Can You Count on Numerology?

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Can You Count on Numerology?"

Stuff They Don’t Want You To Know – iHeartPodcasts
Date: June 10, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, hosts Ben, Matt, and Noel take a deep dive into numerology—the mystical study of the secret meanings of numbers. Drawing connections from ancient civilizations to modern online quizzes, they explore why numerology continues to captivate people, its relationship with math, music, and culture, and its scientific (or not-so-scientific) claims. With a blend of skepticism, curiosity, humor, and philosophical pondering, the team discusses the origins, systems, and cultural oddities surrounding numbers, culminating in an earnest look at the psychological effects and possible dangers of number obsession.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

How Numerology is Conceptualized & Its Appeal

• Definition: Numerology is not one singular practice but a group term for various systems ascribing deeper meanings and powers to numbers. (09:45)
  • “It inherently assumes... all numbers have an energy, a vibration, an occult meaning beyond your typical secular arithmetic.” – Ben (10:11)
• Human Fascination: Numbers are both a technology and a discovery—describing reality and underlying universal truths, leading to their mystique and perceived predictive powers. (10:24–11:47)
• Numbers as Universal Language: Despite linguistic and cultural differences, mathematics remains a cross-cultural constant, making numbers attractive as a vehicle for “cosmic truth.” (15:34)
  • “No matter what language anyone ever speaks... the number kind of remains the same.” – Matt (11:41)

Historical Roots & Cultural Manifestations

• Ancient Traditions:
  • Roots in Babylonian, Egyptian, Chaldean, Kabbalistic, Tamil, and especially Pythagorean traditions.
  • Pythagoras often credited as the “founder” of Western numerology; his cult focused on the mystical properties of numbers, musical harmonies, and irrational numbers. (12:00–16:48)
  • “Numbers then were not understood as mere quantities—they were understood as symbols imbued with symbolic significance.” – Ben (11:57)
• Assigning Symbolism: Different cultures attach luck, fate, or taboo to numbers:
  • Omission of 4 in East Asian elevators due to its similarity with the word for “death.” (21:25)
  • The Western superstition that omits "13," resulting in missing floors or seats. (22:15)

Numerical Systems and Beliefs

• How Numerology ‘Works’:
  • Most Western numerology derives “life numbers” from a person’s full name and birth date, interpreting these numbers as revealing core tendencies and destinies. (30:06)
  • Birth date and name are assigned numeric values (e.g., A=1, B=2...J=1 again, etc.).
  • Flaws pointed out: English alphabet is arbitrary and would differ in another “version” of history or in different linguistic environments. (35:18)
  • “The English alphabet itself is not an objective truth of reality; it’s a thing everybody agreed on that evolves over time.” – Ben (35:18)
• Music & Math:
  • Mathematics, vibration, and musical harmony are tied to numerology’s appeal (and its confusing “logic”). (14:33, 32:09)
  • “A frequency is a vibration and it’s a number. That utterly tracks for me.” – Noel (32:54)
• Gematria & Non-Western Systems:
  • Hebrew gematria, Arabic abjad numerals, and other systems developed independently, each with their own quirks and implications. (50:13, 66:16)

Criticisms and Skepticisms

• Confirmation Bias & Arbitrary Conventions:
  • The similarity between numerology readings and sun sign astrology in their vagueness and positivity (i.e., few scary predictions).
  • Date formats (MM/DD/YYYY vs DD/MM/YYYY) and shifting alphabets highlight the non-universality of numerological “truths.” (59:48)
• No Evidence for Pythagoras’s Belief in Personality Analysis:
  • Pythagoras and his cult valued the mystic qualities of numbers, but there’s no evidence he believed in analyzing personalities by converting names or dates to numbers. (57:31)
• Numerology as Entertainment vs. Determinism:
  • Most useful as a fun diversion or self-reflection tool; dangerous when used to justify serious decisions or fuel delusional thinking. (74:56)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

On Dyscalculia and Memory

• “I have number blindness, frankly...I can very rarely remember a number associated with a title or a thing.” – Noel (01:13)
• “You know that every language has thousands of words for emotions…There is no universal non-mathematical language. But math is the best way to communicate.” – Ben (19:32)

The Skeptic’s Caveat

• “I want to sound like a jerk but…people are using it to find romantic partners.” – Ben (32:02)

Ancient Mysticism Meets Modern Life

• “Check out our Ridiculous History episode for more on why the West is so sketchy about the number thirteen.” – Ben (22:26)
• “Imagine being their architect and having… the priest says, ‘We need everything to sort of nine and eighteen.’” – Ben (49:49)

On Potential Dangers

• “In those situations, belief in an occultic symbolism of numbers…can lead to self-harm or harm to others.” – Ben (71:00)
• “It’s important…if you ever feel the numbers are telling you to do something unreasonable, please, please, on our behalf, get a second opinion.” – Ben (73:53)

On the Limits of Numerology

• “Can you count on numerology? Sure, as long as we think of it as a psychological tool, a neat activity, an interesting diversion. Your inner life—you specifically, you—it’s indefinable.” – Ben (74:56)

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Notable Timestamps

• [09:45–11:57] – Definition and philosophy behind numerology
• [15:34–16:48] – Math as the “universal language” and communication with aliens
• [21:25–24:12] – Elevator numbering, superstition, and cultural quirks
• [30:06–35:18] – Numerology in practice, the arbitrary basis of systems
• [39:09–40:53] – The allure of “nothing happens by accident; all is number” mysticism
• [57:31–59:48] – Arbitrary nature of names and birthdates in numerology; calendar and culture
• [66:16–68:18] – Algorithms, data science, and numerology: is our predictive technology today just advanced numerology?
• [71:00–74:56] – The dark side: referential delusions, psychological risks
• [74:56–End] – Final thoughts; numerology as entertainment, not destiny

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Conclusion

The hosts conclude that numerology can be an engaging lens for self-exploration and pattern-seeking, reflecting humanity’s innate need for order and meaning. However, they underscore that its systems are based on conventions and happenstance, not scientific fact, and warn of the psychological danger in placing too much credence in numbers’ supposed magical properties. In the end, numerology is best enjoyed as a curiosity or creative pastime rather than a genuine predictor of fate.

