Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Zero Works

Episode Date: April 27, 2019

Few numbers have as storied a past as zero. Even fewer have had as great an impact on our ability to understand our universe. Yet zero is a relatively recent arrival in math. Find out all about this surprisingly fascinating number with Chuck and Josh.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi there, hello there. It's me, Josh, your friend, with this week's edition of S-Y-S-K Selects. And for this week, I've selected How Zero Works, a surprisingly riveting episode about zero.

You know, zero made famous by the phrase, you better lose that zero and get yourself a hero. Well, it turns out that zero is pretty great in its own right. Just listen to this episode, okay? Enjoy. Welcome to Step You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is a rare, unusual, mathematical episode of Stuff You Should Know. Yes, and I'm just gonna step out of the room, and I'll be back in, what, 25 minutes? I knew you were gonna do this.

This is not gonna be another yo-yo episode. Oh, I just hate math. This was not math heavy at all. It's about the history of zero. It's about the weirdness of zero. My hero zero. Exactly. So you came along. It's about zero and you're still.

People counted on their fingers and toes. I posted that today on Facebook. I don't know what that is. The schoolhouse rock. I don't remember that. My hero zero. I don't remember that one. Till you came along.

Keep going. They counted on their fingers and toes. It's basically, you would appreciate it, because it sings what you wrote. Oh, that's great. In a much more basic way, but basically trying to teach kids how amazing zero is, and don't discount it as just,

it's a number, it's not the absence of something. Well, there's a lot. Although it is. There's a bunch to it. It's many, many things. It's a multi-faceted number. Not now. It's a multi-faceted entity.

Zilch. Well, Noel is German for zero. Did you know that? Bupkis. Yeah. Bupkis is, I believe, Spanish for zero. Zilch. Zilch is Cajun.

I did actually get a little etymology research. Originally, Sanskrit was Sonja, which meant empty. Then later, Arabic was Saphira, or nothing. Then Italian was Zaphiro, and then finally, French gave us zero. Right. And it wasn't, you know, we represent zero as something that looks confusingly like an O.

Yeah. Right? That was the Europeans who did that. Prior to that, the Arabs, and I believe the Indians too, represented zero with a heavy dot. You know where that might've come from? Where? Robert Kaplan's book, The Nothing That Is,

A Natural History of Zero, he speculates that the shape comes from the round depression left in the sand, a sand counting board, once you remove a stone from it. Wow. So the absence would be a round thing. That's what he thinks, he speculates. But that wouldn't have been the Europeans.

It was the Europeans that came up with that. Well, no, but you said... Like a heavy dot. Yeah, a heavy dot. A solid dot. Could be the depression where a stone was in sand. That's a good one. Who was that?

Robert Kaplan. Thanks, Mr. Kaplan. Well, I guess I feel like we've kind of done a pretty good set up here, Chuck. I think so too. We've talked about how zero is multifaceted, and we talked about the Arabs and the Indians. Right?

Yeah. And we have to go back even further to first find when zero made itself known. Should we get in the wayback machine? Let's. I think, let's blow the dust off of this thing. Sorry. Wow.

That was right at ya. You think this thing still works? Let's find out. You ready? Yeah. Hey, look at there. Wow, lit up like a flux capacitor. This is nice.

We're back in ancient Sumer, and these baked clay tablets haven't even been baked yet. They're still wet, look. Wow. G-O-S-H. Was here. Cool.

So, Chuck, if you'll look at this clay tablet, do you see these two diagonal lines? Yeah, those little wedges. Yeah. Those, my friend, represent nothing. Really? And the reason they're there is because around about this time, somebody figured out,

they ran into a problem, and when they were making some sort of tax record or grain inventory, that showing that basically writing out 3000 lines for the 3000 heads of cattle, that doesn't make any sense. But let's say you have 300, you have 3000 heads of cattle, and all you have are the ways to represent 300 heads of cattle.

There's a big difference, right? There's an extra digit in there, and that those two diagonal lines were used to represent one of those digits when there was not any digits there, but there's something to the left of it and something to the right of it. That's right.

And Kaplan also said that before that even, they just would leave a blank space sometimes, before they even came up with the little wedges. Right. So, what this is all based on is basically our numerical system, where if you look at a string of numbers, starting from the right, you have the ones column, the tens column,

the hundreds, the thousands, the 10,000s, the 100,000s, and so on. You want me to keep going? Add infinitum. Right, yes. And in each of these columns, there may or may not be numbers present. So, when there are numbers present,

we have our friend zero to serve as what's considered a placeholder. Yeah, makes, I mean, it's very easy to just say, well, duh, now, but way back then, before there was a zero, we take it very much for granted. This is huge. This changed everything.

