Latest / Math Therapy / Math is a spiritual practice & here's the proof w/ Edward Doolittle

Transcript

Math is a spiritual practice & here's the proof w/ Edward Doolittle · Math Therapy

• 0:03
  Edward Doolittle: I want myself and all students in mathematics to approach mathematics as whole people, the mental but also the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual.
• 0:15
  Edward Doolittle: We often have this deficit thinking around indigenous culture.
• 0:18
  Edward Doolittle: How do we help those indigenous people get better at math or do better at standardized tests.
• 0:22
  Edward Doolittle: But we ought to look at also what indigenous people can offer the world.
• 0:26
  Edward Doolittle: And we have a different point of view that can actually help the whole world and help us all learn mathematics better.
• 0:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hello.
• 0:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hi, it's me, Vanessa, and welcome to your weekly hit of Math Therapy.
• 0:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 0:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: To kick things off today, I have a fun little multiple choice question for you.
• 0:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: What is my favorite topic to rant about here on Math Therapy?
• 0:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is it A cults, B astrology, C spirituality in math, or D, all of the above.
• 0:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: If you answer D, then you are going to love this episode because it truly was a conversation written in the stars.
• 1:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: So last month I was keynoting a conference in Saskatoon, and so was today's guest, Dr.
• 1:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: Edward Doolittle, who I happen to have wanted to interview forever.
• 1:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: During his keynote, he casually drops this absolute bomb that Pythagoras, like the Pythagoras, may never have even existed by that in entire cult of Pythagoreans did.
• 1:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I literally went back to my hotel room and emailed him and was like, can I please interview you tomorrow, I need to talk about this immediately, and thank God he said yes, because it was one of the most fun and heartfelt convos I've had this year.
• 1:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Also, because this was a totally impulsive decision, I didn't have a mic with me, so I recorded the entire thing with my phone.
• 1:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: Why am I telling you this?
• 1:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Because David forced me to tell you this because he was like, the audio quality is not exactly a hundred percent up to snuff.
• 1:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Please let them know.
• 1:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 1:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Anyways, Edward Doolittle is a Mohawk mathematician and scholar, and he shared a perspective that genuinely stopped me in my tracks, which is this: math is not something we discover or create.
• 1:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's something we come to know.
• 2:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Seriously, wait till you hear'em explain, it's gonna blow your mind.
• 2:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: We talk about indigenous mathematical thinking, how math shows up in ceremony and games in the body, in the breath, and what it might look like to actually bring our whole selves for real into learning math.
• 2:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: We also talk about historical figures like Kepler, who was both an astrologer and a mathematician, and suddenly, aren't you like wait, when did math get separated from all of that?
• 2:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: So if you've ever felt like math was cold or rigid or just not for you, this episode might actually change your mind.
• 2:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: And before we get into it, I want you to think of that one person who would never expect math to be talked about this way, or even better, that one person who's always hated math because it's so like, meh.
• 2:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: I want you to send them this episode.
• 2:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: And don't forget to text the podcast using the link in your app and tell me what you think, because I just know you're gonna have big feelings about this one.
• 2:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: All right, let's get into it.
• 2:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Edward, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:59
  Edward Doolittle: Alright.
• 2:59
  Edward Doolittle: Thank you.
• 3:00
  Edward Doolittle: Glad to be here.
• 3:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't even know how to start really.
• 3:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: We met, less than 24 hours ago.
• 3:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: I saw you do a riveting talk at this conference, and I'm gonna be honest, I have a bunch of questions for you, but the first one I do want to just come in with is one that I've been thinking about ever since I saw you speak, because in your talk you told us that Pythagoras does not exist.
• 3:22
  Edward Doolittle: Well, it's unknown whether he exists or not.
• 3:24
  Edward Doolittle: I, I, this is certainly a mythology constructed around Pythagoras and I tend to believe that constructed mythology is generally maybe rooted in truth, but not true.
• 3:35
  Edward Doolittle: And so, the Pythagorean cult certainly existed, whether Pythagoras was their master or not, oh, whether there's a person named Pythagoras, I think no one is really sure.
• 3:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 3:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: But let's back up'cause you just so casually said, Pythagorean cult.
• 3:48
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 3:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Can you
• 3:49
  Edward Doolittle: Well, they,
• 3:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: I mean,
• 3:51
  Edward Doolittle: they were,
• 3:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: just so you know, you don't know this about me, but I'm obsessed with cults.
• 3:55
  Edward Doolittle: Okay.
• 3:55
  Edward Doolittle: Well then you're talk, you're talking about the right thing here.
• 3:59
  Edward Doolittle: This was a cult.
• 4:01
  Edward Doolittle: That worshiped number, and worship is not really the right word, but they, uh, a group of people who believed that, the universe was constructed out of number.
• 4:10
  Edward Doolittle: And so everything was built from number and that you could influence the properties of something by making say a house out of, uh, 284 bricks would have have certain properties, My car has a license plate that has number 496 on it, and so that's a perfect number.
• 4:26
  Edward Doolittle: The Pythagoreans would've recognized that as a perfect number,
• 4:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: But hold on a second.
• 4:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hold on a second.
• 4:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're saying it's a group of people who believe the world revolved around numbers?
• 4:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 4:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Isn't that just a mathematician or someone who believes that math is real?
• 4:41
  Edward Doolittle: So I think, I think what we understand the difference between mathematics and a mathematical cult is that the cults can't, can't prove what they, they, they don't prove to be true what they believe.
• 4:55
  Edward Doolittle: And so a lot of it was pronouncements of their leadership would say, this is the way we are going to be.
• 5:02
  Edward Doolittle: So they had a number of obsessions.
• 5:03
  Edward Doolittle: One was number, another was cleanliness, and their motto was Hygieia, clean.
• 5:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm sorry, what?
• 5:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 5:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: So a cult that is obsessed with numbers and cleanliness.
• 5:14
  Edward Doolittle: Yes.
• 5:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: This honestly doesn't sound like a bad idea.
• 5:16
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 5:17
  Edward Doolittle: No, I, I might have joined if I were back in the day.
• 5:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Would you have?
• 5:20
  Edward Doolittle: I might have I, we'll see what the membership fees are and so on,
• 5:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: Because cults, I mean, they start off as a well-meaning thing, but they usually go awry.
• 5:28
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 5:29
  Edward Doolittle: And, and in this case, uh, they made a number of, of very interesting discoveries.
• 5:34
  Edward Doolittle: And so our musical system, we were just talking about music.
• 5:37
  Edward Doolittle: Our musical system is based on their discoveries.
• 5:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like what?
• 5:41
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, so they apparently, the, the myth is that one of their members was walking past a blacksmith who was hammering, and the hammering was making harmonious musical sounds.
• 5:53
  Edward Doolittle: And so he investigated.
• 5:55
  Edward Doolittle: Why, why?
• 5:55
  Edward Doolittle: What are you doing?
• 5:56
  Edward Doolittle: Well, here's, here's what I'm hammering is what blacksmith said.
• 5:59
  Edward Doolittle: And the pythagoria noted that, well, these are two rods that are of, uh, rational ratio that they, that they have two to three or or four to five or some, you know ratio like that.
• 6:13
  Edward Doolittle: And so they, they come, came to understand that, these ratios, certain ratios, certain rational numbers as we say now are associated with harmony and music and it's true.
• 6:24
  Edward Doolittle: And so we built the entire musical system, 12 foot scale out of that.
• 6:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: I am sorry.
• 6:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: This cult sounds like it's actually been very productive and helpful.
• 6:33
  Edward Doolittle: They were, yeah..
• 6:34
  Edward Doolittle: And so, um, they discovered, well, they didn't discover, but they may have proved, it's not really clear.
• 6:40
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, the Pythagorean Theorem.
• 6:41
  Edward Doolittle: Pythagorean Theorem was known for millennia, probably before that.