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Final Words

“You as you cannot be put into numbers. We can explain so much of outside reality through chemistry and physics and math, but your inner life—you specifically, you—it’s indefinable, it’s unique, and that’s beautiful.” – Ben (74:56)

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For questions, feedback, or to share your own “lucky number,” the hosts encourage contacting them via social media (@conspiracystuff), voicemail, or email ([e-mail]).

Transcript

[A]

from ufo's to psychic powers and government conspiracies history is riddled with unexplained events you can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know a production of iheartradio

[B]

today's lucky number is eighteen my name is matt

[C]

my name is noel they call me

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ben we're joined as always with our super producer dylan the tennessee pal fagan most importantly you are you you are here that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know now before we continue fellow conspiracy realist please go to conspiracyheartradio dot com and let us know your favorite number if you have one do you guys have a favorite

[C]

number lucky number eleven yes it's up

[A]

there with eleventy eleventy three yes yeah

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no i was just i want to hear y' all but i was just saying off mic that i think i have a condition known as dyscalculia the

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numerical version of dyslexia yeah i just

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i have number blindness frankly so whenever there's a thing other than like really ones that have been hammered into my skull like blink one hundred eighty two i can very rarely remember a number associated with like a title or a thing i do have all of the hallmarks of this and then i'm a pretty decent verbal communicator okay at problem solving more into the arts and music and stuff like that but never been good at math got nearly a perfect verbal score on the sat and really flunked the math section yeah and this

[A]

is this reminds me again because we were talking off mic i think we all have a little bit of those crossed wires in our neurons if you ask me when jfk was assassinated in the united states i would say of course november twenty second nineteen sixty three but if you ask me the name of one of my favorite stephen king books i would say the title is just numbers well because it's a date

[C]

in shorthand right like with lashes and stuff if i'm not mistake and also apparently another hallmark of this condition is the tendency to transpose numbers reverse numbers but weirdly i remember my childhood phone number still to this day because that's just what do you call it a formative a core memory i guess so it's weird what what about you matt

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what about you matt yeah

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the primary number i think about if i imagine one that has a lot of significance in my life would be twenty three okay for reasons we will not be

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discussing but no i won't allow it

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tell us more you gotta let people be you gotta let people have balance

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i know that's true is twenty three is isn't twenty three is a symbolic number though or am i see i see i'm doing it again i think i'm thinking of twenty seven twenty one

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what's there's an enigma associated with twenty

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yes yeah and forty two for all the douglas adams fans and i think that's the one the meaning of life yeah i have a personal relationship with some weird numbers maybe we'll get into that later but folks we want to hear from you most importantly this is a weird one okay and hopefully it's a fun one we are recording this for any fans of numerology on monday june first twenty twenty six you've probably heard about some version of numerology before even if the name wasn't deployed you probably have dabbled with it to some degree in your own life well we've

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talked it's come up a few times recently the the seminal art house picture pie early darren aronofsky film about kabbalah and you know tracing the many many many many decimal places of p presenting some sort of cosmic truth and or

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terror yeah well we we made a video on this way back on yes in the day i couldn't even speak there we did it a long time ago and if you go to the old house stuff works youtube channel you can find it posted fourteen years ago

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little known fact matt frederick did not learn to speak until doing this podcast

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today this morning what i've teleported we're

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in different places teleport to virgin voyages

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with us yes october second through the seventh we are joining our some of our best friends in podcasting on the high seas and we want you to come too so much so that we jump through linear time to put this message in the show yeah and it's

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starting in the big apple new york city to bermuda and it's also we'll be getting back right around the time of comic con so you can make you know double up go see some

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nerd stuff that's right but hey while you're on the cruise with us because you should go on the cruise with us we can literally just hang on the ship where we can get off in bermuda and do something cool that we don't even know about yet that we're excited to do with you excursions

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what are the dates again guys october

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second through the seventh so do join please remember that tickets and bookings are selling out quickly we have heard that

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it is a fact yeah so check

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out our live show there and for now check out the show already in progress oh no we're going back in following up on our recent investigation of the tarot we are finally diving into this related form of divination which is often seen as more scientific than tarot or other forms of divination by its practitioners what is numerology how does it work how does it not work why do some people even today remain concerned about possible occultic connections let's get into it three two one twenty three forty two skidoo here we go this is an iheart podcast guaranteed human this episode

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here are the facts okay at its most basic numerology is not one thing it is a group term describing various ways of encountering or using numbers to interpret a person's character or to divine hidden truths about the past present and future and what's interesting here is that it inherently assumes no matter what version of it you're practicing it inherently assumes that all numbers have an energy a vibration an occult hidden meaning beyond your typical secular arithmetic right we can agree on

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that oh for sure i'm sorry matt it's so interesting though because like numbers are clearly kind of a form of technology sort of an invention used to describe phenomenon that predates numbers right but then they ultimately when you really drill down into them especially with like the the genius thinkers like pythagoras and all the folks that really innovated in mathematics you really do start to see these fundamental truths emerging so i understand that kind of thinking about how these are in some way representative of like these building blocks in and of themselves and could potentially hold some sort of predictive mystical power i get it i do

[B]

yeah i was just gonna say along with that meaning and everything there is power because of the meaning right it's interesting how reciprocal it ends up becoming the concept of interchanging words and numbers and phrases names everything into something that represents the absolute basis of creation if you think all the way down to protons and neutrons and how many there are of those things and then you go even deeper right and then if you go even further out as above so below kind of stuff the number remains largely the same like any where yeah well no matter what number no matter what language anyone ever speaks right the number kind of remains the same

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no it's not like there's like you know different like there's obviously different languages and different pronunciations of numbers but the basis of mathematics is like universal yeah

