Bittersweet Infamy - #66 - The Human Computer

Episode Date: March 19, 2023

Taylor tells Josie about the extraordinary life of Indian mathematical prodigy Shakuntala Devi. Plus: SeaPods, the aquatic homes of the future, and the prototype unveiling that went a little left.

Welcome to Bitter Sweden. I'm Taylor Basso and I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast we share the stories that live on and indeed. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet. Right before we recorded this episode I was walking by a guy who had stopped with his dog and the dog was going to the bathroom. The guy was just kind of chilling and I said hello to him because that's the kind of person I am and I specifically right before as I was walking up to this dude. I'm like I'm just gonna say hello with my full voice. I don't want to do the like little white boy smile head nod. I sort of be like hi because I just felt like saying hi and yeah

he looks at me and he says have you ever watched someone parallel park so badly that it was driving you out of your mind and I look over and sure enough there's someone right next to us dude. And I was like I feel vindicated. I feel so vindicated by my choice to say hello because that was like a beautiful response and I wouldn't have clocked this parallel parking maniac right next to me and it's a beautiful bright day. Full spring in Vancouver. It's the first of many false springs I'm sure. The parallel parkers are out and about. The robins are up and singing with the parallel parkers. Yeah out of practice. It's been so long. The winter has kept people out of the parallel parkers. You used to have in the snow chains on the tires. How about Houston?

How's the weather down there? Oh just a balmy 84. No big whoop. Okay. That means nothing to you does it. I was trying to do that so that's on the higher side of it's like a 25. I was gonna guess okay how and how's that treating you. It's not a full humidity yet. It's like oh warmth. This is great. It's novel. How nice. It's novel. I can plant the bulbs now. Well they've been planted all. Yeah I guess but you know they can winter. Well listen somebody like it's not like all the bulbs that ever existed are currently underground. You can still plant fucking bulbs. Josie don't get fucking smart with me. Objection. Okay okay. If you want to get pedantic with me about the bulbs I couldn't get pedantic. Oh because you're so fucking good at bulbs. We're starting this episode

off on the wrong foot. I know on the wrong bulb. The wrong bulb. Oh we need to bury this. We need to bury this. Okay. Oh we already did. How are you folks is the question. How's everyone listening. How's your weather. How's your bulbs. Yeah. Did you plant the bulbs yet. How's your parallel parking. Yeah. How's it coming along. Show us your bulbs at Bitter Sweden for me on Instagram. I'll send you some pics. Send us some hot bulb pics folks. Well they're underground. They're not underground. They bloom. They bulb. They blossom. We need a magic. What the fuck is happening. Folks before this we had literally just had a chat about how good we'd gotten at intros. It was a mistake. We were wrong. It was a horrible

mistake. We were wrong. We're getting worse by the second. Have I ever told you how badly I want to live on a houseboat. No but that scans. Right. Dolphin House. Yeah. The McBarg. Yeah. I'm living on either of those. Again it comes back to that question that we raised when we were talking about the benefits pros and cons of living on a desert island during one of our many stranded in X episodes. It's hard to get the milk. It's hard to get the milk. You know what I mean. Not that it's hard. You pull up to a dock and you get the milk folks. It's not as complicated as bulbs but there are more logistical difficulties I would imagine living on a houseboat. At least one that is not frequently in direct proximity to a major urban center e.g. the Netherlands

or Amsterdam I should say. Right. Right. Yeah. Because there's all different types of houseboats like boats that are kind of fitted out to be totally you know 24 seven livable but then there's also like concrete barges kind of like McBarg but they're they're based on a concrete barge and the house is just put on it. You know it's windows and window boxes. It's a building that happens to float. Yeah. There's that houseboat but those are always like anchored and connected to the shore. Always you're kind of next to like sleepless in Seattle. This is a very common touch point for you. I've never watched sleepless in Seattle. Really. I'm down. I can watch it. I'll watch it after this folks. Watch it right now. We'll hit pause. You can you can just do your stand-up

