alex added it and added them in yeah just know that this is the origin of the sax that you already heard thank you again again, by the way. You're welcome. And with the stats and numbers here, we can blow through three for three sides. Everyone knows this about triangles. The first number here is at least 5,000 years old. And at least 5,000 years old is the age of the cuneiform writing system, which is made out of a bunch of wedge shapes. It's just a bunch of triangles. It was developed between 4000 and 3000 BC in ancient Mesopotamia. We've never used it ourselves. But one of the first ways of writing was a pictorial

system where you do a bunch of wedges in clay. It was just a bunch of triangles. Of course. Did you need to have a bunch of fresh clay on hand like all the time before pre-harden? I think so. Yeah. Right. Like they're not etching it in. You needed a guy. Yeah. Yeah. Like a golf caddy, you had like a clay caddy. He just carried your clay around for when you wanted to jot down some notes. Yeah. Or a claddy for short. That's what it is. That's right.

That's right. Yeah. Next number here we've got is 500,000 square miles. Doing a lot of big numbers on this one. 500,000 square miles. Bermuda Triangle. Yeah, that's correct. That's the size of the Bermuda Triangle.

Thank you. I was also on Jeopardy, Alex. It's not just you. But yeah. Interesting. Wait, were you really on Jeopardy? No, God, no. I would not ask one question on that show, but. I wouldn't believe it. I wouldn't believe it. All right. Sorry, what is the Bermuda Triangle? Jesus. Ah, that's how I could tell. Such a stickler. Wait, it's 500,000 square miles? Yeah, 500,000 square miles or in metric almost 1.3 million square kilometers is the size of the Bermuda Triangle. It's the amount of ocean in there.

Thanks for giving it to me in metric, by the way, because I am in Sweden right now and that's all I understand. So thanks for that. You did say you spoke Farsi, so we just assume you're worldly in terms of numbers as well. Yeah, I'm going to need it in multiple different types of measurements. Can you also convert that to Mandarin? Is the trick. On a scale of one to absolute Kelvin. Zero, yeah.

Absolute zero on the Kelvin scale. Yeah, thank you. You are absolute Kelvin. Absolute Kelvin is both a temperature and a way I compliment people. So you're welcome, Alex. It's also the name of a drink it's vodka uh vermouth kool-aid and one shot of former panthers wide receiver kelvin benjamin all sort of stirred up and served in a martini glass. I don't drink very much. Don't worry.

He regenerates. He regenerates. I feel like we're hitting other school things like Kelvin because triangles are a school thing. I blame triangles ultimately. Yes. Yes. Bring me back.

Bring me back to seventh grade. Well, I'm not going to be happy until we talk about Avogadro's number. Hey. Nice. Yes. Bring me back. Bring me back to seventh grade. Well, I'm not going to be happy until we talk about Avogadro's number. Hey. Nice. Nice. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I'm done.

Thank you very much. I'm dumb. It's been so nice to have you guys. I'm stupid today. Appreciate your time. Super dumb. Have you seen that Trader Joee's avocados number they have like the exact thing i thought of and that was my first touchstone for it it either says avocados

number it says avocados number is literally on the label of a trader joe's guacamole avocado thingamajig yeah that's their go-to nerds i want to get vaccinated at trader joe's i tweeted that yesterday but it's true like people are going to safeway cvs publics i want to get vaccinated at Trader Joe's. I tweeted that yesterday, but it's true. People are going to Safeway, CVS, Publix. I want to get my Pfizer at Trader Joe's. I know it's going to be organic. I can leave with some frozen food. It's a complete win-win situation. I want to get mine at Sephora.

So I get vaccinated and then I get some samples of perfume. Yeah. And if it's your birthday, you get a free whatever, a complimentary. Which I just recently got. Thank you. Very nice. It's a solid tip. I have a girlfriend.