• 6:45
  Edward Doolittle: Right.
• 6:45
  Edward Doolittle: But, uh, they certainly gave a proof of it.
• 6:49
  Edward Doolittle: Probably their best mathematician was a person named Hippasus, and Hippasus probably proved the Pythagorean theorem.
• 6:56
  Edward Doolittle: A myth is that they sacrificed 160 oxen.
• 6:59
  Edward Doolittle: When they discovered the Pythagorean theorem,
• 7:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: Why?
• 7:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: Just to celebrate?
• 7:02
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, yeah.
• 7:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: What about like a confetti cannon?
• 7:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Why did they do that?
• 7:06
  Edward Doolittle: Well, what would please the gods?
• 7:09
  Edward Doolittle: It's not a question of what would please you.
• 7:11
  Edward Doolittle: You, confetti cannon.
• 7:13
  Edward Doolittle: 160 oxen, gods.
• 7:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: Got it.
• 7:17
  Edward Doolittle: Okay.
• 7:17
  Edward Doolittle: So, uh, yeah.
• 7:18
  Edward Doolittle: And, and, but, but on the other hand, they're also known to have been vegetarians and so it doesn't make sense that they would sacrifice animals.
• 7:27
  Edward Doolittle: To please the gods.
• 7:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's actually, sorry, this has nothing to do with math now, but now I'm actually wondering if the two are similar.
• 7:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like I guess if you're a vegetarian, maybe you care somewhat about animals.
• 7:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're not gonna just sacrifice them.
• 7:39
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah, I guess, I mean, it kind of makes sense so it raises questions anyway.
• 7:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: It raises a lot of questions.
• 7:43
  Edward Doolittle: The mythology is not, you know, self-consistent for one thing.
• 7:47
  Edward Doolittle: they're also known, uh, to have hated beans, so they, they wouldn't eat beans.
• 7:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: How can a vegetarian subsist without beans, what's their protein source,
• 7:55
  Edward Doolittle: I don't know.
• 7:57
  Edward Doolittle: So, again, doesn't make sense.
• 7:59
  Edward Doolittle: so they had the thing against beans.
• 8:02
  Edward Doolittle: Um, they,
• 8:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: okay.
• 8:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: This sounds like a really weird, kind of like picky, a bit of a diva of a cult.
• 8:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: So here's the thing though, right?
• 8:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is like you telling us this, I don't know if you noticed this, but when you started talking about this yesterday, people's eyes lit up, right?
• 8:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Everyone was like, what?
• 8:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Tell me more.
• 8:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I've actually always thought, you know, we talk so much about like making math engaging and relevant, and we're trying to compare it to things in kids' lives.
• 8:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: But this stuff, it's fascinating.
• 8:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like if we, if we told more of.
• 8:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: The history and the lore of the mathematicians that created the math we use, like, don't you think people would be like more into it?
• 8:40
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 8:40
  Edward Doolittle: I think it's, I think it's really interesting and it's part of what interested me in mathematics as a young person.
• 8:46
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, I think we ought to integrate this into, into our education system.
• 8:50
  Edward Doolittle: I don't know why it's not done that.
• 8:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well this kind of leads to what you're all about, right?
• 8:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: I mean, I actually heard most, the thing I heard most about you and saw that really intrigued me was that you tied, um, for lack of a better term, just using kind of the title of your talk yesterday, you tie spirituality and math together in a way, right?
• 9:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like you're, talk you in a, in a sense, appreciate the spiritual nature of mathematics, would you say?
• 9:14
  Edward Doolittle: I, uh, I'm, I guess I do, I'm very interested in it.
• 9:19
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 9:19
  Edward Doolittle: I mean, that's the idea of, of basic research, just curious about it and trying to learn about it.
• 9:25
  Edward Doolittle: I believe it plays a prominent role, but, I don't think we understand that.
• 9:30
  Edward Doolittle: We tend to shy away from that as a culture.
• 9:33
  Edward Doolittle: I believe.
• 9:34
  Edward Doolittle: You know, kind of western or, you know, non-indigenous culture shies away from spirituality.
• 9:39
  Edward Doolittle: I believe that's probably due to a history of, of, uh, religious fanaticism and warfare in European history.
• 9:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: Wait, tell me more about that.
• 9:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: So you're, you, tell me more about how you feel that has caused us to sort of, shy away from anything mystical or spiritual when it comes to math.
• 10:01
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, let me give you an example.
• 10:02
  Edward Doolittle: I told you yesterday, one of my, my mathematical ancestors is Johannes Kepler.
• 10:07
  Edward Doolittle: So he supervised someone who supervised someone and so on and so on.
• 10:11
  Edward Doolittle: Who supervised my supervisor, who supervised me.
• 10:13
  Edward Doolittle: So,
• 10:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: so guys, this is like Six Degrees of Separation with Kevin Bacon, but for math, right?
• 10:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 10:18
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah, right.
• 10:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 10:20
  Edward Doolittle: and people even more famous than Kevin Bacon.
• 10:22
  Edward Doolittle: So, uh, Johannes Kepler,
• 10:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: come on.
• 10:28
  Edward Doolittle: But, Kepler, um, so he made his living doing astrology.
• 10:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm sorry, what?
• 10:35
  Edward Doolittle: Yes.
• 10:36
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah, Kepler was.
• 10:38
  Edward Doolittle: Oh, kind of.
• 10:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm freaking out
• 10:39
  Edward Doolittle: as foundation an astrologer.
• 10:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 10:42
  Edward Doolittle: And so that's why he became interested in astronomy is to draw more accurate astrological charts.
• 10:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 10:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: When, when was this?
• 10:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, what year are we talking?
• 10:51
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, 1530, I think.
• 10:53
  Edward Doolittle: Okay.
• 10:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: Can I just say why this is.
• 10:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: So crazy.
• 10:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 10:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Because I'm not into Duns and Dragons.
• 10:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 10:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: But I'm so into astrology.
• 10:59
  Edward Doolittle: Right.
• 10:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 10:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like I'm obsessed.
• 11:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: I still dunno your sign, I will guess by the end of the interview.
• 11:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 11:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: But what's so crazy is I always talk about how Astra like,'cause people are always like, people will say to me, how can you be into astrology and all this woowoo stuff and also be into math.
• 11:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 11:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I'm always like, you know, back in the day, astrologers were mathematicians.
• 11:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: You actually needed to be a mathematician to cast a birth chart.
• 11:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 11:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: And as a result, by the way, all of the astrologers were men.
• 11:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right, because women were too fragile or whatever to do math and they weren't allowed to.
• 11:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: So we took astrology very seriously, right.
• 11:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Now, things have shifted.
• 11:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: There's an app you can use.
• 11:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: You don't need to like, actually do any math to cast the birth chart.
• 11:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: So it's not taken seriously.
• 11:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's been divided, but, but astrology was considered one of the math.
• 11:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I, and I didn't even know about Kepler, so this is actually very cool that you're bringing this up.
• 11:45
  Edward Doolittle: yeah.
• 11:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 11:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Go ahead.
• 11:45
  Edward Doolittle: Well, Kepler is, is kind of one of my heroes too.
• 11:48
  Edward Doolittle: I'm, I'm, I was very, uh, gratified to, to learn that Kepler was one of my ancestors, just because he kind of crosses two worlds.
• 11:54
  Edward Doolittle: That mystical world on the one side and, and the very rational.
• 11:58
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, mathematical world that, that, and he, you know, found, he was at one of the giants, Isaac Newton said, I, you know, I've seen this further than others because I was stood on the shoulders of giants, he meant Kepler.
• 12:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: What did he do that was like, so cool mathematically?
• 12:12
  Edward Doolittle: Well, he, he took all these astronomical observations and then synthesized them into Kepler's laws that these are the laws of the motion in the solar system.
• 12:21
  Edward Doolittle: and, uh, he actually made four Kepler's laws, I think.