material for the listeners while I watch sleepless in Seattle in real time. Yeah. It'll be great. You really haven't seen it. No. My most of what I know about sleepless in Seattle comes from you. Wow. Is that the one where she does the orgasm in the restaurant? That's when Harry met Sally. Okay. Then I know even less about sleepless in Seattle than I thought. I mentioned houseboats though because I stumbled upon not a houseboat per se but a how like a sea dwelling. In 2017 some pioneering enterprises developed an idea to build a seafaring dwelling and it can be kind of close to the shore. It can be way out in like 200 meter water. It doesn't really matter. There's different different designs for the different depths and it's

not exactly a houseboat because a boat sits on the surface of the water. This dwelling has a special construction where out of the water it looks like it's a lollipop. Like there's a single stem. Okay. And then at the top is a large rounded structure. Okay. So it really does look like a lollipop with a whole bunch of windows. And under the water is a network and maybe network might be implying too many joints there but it's like a four-limbed contraption. Okay. That is designed as a ballast so the building doesn't float on top of the water. It floats underneath the wave action. Show it to me. I am gonna do a drost a lot. So they're called C pods. S-E-A-P-O-D. Okay. Ooh. This is quite modern and muy futuristico and maybe a bond villain

lives here. It's very cool looking. Totally. Do you want to describe a little bit beyond like the lollipop vibe? What is it? Sure. You know bond villain. Yeah. But what else do you see? There are these kind of white round houses with a lot of windows and quite spare and modern just kind of out in a lake. They're in these clusters typically so it's like a little community of these guys and then they're anchored down by what effectively seems like a trilogy of buoys down in the water. There's a ladder so you can access the water and there are always all of these artistic renders. The sky is photoshopped to be at sunset or it's beautifully clear when you're in this gorgeous lake and there's no boats in the background. Just beautiful limitless horizon.

Nothing but ocean. Nothing but blue or purple or whatever color is surrounding you for eternity. God what a life to live in this luxurious opulent round home off just in the middle of nowhere. No one to answer to you. Just windows and egg-shaped chairs. It'll be great. Yeah. See you get it. So when I found these I was like. Sign me up. Gnarly. Sign me up. Literally there is a wait list. I was gonna say those are those are like probably like ten grand a night to fucking sleep there. Well you can rent them for five hundred about five hundred and ninety five dollars a night for two people in there. Let's go. Yeah. Well what's the thing of the tale. Okay where. It's North Korea. Like there's some coming here. The current seapods are being constructed

out of a marina in Panama. Okay. On the Caribbean side. Linton Bay marina is what it's known as. You fly into Panama City, Tokoma Airport and then it's a quick like hour drive out to this marina and there's a few kind of dotting close to the shore next to actually quite close to an island that's in this little bay area. You can rent them five hundred and ninety five for a night. Two people can go in there. We're two people. Sorry Mitchell. We're two people. Sorry Mitchell. It ain't your podcast. This isn't your tax rate off. It's a seapod and we're a podcast. I don't know. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. I'm plotting with the potting. Jesus Christ. Keep going. You're you're you're Josie. You're dancing at the speed of light. Yeah. Can you see me anymore? No you're a blur of limbs.

So the house and it is designed as a residential house. So there's a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, a relatively spacious bathroom. It's about eight hundred and thirty three square feet of living space and because of the the height of the stem you're about seven point five feet above the wave action or the wave line. We'll say wave line and like you I think what you were seeing there the stem has a circular staircase in it so you walk up into the structure that way. Not very accessible but very dramatic and glamorous. They are building a prototype that has an elevator. There we go. There we go baby. Yeah it's nice. The other thing about this home is that it is haunted friendly. Oh. I'm waiting for it. I know you are. That rushing mine. I'm not