I know the deal. With the Bermuda Triangle, the basic points of it are Miami, Florida, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the island of Bermuda. Wow. And we'll link like Snopes and stuff you should know in a bunch of sources. Basically, the upshot of the myth there is there are more ship disappearances there because there are more ships going through it. Just a busy part of the ocean. That's the whole deal. Interesting. Super traffic-y. Yeah. Yeah. If I was in LA, I would say something like, huh, it's like the 4.05 at 4 p.m. Am I right? Hey, or whatever, right?

I live in Manhattan, so I really don't know. But, you know, yes. I'm trying to do the one-handed snap, but I can't do it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, one-handed snaps to me. Can you add a sax every time I go like that thank you yeah yeah can you please

so the little toots of sax you guys heard yeah that was added in post by Alex and again thank you for that we don't have the benefit of hearing them but we are the ones you can thank for them later I'll just send you guys some saxophone music as a thank you after the like the gift bag for the podcast is saxophone music as a thank you after the,

like the gift bag for the podcast is saxophone music. You just get some of that. That's a shitty gift bag. I'm going to say that right now. I reject your gift bag. I sadly put them away. And then the last number here before the the three big takeaways the last number is 367 367 is the number of different ways that people have proved the pythagorean theorem

so we got another math thing uh pythagorean theorem the famous right triangle equation oh yes and then according to ted ed there's a book called the pythagorean proposition where mathematician elisha scott loomis cataloged all of the different ways people have proved that it works because you can do it by showing that like if you make a square off each side of the triangle they're equal but you can also do like half circles off of it or a bunch of other ways to prove it and people have found 367 different ways basically just for fun we all know it works interesting uh that is a really interesting way of having fun yeah yeah what was number 367 i'm sure that guy didn't need to probably do it right we already had

more than enough proof i know i thought of another way it's true okay yeah we had one for literally one for every day of the year including a leap day and you just had to add another congratulations the 367th way good job bro by the way it's mostly like way number 19 you basically copied and pasted and like added a little more to yours i barely want to call it like a little like a like your own chili sauce on here or whatever but it's still essentially the same thing yeah right i picture it i picture him doing it over a beer pong table and just like thinking he's really you you know. Yeah, whoa. Using the pongs as a calculation method. Yeah. Oh, the triangle of the cups.

It's like suddenly numbers appear in the sky out of them. Yeah. It's like those scenes in Queen's Gambit where she's like figuring it out in her head, staring at the ceiling. That's what that guy did, but with beer pong and the Pythagorean theorem. Just looking at solo cups moving. Yeah, I love it.

Well, and also that takes us into the first of the three big takeaways of the show. Here we go into takeaway number one. U.S. President James Garfield did one of those Pythagorean theorem proofs. Wow. Shut up. He's one of the people to do it. Now I feel like an idiot. I'm sorry.

What number was he? What number was he? The middle. I actually don't know. Yeah, that's a great question. Somewhere on the list. Yeah. He's not 367. Fire the researcher. Fire the researcher. That's obviously the first question that was going to come up.

Yeah, it's clearly a thing to know. I actually I've never really thought about Garfield. And now that you're telling me this, I have something to think about. Oh, when his name comes up. Yeah. Like I'm like, oh, that's the guy who did a pythagorean serum proof yeah that's the triangle president what's popularly you know the man who's popularly known as the triangle president yeah he i think he's mostly famous for being assassinated and for the garfield comic strip where it's a cat and that's it that that's sort of the famous Garfield things uh but triangles now you can add this folks you got it yeah oh I'm

gonna I would put this ahead of those other two are barely interesting I'm just probably behind Garfield the cat where the meat is yeah Garfield the cat's probably number one. And then the triangle, and then assassinated. How many presidents were assassinated? Like, just him? Four were killed. Okay, so that's not that special if there's four. I mean, how many proved the Pagrian theorem? Just the one?