• 12:24
  Edward Doolittle: but we only, we only have three because his fourth law was not correct.
• 12:28
  Edward Doolittle: So he was wrong.
• 12:29
  Edward Doolittle: But that, that's part of being a scientist or being a mathematician.
• 12:34
  Edward Doolittle: You're wrong a lot of the time too.
• 12:36
  Edward Doolittle: And eventually you have to be able to double check everything that you say.
• 12:40
  Edward Doolittle: And so that's an important part of mathematics and science.
• 12:43
  Edward Doolittle: Kepler's a very interesting person.
• 12:45
  Edward Doolittle: Kepler wrote, science fiction.
• 12:47
  Edward Doolittle: He's credited with writing the first science fiction novel.
• 12:50
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 12:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: What this guy is really on it.
• 12:52
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 12:53
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 12:53
  Edward Doolittle: Okay.
• 12:53
  Edward Doolittle: Insomnia it was called.
• 12:55
  Edward Doolittle: In Insomnia, uh, a demon communicates with the protagonist's mother and gives information.
• 13:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 13:03
  Edward Doolittle: And so, uh, church, uh, Lutheran church found this and, actually seized Kepler's mother and threatened her, threatened to torture her.
• 13:13
  Edward Doolittle: Oh, yeah.
• 13:15
  Edward Doolittle: And so they didn't actually torture
• 13:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, because they thought that he was writing it about his own mother
• 13:19
  Edward Doolittle: Yes.
• 13:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: And that she was like demonized.
• 13:22
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 13:23
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 13:23
  Edward Doolittle: Oh, wow.
• 13:23
  Edward Doolittle: That he, that he and his mother had had, communicated with demons.
• 13:28
  Edward Doolittle: And so they brought her in because they really wanted Kepler, but he was traveling.
• 13:32
  Edward Doolittle: He was away.
• 13:33
  Edward Doolittle: So they, they, uh, brought in his mother and then laid out the instruments of torture to show her these are the instruments of torture.
• 13:40
  Edward Doolittle: This is what is going to happen unless your son comes back.
• 13:43
  Edward Doolittle: So Kepler immediately returned to, uh, his hometown and, and, um.
• 13:48
  Edward Doolittle: Face charges for, for, you know, this.
• 13:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: For what?
• 13:52
  Edward Doolittle: For, uh, for writing about demons.
• 13:53
  Edward Doolittle: And, you know, I mean, he had to, he had to show that he wasn't under actual demonic influence, I suppose.
• 13:59
  Edward Doolittle: I don't know.
• 13:59
  Edward Doolittle: I don't know the details
• 14:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: of you weren't like alive at the time.
• 14:01
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, well,
• 14:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: it feels like there was a time when mathematics and spirituality were not divorced from one another.
• 14:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: when you read about like these ancient mathematicians and their discoveries and their lives and like all the stuff you're talking about, all the Lord, it feels like there was a point where mathematics was more mystical.
• 14:19
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 14:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Am I right?
• 14:20
  Edward Doolittle: Well, I, I, I believe so.
• 14:23
  Edward Doolittle: And, and one way I think about this is to run it backwards in time.
• 14:27
  Edward Doolittle: Mathematics was essentially astronomy if you go back years.
• 14:33
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 14:33
  Edward Doolittle: So they weren't called mathematicians.
• 14:35
  Edward Doolittle: we were called astronomers.
• 14:38
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 14:39
  Edward Doolittle: And so
• 14:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: this is blowing my mind.
• 14:41
  Edward Doolittle: So, yeah.
• 14:42
  Edward Doolittle: And so as time has passed.
• 14:44
  Edward Doolittle: These disciplines have kind of, become their own thing.
• 14:48
  Edward Doolittle: They're separated.
• 14:49
  Edward Doolittle: So mathematics is separate from astronomy now, and separate from physics is separate from chemistry and so on.
• 14:55
  Edward Doolittle: But you start to run it backwards in time and these things become integrated.
• 14:59
  Edward Doolittle: And so, you know, it kind of makes sense and, and the philosophers and historians of, science and so on would known better than me.
• 15:06
  Edward Doolittle: But my belief is that knowledge was much more integrated in the past.
• 15:10
  Edward Doolittle: and possibly there are a time and time in the past where you just didn't have someone who was a mathematician, a medical doctor, whatever.
• 15:18
  Edward Doolittle: You just had a sage.
• 15:20
  Edward Doolittle: Knowledgeable person.
• 15:21
  Edward Doolittle: And so, uh, I believe that indigenous cultures are still in that state.
• 15:27
  Edward Doolittle: Where we don't have that division of knowledge.
• 15:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: I would love to even just pick up on what you just said.
• 15:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: That is such a beautiful thought that there's this idea of a wise one.
• 15:36
  Edward Doolittle: Mm-hmm.
• 15:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 15:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: And mathematical knowledge is just integrated as part of their knowing.
• 15:40
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 15:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Can you tell me a bit more about how it works and how indigenous mathematics is different in that way?
• 15:47
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah, so I think, I think we need possibly to think about mathematical thinking as opposed to mathematics.
• 15:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: Love
• 15:54
  Edward Doolittle: it.
• 15:54
  Edward Doolittle: We talk about mathematics.
• 15:55
  Edward Doolittle: We we're creating that, that crystallizing that as a subject in itself.
• 16:00
  Edward Doolittle: But when we talk about mathematical thinking, we can think, think about it in relation to all kinds of other thinking and, and it's really something all people can do.
• 16:09
  Edward Doolittle: It's something that's universally open to us as human beings, mathematical thinking.
• 16:13
  Edward Doolittle: It's just like, if I do this, what's the consequence?
• 16:15
  Edward Doolittle: Or if I want this to be the consequence, I'll run that backwards.
• 16:18
  Edward Doolittle: What I have to do,
• 16:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: I need to stop actually hitting the table.
• 16:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Take the microphone.
• 16:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: David will actually kill me.
• 16:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: It was not me for once in my life.
• 16:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 16:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: The bracelets.
• 16:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh, he's gonna kill me.
• 16:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh no, they're probably jingling.
• 16:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 16:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Fuck.
• 16:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 16:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Don't worry.
• 16:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's all good.
• 16:36
  Edward Doolittle: Okay.
• 16:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, keep going.
• 16:37
  Edward Doolittle: We're gonna need AI to process this thing.
• 16:40
  Edward Doolittle: It's like, please take out the bracelet jingling.
• 16:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, there we go.
• 16:46
  Edward Doolittle: Anyway, uh, yeah, so,
• 16:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: so mathematical thinking versus mathematics.
• 16:49
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 16:49
  Edward Doolittle: Mathematical thinking.
• 16:50
  Edward Doolittle: And so I, I, you know, it's open to all people and we see it in children, we see it.
• 16:54
  Edward Doolittle: It's part of being human, is being, is having mathematical thinking.
• 16:58
  Edward Doolittle: and so, uh, we, I am interested in searching for mathematical thinking in my culture and other cultures, indigenous cultures.
• 17:08
  Edward Doolittle: I'm currently working on a paper on this with my, uh, grad student, and he's done a lot of the work, we just have to kind of form it into a paper and submit it now.
• 17:17
  Edward Doolittle: So the idea is that there's a ceremony we have and it's a game.
• 17:23
  Edward Doolittle: So our mid-winter ceremony, my culture is, uh, Rotinonhsyonni, or, uh, Mohawk culture.
• 17:28
  Edward Doolittle: Iroquois cultures, how it's often said in English.
• 17:33
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, Rotinonhsyonni, we have made the longhouse.
• 17:36
  Edward Doolittle: We have midwinter ceremony.
• 17:37
  Edward Doolittle: It's our, probably our oldest ceremony.
• 17:39
  Edward Doolittle: And so I participated in midwinter ceremony.
• 17:42
  Edward Doolittle: And at the end of midwinter ceremony there's a game, Peach Stone Bowl game.