doing that again. What's the catch? Okay but it's very it's very eco-friendly you say. Yes, yes the whole design is based to make sure that you're not depleting resources and that you are giving back to the ecosystem that you're in. So the idea is that when you build a house on land you have to clear the land, you have to cut down trees, you take away soil that could be used to for nutrients for your plants. If you build in the ocean though you are building an ecosystem where barnacles and eventually corals and then eventually fish habitats can thrive wherever there's shade in the ocean. Okay. An ecosystem can build. Okay. Yeah beautiful right. There's a desalination system built into the house. There are outrigger connections so what you saw is kind

of those buoy. Yeah that's a better way to describe it. They're outrigged. Yeah because they're not actually floating in that same way because a buoy kind of floats on top of water. They're floating underneath. My lack of knowledge of like hydrodynamics failed me in describing things here which would it's kind of crazy given how many of these floating episodes we've done now. Yeah it's true. But they have apparatus where you can attach solar panels to those so all the electricity can be solar. It has all these you know very tricked out high-tech elements chargers in every single table. You wear a ring that is perfectly outfitted for you and it can unlock your house and turn on the features of the house that you want. So a bond

villain does live here. You open the door and it plays the music that you want and the lighting is set to what you want. Okay sure. Does it wipe your ass? It probably I mean they're you can put it in the day. Yeah the windows are you saw that they're kind of 360 degrees. Beautiful. A little I wonder if that's a little warm but beautiful. I'm sure you can hit the button that makes the screen come down and says sorry Ms. Mitchell. Yeah. You whisper a sweet nothing into your ring. You're like oh too sunny. My eyes. Because they're interested in making this ecological the lowest price currently starts at $295,000 USD. Okay. And then it goes up to 1.5 million. Okay. So quite a range there but they are designed to be extremely modular so if you

wanted to do all the upgrades if you wanted to add you just need to they snap on like Lego. Yep. Yes. Yes. Yes. They're designed that way. So if you were like give me the greenhouse. Give me the like rock climbing wall in the shower to get to the roof. Give me the jacuzzi you know. I'm gonna want to keep my cars here. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Then you get you get up there. But the $295,000 is kind of a typical average cost of an American home. So they're they're aiming aiming for that number. Of course it's only prototypes that have been made and this is Ocean Builders. Okay. They're an international company. It says repeatedly on their website that they are a decentralized entity which okay. Yeah no that's we gotta make real clear that we we operate in foreign waters folks

quite literally in this case. On their website there's also a little marketing catchphrase that I particularly enjoy. It says we are on an incredible adventure and we hope you will join us in the age of Aquarius and the dawn of homo aquatics. Yeah. I love that. But I'm compelled. I want to be in the age of Aquarius. Yeah. I mean I've already told you I want to live in a house boat and now this one is like an eco-friendly small footprint. I like that it's round. The founders of Ocean Builders. The OGs of Obies. The OGs of Obies. That's good. Thank you. You should work for that. Maybe I already am in the age of Aquarius. Call me. Yeah. So Grant Rumund. He's the CEO fellow Canadian there. So we've already got a connection. He was the first and youngest to

write a software program in Canada and compete in a science fair in 1980 at the age of eight. The architect of the seapods is a man from the Netherlands named Koeneltus and he is the founder of an architectural firm called Water Studio in L and where he specifically builds structures that are meant to be on the water. So he's kind of a perfect fit. We mentioned the Netherlands in our little houseboat conversation to, you know, the founders of living next to on and among water. He can be quoted in architectural digest as saying the same way elevators changed our cities from horizontal cities to vertical cities. The seapod will be the first element that turns static cities into dynamic cities. I hope you'll look back on this day and understand

that today started the future. Lofty. Yeah. That day was September 22nd, a Thursday, 2022. The ribbon cutting ceremony for the seapod prototype. And it's like that. Not, not the super futuristic egg one, but more like a kind of lighthouse rounded. Sure. More kind of like spaceship saucer. Love that too. Than the egg. Love it too. Yeah. Yeah, it's the basic prototype. And it was there for all of these guests to come and walk inside, see what it was all about. There was food, there was dancing. It was in Panama, at Linton Bay, Marina. And so the workers who had built it were there wearing shirts that said, I built the seapod. There was beautiful women in little sailor inspired dresses.