I think nine, actually, yeah. Millard Fillmore did it four times. Oh my god times but didn't get assassinated and that's where he messed up nobody cares like please shoot me so i can stop i don't want to do this anymore uh with respect to his uh descendants we're joking i'm sure he was a fine man when uh and so garfield did this not when he was president but when he was a sitting congressman because garfield was elected president in 1880 shot the the following year. But in 1876, Garfield published a new proof of the Pythagorean theorem in the New England Journal of Education. He's believed to be the

first person to publish it. It's based on using a trapezoid to make three right triangles and proving it that way, which is very visual and mathematical. We won't talk about it anymore. But Garfield was a leading congressman and the main candidate to be speaker of the house if his party took congress and meanwhile he was just doing like triangle math for fun that was what he was up to is it because like they just didn't have like hbo max i mean it was so boring then that the people literally had to just prove shit for fun like at least make a game out of it have tangrams at the very least don't like

tangrams yeah don't like start proving shit when you're bored that's not like a good productive use of your time Garfield sorry I'm sorry to say but I'm almost like low-key excited he got assassinated because he was such a dork.

And I'm not even trying to say something controversial to get a rise out of you guys. Like, I'm really like kind of pissed at myself that I didn't know that he was such a doofus before he got. Was he killed or just attempted? He was killed. Yeah, he died. Okay, good. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Gun or knife back then?

How did that work? But can I just say, can I just, my hot take, my pandemic hot take is that I am now bored with like basically all of television. And I am this close to being number 367 on the Pythagorean theorem. Oh, my God. No, we already have. You'd be 368. Don't do it.

368. 368. Okay. I won't do 367 over again. I will do 368 because, like, that's where I am, you know? I thought you were going to say, I'm so bored with TV. I'm this close to reading a book. I swear I'll do it.

I will pick up a book right now. That's how bored I am. No, no, no. That's not how crazy I am. Yeah, I mean, you're not that bored, obviously. I will do some theorems, you know, and other mathematical proofs if you want. I'll, you know, I'll take some measurements of stuff, you know, I'll do that. I'll take some measurements of stuff.

I'll do that. Yeah, it is. Of all the hobbies, math never came up for anybody, huh? Nobody was like, I'm going to relearn algebra or trigonometry. That never was the way to go. I'm saying I will do that. I will take algebra two again. I forgot SOHCAHTOA and what it means and why, but I want to know again. Yeah.

Yeah. Those were the days, but I want to know again. Yeah. Yeah. Those were the days, huh? Where questions had answers, you know? None of this, like, comedy slash theorizing, essays, writing, opinion. I want to know why equals this. X equals this. That's what I get off to. Yeah, you're in the worst field.

Yes, I'm telling you, I'm in the worst field yes I'm telling you I'm in the worst field that's correct and that's when this this podcast devolves into a mere just like completely breaking his life yeah I think I'm breaking down I'm gonna be a professor or something like that I don't know but I'm not like smart enough to do that either no no they just let you do it really all right thanks you just like walk up to a university and you're like i want to be a professor i'm willing to take algebra two again and then they just let you do a job all right good thanks i needed to hear that the thing we're joking about right now was basically Garfield's job before politics. He was raised on a farm in Ohio and then worked his way through school and taught himself law

and then just got a job as a college professor teaching like five different things. It was called the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute in Hiram, Ohio. And he taught like math and Greek and Latin and a bunch of other stuff because that was being a college professor in the 1800s. It was like, I want to do it. Oh, he was such a nerd. Yeah. Loser. Is that what became Case Western Reserve, which is also in Ohio?

It oddly is separate, even though it sounds like it would be there's two western reserves in ohio and one of them is case western and the other is another western reserve there's yeah that's too many western reserves they didn't know they didn't have more words then you know you only had a few words yeah it was just state university or western reserve yeah so you just had to do a combination of those words, you know, in some order. Western State. So that's why we ended up with so many. Right.