Changed everything. All of a sudden now, because I mean, we said there's a big difference between 3,000 head of cattle and 300 head of cattle. And by putting a zero there, right, saying this column is represented, there's just not any in here. You're not gonna find the two cattle

that should be in this. Right. That changed everything. It changed everything. I bet there was frustrating before that. Yeah. There was only, there was something to put there. Yeah.

Instead, they were just like, just trust me, I have 3,000 cattle, okay? And I guess when they left the blank space, that got confusing because they could have thought it was an error. So, they figured we have to put something there so they know it's not just an oversight. Right, exactly.

Hence the diagonal lines. Well, in this, I think before it even became that standardized, they used different things because they found a tablet from 700 BC and a dude used three little hooks to represent zero. Well, that would have been after that because the Sumerians were doing this like 5,000 years ago.

Oh, well, it's probably hard to get the word around. Right. Three hooks, what is this crud? Exactly. So, the Sumerians are the first documented to come up or stumble upon zero as a placeholder. Sure. And then it was codified with the invention of the abacus

which uses our numerical column system that we use today which is invented by the Babylonians about 300, 500 BC. Wow. Right? Smart folks back then. So, we have zero as a placeholder. We have this understanding now that there's something out there

like we can represent nothingness. Yeah. But it wasn't until the 5th century AD in India where zero first comes about as a concept as a number which is equally groundbreaking. Yeah, on this nothingness, we should point out was not something that people were comfortable with back then. True.

Oddly, now it seems odd, but to have something represent nothing made people very uncomfortable. It was associated with chaos and the great void and even the sign of the devil. Yes, it was. Well, I mean, if you look at the Christian theology, the void which is represented by zero or nothingness

was the state of the universe before the creation of man. Humans. Sure. Seeks feel the same way too, although I don't know how they felt about zero. Oh, really? But that's their conception as well. There was nothing.

There was void. And then also void fits well with chaos which is the Christian conception of hell. Right. Like no one's in charge. Right. So, yeah, it was avoided. I don't know.

I went back and looked, Chuck, after I wrote this article. When we were studying today, I went back and looked and I didn't find a lot of support for that. I didn't either. I did see that during the Dark Ages, monks kind of were probably, they feared zero.

Well, Kaplan mentioned it in his book, so. But I mean, it was out there, but there's no, well, these people did this. They killed this guy for saying the word zero. There was nothing like that out there. I think more to the point, it was the Romans who just didn't use zero and the West was built by Rome.

And that's, I think, where the shunning of zero came from. Not necessarily from fear, but just because the Roman numeral system doesn't have zero. Yeah, I found where they flirted with it at first with the nulla, N-U-L-L-A, which they would represent with a little N, but it clearly didn't take. No.

They said, we're not gonna use that as zero. No. Why would we ever need zero? We don't need it as zero. Right. Did they talk like that back then, too? Yeah, like Vinnie from Brooklyn? Sure.

I think so. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling

of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place,

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So, where are we, in India? Yeah, we're in the 5th century AD in India,

and a guy named Ariyabhada, Ariyabhada, is possibly the person who invented zero. Really? Possibly. Or discovered, as you like to say? Thank you. Yes. So, where are we, in India?

Yeah, we're in the 5th century AD in India, and a guy named Ariyabhada, Ariyabhada, is possibly the person who invented zero. Yes. Thank you for correcting me with my own words. I know. That's weird. That's a lot, doesn't it?

When they're your articles. So, it is pretty much universally accepted that zero was created or discovered in India, and then it spread pretty quickly over to Islamic nations, Arab nations, and it was the Arabs who taught a guy named Fibonacci, Leonardo Pisa, who was a great mathematician of the West

in the, I think the 12th century or the 13th century. You know, people are gonna say, do the Fibonacci number. Go ahead. Well, no, no, no, people are gonna ask for that podcast. Oh, okay. In fact, they've already been asking for that podcast. Do you wanna do that one?

Yeah. You want to? Maybe. Probably not. Okay. Well, Fibonacci was the son of a customs officer in Algeria, Chuck. Yes.