A wonderful time. These startups. These startups in their parties. I know. A two day affair as well. Oh, that's a fiesta now. That's a festival. That, yes, yes, exactly. Except at the end of the second day. These ceremonial speeches, the today starting the future speech had already completed. It was about 4.35 PM when the seapod filled with guests looking at all the wonderful amenities started to... Oh, no. Oh, that's no good. It started to get a little too top heavy and fall ever so slowly into the adjoining dock. You can't overfill the seapod, folks. There's a capacity limit. We weren't thinking about gravity

when we designed it. We didn't water. If everything floats, you don't need to worry about it. You don't need to be in water. Yeah, right? No, you just chuck it in there and go. So there seemingly wasn't any problems that they could detect, obviously, before it started to tilt into the dock. Of course, because if they had known that they would have fixed it. But after the fact, they realized that in this prototype they had installed a jacuzzi and in the piping to the jacuzzi tub, there was a small leak. So over the course of the day, that fixture had started to fill with water. And so that all of this water was at the top of the residential space. And so it started to list with all of that extra weight. You'll be

very happy to know nobody was hurt. Yes, that's right. Even the people inside the structure, it was kind of just a slow, it was just a slow ride down. Then that's just a fun story, folks. Yeah, yeah. It's a very minimalist design in there. So it's not like, you know, all the all of grandma's China's come flying at you or something like that. There's no frames. There's no framed photos. It's all windows. It's fine. It's fine. So they were able to, in the following days, they were able to pump out all the extra water that had accumulated. And the structure only needs a few cosmetic tech chefs. Zero contamination to the marine environment, you should know, because it is still eco-friendly. I would cry. If I were them, I would

just cry. To be honest, if I were one of the guys working on it and I was wearing one of those shirts, I would just be like... Turn that bitch inside out. That's... Yeah, I'm going shirtless. I don't care. Shirts versus skins. Who's in? Basketball. Let's go. Kind of a bummer, you would probably say. You hate to see it. Yeah, a prototype unveiling and the thing went down. It was a little rough, though, I do have to say, they have a sturdy resolve. Ocean Builders has a blog and there was an entry written by the CEO himself, Grant Ramond, published just five days after, entitled Ups and Downs Along the Road. Well, yeah, he's not wrong. You and your team of hard-working people united by their passion

for a shared vision, organized a million-dollar ground opening event, a two-day event, ripe with sciences, engineering, and lots of technology. Day one, smashing success. Over 300 people from all over the world in the renowned Panama City. No. Day two. Say it itself. Another success. 300 people. The first ever to experience the inaugural C-Pod in action and then it went down. The prototype, the C-Pod prototype, has been named Phoenix, though. So you know what happens to the Phoenix. It rose from the ashes. It can rise from the ashes. It can rise from the watery grave where its ashes flow down. So you can still put your name on the wait list to own one. It's only $100 deposit to get on the wait list. How about we rent first? Yeah. With a lot of renters insurance.

Yeah, that would be good. That's another thing that I thought was kind of funny is, well, there's no financing program. You can pay in installments, but there's no bank loan. We're not putting the C-pods on layaway. You got to have some money up front. There is no mortgage plan for these bad boys, nor is there an insurance plan yet concocted. Who's covering that? I know after it plummets at its own inaugural. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. You'd have to be mad, but Phoenix. But Phoenix, you know? We love a dreamer. Yeah, I do have to applaud the fact that they're still there. Their website is there. They posted on the blog. They kept going. They were quite up front about what had happened.