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there's so many different types of spiritual belief systems that could be called numerology today or they include facets of the larger concept of numerology we're talking about like the kabbalah we're talking about chaldean tamil and of course pythagorean if you look at the trace of like if we did forensic numerology we would see it's been with civilization since humans began humaning you know the babylonians the egyptians were doing it numbers then were not understood as mere quantities they were understood as symbols imbued or dare i say imbrued with symbolic significance so that's why if you're taking a fun numerology quiz on the internet today what you're going to probably be practicing is descended from pythagoras a lot of numerologists will credit pythagoras a greek philosopher of old as the founder of numerology this is largely true for the western system but those other systems to be fair were created more or less independently and we gotta be honest pythagoras you know kind of started a cult very good at math apparently his followers the pythagoreans studied stuff that so many of us are in love with philosophy math music and they did have several fundamental discoveries that remain crucial to human civilization today like the pythagorean theorem we all remember that one

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right right that's the one about triangles

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right that's the one about triangles cool the square of the length of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two other sides

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i wish i was eighteen right right

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shout out to key and keel it's a joke about a joke it's a

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joke about a joke about a joke it's very meta i think it's appropriate to repeat in this in this context

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i'm a dude pretending to be a dude disguised as another dude just rewatch

[A]

tropic thunder man holds up a two plus b two equals c two this is also a it plays a huge role in some sci fi stuff we can get to later they also and this will be of interest to my colleagues here they also are reported to be the first western investigators who discovered the beautiful mathematical proportions in musical harmonies

[C]

yeah i mean i guess that's the way that i can kind of see myself to organically participate in math without actually knowing the math of it all like there's a lot of math that goes into a lot of what i do with synthesizers and composition but i couldn't exactly explain it to you in mathematical terms but intuitively i am kind of participating that just by messing with intervals and relationships you know between frequencies and all of that and you can do that that that's the beautiful thing about music without having to drill down into the nuts and bolts but it's all there but just just below the surface and there's also different kinds of scales you've got western scales that have certain intervals and relationships you've got eastern scales that are different and all of that stuff involves the relationship between notes and and intervals and then you've got like atonal scales that are even more complex mathematically because they don't have hard intervals so it's really fascinating stuff and it is a way that even the mathematically dyslexic among us can kind of intuitively participate in these like really fascinating

[A]

building blocks and of course we have the other big discovery at least in the west attributed to the pythagorean cult which is the first irrational number the square root of two aka street game pythagoras is constant irrational numbers we can't get into it i don't think we're qualified but they are a phenomenal entry point into exactly why humanity remains so fascinated with numbers and math in general because going back to an earlier point math is at heart an independent constant language it can function as a common tongue between otherwise mutually incomprehensible cultures this is why quite some time ago some very smart humans decided that math is probably the most realistic avenue for communication with intelligent non human civilizations if you can figure out how to communicate you know nine plus nine is eighteen or two plus two is four then you and an alien civilization might have a lingua franca amazing stuff isn't it weird

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how there are some times in history where folks don't agree on what one is sure how much one is or

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the discovery of zero or whether we go base eight or base ten well

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nothing yeah not even to mention negative numbers that's a whole other thing and i always confuse it negative numbers with irrational numbers they're not the same irrational numbers are just numbers that can't be expressed they are real numbers that can't be expressed like using an integer but to me like negative numbers are kind of theoretical because you can't have less than a thing if we're talking about quantifiable elements of using numbers as representations

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of things right maybe it's because of the limitations of english but i feel like we're being unfair and gaslighting certain numbers by calling them irrational yeah you know what i mean they have their

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own they're just who they are they have their own logic to them yes well they're they're highly logical it's all

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logic really i've got all these images of terrence howard in my head did you guys see those videos of him

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terry yes yeah i've seen the interviews i've read some interviews he's got a he's got a lot of charts you can look up as well as three

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d models i would say you know no matter how you feel about it or what you think about it especially if you look down upon it i would just say it is quite fascinating if that makes sense if you let your mind kind of go with it for a moment you're like oh what is going on over here and you can see why when folks over all of these centuries these you know thousands of years where humans have been playing with numbers and words and like making them make codes in ways you can see the intrigue that if you're someone let's say like pythagoras standing up higher than the other folks around you and explaining how all of these words and phrases have numerical meaning and that meaning is hidden in secret and all this stuff you can see how you could get taken in perhaps at least i can simply by watching some of the things that terrence howard has spoken about

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well and i just want to walk back with something i said too like negative numbers are real numbers and they're describing a relationship like it's like it's all about what you said earlier ben about what we agree is that baseline negative numbers are just everything to the left of that baseline and they while they don't describe a thing that is it exists in my hand they describe a lack of a thing right or like a deficit right like a debt of some kind which is a theoretical thing again kind of based on what we agree stuff is so there's so many interesting caveats when it comes to numbers but then they also don't lie

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in theory there's also a very real world impact of negative numbers for anybody who's had a really nasty meeting about quarterly returns and profit predictions unrelated with a shout out to our fearless leader bob pittman math and magic have always been closely intertwined in virtually every single human culture it makes so much sense logically if we exercise empathy early humans probably knew how to count and render certain calculations of the seasons the heavens and the harvest before the advent of the written word but the invention or if you want the discovery of literacy led to a revelation in mathematics as well it's the related distinct invention of numeracy the ability to not just competently understand numbers and their relationship which we would call math but the ability to communicate that to write it down to speak it to contact someone that had nothing in common with you have them tackle the same equation and they would have provable reproducible results i i think about it this way guys so you go around the world right let's say you're a polyglot who can speak five languages you know that every language has thousands of words for emotions some of which don't directly translate to other cultures these cultures will independently invent language there is no universal non mathematical language but math is the best way to communicate no human culture is going to tell you certain numbers like forty two or eleven or two or nine or a million they're not going to tell you that those numbers don't exist the difference is the symbolic meaning assigned to those numbers in a given culture usually draws from the previous belief systems of that culture for example you might go to i think some of us are going to east asian sphere later this year and there you shouldn't be surprised when you hop into an elevator and there's no number four on the elevator maybe not a number fourteen if you're in china this is because four when it's pronounced is it means the number four but it's also one tone off from the chinese word which means death so they don't want a death button on

[C]

the elevator and of course here for other reasons we don't have a thirteenth floor or at least historical buildings i guess that are built within a certain range because of negative associations with the