And he had Arabic tutors, and they said, hey kid, we're gonna teach you how to really do math, because by this time, by the, I think the 1200s, or the 1100s, so the 12th century, the Arabs were very well versed in mathematics, and the West was still just complete idiots. Fortunately, Fibonacci was over there getting tutored, and he figured out, wow, this is really, really important,

and introduced our Arabic numeral system, which we use today, to the West through a book. So you said he wrote a book. Did he write the book? No, he wasn't the only one. Okay. Okay, no, that's not true. For the West, yes, he wrote the book,

and then other people wrote treatises on his book. Okay, so he pretty much set the basis. Yes. Okay. He was the fulcrum, the hinge, between West and Middle East. A zero is a fulcrum. Yes, it is.

Interesting. So he was the one who introduced it to the West, but again, I mean, we say that because we're Western writers, Chuck, but it was very well established for hundreds of years by the time Fibonacci heard about zero. Yeah, and you also point out, interestingly, that simultaneously, and completely independently,

of India and Central America, the Maya were also beginning or already using zero. Yeah. To mainly for their calendar, right? Yeah, it was the base of counting, which makes sense. It totally makes sense, and it makes for a more accurate calendar, right? Sure.

So for Mayan calendars, the day of the month would be zero day, and one day, then two day, then three day, and so on. How would you say that, though? Because you say first, second, third, how would you say? They had different names for the day, like Zul. Oh, okay. It would be Zul, or Mon, or something like that.

It was like, rather than first, second, third, they didn't have numerals like that. Right. Like first, second, third, that's Arabic. Right. So to the Maya, it was like Zul day. Isn't that Ghostbusters? I think so.

Okay. But that was what Sumerian. Oh, yeah. Zul was Sumerian. It's all coming together. So that does make for a lot more accurate counting, and that's one of the big flaws in our calendar, the Gregorian calendar, is that there is no zero year.

Well, and we all got that pointed out to us quite through the media, especially when the millennium turned, because there's no year zero, our decades, and our centuries, and our millennia actually occur at the end of that year, and not the beginning, like when the clock struck midnight at 2000, we all went, yay, new millennium, not so. And we still had a year left.

That's right. Had we started counting from zero, then, yeah, in January 1st, 2000, that would have been the start of the new millennium. But we started counting from one, so one to 2,000 is 1,999 years rather than 2,000 years. And there was one guy in every bar trying to point out to as many people as he could.

Do you realize it's not even true? And he's like, why isn't anyone buying me drinks for this? I know, it's so crazy. Why are they going to beat me up? Yeah. And I put a little notation in there, because I have trouble wrapping my head around that sometimes. But the point is, there's 10 single digit numbers

in the Arabic numerical system that we use. Yes. And it's zero through nine. Makes total sense. Anything beyond that is in the 10s column or above. And thanks to zero, we have a 10 column. Exactly. Take a chuck.

Well, Western astronomers, they came up with a system, late 17th and early 18th century, that designated calendar year 1 BC as zero. And then basically anything above or below that would either be plus or minus, so BC or AD. Right, so 2 AD would be minus 1. Or no, 2 BC would be minus 1 BC. Yes.

Since we're not living in AD, they just kind of screwed with the BC a little bit. So right now we're in plus 2012. Yes, which also makes, I mean, it's not just calendars. I mean, zero lies between negative 1 and 1 and serves as a fulcrum point for basically all numbering positive and negative. And that was Jacques Cassini who came up

with that astronomical calendar. Well, those Italians are all up on this stuff, weren't they? Yeah, it took him to be French. But yeah, at least it is an Italian. Well, Jacques, though. Yeah, who knows, maybe he's Northern Italian. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so he basically said, well, wait, why don't we just

choose one year to be zero, and then we'll just basically make it, we'll make the calendar based on zero's rightful place of numbering, which is precisely between 1 and negative 1. There's a zero there. It doesn't just go from negative 1 to 1. Zero is like you said, the fulcrum of all numbers. It spreads out infinitely on either side.

So it's not positive, and it's not negative. And so it's the only number that is non-positive and non-negative. But it's neither a positive number nor a negative number. Wrap your head around that one. You college students sitting around here at midnight just gaze up at the stars and try and figure that out. Start counting.

Start counting. It's also an integer, a whole number, right? Yes, and it's very handy when it comes up to ratios and fractions because a fraction can be written in a couple of ways, either with the one on top of the other or with a little decimal point. Yes. And without those zeros, you wouldn't be able to do that.

No, so this decimal system, basically you can look at it as anything to the right of the decimal. Yes. So the tens, the hundreds, the thousandths, right? The THs? Tenths, hundreds, about, yes. Thank you. Yeah, you're getting as bad as me, Chuck.

