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