[A]

number thirteen check out our ridiculous history episode for more on the why the west is so sketchy about the number thirteen you're absolutely right i'd love to see an elevator you guys where they refuse to acknowledge all the culturally unlucky numbers i wonder how many buttons you

[B]

can actually push it really makes you feel bad for fourteen yeah fourteen is just pretending to be fourteen and wait and all of them above that are also they're just pretenders right right in

[A]

the western system but also fourteen doesn't even get acknowledgement in some asian elevators because it's like one death but isn't

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that funny though it's another example of omission where it's like then does the baseline reset like are we just omitting a number or a floor and then there's anything above that like it would honestly be not in the best interest of the superstition to say well now now this floor is thirteen no that's not true this floor is fourteen exactly thirteen doesn't exist in this condition right

[A]

under these conditions we've further complicated it in a lot of i didn't know if we'd get into elevator hierarchy here but we've already complicated it in a lot of big cities across the planet where the first floor is also not really the first floor you know what i mean you know so we're and

[C]

then is the basement a negative floor

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right it's g two p two parking we've been counting wrong the whole way don't trust skyscrapers is what we're saying here folks that's the main takeaway it's

[B]

a really concrete example of how willing we are to trick ourselves for some positive theoretical outcome right and for a

[C]

feeling of understanding right for a semblance of order you know well yeah in

[B]

just somehow pretending like something isn't what it actually is so that we'll feel a little better about it the nature

[A]

of superstition quite honestly yeah and it's also it's also an argument that reality is determined within the internal mind you know it's very descartes or it's a sith lord version of descartes i think therefore i am instead it's saying i think therefore all this stuff is well

[C]

and if i'm not mistaken it was descartes or one of his you know kind of contemporaries who had this whole idea of like monomes or just like what are the things that we're actually seeing and experiencing are they made up of little organic you know pixels basically and that it's all kind of a construct like this table isn't really this table it's just sort of like a representation in the way we experience it it's enough to really crack your head open if you're not careful for sure

[A]

yeah all these reasons we're outlining here folks are part and parcel of why numerology whatever you want to call it whatever system you're practicing remains a subject of continual fascination for humans just like tarot but with an extra dollop of what appears to be science via mathematics so we have to ask does it really work and if so should you try this at home we're going to argue yes and we're going to wonder how after a word from our sponsors

[C]

this episode of stuff they don't want you to know is brought to you by wise code guys you know these days it feels like every product at the grocery store claims to be healthy and all natural or you know better for you than the other stuff but that often ends up being quite the misleading proposition oh yeah once you turn

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with wise code you can look into all kinds of stuff on nutrition quality health quality it'll help you understand what's inside that thing especially if it's packaged before you purchase it yeah and it

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doesn't matter if you're shopping for yourself or your family or just trying to make more informed healthier food choices wise code is here to give you another layer of crucial information right at your

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fingertips it's quick easy to use and designed to help you navigate the grocery

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store with more confidence download wise code that's w i s e c o d e the ultra processed food detector on the app store today and start discovering what's really inside the foods you

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[A]

here's where it gets crazy all right yes rip the band aid off rip the numbers off yes numerology does work for various people at least in their own experience caveat asterisk fine print because a lot of it is similar to tarot the attractiveness of it comes from people's natural desire to learn more about themselves right it reminds me of that stephen crane poem about the universe it's similar you guys to how some people a lot of people will yearn for psychics or personality tests that will tell you especially if you pay them that you are full of hidden strengths and powers i've reinforced your deepest needs and emotions or in a more positive note help you reframe the way that you look at things in yourself and in the world around you there are countless online outfits of all the numerology schools we just named that are going to take very simple information about you your full birth name they'll usually want your birth date or both and they'll construct a life path reading for you that's the western system these are not based on batteries of questions like myers briggs or determining an enneagram the idea is that there are deep truths about you inviolable insight that can be entirely derived from your name and from your birthday as the theory goes it's because each number especially in your birth date has a unique vibration which gives it certain properties now i want to sound like a jerk but you know fine sure i sounded like a jerk fine sure hey but

[C]

you caveat it so it's okay it's

[A]

just you know it's reframing it's people are using it to find romantic partners

[B]

guys well if we take it back to the instrumentation and let's say a string that is vibrating at a certain tone that we would because you could associate that with a letter right like an a c a g something like that but that tone the number itself as it is going up and down there is a different vibration right if you're if you're talking about frequency going up and down yeah so like there are ways to connect it back to this right where your brain can kind of do that thing you're you're talking about there ben you're describing where you're like okay i guess i kind of understand how a letter has a representative number and that number could have a vibration i can understand why you might

[C]

believe that but again back to the math of music i mean a frequency is a vibration and it's a number yes so i mean i think that utterly tracks for me anyway and then

[B]

but then you what is that thing guys cymatics where you can use frequencies like if you're playing a certain frequency through a speaker and then you've got sand on top of that speaker it will actually create the shape one hundred

[C]

frequency i love that see youtube there's tons of examples of those not to mention that like math and the way a record works where it's like grooves cut into a piece of freaking plastic that is then interpolated you know into a thing that you hear with your ears and and if you look at the grooves they're just concentric circles which is just kind of boiled down to math it's weird man i'm sorry i know i'm i'm oversimplifying that but i i do tend to you know and even binary code and the way all digital representations of things are are boiled down to numbers and now that we've got digital photography and increasingly elaborate and advanced versions of recreations of images using digital technology that's a digital recreation of a thing that was once much more analog but even the analog form of it is in some ways involves math

[A]

it's yeah i don't think that's oversimplifying the art of truly understanding something is to be able to explain it simply shout out to how stuff works true

[B]

well in a very not simple way because i don't have the good brains this is what i'm imagining if let's say we're using somebody's name right and we're translating each letter in that person's name into a number then each one of those numbers corresponds to let's imagine a piano key okay now imagine if you are playing that entire person's name every one of those corresponding piano keys gets played at one time when you say that person's name and that is the tone the numerical representation of that human's name and i really like that concept of is that name or that phrase or that thing that you're you know that you're trying to represent with numbers being played on a piano and hearing all of it at one time that's very that's an interesting concept to me it's not explaining anything though yeah