• 17:45
  Edward Doolittle: And we, um, usually we put up stakes and it's, uh, usually something handmade, something very valuable in the sense that it's taken somebody a long time to make.
• 17:55
  Edward Doolittle: A, a year of, of, you know, sometimes beautiful jackets that are beading on, put up on stakes.
• 18:01
  Edward Doolittle: And, at the end of the game, there's a winner and, and the winning side will take all the stakes and the losing side gets nothing.
• 18:08
  Edward Doolittle: The real interesting question, uh, which is raised to me by people playing the game, is how long is it gonna take to finish the game.
• 18:17
  Edward Doolittle: Because it's part of ceremony, once you start, you have to keep playing it.
• 18:21
  Edward Doolittle: And you know, you, you may have other things to do, a job to attend or whatever, but
• 18:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: how long does this go?
• 18:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like
• 18:27
  Edward Doolittle: It could take about a week.
• 18:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, I Under a week.
• 18:31
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 18:32
  Edward Doolittle: So it kind of goes back and forth.
• 18:33
  Edward Doolittle: You, you know, you, you get a winning outcome.
• 18:36
  Edward Doolittle: You get some beans from the other side counters.
• 18:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my god and Pythagoreans would have hated those beans.
• 18:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Am I right?
• 18:41
  Edward Doolittle: That's right.
• 18:43
  Edward Doolittle: yeah.
• 18:44
  Edward Doolittle: and then so we use these counters and the game can go back and forth.
• 18:47
  Edward Doolittle: Okay.
• 18:47
  Edward Doolittle: And it can go on for days.
• 18:49
  Edward Doolittle: And, and so the real interesting question is how long it does it go on for?
• 18:56
  Edward Doolittle: It was designed to go on a certain amount of time, I believe.
• 18:59
  Edward Doolittle: Consciously designed.
• 19:00
  Edward Doolittle: It's not just random, but it's designed to take between three to six days or so.
• 19:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 19:07
  Edward Doolittle: How do people arrive at that?
• 19:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: At that, yeah.
• 19:10
  Edward Doolittle: And
• 19:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: you'd have to, like,
• 19:11
  Edward Doolittle: we used markup theory and we used computer simulation.
• 19:15
  Edward Doolittle: Those were not accessible to my ancestors.
• 19:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hmm.
• 19:18
  Edward Doolittle: How did they answer the question?
• 19:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hmm.
• 19:22
  Edward Doolittle: It was trial and error.
• 19:23
  Edward Doolittle: I'm sure.
• 19:23
  Edward Doolittle: I mean, I, I, I'm, I'm not absolutely sure, but it seems to be the, the, the obvious answer.
• 19:29
  Edward Doolittle: That trial and error, was used to develop how many, how many counters to, to use to, to make the game last a certain amount of time.
• 19:37
  Edward Doolittle: But there has to be some kind of mathematical thinking there.
• 19:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 19:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: I am totally with you here.
• 19:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: This idea of mathematical thinking.
• 19:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Let me, tell me, I'm gonna reflect back and tell me if I've like understood this.
• 19:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 19:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: First of all, I love the idea that mathematics as a field is different than mathematical thinking.
• 19:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: And tell me if you agree.
• 19:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: I feel like mathematics as a field is very constrained.
• 20:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like we're kind of like, it's this, that, the other thing, it's these things.
• 20:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Whereas mathematical thinking feels so much more open.
• 20:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 20:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: And broad and infinite.
• 20:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 20:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: There are so many ways to think mathematically about everything.
• 20:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: You don't need to be thinking about something in the category of mathematical field.
• 20:18
  Edward Doolittle: Well, yeah.
• 20:18
  Edward Doolittle: I, I think that that is exactly one reason why we use mathematical thinking is to broaden our, our area
• 20:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: and to show that it can be applied to anything, like, which is the next piece where you're like, mathematical thinking in Indigenous math is integrated into everything, including this game.
• 20:35
  Edward Doolittle: Right.
• 20:36
  Edward Doolittle: and so then the question becomes, what do we really mean by mathematics?
• 20:40
  Edward Doolittle: I think mathematical thinking is also a little more well defined perhaps than mathematics.
• 20:45
  Edward Doolittle: Some people say, well, mathematics is proof.
• 20:48
  Edward Doolittle: and that's, it is kind of a go-to many my colleagues mathematicians will say that mathematics is, all about proof.
• 20:53
  Edward Doolittle: And if you're not proving something, it's not mathematics.
• 20:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: But if you're adding two plus two.
• 20:57
  Edward Doolittle: uh, you can prove that two plus two is equal to four.
• 21:00
  Edward Doolittle: But, uh, but, but
• 21:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: go on.
• 21:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: We have to think about this.
• 21:04
  Edward Doolittle: There are, there no, there are lots of problems with that there, there's a conjecture as part of mathematics.
• 21:09
  Edward Doolittle: Well, there's no proof there.
• 21:10
  Edward Doolittle: It's just like a kind of an, uh,
• 21:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: a hypothesis.
• 21:12
  Edward Doolittle: A, you know, it could be intuition, it could be experiment that gives you inspiration.
• 21:17
  Edward Doolittle: It could be just a lucky guess or whatever.
• 21:20
  Edward Doolittle: These are, these are where conjectures come from.
• 21:22
  Edward Doolittle: So these are not proof.
• 21:25
  Edward Doolittle: So there's a whole bunch of stuff.
• 21:26
  Edward Doolittle: But I think one of the best arguments is that we go back to a time, the first mathematician in the sense of proving things was Thales of Miletus, greek.
• 21:36
  Edward Doolittle: And, uh, what about before him?
• 21:38
  Edward Doolittle: Was there any mathematics before him?
• 21:39
  Edward Doolittle: Well, yes there was.
• 21:40
  Edward Doolittle: Of course, of course there was.
• 21:41
  Edward Doolittle: There was.
• 21:42
  Edward Doolittle: There's a whole, whatever human race, uh, we've had mathematics, we've had counting, we've had, um, you know, ideas of, of consequence.
• 21:51
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, this happens then that happens in order.
• 21:54
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, so ideas of ordering.
• 21:55
  Edward Doolittle: All these things go back well before the existence of proof.
• 21:58
  Edward Doolittle: So proof is not the fundamental part of mathematics.
• 22:02
  Edward Doolittle: It becomes then more difficult to define what mathematics is.
• 22:05
  Edward Doolittle: That's really the problem.
• 22:06
  Edward Doolittle: And I ask people, and I get different definitions from everyone I talk to.
• 22:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: What's your definition?
• 22:11
  Edward Doolittle: My mine is going to be very strange.
• 22:14
  Edward Doolittle: My definition
• 22:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Shocking.
• 22:17
  Edward Doolittle: My definition is that mathematics is a spiritual being is like a being.
• 22:23
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 22:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: Say more.
• 22:26
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 22:26
  Edward Doolittle: Well, one thing we want to know is, is where did mathematics originate?
• 22:30
  Edward Doolittle: And as I mentioned, it originated at the time of creation.
• 22:32
  Edward Doolittle: The world was created, the universe was created.
• 22:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: does it mean something to you that I have Euler's Theorem tattooed to my finger.
• 22:40
  Edward Doolittle: Uh,
• 22:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: in terms of what you're saying,
• 22:41
  Edward Doolittle: I strongly approve.
• 22:43
  Edward Doolittle: Uh,
• 22:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: but don't you think it proves what you're saying?
• 22:46
  Edward Doolittle: That, I dunno,
• 22:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: because the reason I have it
• 22:50
  Edward Doolittle: Okay, yes.
• 22:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is because Euler's theorem, part of the idea of this proof is that it is so perfect and it's complexity that there's no way that humans could have created it.
• 23:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: It must have been something that was more akin to what you're saying.
• 23:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's something we discovered when we came here because it already existed.