In this particular case, it's Case Western Reserve. I see what happened. 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. and NPR. 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. From here, let's go into the next takeaway of the show. Takeaway number two. Pythagoras either founded or inspired a magical cult, and he might have been mythological.

it or inspired a magical cult and he might have been mythological or this i know there's more pythagoras the guy behind the theorem might not have been real yeah i i'm just so thrilled to be talking about this because like i think the pythagorean theorem is one of the few things people still have from math class like a squared plus b squared equals c squared yeah it's just easy to remember somehow yeah and no one taught us that the guy it's named after might not even be a real person it might they might be made up it's like shakespeare again i hate to just talk ill of the dead but boring that we had to read in high school like what are these plays are they even plays there it is like what are they yeah Romeo and Juliet what is that it's a guy liking a girl I guess that was novel because

it was like 1392 yeah but I've seen it it's called Two Weeks Notice starring Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant and I could watch that in 91 minutes and it's lovely yeah already has a British guy in it right yeah and i you don't you don't need to like pretend like you're understanding the dialogue like that's what most people do with shakespeare right is they're like pretending that they totally understand yeah like did you know wherefore art thou actually meet yeah no i don't know that because it's not like it's barely english don't tell me these things because then i forget important stuff like the pythagorean theorem unlike uh ohio that just didn't have enough words to name their colleges yeah in shakespeare's time they oddly had too many words too many yeah

it was too many words too many words what is it what are you doing with all of those words like and and also don't feel the need to stuff in all the words at the same time yeah like you know what i mean for meter like pentameter and it's like oh i have to say it in a certain way in addition to like the way that's a crazy rule stupid rule doesn't make sense i agree too many words too many rhythm rules i just want to ask them to revisit ideally Ideally, yeah. Yeah, acting like words are math. Get out of here, Shakespeare.

For some reason, numbers are cool and words are bad. Say it all the time. So we got a few sources for this. One of them is a BBC Radio 4 show called In Our Time that did an episode on Pythagoras, also a BBC documentary called The Story of Maths, and then a book called The History

of Philosophy by the UK philosophy professor A.C. Grayling. And the first thing about Pythagoras is around the scholarship of him, there's something called the Pythagorean question, which is whether he was real or not. And Grayling says, quote, he is personally something of a mystery. There was certainly a Pythagorean school or cult, perhaps a religious order that had something to do with a charismatic individual called Pythagoras, end quote. Whoa.

That's all we actually know about him. That's it. And what's interesting about that is you normally hear about cults that have to do with sex and murder right that's usually where your cool kind yeah and this cult was about math trying to specifically try specifically try well like how many throuples what would be really sad is if it was a cult about triangles and there were no throuples in the cults yeah the whole yeah that'd be the whole three love triangle that's one of the triangles that there could be and they're like no we never thought of that everyone here is actually monogamous and in pairs yeah right we're all such dorks we would never actually do that

that's also almost the situation another thing about this is they believe that the Pythagorean school allowed women, which was rare for the distant past and things led by men. It was men and women in it, but also apparently they led relatively austere lives of study and prayer kind of thing, sort of like monks. And so it's not even a cool cult. It's a cult for math and for just thinking about the world. Wow. A cult for math that allowed girls. Yeah. I mean, this actually sounds pretty dope,

quite frankly. I'd be down to like join. A cult for math that allows girls. What year was this, Alex? This is the 80s, right? Or even before 78 pythagoras singing that song and uh so if pythagoras existed he was born around the year 570 bc oh i was gonna say that

yeah yeah 570 that exact year yeah if he was born yeah and he was born on a greek island near modern day turkey and then the school was in southern italy which was culturally greek at the time so we know there was a school we don't know if he's real but the the school is amazing because it's this group of people that are like mixing magical thinking and also actual true stuff. And they sort of believed both that Pythagoras came up with a bunch of amazing science and then also was a like mythical amazing figure with a bunch of powers. So it's a really interesting thing. Yeah, they were wrong about him, you know? Wow, that's cool.

And you know that for a fact. That's interesting. All right. He did not have mythical powers. I'm going to tell you that's cool. And you know that for a fact. That's interesting. All right. He did not have mythical powers. I'm going to tell you that right now. Damn, that's kind of breaking news a little bit. I know you want to join the cult, but like. Now I'm second guessing everything.

This is the point of the podcast, the second point of the podcast where Amir has a meltdown and changes his entire life. Does that even work? Second point of the podcast where Amir has a meltdown and changes his entire life. Does that even work? A squared, three, four, five, nine plus 16. Prove it. I guess it works sometimes, but I haven't tried it with every right triangle.