[A]

because as pretty as it might may sound folks fellow conspiracy realist there's a glaring error in this concept in the case of western numerological systems the calculations of your name are based on a number value assigned to the english alphabet so the pattern goes one to nine then repeats so a equals one b equals two up to i equals nine and then when you get to j it recycles right it iterates so j equals one and so on and so forth all the way up to z which equals eight the the issue with this is that the english alphabet itself is not an objective truth of reality it's a thing everybody agreed on that continually even now in twenty twenty six evolves over time so at various points in history we see massive variables right trade communication war disease economics they all influence the formation of what we call modern english today so this is a little thought experiment that i thought we might enjoy guys if we went back in time all the way back to the formation of language and we just played the simulation again with all the dice rolls of accident once more we would almost certainly not end up with the same alphabet that exist here the odds are statistically preposterous so therefore in that other world in that other simulation yeah i'm doing simulation theory we would see that the resulting numerological system based on whatever language evolved in that other world it would be way different from the system you as an english speaker in your version of the universe encounter today that's worth pointing out right it reminds me of that excellent conversation stephen colbert and ricky gervais had about spirituality and atheism which is worth looking up i hope you can see it on youtube i don't know how's colbert doing has cbs pulled his stuff oh like

[C]

from the internet yeah is that gonna

[A]

happen i mean i don't know i

[C]

guess yeah it's hard to say it

[B]

could be a political keep making money on it if they keep it up

[C]

that's a good point and not to derail from the topic at hand but i just wanted to ask you guys maybe this is more of a strange news question did you hear about the guy that kind of took his time slot and there's like a model where he's kind of paying the network work in order that's fascinating i want to talk maggie what yeah it's a new model kind of like yeah he's like

[A]

renting space from cbs who who is

[B]

this person and what how why i'm sorry i need to know more i won't bother you all with it i'm gonna go into well no maybe we

[C]

just saved let's put a pin in this and talk about it when we do strange news because i just and

[A]

yeah let's figure out that guy's name and birth date so we can do numerological chart analysis item this will determine a person's lucky number their life path their angel numbers recurring numbers are angel numbers according to proponents these numbers will offer clues into how the world works or the significance of people and events to you the practitioner they may also show you numbers you should look out for in your waking life what's the word gosh is it is it bader meinhof is that the phenomenon where you hear something you see it all the

[C]

time where you see the things that you like just learn kind of like you learn a new word you hear a new song all of a sudden it seems to appear everywhere right so

[A]

there's this is the pickle and our buddy dan harmon would love this according to a lot of numerology or the basis of numerology nothing happens by accident everything is quantifiable everything happens according to the numbers in this chaotic world that's really comforting and the idea does come straight from pythagoras especially if you look at scholars who have studied them like underwood dudley who's mentioned a lot in the research we were doing the author of numerology or what pythagoras rot dudley makes this great argument he says look the pythagoreans became interested in number mysticism because they were discovering incredibly fascinating real world facts about numbers you add up a series of odd numbers beginning with the number one the result is always a square number what imagine being the first person to figure that out how do you even explain that to people

[C]

i don't understand how anybody figured any of this stuff out like the pythagoras of it all and like how do you even wrap your head around these concepts without already having math kind of to help you understand it like how do you invent math i just don't get it and again i know that's overstating the case a little bit like because it is an inherent thing that people just kind of pulled out of these pre existing truths but you still have to have a system that you create and in order to do that you really have to have certain i mean obviously these are just very very smart people but the the level of thinking and problem solving that goes into these early you know innovators blows my

[A]

mind every time they were also far less distracted they had a deep attention economy that's true that's true they didn't have to check their phone every i don't know what the time window is for most people but they didn't check their phone constantly so maybe they have more time to think and this i can't get past the deep empathy here to realize how freaking astonishing and world changing these discoveries most must have been it was one of if not the strangest reality hacks these folks had ever seen so of course they're going to get super into numbers they're going to say all is number that's the quote and if you can measure the idea is that you can measure everything in reality and describe it in quantifiable terms in numbers in proportions it reminds me too guys of a long time ago i had this great conversation with our pal tyler klang who later went on to make a film called god of spinoza about how music is math it's

[B]

comprehensive i remember that one yeah yeah i think you're a production company yeah

[A]

right all of it yeah yeah that

[B]

was a fun one to work on my sister was in it she was the starring role josh clark was in

[A]

it as well because i couldn't make the schedule work up by him sorry

[B]

josh i guess we'll take josh then

[A]

i guess we'll take the most famous guy we hang out with it's a

[B]

very good personal memory of mine though that was one of making a film attempting to make a feature length film is one of the craziest things any human can do when you don't have

[C]

a budget speaking of that and again not to derelict is so excited that i keep hearing such good news about this film that i loved obsession which was made for seven hundred fifty thousand dollars and is on track to be the most profitable movie of all time making over two hundred thirty five million dollars this dude curry barker who's like a youtube dude doing comedy again i just super cool cool just wanted to shout out that guy because i really

[A]

love movie grats yeah and shout out to the young director of backrooms thank you for doing your part to save

[C]

hollywood people are loving that one too i think it's a cool yeah a

[B]

very rising tide situation yes save hollywood

[C]

or just burn it down maybe parts of hollywood maybe i don't mean physically let's not actually set fires they've good lord protect hollywood yes but also the system the system is what i'm referring

[A]

to we've got some notes hollywood is what we're saying there is indeed with the idea of music being math there is indeed a comprehensible complex yet understandable nature to mathematics and through understanding that nature humanity has made phenomenal strides in understanding more about reality so i would say without being too much like a quotable in double xl i would say if god exists math is best described as when god wrote poetry yeah i

[C]

could see that i also again i think going back to the binary code that's the best way i can understand it it's like this programming language at the heart of all of it and the question then becomes it's like a chicken or the egg thing obviously we know when it comes to binary code and programming the code came first but then the code was used to create a thing that already pre existed or the people had an idea about what they wanted it to be so it's like it does kind of become a chicken or the egg question when it comes to like math in the universe