Those are all encapsulated in that zero that's up to positive 1, right? Yeah. Because it's less than a whole 1. But it's not so much that it's negative 1. Right. It's encapsulated by that zero. So all of these ratios, all of the decimal system,

gives us these incredibly precise numbers. Whereas we can count in whole numbers to the right of zero, in positive whole numbers. That just goes on and on and on and measures the vastness of the universe. Right. To go the other way, to go in this infinite decimal system that's encapsulated within zero, lets

you measure the infantismal, right? Yeah, so it's not like, oh, it's between 2 and 3. Right. I mean, try making high quality machine parts using whole numbers. Yeah. You can't. No, it can't be done.

So there's all sorts of things that would have never taken place had zero not given rise to the decimal system. Or everything would be really big, you know? Everything would be twice as large. Like the 10,000-year clock wouldn't even work. Remember, they were using fractions of an inch that still wouldn't work. That's true.

What else, Chuck? Well, you point out very astutely some odd properties of zero, and they are actually called the properties of zero, because it's such a weird number that you have to have properties to explain it. Exactly. So what's this version called? Is it the additive property of zero, addition property?

Yeah. Add zero to anything, and you're going to get that same thing. Sounds very basic. Same as subtracting. Sure. 5 plus 0 is 5. Right. 5 minus 0 is 5.

Right, and it is very basic, but zero is the only number that doesn't affect another number when it's added or subtracted to it, which is important. It is. Any time a number is the only thing of its kind, it's worth mentioning. Like pi. There's which, by the way, wouldn't exist without zero

in the decimal system. Or any of those other numbers. It wouldn't exist to us. Yeah, true. There's the additive inverse property of zero, where any numbers that add up to zero are additive inverses of one another. So negative 5 plus positive 5, or just 5,

as they call it in positive land, equals zero. So negative 5 and 5 are additive inverses of one another. Multiplying? From the time you're, I think I learned in the second grade my multiplication tables, if I remember correctly. Ms. Anderson, Ms. Temple, thank you very much. Very good, Chuck. They taught me that if you multiply any number by zero,

you're going to get zero. And as you point out, that multiplication is really just a quicker way of adding things. It's like a shortcut. Yeah, it's a shortcut. So the idea that a number can be added zero times, or that zero can be added to itself. That's when I get the most.

Yeah, it just doesn't make any sense. Like five times zero doesn't mean zero plus zero plus zero plus zero plus zero. That doesn't mean anything. Right. Zero. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, Stars of the Colt Classic Show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive

back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. What about dividing by zero?

Let me ask you. No, let me ask you. This is the part where I was like, what? Nobody understands this. OK. I don't feel very bad about this because no one really understands it. There's no, so there's these other properties of zero

that cover additive inverse, addition, subtraction, multiplication. There is no property that says why you can't divide by zero because it's so nonsensical. It doesn't even exist. The concept of dividing by zero doesn't really actually exist except in the imagination of people. I bet mathematicians have tried, though,

like frustratingly tried. You can't. There's nothing you can do. And they don't even fully understand why. But the best explanation that I saw was that it has to do kind of with the multiplication property, to where if you divide something, so like 6 divided by 2 equals 3.

So if you can divide a number, the result of that number by the divisor, so in this case, 3 and 2, multiplied by one another should equal the dividend, which is 6. Now, if you divide 6 by 0, it doesn't equal anything. It should equal 0 if you multiply it. It's not going to equal 2.

That's the best example I could come up with. Yeah, that makes sense, though. It shouldn't. You're completely insane. It makes sense that it doesn't make sense. OK. That's what I'm saying. And Stephen Wright had a joke.

He said that black holes are where God tried to divide by 0. Wow, you like it? That's good. Stephen Wright, I still did his one bit sometimes when people get in a car with me. I say, hey, put your seatbelt on. I want to try something. That was one of his jokes.

He's like, just try that whenever someone gets in a car. He's good. And then also, there's the property of 0 exponent, which also doesn't make any sense, Chuck. There's negative exponents, like numbers to the negative power. 10 to the negative 5. Yes. Because of this, mathematically, it works out,

but I don't understand it. Numbers to the 0 power equal 1. That doesn't make any sense, because 0 multiplied by something should equal 0, not 1. That's how it works out, though. Thank you. It's a magical, mysterious number. My hero, 0.