Prove it. Let's do some of the myths about them because they're wild. Okay. In this tradition, according to Professor John O'Connor, they believed they were following a real person named Pythagoras and his example. And there were a bunch of traditional stories about him traveling to Egypt and Mesopotamia. But the stories also said that Pythagoras traveled into the underworld and met the dead and then came back. underworld and met the dead and then came back okay they also said that he could converse with animals such as bears and eagles and also that he could predict earthquakes i know we know what animals are this is false this can't be right i don't care what the animals are you don't have

to give me examples like that's not the part that i would believe well here's a question though about those specific specific examples of bears and eagles. Bears, like you're both on the ground for some period of time, I guess I can see a con, like a chat brewing. A world where that works. Yeah. But like an eagle isn't like hanging out. An eagle like just then takes off.

An eagle's like, shut the up, and literally just flies away. You wouldn't be able to hear it. Exactly. It's just, it's not, I don't see that working out. I don't see that working out. That's, yeah. That's a no from us, dog. Randy Jackson.

They also claim that he could predict earthquakes. They claimed that he could remember his own past lives. And then I think the strangest thing is they claimed that one of his thighs was made of gold. All right. This is just some Charles Manson level shit. He probably had a huge dick and everyone's like, yeah, I love this guy. He could talk to animals. He could predict earthquakes.

Please, please sleep with me me pythagoras wait what is what is the point of a thigh made of gold it's nothing it's it's first of all it's in pants all the time it's not like what are we right who's benefiting from that yeah there's no like story arc with. It's not like, and then he did this. It doesn't make any sense. Thigh. That's really weird. Yeah. Even a thigh, what a boring part of your body to be gold. Golden foot would be cool, golden face, golden neck, golden hands. Golden thigh is just-

Nothing. It's covered. It's a lot of weight to be gold imagine if your one of your whole thighs was gold that just seems does that include your ass or like does the thigh start right below the ass that's a good question i think it starts right below the ass i think it's we know the answer to that quite below the ass so and then on the front does it go all the way up to the hip or does it just is it a single cylinder that starts below the ass and then goes around your it's like at the

bikini line I think is where it starts and stops yeah so the front of your thigh it doesn't go all the way up to you like your pelvic bone no no it's not you're not belting your thigh yeah right so the thigh is basically half the quad. Yeah. The lower half, really, the worst half. I'd rather have a golden ass. Right. Yeah.

That sounds special. It would weight you weirdly. You might have to lean over to keep up, you know? Oh. Right. Yeah, you'd always be falling out of chairs sideways it doesn't make any sense right exactly yeah you would need two golden thighs just even it out yeah he really would right yeah yeah go to the bank get a loan

get another thigh that made out of gold like make it happen or talk to one of your eagle buddies and see what they can do. Talking to eagles. And so they had all these magical beliefs. Also, the group believed that souls can move from thing to thing. And they believed that beans contain the souls of the dead. Bunch of magical thinking in this group. Like there was a lot of strong spiritual beliefs. But they also believed in a lot of things that helped them invent actual things. And the main one is that they believed, quote, number is the basis of nature, end quote. So they believe that you have to measure and calculate things in order to prove them, which is science. They just were some of the first people

to believe in science on top of all this other stuff that they thought. We gave them a little too much power, I think. They had the theorem, which was like, that's a solid get. Yeah. And then we're like, what else do you think? And then he's like, oh, shit. Yeah, and he's just listening. He's like, eagles, beans, thigh.

You had the theorem. You didn't have to lie after that it's fine to be a one-hit wonder like that guy the ain't nobody gonna break my stride did he have another good song he wasn't like also i talked to a dog yesterday take the w go home i agree the other thing is they their main actual discoveries triangles are not really the top of the list the main really cool discovery by the pythagoreans is musical keys and intervals they figured out that if you measure a string's length you get different pitches from it and then they figured out keys and intervals from there and so like the the main thing they actually came up with is music theory but also based on most scholarship and study of where math was at in various places the pythagoreans were some of the last people to come up with the pythagorean theorem wow they are not really the people we

should credit with it i don't know what to think And I don't really know how it got the name. It might just be a Greek-centric thing. Because they could have called it like, you know, they could have called it like Richard or something, you know? Yeah. Oh, like it's a cool name. Maybe that's why they picked it. Like Pythagoras.