[A]

why does numerology in the west come from pythagorean thought well it's because pythagoreans also sorted numbers into categories and here if we're cool with it i'd love to shout out our legendary longtime colleague tracy v wilson writing for how stuff works she this is kind of complicated guys i'd love some help because i can't quite put my head around it but she talks about the original way that the pythagoreans grouped numbers

[B]

oh i like this a lot okay i'm a here you go tracy i'm gonna do my best you ready numbers like one four and nine are square because a corresponding number of dots can be arranged in a perfect square makes sense one mm one three six and ten are triangular interesting how is one triangular i'm genuinely confused on that one i understand three i understand six i think i understand ten okay all right let's keep going one three six or ten dots can be arranged into regular triangles two six and twelve are oblong since the corresponding number of dots form rectangles okay yes i can visualize some of that i don't understand the one triangular thing

[C]

it says because triangular numbers count dots that can form an equilateral triangle and the nth triangular number is tn equals n parentheses n plus one bubble okay i don't know either nevermind i was really hoping man i was really hoping to lay it out for you guys i found what i thought was a reasonable explanation i just asked the question and an article came up but nah it's not that easy guys you're not

[A]

alone matt yeah you're not alone none of us because numeracy is a skill that takes a lot of work and what i love about these things guys is reading the reading the best non math boffin explanations of this for the first two or three paragraphs i don't know about you i'm usually on board i'm like okay i get it yeah dots all right pebbles whatever but then by the fourth or fifth paragraph the water gets so deep yeah i mean

[C]

the best thing i will pull out of this description that i found is this idea that one single dot is the smallest triangular arrangement so by definition i know what are we talking about

[A]

oh my gosh all right shout out to every look i'll say it because it's legal in parts of the us shout out to everybody who's very high as you're watching this thanks for tuning

[C]

in i wish i was high on pot news no i am actually and here it is maybe this is better so a triangular numbers count dots in one two three rows forming a triangle with one row there's one dot a degenerate triangle with a single vertex degenerate

[A]

triangle just because my new favorite triangle that's amazing man they've got this okay so the pythagoreans have this pretty clever secular approach and we can tell from the way they're describing it that they are using real world examples right they're drawing dots they're moving pebbles but along with this they also assign non numerical non quantifiable traits to numbers and these determinations have a lot more to do with culture and mysticism and vibes than you know actual math so it's like think about it this way you're looking at simple arithmetic nine plus nine and you say all right we understand the result of nine plus nine is eighteen but the pythagoreans may also put some some deeper spin on this and say nine is also an inherently good number it's an inherently masculine number so nine plus nine is good guy plus good guy which means that logically eighteen is freaking superb best guy well maybe someone

[C]

can explain this mathematical magic to me it's one of the only things that helped me with my times tables when i was younger like multiples of nine or like things like six times nine is fifty four and five plus four equals nine you know nine times nine eighty one eight plus one equals nine pretty you know i know there's a reason inherently but when you have these little like tricks like that that appear that sort of emerge you know from this seeming chaos it really it fascinates

[B]

me well yeah that that concept of nine's been in eighteen in particular being double plus good that was one of the things i found to be very interesting looking at gematria one of the older like hebrew gematria the older versions of this and it goes back to assyria and like the rulers of assyria and being all about we need to put these eighteen s and these nines together into our temples and they need to correspond with our name numbers and you're like oh what the hell it's been going on that long i know

[A]

imagine being their architect and having that kickoff meeting with the celebrity the ruler and then the priest and the priest is and you're saying look this is how high we can build stuff in ancient assyria and they're like okay but i talk with the priest and we need everything to sort of nine and eighteen okay yeah it's gonna need to

[B]

be about sixteen thousand cubits because of

[A]

my name and that's part of why in the torah we have such specific measurements right of different the the dimensions of different things like the ark of the covenant is described in detail and there were big questions about how much of that was symbolic or numerologically related i don't know if we ran into that but i do know that you you ran the the numbers on some names on some names of our fellow co hosts here matt in hebrew gematria

[B]

well see and some and some not so co hosts for instance jeffrey edward epstein according to the gematria calculator i found is two thousand four hundred five so twenty four oh five that's a very interesting number let's just throw another one in there i don't i don't know his middle name but benjamin netanyahu is fifteen twenty two that's an interesting name to put in there an interesting number fifteen twenty two i'm just doing leaders right now donald john trump twelve eighty seven one thousand two hundred and eighty seven no these don't mean anything

[A]

to me what about jesus hubert christ thanks

[B]

that's a good idea herbert hubert

[A]

what what that's a great question because you and e have different vibrations i've

[C]

never known what the h stood for ben this is a learning opportunity for me as well i always thought it

[A]

was howitzer ah yes yes ah yes

[C]

jesus horatio is what i was always

[A]

hoping other names that begin with h let us know we're gonna take a break for a word from our sponsors

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[A]

we've returned again with the let's pursue these concurrently right branch two fronts in pythagorean numerical tradition odd numbers are masculine that's why we just called nine a dude and sorry nine even numbers are feminine this is related to what we talk about in the past anthropomorphization it's the human obsession with assigning human perspective to non human things concepts or events later in humanity you see vestiges of this like how certain languages will call some nouns inherently feminine or masculine you know what i mean spanish and french would be very easy

[C]

examples of this even in odd i've always been fascinated by that concept and like even in even again back in music sorry this is just my big my frame of reference there are even an odd frequencies that have different characteristics i just think it's so cool that like you know we're talking about vibrations we're talking about numbers having this inherent energy and i think the best and most fun way to kind of understand that is through music which is just vibrations that are then assigned value you know numerically speaking so even in odd frequencies they very much have distinct quality

[A]

qualities and the assignation of value right right that's the big part of this it reminds us of the early days of alchemy right chemical interactions were discovered chemical interactions they're still used today but they were phrased in spiritual means so the pythagoreans made huge strides in learning about arithmetic mathematics and numbers and they immediately said okay we figured out something crazy what else could this mean and then being human they said how can we make it more about us right in the world in which we live i'm kidding but the main thing is to be fair there is no current evidence that pythagoras ever thought he could analyze his disciples personalities by assigning numbers to the letters of their names or their dates of birth there's no evidence

