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Short Stuff: The Number 23 · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to these short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: there's Josh. But the three of us together, this is
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: short stuff. It's so short. Yeah, and we should mention that,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: you know, Josh is in here with this guest producer.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: And he asked what we're recording on and I said
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the number twenty three, and he said, oh, I'm into that,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: and I said, well, I apologize because I'm probably gonna
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: make fun of it a lot. That's funny. So, Josh,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: then you're a is what they're called the number two,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: the number three, the letter R, the letter D, the
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: letter I, the letter A, the letter N, and then
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: because there's more than one, the letter S. And we
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: know that's real because there's a Facebook page. Yeah. Facebook
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: basically legitimizes everything. So we're talking about the number twenty three. Um,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: apparently a lot of people put some stock into this number. Yeah,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: not just Josh. No, he's not the only one they made,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: are he does two? They made a very bad Jim
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Carrey movie called The Number twenty three. Did you see
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: it or are you just presuming it was bad? I'm
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: presuming it was bad from all the people that said
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: it's bad. I have never seen it, and I presumed
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: it was bad too, But I have gotten just desperate
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: enough on like Netflix and Amazon Prime to let's try it.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: There's so much good stuff out there, and you're gonna
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: watch that? Is there? Oh? I don't know, does everything stink?
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know if everything stinks. I don't want to
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: say that, but I think I am at the number
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: twenty three level right now. All right, Okay, let's follow up.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I want to hear about it. All right, you got it?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: All right? So the number twenty three, Um, you've seen
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: it on Michael Jordan's uniform. Uh. He picked it apparently
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: because that was as close as he could get to
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: half of forty six, which was his older brother's number.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I think his older brothers was would be exactly. Uh.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: And then of course since then, other people, um have
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: tried to emulate Michael, like Lebron and so the other
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: twenty three you see in basketball and even some other
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: sports sometimes or a tribute to Michael Jordan's. Yeah, like
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: David Beckham's twenty three when he went to Real Madrid
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: was an homage to Jordan's two. So yeah, Organs the first.
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  Speaker 1: Every other twenty three was an homage to Jordan's which
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: is that's great, but that's not where the number twenty
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: three ends. Actually, that's not where the number twenty three started. No,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: it's so well it did. It started elsewhere. Um, the
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: number twenty three has been with us for as long
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: as Arabic numerals have. But um, the obsession with the
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: number twenty three. They've tried to trace back as far
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: as they can. And there's actually a guy who came
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: up with a book, um that came out in two
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: This guy's got one of the better names of herd
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: in a while, Barnaby Rogerson. Yeah, and this book title
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: is just out of hand. Rogerson's Book of Numbers Colon
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the Culture of Numbers hyphen from one thousand one Nights
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: to the Seven Wonders of the World. That's the end
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: of the title. It has a colon and a hyphen. Yeah.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: He should have ended that with a exclamation point, because
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I think you have to when you say the seven
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Wonders of the World. Yeah, I don't. I don't know
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: anybody who says it like without an exclamation point. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So Barnaby Rogerson traces the obsession with the number twenty
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: three to a little writer that was drugged out named
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: william S Burrows. Yeah, the man who's shot a million
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: bucks in his arm, says Matt Dillon. Really was that
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: the thing? The quote? Yeah, it was from drug store Cowboy.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: William S Burrows played an old aged heroin addict and
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: and Matt Dillon said he must have shot a million
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: bucks into that arm. So he watched that again instead
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  Speaker 1: of the number twenty three. Okay, all right, you got it.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: That's your assignment. Okay. So supposedly in nineteen sixty this
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: story has many many holes, but uh and probably because
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: of all the drugs. Burrows was in Tangier. Probably because
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: of the drugs, and said he met a sea captain
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: named Clark, not me, who said he had never been
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: in an accident in twenty three years. Later that day
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  Speaker 1: Clark sank his ship and died. Which that'll that'll perk
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: your antennae up. And then supposedly later that same day,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: that night, Burrows heard a radio story news story about
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: a flight twenty three that crashed in Florida, also piloted
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  Speaker 1: by Captain Clark. This all sounds very interesting until you
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: realize that that didn't happen. Well, there was a flight
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: twenty three. I didn't see whether it was piloted by
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Clark or not. So it's possibly heard a story, um,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: from twenty seven years earlier. Yeah, but like maybe they
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: were recounting the story or something like that, you know
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: what I mean. Sure, And we also have to remember
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: again he's hopped up on Smack right either way, I
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: think Smack was just one of any at any given
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: time going through his bloodstream. But um, he is usually
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  Speaker 1: the guy who is first credited with becoming obsessed with
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: the number twenty three. And he was you could say,
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  Speaker 1: fairly influential in the underground scene in the sixties and
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: then into the seventies and so on. And one of
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: his friends was named Robert Anton Wilson, and Robert Anton
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Wilson went on to co write, um, the very famous
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Illuminatus trilogy. Have you ever read any of those? I haven't,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: But that that's Josh's main interest. Okay, they're fascinating books,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: they're wonderfully written, they're they're hilarious, they're engrossing, they're really interesting. Um.