• 23:09
  Edward Doolittle: Right.
• 23:10
  Edward Doolittle: So, so part part of my point of view on this is that we don't discover and we don't, we don't create.
• 23:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 23:19
  Edward Doolittle: Okay.
• 23:20
  Edward Doolittle: So you're a human being.
• 23:21
  Edward Doolittle: You're a being.
• 23:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 23:23
  Edward Doolittle: I didn't discover you today.
• 23:25
  Edward Doolittle: I mean, that's just wholly inappropriate to say, oh yes, I discovered you.
• 23:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right,
• 23:28
  Edward Doolittle: right.
• 23:28
  Edward Doolittle: maybe your producer discovered you, but I didn't discover
• 23:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: No, but that's like an ego-based way of thinking,
• 23:33
  Edward Doolittle: Right, it's ego-based.
• 23:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 23:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: I see what that
• 23:35
  Edward Doolittle: Exactly, it centers us.
• 23:36
  Edward Doolittle: As human beings.
• 23:37
  Edward Doolittle: The same with creation.
• 23:39
  Edward Doolittle: It's centers us as human beings.
• 23:41
  Edward Doolittle: But that's not, you know, mathematics exists independently of us and is something much larger than us.
• 23:48
  Edward Doolittle: And so we come to know, we don't,
• 23:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: we come to know,
• 23:52
  Edward Doolittle: yes, we come to know mathematics.
• 23:53
  Edward Doolittle: We don't discover it.
• 23:55
  Edward Doolittle: We don't create it.
• 23:56
  Edward Doolittle: So the debate in mathematics is, is discovery versus creation.
• 24:00
  Edward Doolittle: And that's all ego driven.
• 24:02
  Edward Doolittle: And we take the ego out of it.
• 24:03
  Edward Doolittle: We humble ourselves, which is the indigenous way, and we now come to know mathematics as a being.
• 24:10
  Edward Doolittle: And some of us come to know this being better than others.
• 24:14
  Edward Doolittle: We, we, you know, I, I, I feel I'm on a first name basis with mathematics, but many people are not.
• 24:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: I am getting emotional over this.
• 24:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: That was really, really beautiful.
• 24:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I think I, that I feel like that I just checked myself there to be like, oh wow.
• 24:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like we are so egocentric in the way that we talk about math.
• 24:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: I also think it's so beautiful, this idea of some come to know mathematics more than others.
• 24:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I think this is beautiful because, you know, at its core my work is about math, trauma, and, and our relationship with math.
• 24:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: And we come to know mathematics, at different levels, at different stages of our lives.
• 24:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: And just because we, some of us are not on a first name with math, you know, a first name basis with mathematics now doesn't mean that we can't be.
• 25:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I really wonder if, like, if we looked at math as more inter integrated in this way, you know, the way that we're like, you know, there are, we know things, we are engaged in mathematical thinking in all that we do.
• 25:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: If that would change the way so many of our students feel about math.
• 25:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: 'cause right now it feels like we are looking at math in the in, in isolation.
• 25:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like it's this like bucket, like this, this what you were talking about.
• 25:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, oh, math is proof, or math is this thing.
• 25:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: And if you're not in that bucket, then you are not engaged in mathematical thinking and you can't access it.
• 25:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: But the way you're talking about it as, hey, math is here.
• 25:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: We come to know it at different stages in our lives, in different ways.
• 25:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: It is, it is there, you know, ready to greet us when we're willing and able, if that would change the icky, horrible way that most people feel about math.
• 25:49
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 25:50
  Edward Doolittle: I, I, I agree.
• 25:51
  Edward Doolittle: I think, uh, this is an example of how indigenous culture can teach the whole world something.
• 26:01
  Edward Doolittle: So we often have this deficit thinking around indigenous culture.
• 26:05
  Edward Doolittle: How do we help those indigenous people get better at math or do better at standardized tests?
• 26:09
  Edward Doolittle: But we ought to look at also what indigenous people can offer the world.
• 26:14
  Edward Doolittle: And we have a different point of view.
• 26:15
  Edward Doolittle: We have a point of view that can actually help the whole world and, and help us all learn mathematics better.
• 26:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: How can we, if someone's listening to this right now, which I know they are being like, I love that.
• 26:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: I love this.
• 26:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: I teach math.
• 26:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: How do I, what's something I can do right now in my classroom to bring this way of knowing into my room?
• 26:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: What can they do?
• 26:36
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 26:36
  Edward Doolittle: that's a, that's a harder question.
• 26:39
  Edward Doolittle: My, my area, of research is, is I guess you might call'em basic research.
• 26:44
  Edward Doolittle: I'm interested in ideas and, I'm not good at the implementation.
• 26:49
  Edward Doolittle: I don't have a degree in education, for example.
• 26:52
  Edward Doolittle: So I, I try to partner with other people to bring this into the classroom, and it's a slow process because there's so many factors.
• 27:00
  Edward Doolittle: You know, I think there's this, also this religious.
• 27:03
  Edward Doolittle: we were, we were talking about Kepler and, and the point of Kepler is that there are a lot of religiou violence, socio religious fanaticism in European history.
• 27:14
  Edward Doolittle: The Lutherans versus the Catholics and on and on and on and wars fought and so on.
• 27:19
  Edward Doolittle: And so I think that's why people shy away from that.
• 27:21
  Edward Doolittle: And, they mistake spirituality for religion.
• 27:26
  Edward Doolittle: And that's something our elders tell us is very different that we can, we can introduce spirituality into the classroom without interfering with people's religious beliefs.
• 27:36
  Edward Doolittle: I believe that's true, but it takes agreement and it takes, you know, understanding.
• 27:41
  Edward Doolittle: So it's gonna take time to build that.
• 27:43
  Edward Doolittle: But I, I aim for that to integrate, I want myself and all students in mathematics to approach mathematics as whole people, which is the mental,, but also the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual.
• 27:59
  Edward Doolittle: So we as if we, in that integrated way, address everything that we learn, including mathematics, I think it leads to much healthier outcomes.
• 28:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Can I ask to you what the difference is between spirituality and religion?
• 28:13
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah, it's one of those things that, uh, I, I know it when I see it.
• 28:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Same like, like, so I'm only asked because I am the exacts.
• 28:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, we're so similar in this one.
• 28:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're so dissimilar in many ways, but we,
• 28:27
  Edward Doolittle: I don't know,
• 28:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: but we are so similar in this, and I've always felt the exact same way.
• 28:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know, to me, math has always had a spiritual, uh, role it's played in my life.
• 28:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like the meditative nature of working through a, a beautiful problem.
• 28:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: And, what that does for your mind, the curiosity and wonder and those aha moments, the questions, the curiosity, the, the intuition you get when you feel like you're on the right track with something, when you don't even know what a formula is that you might need.
• 28:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 28:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 28:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: There's a lot in there.
• 28:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: But you're right.
• 28:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: As soon as you start talking about spirituality, a lot of people get their backs up, and I think you're totally right.
• 29:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's because from spirituality, we get to religion.
• 29:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: From religion, we get to divisiveness because that's how it's been used so often and there's kind of this shutdown.
• 29:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: But if I never say the word.
• 29:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 29:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: And you probably, maybe, maybe experience this sometimes if I never use the words like spirituality or, you know, magic or whatever.
• 29:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I, I, um, engage someone in an experience where they themselves feel it.
• 29:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: There's something that happens, right there is this spark, there is something that happens there.
• 29:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I wonder how like we as educators can create those moments for our students, without wading into the hot button of having to label the moment as spiritual.
• 29:45
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah, I think possibly, yes.
• 29:48
  Edward Doolittle: one of my models for this is not just indigenous culture, which is my main interest in being an indigenous person, but
• 29:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: do people associate, when, when you're talking about indigenous culture, do you think people automatically start thinking religion?