[C]

that he thought that the name thing throws me because names seems very what's the word i'm looking for arbitrary you know i mean i know there are things like nominative determinism and all these concepts but like date of birth if i were to go out for some kind of woo woo you know version of things i could see how that would maybe be more aligned with the stars or the universe but the name is like chosen based on kind of preference like aesthetic you know the tastes of the parents so i just i don't know if that would necessarily be something that i could believe would have a numerical some sort of like significance but the date of birth i could get and we also know that i think some of the more i guess convincing woo woo astrological kind of stuff the birthday books there's some really neat stuff in those that really do seem to align and like a lot of the astrology of it all you can definitely pull out some things that seem to have meaning whether that's the beta meinhof you know of it all or just the confirmation bias that sits in

[A]

thing exactly two two quick responses with that one first off there are some notable languages where numerology kind of already exists like in like some hebrew names do have of course gematria baked into

[C]

them but then that's because they're thinking about that in advance and they're signing that based on a series of options or like cultural significant yes i got

[A]

it yeah and the second point would be that not all countries practice the same calendar and not all countries or cultures i should say write the birth date the same way so does the order of say month day year or year day month or whatever mix up you want to have sure does that determine something different right like in europe

[C]

they do day first then month then

[A]

year year which makes way more sense

[C]

it does make more sense but it also can really throw you off i don't know if i told you guys this i was in berlin just before COVID restrictions were lifted and i showed them my sad little dog eared vaccine card and because of the way my birthday was listed they thought that i hadn't gotten the vaccine like recently enough and they like wouldn't let me into this place and then we had this whole moment where we had to realize we finally got on the same page of like no no this is just like a difference in convention and the

[A]

pythagoreans had to realize this i mean let's think about it they're a group of brilliant people they had to logically understand that different cultures were already using different alphabets and calendars at this time in history not everybody agreed on what year it was and by the way we still have several different calendars going today they knew it would be a fool's errand to assume that all cultures despite their own histories spiritual systems unique languages it'd be foolish to assume they would all have the same results from one size fits all numerology but it's still again to me i hope to all of us it's understandable that the pythagoreans in particular would have said math is the closest thing to a universal language so we can find deeper meaning we've already proven some crazy stuff about triangles what else is there to find let's look into it right it makes

[B]

sense it does i think so i get so frustrated because i'm i'm having thoughts about everything you guys just talked about for a while there and i'm it's i think it might be impossible for me to wrap my head around some of this because i i get internally frustrated and kind of angry at myself for believing a thing for a moment and then because i'm like oh could be more skeptical and then i truly do feel like oh i kind of see how that works i mean it's just what if right yeah but i'm going in a circle it's very circular for me because i don't want to let myself believe something that i feel strongly is not real i don't know man i wonder how people today because i know it is still a very popular thing you can go online and find a ton of different places to calculate these different things in all the different forms right and all the different versions of numerology and gematria and stuff that goes way way back people are using these sites there are advertisements on the websites that are clearly going out to people there's money being made i just wonder did you guys see that show the rehearsal yes with nathan the first season do you remember there was a guy who was gonna like go on a date and then pretend to be the boyfriend slash husband of a woman who wanted to be a mom do you remember this at all

[C]

yeah i do oh yeah that one

[B]

goes goes deep yeah well i think about that guy when i think about numerology in general that dude pops up in his car pointing things out and talking about the numbers of all the things that he's watching as they're driving and i in my maybe i'm wrong but in my mind i'm like oh gosh this is dumb but maybe that's just being too judgmental but there's that

[A]

ouroboros right there with you no it

[C]

is that because it's one of these things too where when you it's like a way of like what's the word i'm looking for like overplaying your kind of hand in a way like if you lean too hard and like this is the end all be be all and i need the numbers to match up you're going to be spinning your wheels you know for the rest of your life but if you can use it like as a guiding principle or as some kind of like the way people maybe use certain parts of religion or whatever i could see how it could be useful as a some sort of guide or some sort of check in you know like a sort of spiritual quality but at the end of the day we're just trying to assign values to what's ultimately happenstance intuition and serenity serendipity well i doesn't it go

[B]

i i yeah i see what you're saying my wonder here guys is if there is some kind of deeper secret meaning that is being lost on me because you go back to some of the old gematria stuff i'm i'm seeing essentially writing that in my mind is saying these numbers allow you if you do it right and if you can calculate things and see the world and words and everything in this way through gematria you can see the secret hidden part of the world and life and humans and actions if you do it right as in it's the vina veritas thing concept but it's through numbers well

[C]

couldn't we argue that like algorithms and let's call it machine learning or large language models or whatever at a certain point are really really advanced interpretations of patterns which is just you know a way that you can you know use numbers to describe things and to be predictive like isn't that what that is just with more specificity and more precision and just given like more data like isn't data numerology in a way like it's just like taking numbers and feeding them into the right system and then getting a result that is the product of analyzing representations of events and people's preferences and you know smushing it all together into this giant you know numerical kind of stew and then at the end of it you can with some accuracy begin to predict the future i don't know man maybe i'm being too flippant about it but i just to me it's like what they were trying to describe with numerology and a lot of this stuff back in the day i feel like we're approaching a place where it's its own kind of oracle

[B]

i even saw the thing about abjad i think i think that's how you say it abjad numbers numerals ben did you see this with the arabic system that was again like ancient yeah doing kind of the same thing but not really

[A]

yeah it's interesting right because a lot of people a great many people and some of you fellow conspiracy realist have found comfort in modern numerological systems or in ancient systems that are non western the thing is it reminds me of reading your horoscope in newspapers back when those were a thing the current numerological systems that you're most likely to encounter they're going to come off pretty sanitized you are not going to get a life number that says whoops you're doomed buckaroo you're getting a heart attack at twenty five instead you'll get something that says again it's like loose astrological sun sign charts it's going to say here are your core tendencies some strengths some weaknesses and this reminds me this might have been a little before your time noel but matt do you remember when i got obsessed with mesoamerican astrology and we read the numbers and their predictions are not sanitized they will say stuff like you have a bad number you must have done something terrible in your past life you were doomed you are f u c beeped and they would that's why i'm trying new beeps that is a version of the unsanitized warm fuzzy stuff that you can see and some numerological systems still practice that but you know you always have to ask right real science is not sanitized real science will give you disturbing answers if this stuff is just like go you then is it science is it