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  Speaker 1: But he was friends with Burrows and so the number
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: twenty three is a major foundation of the Illuminatus trilogy,
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  Speaker 1: which also draws from another kind of underground UM school
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  Speaker 1: of thought. I guess that the in the sixties and
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: seventies UM which is called Discordianism, which is kind of
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: like a made up parody religion that actually makes a
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: lot of sense, so much so that it kind of
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: blurs the lines between reality and non reality when you
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: when you look into it. And number twenty three is
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: a holy number for Discordianism. So if you kind of
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: take all that together, Discordingism, the Illuminatus trilogy, and William
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: S Burrows and put it all together, that seems to
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: be where the kind of cult like um awareness or
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: obsession with the number twenty three came from. All Right,
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  Speaker 1: So we're gonna take a break and we're gonna come
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: back and talk about more twenty three coincidences right after this.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: So I should mention when I said that that's a
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: guest producer Josh's main interest, I didn't mean in life.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: I just read as far as the number twenty three goes.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: He was like, yeah, I read Robert Anton Wilson. Yeah,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: So I thought it might be fun just to kind
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: of tick through a bunch of the uh, the things
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: you might find on Facebook page, where people are like,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: look man twenty three again. Uh. Darwin's Origin of the
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Species was released in eighteen fifty nine. You add up one, eight, five,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: and nine and you get twenty three. That's one of
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: the more interesting ones. Some of them are just pictures
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: of like a truck with the number twenty three on it.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Like there it is again. Those are a little but
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: there are some, mister inter interesting coincidences that pop up
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: when you look around, Like Kurt Cobain. Um, he was
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: born in nineteen sixty seven, and if you add those up,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: it comes to twenty three. He died in And if
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: you add those numbers up, they come to twenty three
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  Speaker 1: as well. Okay, much more interesting than a truck with
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  Speaker 1: the number twenty three on it, uh for sure. UM.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Conspiracy theorists will point to the nine eleven tragedy. You
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  Speaker 1: add up nine eleven UM to zero, zero and one
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  Speaker 1: and you get twenty three. That's a good one. Shakespeare
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: was born and died on the same day, April, but
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: years apart, obviously, Uh. Julius Caesar was supposedly, if you
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: look at detailed reports, stabbed three times. That's not bad.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: I like this one. Um, there's one called the birthday paradox.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Have you heard about that? I did see that, and
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: after reading it four times and not fully on understanding it,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: I just walked away in tears. It's it's really fascinating.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, we should do one just on that,
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  Speaker 1: but it's actually too simple. So the birthday paradox is
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: where if you get twenty three people into a room,
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  Speaker 1: you now have enough people to where there's a fifty
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  Speaker 1: fifty chance that two of them are going to have
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  Speaker 1: the same birthday, which makes zero sense. Since there's three
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: hundred and sixty five days in a year, you would
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  Speaker 1: think that you would need um that times two to
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  Speaker 1: have a figure I guess three. But no, because paradox,
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  Speaker 1: each of those twenty three people have the opportunity to
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  Speaker 1: be compared to the other twenty two people. You get
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  Speaker 1: a number way more than than twenty three, a number
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  Speaker 1: of comparisons way more than twenty three, and it turns
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  Speaker 1: out it's enough to have a fifty chance of having
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  Speaker 1: the same birthday among two people. And has that been
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: proven out? Yeah, oh yeah, it's mathematic it's it's mathematical. Yeah, no,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: it's very it's very well proven it's interesting once you
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: look into just the probabilities of your like, oh, it
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  Speaker 1: makes way more sense. Okay. I took statistics in college. Actually,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: that was one of the maths that I took. I