I'll give the last word here to a potential investor who was very interested in getting a deposit down. So having learned about the malfunction, she says having worked in software research and development previously, I understand the need to occasionally work out unexpected challenges. End quote. She's looking forward to her C-pod that will, quote, ultimately become my dream home. End quote. Hope floats. Hope floats, Barry. I wish these people the best. You know, so often you hear about criminals and architectural negligence. Important. Let's make sure that all of our stuff is that we're not installing jacuzzis and roller rinks and skate parks, willy-nilly and things that aren't meant to, yeah, that aren't meant to architecturally

have those features. Other than that, presuming that these folks have kind of learned their lesson from Estación Indigas. Go with God, I say. Go with Pod. Go with Pod. Go Pods. Go Pods. You ready? You ready to go? You ready to take off? What do you think? What do you think I'm bringing in this week? You guess. Just shoot your shot. Maybe you'll be right. Give me a genre. Give me a country. Give me something. Strong female lead. Yep. Really? Keep going. Let's see if you can do it. Let's see how the psychic connection is going. I'll go continents. Asia. Yes. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. This is great. Okay. I mean, I don't know. I was reading Maxine Hong Kingston earlier, so I'm like, Mulan. No. Is it? Okay. Okay. Okay. Back away. That's good.

We're building the psychic link, though. That was very good. Yeah. Interestingly enough, I'm going to tell you about somebody who was known for their own mental powers, let's say. The date, October 5th, 1950. The setting, a BBC general interest program hosted by presenter Leslie Mitchell. No relation as far as I'm aware. That we know. That we know. The original tape doesn't seem to have been preserved, but we know what happens on the show. Mitchell oversees a quiz, a mathematics quiz delivered to his guest, a 20-year-old woman named Shakuntala Devi. This is no average math quiz. Shakuntala is an internationally known mathematics prodigy, a young woman who has grown up touring her native India and later England,

giving live math shows where she stands in her sari and takes requests from the audience of extraordinarily large equations, which she answers with seeming effortlessness. Can I just say that would bore the shit out of me because I wouldn't know if that answer was right or wrong. It would just be like whatever in the wind. I will explain to you why it wouldn't bore the shit out of you. Okay, I'm ready. And now Leslie Mitchell is putting her gift to the test by pitting her answers against a computer is live on TV. Oh, robots. This meeting has been arranged by the Indian High Commissioner who told Shakuntala before the show, don't let down the name of the Indian people here. Do all the sums right and bring the best name to the country.

No, no. No pressure. Pretty much. Yeah, we love you no matter what lowstakes commitment. This is a great opportunity. If you fuck up there, you will be disowned. And for the first three sums, she does just that. But when Mitchell checks her final answer, imagine his surprise. And hers. When her work doesn't match the computers, her answer, it seems is wrong. Well, that's what she says. She's like, give me the opportunity to recheck the answer. I know I'm right. There must be a mistake. The presenter responds that the BBC used a

sophisticated computer to generate this answer. There is no mistake. Shakuntala protests. The computer is wrong. Mitchell rebuffs her. We're out of time. The show concludes. Shakuntala is stunned. How could this appearance have gone so badly? After the show, the BBC is inundated with calls from viewers demanding that the program at least acknowledge Shakuntala's request to recheck the answer. Yeah. A very fair request. Yes. Why don't we like that? They lose nothing. Yeah. And so they do and they discover that there was a rounding error in the computer's calculations. The computer was wrong. Shakuntala Devi was right. And this is the incident that launched Shakuntala Devi into the international eye

and the one that gave her the nickname that would follow her across the world for the rest of her colorful life as she defeated supercomputer after supercomputer baffling the world's greatest mathematicians with her innate numerical prowess. Josie, welcome to episode 66, The Human Computer. We are robots. This is robot show. Let me tell you a little bit about the research on this one actually because it was an interesting one. There are a few things that made this story quite difficult to research in a way that I really didn't expect it in a way that often frustrated me. There isn't actually that much about Shakuntala on the English language internet and a lot of what exists contradicts each other. Okay. We also will come

