HBM110: Big Numbers

Here Be Monsters

Here Be Monsters Podcast

Science, Society & Culture, Social Sciences, Personal Journals, Documentary

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2019

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For two thirds of his life, HBM host Jeff Emtman has been thinking about the distance to The Moon in terms of corn snacks. Bugles specifically. It was a factoid written on the packaging that purported to convey information about the distance to the moon. The number itself has been long forgotten, but the taste of degermed yellow corn meal lingers.

Content Note:
Language

In this episode, Jeff takes issue with the significance that is placed on large and round numbers. And he talks to his 2 year old nephew while they play the piano. And he interviews his brother about larger and smaller infinities. And he makes podcast music on a tiny sampler. But mostly he complains about turning 30, a number that’s round, if you count in base ten.

But not everyone uses base 10. Several languages of Papa New Guinea use base 27, using not only their fingers, but parts across all their upper body. And many others from across the world have settled on base 20.

It’s possible that numbers are an advanced technology of language to make the abstract more palatable. Homesigners are people who develop their own sign languages independent from established sign languages. In a 2011 study called Number Without a Language Model, researchers contacted several homesigners who lived in numerate societies, but apparently had not developed strong words for numbers past three or so.

Big thank yous to Alan Emtman, Brian Emtman, Ariana Nedelman and Ross Sutherland (who produces the fantastic podcast Imaginary Advice [this episode contains excerpts from Episode 49, “Re: The Moon”]).

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Editor: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot, Serocell

FYI our voicemail number is (765) 374-5263. Give us a call sometime.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Bea.
0:03.0	Bea.
0:04.0	Be?
0:05.0	.
0:07.0	Oh, not that one.
0:11.0	Not that one. From KCRW, this is Here Be Monsters. I'm Jeff Edman, and as you might notice, I'm recovering
0:16.9	from a little bit of a cold right now. I think I got it while I was traveling. It's been that time of year. I've been taking planes and
0:23.9	trains and cars across lots of parts of the country and I appear to have picked up
0:29.0	something along the way. And I'm kind of recording now through a couple layers of cough drops and store-brand
0:34.8	d'acwell. But that first thing, the thing about planes and trains and cars, that's actually
0:39.6	been a long-term goal of mine, to be able to produce this show a little bit more nimbly, a little bit more on my feet.
0:45.3	Not sweat the small stuff quite so much.
0:47.8	One thing that's been really helpful in that process actually is my girlfriend gave me this
0:51.2	little pocket-sized sampler where I can sample little tidbits of the world around me as I travel.
0:57.0	Yes, I travel. Yes, I travel. Yes, I travel.
1:01.0	And that's good. It's good for me to switch up the workflow a little bit. This is a toilet. 3D I used to go to go to Boy Scout camp as a kid. We'd wait for the summer nights when there were no clouds and no moon.
1:50.0	They'd take us on this trail up the hillside and we'd all lie on our backs in this pasture full of cow pies,
1:57.0	and they would tell us the names of the stars and where to find them and the stories behind the stars.
2:02.0	And I liked this. I mean it was arbitrary of course like why
2:06.0	is Cassiope shaped like a W it doesn't really make sense but I got it. But they
2:11.1	also told me that there were planets up there that I could see, Jupiter, Venus, Mars,
2:16.4	and I would squint through my glasses thinking that they all could see something that I couldn't.
	...

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