• 30:06
  Edward Doolittle: when we talk about things like creation story
• 30:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah, I got
• 30:09
  Edward Doolittle: people, people talking.
• 30:11
  Edward Doolittle: You know, there's a famous example in, uh, the writing of Vine Deloria Jr.
• 30:15
  Edward Doolittle: God is Red.
• 30:17
  Edward Doolittle: Excellent book, I highly recommend.
• 30:18
  Edward Doolittle: but he writes a story about, a, Christian religious figure, I believe a Catholic priest, I'm not sure though, in conversations with some indigenous people.
• 30:26
  Edward Doolittle: And, and, they tell him their creation story and then he's listens patiently and then he replies with his creation story.
• 30:35
  Edward Doolittle: And he said, they asked him, do you believe it?
• 30:38
  Edward Doolittle: And they say Yes.
• 30:40
  Edward Doolittle: Do you believe ours?
• 30:42
  Edward Doolittle: And he says, well, no, we can't believe the two things.
• 30:46
  Edward Doolittle: And he said, no.
• 30:47
  Edward Doolittle: We said, we believed your story.
• 30:49
  Edward Doolittle: Why won't you say you believe ours?
• 30:52
  Edward Doolittle: That was kind of unresolved.
• 30:55
  Edward Doolittle: So we have a history in North America, at least as indigenous people, of religious tolerance or spiritual tolerance that goes back to time immemorial that we, uh, respect the spirituality of religion of other people.
• 31:13
  Edward Doolittle: And that was one of the most kind of confusing and astonishing things about the settlers is their lack of tolerance.
• 31:20
  Edward Doolittle: So I don't think we've ever really come to, come to grips with that.
• 31:24
  Edward Doolittle: But, we,
• 31:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: so I guess we're like, we have to, in a way to make math like palatable to everyone, you have to take any sort of spirituality, like I'm using air quotes out of it.
• 31:35
  Edward Doolittle: Well, it's, I don't know.
• 31:36
  Edward Doolittle: I mean, not not just math, but all of education.
• 31:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Sure.
• 31:39
  Edward Doolittle: Right.
• 31:40
  Edward Doolittle: And people recognize that teachers are in a powerful position and can manipulate young minds.
• 31:46
  Edward Doolittle: And so they want to be careful that the teachers don't contradict their religious beliefs and you know, I, I guess it's a, it's a complicated thing.
• 31:56
  Edward Doolittle: So, yes, I think it's possible to maybe stealth introduce spirituality, but that again runs counter to some basic principles of informed consent.
• 32:06
  Edward Doolittle: You want people to, give consent and give informed consent when we engage in any kind of relationship.
• 32:12
  Edward Doolittle: And so education is exactly one of those things.
• 32:15
  Edward Doolittle: And I think that's a problem with our education system, it doesn't have conform consent.
• 32:18
  Edward Doolittle: It's a government saying, this is the curriculum, this is what happens in the classroom.
• 32:22
  Edward Doolittle: It's not a matter of negotiation, which is really what it should.
• 32:25
  Edward Doolittle: And so I think, I think that, that there's probably a better way to build a classroom, uh, experience is to gather everyone involved, uh, together and just say, here's what we hope to do, or here's what we hope to accomplish, let's all agree on some basic principles.
• 32:40
  Edward Doolittle: Let's agree on the curriculum, let's agree on so on.
• 32:43
  Edward Doolittle: And I think it's possible.
• 32:44
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, I think this happens all the time.
• 32:46
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, and for example, diplomatic protocol.
• 32:48
  Edward Doolittle: You bring people from different countries together and, uh, they have to come to an agreement about how they're going to behave.
• 32:55
  Edward Doolittle: You know, how hierarchical relationships are represented.
• 32:58
  Edward Doolittle: Who goes first?
• 32:59
  Edward Doolittle: Who goes second?
• 33:00
  Edward Doolittle: Are you gonna shake hands?
• 33:01
  Edward Doolittle: Are you going to bow?
• 33:02
  Edward Doolittle: Are you going, whatever.
• 33:02
  Edward Doolittle: So these things are, it's understood.
• 33:05
  Edward Doolittle: Human cultures are different, but when we come together, we have to come to an agreement about how we're gonna proceed.
• 33:11
  Edward Doolittle: And this is not done in education now, and I think it needs to be done.
• 33:14
  Edward Doolittle: So I think that we need to, not try to sneak this in, is we have to be very clear and open about it and everyone should agree on it.
• 33:23
  Edward Doolittle: But on the other hand, I think we can introduce spiritual experiences that are maybe universal.
• 33:28
  Edward Doolittle: One of them is giving thanks.
• 33:30
  Edward Doolittle: We all give thanks, all cultures give thanks and, you know, we do it maybe in different ways, but we can find a way to give thanks together.
• 33:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: Tell us how to give thanks in the math classroom.
• 33:42
  Edward Doolittle: Uh,
• 33:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: you've got this.
• 33:44
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 33:45
  Edward Doolittle: I don't know.
• 33:47
  Edward Doolittle: I'm sorry.
• 33:47
  Edward Doolittle: I don't got this.
• 33:48
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, I,
• 33:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: no, let's, let's talk it through though, because, because let me tell, tell me if I think I'm on the right track.
• 33:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: Something that actually a lot of research is now showing can be really useful is a gratitude practice.
• 33:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 33:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I actually think this is, well that's similar, right?
• 34:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Exactly.
• 34:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 34:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: And so a lot of our tutors before a student's math session will say, before we start our session, let's give gratitude to three things.
• 34:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 34:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, just three things you're feeling really thankful about.
• 34:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: Doesn't actually even have to be about math.
• 34:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: Anything.
• 34:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm thankful that I woke up this morning and it was sunny.
• 34:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm thankful for the, you know, my, the amazing breakfast my parents made me.
• 34:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm thankful that I, I walked here'cause I live so close.
• 34:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: It actually puts your body, mind, soul in a, just a better mind frame with which to tackle the challenge that lies ahead, which might be mathematics.
• 34:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: So what about that?
• 34:31
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 34:32
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 34:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: There we go.
• 34:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: We just did it together.
• 34:33
  Edward Doolittle: We did it.
• 34:34
  Edward Doolittle: Alright.
• 34:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: We did it.
• 34:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 34:35
  Edward Doolittle: High
• 34:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: five.
• 34:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: High five.
• 34:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 34:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: But that's, I think that is, and I think, you know what, I do wanna pause and be like, look, we're using the word spirituality, we're talking about religion.
• 34:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: It can seem like we're going really deep, but at when we strip it away to its core principles, I really like what you said.
• 34:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: You are calling it a spiritual experience that is almost cross-cultural that, you know, giving thanks.
• 34:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: A lot of people would be like, what the fuck are you talking about?
• 34:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's not a spiritual experience.
• 34:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: And that's why it's like, forget the word.
• 35:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's like I say, we don't need to use the word math trauma, okay.
• 35:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're just talking about did you have an icky root experience with math?
• 35:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: Don't bring up a heavily loaded word if you think it's gonna throw people off.
• 35:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: But, when we're talking about universal experiences, I think you and I would probably be like, a lot of those are spiritual experiences.
• 35:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: Giving gratitude to me is a spiritual experience.
• 35:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: But if that word is throwing you off, you don't have to use it.
• 35:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: But I think those little moments, and I'm saying they're not little, but I'm saying something that takes five minutes, can actually put somebody into the mind frame of getting to know mathematics, right?
• 35:36
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 35:36
  Edward Doolittle: And so another example in indigenous culture that we use very often is kind of a cleansing ritual.
• 35:42
  Edward Doolittle: Say for a pipe ceremony, we'll gather together, but we begin with smudging.
• 35:45
  Edward Doolittle: So we'll smudge and it, it is symbolic cleansing.
• 35:49
  Edward Doolittle: It's like washing, you know, I'm, I'm cleansing.
• 35:51
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, and, and now I know to be clean.