Yeah. It sounds special. Yeah. It's like the, you know, it's kind of like band names or whatever. Yeah. You know. Like if his name was John, he wouldn't, they wouldn't have bothered to. John Theorem.

Then it's not going to get world famous. John Theorem. You know what I mean? Like Bob Theorem. You know? Richie Theorem. That's boring. Like that's just no one's doing.

Like Cheryl Theorem. Yeah. What would Cheryl's theorem be? Why would anyone ever subscribe to that? Yeah, her theorem would just be like pleated front khakis and a cardigan sweater equal mommy night out or whatever. Yeah. She's sort of Karen-esque, but not quite. She's Cheryl. She's not racist. She's just a Karen-esque, but not quite. She's Cheryl.

She's not racist. She's just a little basic. I see. Yeah. Yeah. I really hope she calls it doing her theorem when she gets ready to go out. That's amazing. Oddly, she calls it doing her Pythagorean.

Well, because as far as as others we could name it after so pythagoras lived about 2 500 years ago the babylonians probably had this theorem more than a thousand years before that there's a clay tablet called plimpton 322 because it's in the collection of a guy named george plimpton uh But it's about the size of a postcard, and it has carvings and writings on it that indicate doing the square root of two for the long side of a right triangle. And they probably knew the Pythagorean theorem.

So he wasn't first by a lot. And then you also have the Egyptians probably knew it, and China probably knew it. And also potentially Pythagoras' teacher knew it if he was a real person. Can we quickly get back to this guy George Plimpton, though? Yeah, isn't that an animator or something? Yeah, I thought he was like a music producer or something.

Or like the father of an actor? Yeah. He gave it, apparently he got it in 1922. So maybe he's related. Maybe he's an ancestor or something. Martha Plimpton's dad. That's cool. Is what he's known as, yeah.

Yeah, she's a cool actor. I'm into it. I wonder what she's doing with that collection now. She's probably looking at that square root of two like right now. Her quarantine hobby is learning math from her old tablets that the family owns yeah i love her she's great but yeah if nothing else there was somebody called thales of myletis who was greek and if pythagoras was real thales was pythagoras's teacher and there's evidence that thales knew this theorem so Pythagoras might have like ripped it off from his teacher, credit wise.

And we really, I don't know why it's named after this possibly mythical guy. It doesn't make any sense. Thales? Yeah. T-H-A-L-E-S, which I might be pronouncing wrong. Thales. Bollies? Yeah.

You never see a Thales anymore, right? Come on. Come on, parents. You really don't. Pick it. That's like like let's bring that back it's hard to say spell pronounce it's a waste of a name really but let's think of those moments in like you know in preschool when like like there's like one there's like three fails in the room and then one has to be like fails n like like Thales P Thales J yeah I mean I'm looking

forward to that era of our lives when that happens well and uh and from here I think we can do the last takeaway the main episode and it is takeaway number three one triangle dominated the world of basketball for 20 years. Because we're going to talk about the triangle offense in basketball. Finally, basketball. No more Greeks. We did it. Well, we could talk about Greek basketball players if you're interested, like Giannis. Oh, yeah, he's cool.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the main sources here are the New York Times. and the main sources here are the New York Times. They have a 2017 article that is written as kind of an obituary for this offensive system, and then also basketball Hall of Fame pages for Sam Barry and Tex Winter. But the most famous person with it, as Amir said, is probably Phil Jackson, the coach of the Jordan Bulls

and the Shaq and Kobe Lakers, who won 11 championships. That's right. Yeah. Was the triangle, what is it called? Defensive? Offensive? Triangle offense, yeah. The triangle offense, was it showcased in Save the Last Dance?