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: took statistics, chuck on two twa times. Did you get
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: an F and F and a D? Finally, yes, the
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: last time I got a D because I had the
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: same instructor all three times, and last time she's like,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: D just go just go away. Well, you're never going
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: to get this. Yeah, you and I were Liberal arts guys.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I was an English major and they before that class,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: they actually had a math class called Math for Poets
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: was the nickname, and it was basically like the math
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: class all English majors took because it was very simple arithmetic,
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  Speaker 1: not bad. Um, let's get back to a couple of
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  Speaker 1: twenty three things. Oh yeah, Princess Leah Josh and the
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: very first Star Wars film is held in detention block
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  Speaker 1: A A to three. Okay, And apparently in George Lucas's
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: first film th h X eleven thirty eight, there is
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: another twenty three in there, so some people might think
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  Speaker 1: that was that was his little way of giving a
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: nod to that number. I would guess so, and George
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Lucas wouldn't be the only person who's a famous UM
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: of twenty yeah. Famous. One of the most famous, uh
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: is John Nash, the guy who's the mathematician whose life
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: was dramatized in A Beautiful Mind, both the book and
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: the movie, which is a great movie if I remember correctly.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: But he was obsessed with twenty the number twenty three. UM.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: He said it was his favorite prime number. That's not
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: where the obsession ends. He also says that he or
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: he said that he appeared on the cover of Life
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: magazine once disguised as Pope John the three right and
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Pope John the twenty three really did appear on Life magazine,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: but it was him. John Nash was saying, well, that
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: was me. Yeah, I shouldn't laugh. Uh. In the Bible, um,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: which is a book, the there is ah. I was
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: about to call it a chapter, but I guess they
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: aren't called that the Book of Numbers and the verses. Uh,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: it's numbers twenty three If you look that up, what
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: hath God wrought? That is also the very first message
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: sent by telegraph in code by Samuel morrise In. So
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: if you if you take all of this and you um,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: you look at it a certain way, it becomes plain
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  Speaker 1: that there's something very special about the number twenty three.
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  Speaker 1: If you look at it a different way, it becomes
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: plain that people have invested a lot of UM like
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  Speaker 1: mystical significance to twenty three that isn't actually there, that
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  Speaker 1: that it could be any other number, especially any other
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: number that is within UM one to thirty, because a
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: lot of people ascribe dates, you know, significance to dates.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: I should say John Nash died on the twenty three
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  Speaker 1: of May in two thousand fifteen, and so that just
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: proves it to people who are is obviously twenty three
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: means something, but if it could also be fifteen or
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: seven or three. There's a lot of like numbers that
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: we ascribe a lot as significance too. And if you
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: ask a cognitive psychologist what's going on, they will just
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: basically say that our brains contain a mechanism for detecting patterns.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: We search out patterns how we make sense of things.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: It's how we save brain energy is finding patterns so
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: we can predict things and just make sense of the
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: world around us. And sometimes we force patterns onto things
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: that don't actually have any significance, that don't actually mean anything,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and that could be things like the number twenty three
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: popping up suddenly or randomly. Yeah, when you look at
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: the clock and it's eleven eleven and you make a
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: big deal about it, it's more likely that you just
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: don't make a big deal about every other time of
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: day that you look at the clock. Exactly, Chuck, I
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: got nothing else except for twenty three chromosomes. Hey, well
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: with that short, stuff is out. Stuff you should know
• 13:35
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