• 35:54
  Edward Doolittle: I, I'm going to treat others with respect in this space and so on.
• 35:59
  Edward Doolittle: So that's another thing that can be done.
• 36:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: I love this.
• 36:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: Sorry,
• 36:03
  Edward Doolittle: we're going back to the Pythagoreans.
• 36:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: I was just about to say the obsession with cleanliness.
• 36:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 36:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Um, but the idea of cleansing is to, tell me the purpose of it, because I, I also like cleanse my space.
• 36:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: I do it.
• 36:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: I did it before my talk yesterday.
• 36:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, I always like to, I kind of feel like I'm resetting myself and the energy.
• 36:20
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, I am no expert.
• 36:21
  Edward Doolittle: I'm no ceremonialist and so on.
• 36:22
  Edward Doolittle: I participate in ceremony and I think that's an important part of, of becoming a complete human being.
• 36:28
  Edward Doolittle: So, I long ago left a Christian Church.
• 36:31
  Edward Doolittle: But I
• 36:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: You were in the Christian Church,
• 36:32
  Edward Doolittle: uh, was raised as a Christian.
• 36:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Interesting.
• 36:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 36:35
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah, till 14, I, and it's kind of a long story, but I disavowed that.
• 36:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Got it.
• 36:40
  Edward Doolittle: At that point.
• 36:41
  Edward Doolittle: But I still feel the need for spirituality in my life.
• 36:44
  Edward Doolittle: And so, uh, I have found an indigenous spirituality that, fulfilled that need.
• 36:51
  Edward Doolittle: But, I've had to learn all of that because I wasn't raised that way.
• 36:55
  Edward Doolittle: And so I, I attended many sessions all over the place.
• 36:59
  Edward Doolittle: But when I was a student at the University of Toronto, they brought in ceremonials and spirituals and so on.
• 37:04
  Edward Doolittle: Joe Couture was the name of one man, and he I think had a degree in spirituality and religion.
• 37:10
  Edward Doolittle: So he talked about it in a rational way as well as just doing it or experiencing it.
• 37:16
  Edward Doolittle: He said, this is kind of a reset.
• 37:17
  Edward Doolittle: I, I'm not sure what the exact words he used.
• 37:19
  Edward Doolittle: It's like a reset or a centering thing that you do is this cleansing ritual.
• 37:24
  Edward Doolittle: So it prepares us for, to open ourselves up to the next experience that comes.
• 37:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, and I would say to that there is so much work around, um, the nervous system and polyvagal theory.
• 37:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: So like, let's put spirituality aside for a second and talk about like cold hard science the idea of, we are evolved to co-regulate, right?
• 37:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: So we walk into a room and everyone's energy around us, we absorb that energy.
• 37:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: We want to kind of match people's energy.
• 37:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: So the idea of a reset is very in, and the idea of grounding and centering, how much work have we done lately on the idea of putting our feet on the floor, you know, all of the breathing exercises, taking a walk around the room, use of fidget tools for kids who just need to center.
• 38:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I would say that those two are basically the same thing.
• 38:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Again, we're using lang, different language.
• 38:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're using the term cleansing and reset, or we're using the term centering, grounding, regulating, right?
• 38:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I would say these things happen in math classrooms and can happen on a greater level.
• 38:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I love the idea of really making it a part of, and again, I'm gonna use the word ritual, which you might be like, oh my God.
• 38:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: But it's like, what is ritual?
• 38:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's the same thing as a routine.
• 38:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's all it is.
• 38:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right?
• 38:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: A routine that gets kids coming in.
• 38:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: A nice cleansing might be something like, let's all take three cleansing breaths together, center ourselves, those breaths.
• 38:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yes, they emotionally regulate us, but they actually put us into parasympathetic.
• 38:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: They actually regulate our nervous systems.
• 38:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: So we're now relaxed and ready to absorb the material.
• 38:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I think in these ways, like these things you're talking about can really be brought into education.
• 38:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: And you're kind of saying like you've seen through your research that indigenous mathematics creates this more whole picture of a person who's able to bring their whole self to mathematics because mathematical thinking is not separate from who they are as a person.
• 39:10
  Edward Doolittle: Mm.
• 39:10
  Edward Doolittle: That's the one of the major messages of indigenous education in general.
• 39:15
  Edward Doolittle: So we we have to address the whole person.
• 39:18
  Edward Doolittle: The whole person includes these spiritual things.
• 39:20
  Edward Doolittle: And, and it's not like they're just made up.
• 39:23
  Edward Doolittle: They're actually connected with the human, the human nature that these, I prefer the term ceremony to ritual.
• 39:29
  Edward Doolittle: I don't know why.
• 39:30
  Edward Doolittle: Okay.
• 39:30
  Edward Doolittle: But that's been my education in this, is that we, we tend not to talk about rituals and why in, uh, in, I don't know, uh, in, in indigenous culture, we just don't use the word ritual.
• 39:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Interesting.
• 39:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: And some people may hate both of these words.
• 39:42
  Edward Doolittle: Well, too bad for them.
• 39:46
  Edward Doolittle: I'm gonna say ceremony.
• 39:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 39:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's your interview.
• 39:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Say whatever you want.
• 39:51
  Edward Doolittle: Okay.
• 39:52
  Edward Doolittle: So, yeah, so, so.
• 39:53
  Edward Doolittle: We, uh, we talk about ceremony all the time, and, and it's, I mean, there, it's so complicated and it's something that people study, you know, spend their lifetime studying.
• 40:03
  Edward Doolittle: So I can't, I can't contribute very much to that.
• 40:07
  Edward Doolittle: It's not my field.
• 40:08
  Edward Doolittle: I can just say, people have thought hard about it that, that there's part of a universal human experience and that we all, you know, we have needs that need to be addressed, and ceremony helps with that.
• 40:19
  Edward Doolittle: and, and, you know, anyone I think can benefit from engaging in ceremony.
• 40:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Ugh.
• 40:24
  Edward Doolittle: And they find the ceremony that suits them.
• 40:26
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 40:26
  Edward Doolittle: It's, you know, I,
• 40:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: I feel like going to the gym is ceremony for some people, like going to a spin class.
• 40:32
  Edward Doolittle: Sure.
• 40:33
  Edward Doolittle: I, I would not say no.
• 40:35
  Edward Doolittle: I mean, people will find that they will find their own level, they will find their own way.
• 40:41
  Edward Doolittle: But
• 40:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: Did I misuse that term?
• 40:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm sorry.
• 40:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't wanna like
• 40:43
  Edward Doolittle: No, no, no, no.
• 40:43
  Edward Doolittle: It's not, uh, it's not a misuse, but it's just, what's may be lacking and, you know, may or may not be lacking in that context is guidance.
• 40:53
  Edward Doolittle: And I think that's one thing that we need is guidance from, uh, more knowledgeable, more sage, more, uh, wise people in spirituality.
• 41:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 41:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: What an amazing talk.
• 41:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: We have to wrap up.
• 41:04
  Edward Doolittle: Okay.
• 41:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: I mean, I can't believe it.
• 41:06
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 41:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's been so fun.
• 41:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Did you have a good time?
• 41:08
  Edward Doolittle: I did.
• 41:09
  Edward Doolittle: I did.
• 41:09
  Edward Doolittle: I,
• 41:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: I feel
• 41:10
  Edward Doolittle: like I'm just getting started here.
• 41:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: I know, right?
• 41:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: We could talk forever.
• 41:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 41:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: This has been so amazing.
• 41:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: There's, I mean, you're such a wealth of knowledge.
• 41:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: We are just getting started.
• 41:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: There's so much more I wanna ask and I just, I think it's really cool because I think sometimes we neglect like, like you in a way, like are, you have all of this wisdom, you don't have an ED degree, so it's not in the classroom, but it is wisdom that would be so useful in the classroom.