Save the Last, oh, you're thinking, are you thinking of Thus the Last Dance? Save the Last Dance, I think, is a Julia Stiles movie about ballet. So I don't think they brought it up there unless they're watching a Bulls game at some point. Did it come up in The Last Dance?

Yeah, I think it did come up in The Last Dance. That's what I meant. And I also just want to point out that The Last Dance was ill-titled because that's not the first time I've said Save the Last Dance when i meant the last dance i just want to go ahead and point that out to filmmakers out there who are thinking of adding

a word to their movie names of old older movies i love that that's really good yeah save the last dance this is like someone who's protesting they're gonna cancel the last dance and you're like no save the last dance and people are like the julia protesting. They're going to cancel the last dance. And you're like, no, save the last dance. And people are like, the Julia Stiles movie? No, no, no. Unrelated to that. I want you to save, comma, quotation mark, the last dance. So Michael Jordan is one of these dudes via Phil Jackson who did a triangle.

Yeah. Yeah. jackson who did a who did a a triangle yeah yeah the the weird this is a this is a bad basketball podcast pilot that we're starting because i don't i i know you guys like look at me and think sports woman but i really don't actually know anything about basketball as you as you probably didn't guess. I can't tell. I cannot tell. No, thank you.

I feel like I'm pulling it off really well. But Michael Jordan did a triangle. Well, Jordan played on the Bulls, and the Bulls, they positioned themselves on the court when they had the ball. There was a triangle on one side and two people on the other, and they would give the ball in the post. So Michael was one point of the triangle triangle but then he had other players around him from which he can like pick and choose to pass the ball to and creating other triangles yeah sort of creating movement it's very geometrical

and because in the 90s and early 2000s nobody really shot three pointers there wasn't a lot of like uh inefficiencies in the game to like try to get as many three pointers as possible. This was like the best offense. And then by like 15 years later, it was completely defunct and useless way to run a team. Exactly. Yeah.

Oh, that's sad. Yeah. So you don't see it anymore. You don't see it anymore. Oh, and also, and I'm here.

That was a great description of it. And like, when I read about it and when I try to talk about it, I find that the most I can kind of say is like, there's a triangle of three guys on one side. And then because it from what I've read and seen, it's also, it's a simple offense, because it's three guys make a triangle. And then it's also like impossible to explain, like the movements from there are apparently very mysterious and hard to to do yeah i remember like a big point point of every time phil jackson either brought in a new player went to a new team they're like it's gonna take them months to learn the triangle it's like wow really these are professional athletes and they can't figure out the triangle in like 30 days. That's a lot of time. Like, no, it really takes 15 minutes to learn and years to master the triangle. Really?

Because I just see a guy passing the ball to Shaq and getting the f*** out of the way. That seems pretty easy. I feel like I could do that. Did he master it or is Shaq just 300 pounds heavier than everybody else it seems pretty simple to me but it worked yeah because that's for and for anybody who doesn't know basketball the the basics of phil jackson's championships are that he won six with the chicago bulls in the 1990s and then five with the la lakers in the 2000s that first decade there and i the the big question around his offensive scheme which also came from an assistant coach named tex winter the big question is did this scheme work or did phil jackson have michael jordan scotty pippen shaquille o'neal

kobe bryant like all the best players in the world and then this this offense is just all smoke and mirrors. Like it's not actually any of the reason they're winning games. Yeah. So according to Amir, Amir could have done the same thing. Like, cause it's so easy. Yeah, definitely. Look at me.

I'm the most athletic person you'll ever see. And even I could do it. I see that. Well, I think a lot of the hate Philil jackson gets is like alex said like the yeah any offense works when you have the greatest players of all time but i will say that those players did not win anything before or after phil jackson so they lost lost lost phil came one one one one one phil left lost lost lost so it's like well really excellent point uh how good was it because when shack left and it was just Kobe, didn't win anything.