[B]

factual well is it even that helpful because for me the only way a fortune is going to be helpful is if i'm it's going to help me with the bad stuff right if it's just just big upping me when i learn my fortune or i learned some something that might happen like well great something good's gonna happen yay i want to know when the tree's gonna fall on me so hook me up please if we're doing this i like that version of it ben the one the one you were obsessed with same oh

[A]

man yeah and shout out to my best human friend who got a bad number in mesoamerica mesoamerican belief systems corey if you're listening i'm glad you're okay

[B]

oh no we know what happened to corey poor guy poor guy i'm just

[A]

joking man we should also mention though as we alluded to earlier and i love this setup as we're wrapping up numerology can also have a dark side it can be misused in a number of ways i'm thinking in particular killer going back to the conversation about serial killers right or evil leaders numerologists especially in the recent past would make great claims or great to do about taking the name and birthday of say a serial murderer like ted bundy who i almost called tim bundy if there's a tim bundy in the crowd sorry that

[C]

was his kinder gentler younger brother tim

[A]

him right right he was more into fly fishing so he also did killer macrame and i guess fly fishing is a different kind of serial killing that's

[C]

true that's true a little more acceptable

[A]

socially a little more socially acceptable so

[C]

they would look at the sick waiter

[A]

boots right they would look at ted bundy and they would explore this personality or these actions through the lens of their numerological system system the problem here is the analysts already knew which crimes have been committed in the case of bundy they already knew his name his birthday and they knew a lot about his life so when they derived associated numbers from their respective systems they were able to retroactively rationalize their findings and fit their interpretation into whatever we already knew about the killer and add to whatever they wanted the supposed credibility of numerology to be as a whole side note now i know some of us already know this numerologists were also actively analyzing letters from the zodiac killer do

[C]

you guys remember this part vaguely not with the degree of specificity that you

[A]

do i'm sure i mean people are desperate for answers that's the side note it's important for us to mention this as well one issue with numerology it's not unique but it can be misused when people are experiencing a cognitive crisis or mentally unwell this brings us to a not uncommon phenomenon for people with certain mental issues we've heard of delusions of grandeur but they're also what we call delusions of reference or referential delusions this is when you start to believe that everyday people places events objects hold personal significance for your life despite no log connection to you right a pop star is making these songs and these songs coded messages to me i see the number you know one hundred seventy three everywhere and that means something that is a hidden truth that only i recognize in those situations belief in an occultic symbolism of numbers or combinations thereof it can lead to self harm or harm to others so if you or someone you know is getting a little too engrossed in patterns getting a little too like the movie pie if they think no one else can see or understand what's really going on it might be time to look for professional assistance i know that's a bummer point but i feel like it's important for us to make it well yeah much like

[C]

absolutely much like there's that condition of being kind of numbers blind there are people that can develop obsessions with numbers so or literally where you like to your point ben where you see numbers everywhere and i think that is speaking to a human relationship with numbers and the meaning that we ascribe to them and how it can become this kind of point of focus especially you know i always think of like a beautiful mind and like the gif of dude like drawing the formulas you know on the clear piece of glass like with a grease marker or a grease pencil like there is a certain certain madness and order in numbers and it made me think of the idea too of of randomness and like true randomness the idea of like random numbers generators and there's all kinds of fascinating methods and and scientific techniques for generating true random and what that even means i don't know it's all just it's kind of all mind blowing i know i keep saying that but when you bring up the whole yeah falling down that rabbit hole and becoming obsessed with numbers that we've seen kind of dramatized so much in movies like that jim carrey one with the number whatever the number is because i couldn't possibly remember it or pie number twenty three that's the one wasn't that your number matt yeah oh no oh no

[B]

oh numbers thirty two twenty three read it it's in your

[A]

bible and what we're saying is ultimately numerology is fun and of course it's fascinating math always is but our key words for any numerological explanation experience encounter should be the following fun entertainment curiosity if you ever feel the numbers are telling you quote unquote to do something unreasonable please please please on our behalf get a second opinion before you do anything rash i mean that's pretty much it for us tonight folks can you count on numerology really quickly but i

[C]

did find the term for what you were just describing and it is so similar to the mathematical blindness that i was mentioning earlier it is called arithmomania or also numeromania less common synonym referring to numerology specific specifically and an obsession with it but it describes a compulsive preoccupation with numbers and counting and often is a symptom of or a subtype

[A]

of obsessive compulsive disorder yeah so that's our question can you count on numerology sure as long as we think of it as a psychological tool a neat activity an interesting diversion but it's just like counting the old trope of counting flower petals like she loves me she loves me not he loves me he loves me not not a person's name and birth date alone is not scientifically proven to confirm whether or not they're your soul mate and you are something that cannot be quantified you as you cannot be put into numbers we can explain so much of outside reality through chemistry and physics and math but your inner life you specifically you it's indefinable it's unique and that's beautiful beautiful you know i don't think you need numbers

[B]

to explain it you're so beautiful and that's for sure what the numbers say and that's our numbers can't bring you

[C]

down they can it's called numero mania

[A]

or taxes or or taxes they can bring you down we'd love to hear your thoughts folks thank you so much for counting down some time with us your time counts very much we'd love to be a part of it please find us on the lines call us on a phone you can always please send us an email if you want

[C]

to find us on the interwebs you can do so at the handle conspiracy stuff or conspiracy stuff show depending on which social media platform you you get

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[C]

interesting who is this palm beach pete

[B]

i don't know look it up it's it's jeffrey epstein but it is but it's not but it but it's not but it is but it's not kind of like the numbers thing we also have an email address please send us a message we are the entities that

[A]

read each piece of correspondence we receive be well aware yet unafraid sometimes the void writes so three two one four three find us out here in the dark conspiracy at iheartradio dot com my number's too

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