• 41:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I really hope this bridged a bit of the gap and I'm really excited for teachers to hear this.
• 41:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: If you're listening to this right now, I'm sure you have a million questions.
• 41:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: Not only about like the Pythagorean cult, but about a lot of what, Edward has said here about how we can create a more holistic picture of mathematics.
• 41:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: So text the podcast.
• 41:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: You can hit the link in your show notes and text us.
• 41:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I have to ask you the two questions I always ask everyone.
• 41:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 41:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 41:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: You have 30 seconds to answer each one.
• 41:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 41:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: Ready?
• 42:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: The first one is, what is one thing, if you could pick one thing to change about the way math is taught in schools, what would it be?
• 42:07
  Edward Doolittle: I think we should use manipulatives at all levels.
• 42:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh, whoa.
• 42:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Throwing in manipulatives out of nowhere.
• 42:12
  Edward Doolittle: Well, it's, it's part of the whole person.
• 42:14
  Edward Doolittle: Mental, physical, social, spiritual, or, sorry, emotional and then spiritual, uh, manipulatives are like the easiest way for people to get started in that journey around that circle.
• 42:25
  Edward Doolittle: We're all mental now, and we need to break that and introduce more of the physical.
• 42:29
  Edward Doolittle: So,
• 42:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: oh my God.
• 42:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: We could do a whole interview just on that.
• 42:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 42:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: And now imagine someone's listening to this and they're like, oh, I love what you said about getting to know math and you know, all of this, but honestly Edward, I'm just, it's never gonna happen for me'cause I'm not a math person.
• 42:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: What would you say?
• 42:46
  Edward Doolittle: Well, it's, it's part of the universe around us as part of ourselves.
• 42:49
  Edward Doolittle: We're all math people.
• 42:50
  Edward Doolittle: I'm sorry to say.
• 42:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 42:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: And finally.
• 42:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: I need to guess your sign, and I'm honestly, this is a tough one for me.
• 42:57
  Edward Doolittle: Really.
• 42:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: It, I,
• 42:58
  Edward Doolittle: I think it's obvious, but
• 43:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: do you I do.
• 43:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 43:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: That
• 43:01
  Edward Doolittle: I, I, on the other hand, I don't know as much about astrology as I should.
• 43:05
  Edward Doolittle: I do draw charts for friends and family.
• 43:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: You do,
• 43:09
  Edward Doolittle: I Do
• 43:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: You draw birth charts?
• 43:11
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, yeah.
• 43:12
  Edward Doolittle: I can draw various charts.
• 43:13
  Edward Doolittle: just using, existing software and so on.
• 43:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 43:16
  Edward Doolittle: Okay, so give me your date of birth.
• 43:18
  Edward Doolittle: Your time of birth, and your location.
• 43:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: You sound like me.
• 43:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is what, this is now what I'm supposed to say now.
• 43:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, so let me just do a mental, I'm trying to see if I'm getting an intuition.
• 43:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: For some reason, I'm getting an intuition that I really don't think there's something about it that is not tracking for me, but I'm going to put that in the pocket of one thing and then I'm gonna go with my rational mind and think.
• 43:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: I just, it, it's, honestly, this is a really tough one for me.
• 43:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Really?
• 43:43
  Edward Doolittle: Okay.
• 43:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: Are you an earth sign?
• 43:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, so my first guess is actually gonna be Aries.
• 43:48
  Edward Doolittle: No.
• 43:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 43:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I didn't think that was right.
• 43:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, so fine.
• 43:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: My next guess is going to be,
• 43:55
  Edward Doolittle: there's only 12 guesses.
• 43:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: I know there's only 12 guesses.
• 43:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: I know there's only 12 guesses.
• 43:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: I get that
• 44:00
  Edward Doolittle: Right.
• 44:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like are you,
• 44:01
  Edward Doolittle: Which, which again is.
• 44:03
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, in my culture there's 13.
• 44:06
  Edward Doolittle: What?
• 44:06
  Edward Doolittle: There's 13.
• 44:07
  Edward Doolittle: We divide the year into 13 phases now.
• 44:09
  Edward Doolittle: 12.
• 44:09
  Edward Doolittle: So, so, uh, you know, this is, uh
• 44:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: oh.
• 44:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 44:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Wow.
• 44:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: This just rocked my world,
• 44:16
  Edward Doolittle: right?
• 44:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: Are you a Taurus?
• 44:17
  Edward Doolittle: No, my sister is.
• 44:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Are you a cancer?
• 44:20
  Edward Doolittle: No.
• 44:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God, guys, I just, I can't after three.
• 44:23
  Edward Doolittle: I'll give, I'll give after three.
• 44:24
  Edward Doolittle: That's it.
• 44:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's over.
• 44:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: Fuck.
• 44:27
  Edward Doolittle: Isn't it obvious?
• 44:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: I was, I'll tell you what honestly happened.
• 44:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 44:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: I was between Taurus and Virgo.
• 44:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 44:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: I was like, okay, it's gonna be one of the earth signs.
• 44:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: But you don't actually seem particular enough to be a Virgo.
• 44:39
  Edward Doolittle: Oh, you don't know me either.
• 44:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's true and I don't.
• 44:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 44:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's the thing.
• 44:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's his.
• 44:42
  Edward Doolittle: I'm so particular
• 44:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: You are.
• 44:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: You seem so chill.
• 44:48
  Edward Doolittle: I try very hard to be chill.
• 44:52
  Edward Doolittle: Oh, internally.
• 44:52
  Edward Doolittle: It stresses me all the time, and I'm not particular.
• 44:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 44:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: And so, so
• 44:56
  Edward Doolittle: I'm very, very, I'm, you know, it's, it's something I'm trying to overcome.
• 44:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're working on it.
• 45:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Do you know what your rising sign is?
• 45:02
  Edward Doolittle: no.
• 45:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Do you know when, oh, you do know when is your birthday?
• 45:05
  Edward Doolittle: My birthday?
• 45:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 45:06
  Edward Doolittle: Uh, September 6th.
• 45:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Keanu Reeves is September 2nd.
• 45:09
  Edward Doolittle: Really?
• 45:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 45:10
  Edward Doolittle: Okay.
• 45:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: I know, right.
• 45:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: And he seems really chill.
• 45:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: Maybe he's really particular.
• 45:13
  Edward Doolittle: Okay.
• 45:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Thank you so much.
• 45:14
  Edward Doolittle: I think that's how we can meet Keanu Reeves is to say, I know someone who has, um, born just a few days apart from you.
• 45:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: I really appreciate you trying to help me out here.
• 45:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 45:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're ending this, the end.
• 45:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh, I have to say bye.
• 45:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: But it's weird to see by your next.
• 45:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 45:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: Bye.
• 45:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, well that was easy.
• 47:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Tell us what a dodecahedron is.
• 47:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is that 10?
• 47:17
  Edward Doolittle: It's 12.
• 47:18
  Edward Doolittle: Dodeca is 12 in Greek.
• 47:19
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 47:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: So 12 sides.
• 47:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: 12 angles.
• 47:20
  Edward Doolittle: 12.
• 47:21
  Edward Doolittle: 12 sides you've probably never played Dungeons and Dragons, but if you do, how
• 47:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: do you know that?
• 47:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Why did you make that assumption?
• 47:28
  Edward Doolittle: I just, I don't know.
• 47:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: I have not.
• 47:31
  Edward Doolittle: Okay.
• 47:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: I mean, I am interested in Dungeons and Dragons, like I would like to play a game, actually, to be honest.
• 47:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't understand how it works, but yes, you're right.
• 47:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: The so back,
• 47:40
  Edward Doolittle: it's still great fun.
• 47:41
  Edward Doolittle: Yeah.
• 47:42
  Edward Doolittle: I'll hook you up with a dungeon master.
• 47:44
  Edward Doolittle: You can, anyway.
• 47:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: Told you this is gonna be salacious interview.