Phil comes back, wins two more championships. There's something to it. Yeah. And the other, the weird thing about this offense is that it took a long time to work because I didn't know this until researching it, but the triangle comes from all the way back in the thirt and 40s. There was a coach at USC, the college, named Sam Berry. And he was the first basketball coach to develop it. And then one of his players was a guy named Tex Winter, who then immediately became a coach. And Tex Winter

wasn't winning championships all the time or anything, but he was just relentlessly trying to get other basketball people excited about the triangle. He wrote a book in 1962 called The Triple Post Offense that was like a book about his triangle. And until Winter and Jackson joined up with the Bulls in the 90s, it didn't win anything. But then all of a sudden it did when when it was with this team. He should have like renamed his book like men are from mars women are from venus or something and then it would have gotten more traction yeah that one was so big like the the name of the book makes it sound like total snooze fest yeah what about like the south beach diet or something wasn't that like a huge one at the time that's

where you get a bestseller that's where you get people talking about your triangle exactly the vicious v yeah so then winter and jackson they win jackson wins 11 championships winter is involved in 10 of them and there's also like a last chapter of phil jackson's career where he goes to new york and tries to revive the new york knicks and And from what I read, it basically didn't work because the Knicks refused to get into the triangle. Like, they refused to do this system that Jackson was way into. At one point, Carmelo Anthony, who was one of the main players on the Knicks at the time, openly told a reporter, quote,

at this point, I'm getting tired of hearing about the triangle, end quote. Wow. And the Knicks did not play well under Jackson and it didn't work out. It's hard to tell whether they were just bad or whether it was because there was this dispute over this mystical offense that no one understands. They were really bad. There you have it. I'm glad we can sort of just put that rumor to... I didn't catch a single game, but I just can tell from the vibe of your storytelling that they were really bad.

I think it might have been a joke, but you're 100% correct. He was bad. Not a good team for very long. That's correct. But yeah, I think the average person does not know, especially if they don't follow basketball, that there was just this whole era

where all people could talk about was either a triangle winning championships or like the Spurs winning some in between. That was what was going on for like 20 years of the game. It sounds like a little boring because it was so predictable. That's interesting. Yeah. I would agree. Like there's no other way it's gonna go yeah i would agree boring someone tell phil jackson i said that all right he's

he's in a farm on montana right now but i'll i'll dm him yeah yeah let it please let him know Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Amir Blumenfeld and Nagin Farsad for being the Jordan and Pippen to my Bill Wennington. Alternatively, they are the Shaq and Kobe to my, I think I'm going with Brian Shaw. I don't know Lakers stuff as well, but you get it. Stars, role player, makes sense, great. 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 bizarrely triangular layout of Washington, D.C. and the bizarre situations that that causes. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than three dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring triangles with us. Here is one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, U.S. President James Garfield helped prove the Pythagorean theorem. U.S. President James Garfield helped prove the Pythagorean theorem.

Takeaway number two, Pythagoras either founded or inspired a magical cult, and he might have been mythological. And takeaway number three, one triangle dominated the world of basketball for 20 years. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests they're great both of them are doing incredible weekly podcasting you can hear amir blumenfeld on his show if i were you co-hosted with jake hurwitz you can hear him on his show buckets with many guests talking basketball and then nagin farsad has her podcast Fake the Nation with many guests doing all of the world of politics every week. Also, she's a voice on Bird Girl, which is a new Adult Swim cartoon series. And then I'm also going to link some of their guest spots on other HeadGum comedy podcasts

because HeadGum is just a great network to know, a great scene to dive into if you're looking for more stuff. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A great article in the New York Times. This is from 2017. It's called The Triangle Offense, A Simple Yet Perplexing System Dies, and that is by Dan Barry. A great book titled The History of Philosophy. That's by philosophy professor A.C. Grayling. And then an amazing BBC Radio 4 show. It is called In Our Time. They did an episode on Pythagoras hosted by Melvin Bragg. The experts they consult are Serafina Cuomo of the University of London,

John O'Connor of the University of St. Andrews, and Ian Stewart of the University of Warwick. If you heard the Dice episode recently, he wrote a book that was crucial to that Dice episode, so thank you, Professor Stewart, for helping make this one, too. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all of that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Also, come to think of it, they add some saxophone to the show. So thank you.

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 am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.