And I ran across one other thing that I thought was pretty cool. The evidence of Islamic countries' comfort with 0 as a concept and Western countries' discomfort with it can be found still today on elevators in countries where the Ottoman Turks or any other Islamic nation conquered and ruled for a while. You're still going to find evidence of a comfort with 0. Like in Hungary, if you look in Spain, I hear 2,

if you look on an elevator, the ground floor is 0, and any floor beneath that is a negative number. Really? Like the basement parking, like sub-train parking? Negative 1, negative 2. Isn't that cool? And apparently, that's because of the presence of the Turks who were there for a while.

Wow. Yeah. I mean, they didn't have elevators then, but apparently, you don't see a floor 0 in the West. No, you don't. We just don't like 0 that much. Or a floor 13. All right.

Although it is 13. We've had that talk before, I think. We have. Yeah. What do we have here, P1, P2 in our building? Yeah. That's so boring. Definitely not negatives.

Let's say that from now on, like what level we parked on. I'm on negative 4. Yeah. I will say that. What? I will say that right now. I'm on negative 3. I'm on negative 2.

I was here early. Go and check. And also, let's see, you can type 0. You got anything else? You're just happy to be done with this one? No, this was actually really good. I don't know about that. 0 is my hero.

3 is a magic number. If you type in 0 in the search bar at howstuffworks.com, it will bring up this article, including a cool little story that we didn't get to about a great parrot. True. And also, I highly encourage you, if this even piqued your interest at all, I highly encourage you to read Zero in Four Dimensions, which

is an article you can find online from 2002 by a guy named Hossain Arsham. And he explains in much greater depth and detail, like zero and what's so cool about it. Or if you want to really get into it, Robert Kaplan wrote a whole book on it. We should do one on 3. All right.

I pitched that article. Long time ago. Long time ago. I remember. On 3. Yeah, I remember. So those would be our two, I'd have to write it though, so I don't know if that'll ever happen.

Get to it. I wrote this so we could do this. You're more of a man than me. I think at some point in the not too distant past, Chuck, I said search bar. Yes. So that means it's time for listener mail. Indeed.

I'm going to call this including coffee song from a listener. OK. This is from Ashley. Great work on the coffee podcast, Gents. I could have saved my last four years of work at a cafe just by listening to y'all. Really though, it was a splendid way to spend my days getting to know the locals in downtown Edmonton, Alberta,

Canada, North America, Earth. Have we entered the song yet? Because she rhymed a second ago. No, that is not the song. OK. That's coming. That's great. She's just a rhymer by nature, I think.

While I can't say I'm a total coffee snobber expert, I do have a thought on the old, why is Starbucks so bitter debate? I think that part of the taste comes from the number of beans used in the blend. For instance, at the cafe I used to run, we served both Milano coffee and then Umbria. I believe that each of these companies plus the coffee I now

drink called Intelligencia contains a blend of beans as many as 15 different kinds to create that smooth balance I really love in my Americanos. It's her last name, Starbucks. No, no, no. She's saying Starbucks doesn't use the blend. Oh, gosh. It's more bitter.

Her name is Mom and Pop. Got you. Her last name. As far as I understand, Starbucks may use this few as one to three types of beans and their espresso blend. Like I said, I think this may be a part of the story, but not likely the whole story.

On another note, since leaving the cafe, I now work with a group of software nerds who used to visit my cafe on a regular basis. So now I too get to go for coffee every day. It's one of the perks of the job, pun intended. We even have a little coffee song, and she recorded this and sent it to us. So we're going to play that right now.

Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee all day long. When I need some coffee, I sing the coffee song. Well, that's the G-rated version I learned. So how about that, Josh? That was something else. Thank you, Ashley, for that. Yeah, thanks a lot. She says, as you can tell, we're a bit

mad about our coffee drinking. It's the new smoke break for us. What? Where is that person from? She didn't say. Oh, no, she did say. I'm sorry, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Oh, that's right, Earth.

That's right. Well, thank you very much for that. We appreciate you and your co-workers for making that song, for listening, for drinking coffee. Indeed. For caring. That's great. Yeah.

If you have a song, Chuck, we get them from time to time. And I feel like we should be better about playing them. Yes. We want to hear it. You can, I guess, make it as like an MP3, MP4. MP3 is good. Right, Jerry? MP3.

And you can send it to us. You can tweet to us and tell us it's on the way at SYSK podcast. You can go into Facebook and tell us it's on the way at facebook.com slash stuffysnow. And you can actually send it to us at stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.