to have a bit of a reliable narrator question around Shakuntala herself. Ah, colorful. A colorful life she leads. So for example, she says at one point and so she has so often said in interviews that it became part of like an accepted part of her backstory that is just stated as fact in many places that her father was a circus performer who was like trapeze magician, all of this. Yeah. Shakuntala's daughter Anupama Banerjee says no. She says, oh, that was just like part of her persona, her public persona. Yeah, grandpa was never in the circus. Right. However, Anupama might also have her own reasons to not be reliable. So we're kind of just it's often like Shakuntala's word against her daughters at various points. But then at the

same time, Shakuntala claimed to have joined a convent at the age of 10 and at other points have flirted with like being a nun and I couldn't really find anything to support this. But maybe that's because it happened in 1930s in in Bangalore, India. So why would there be documentation of it on the internet? You know what I mean? Right. Yeah, especially that you could easily access. Yeah. It's a little bit hard. Another thing I found all of this is kind of ironic given the context of this story. The numbers were kind of fuzzy. A lot of the numbers contradicted each other. She did it in 12 seconds over here. She did 11 seconds over here. She did in 1940 over here. She did in 1929 over here. Fuzzy numbers. Yeah. Fuzzy math. Fuzzy math. The other thing that made this one tough.

Oh, God, this one this one was really just like I picked this one thinking it was going to be a walk in the park and I ended up having to work a little bit harder than I thought. But please forgive me if we jump out of chronological order at times, etc. The other thing as I was about to say that made this tough is that Amazon Prime released a movie in 2020. It was supposed to be a theatrical release, but the pandemic made them look for online distribution. It was called Shakuntala Devi and it stars Vidya Balan. She does a really good job portraying Shakuntala Devi. It was made by a director named Anu Menon and with the participation of Anupama Banerjee, which is the daughter. So it sort of tilts towards the daughter's perspective. And it also is a mix

of things that actually happened and some that I'm not sure actually did. There are things that happen in the movie that either didn't happen in real life or didn't happen the way they are depicted in the movie and that made it quite tough. One of the main things that the movie posits is that Shakuntala had a younger sister who passed away when she was really young because her parents were more focused on Shakuntala. Whoa. And Shakuntala was really upset at them for that and there's a lot of treatment of the family relationship. I was looking really, really hard. I ended up finding at the very last second a reference in a paper called The Dick and Harold to an interview Shakuntala had done with them alluding to the sister and her death,

but other than that I couldn't find anything on this sister, whether that had actually happened the way that it was shown in the movie, etc. So it was really quite tough to pull together the full story. Those moments of oh maybe this actually happened or maybe this actually didn't. I will try to make us clear to you as possible when those occur. Okay, okay, good, good, good. All right, that's all my that's all my preamble. I didn't anticipate having a preamble there but by the end I was like no I need to vent my spleen about how fuzzy everything was in the research here. Especially following up the Wikipedia episode, yeah. We're doing all the shit you love in season three folks. We're doing Wikipedia, we're doing math, we're doing raisins, we're doing Esperanto,

all the sexy topics. So exactly how good was Shakuntala Devi at math? How good was she? How good if you gave her your full date of birth she could instantly tell you the day of the week that you were born? Like that she could rattle off every Sunday in a year like a machine gun like if you were said to say to her like what what dates fall on a Thursday she'd be like January 1, 8, 7, 7, done? Whoa! She could give answers backwards and forwards to however many decimal places you you wanted and she did it with no formal schooling. Wait, for real? Her family was too poor to afford schooling so she just kind of came up with it herself, yeah. Whoa. She is in the Guinness Book of Records and she got there by multiplying two random 13-digit numbers at the Imperial College

in London. The equation was 7,686,369,774,870 times 2,465,99,745,779. After 28 seconds of thinking she produced the correct answer, which I don't know how to phrase this so I'm just going to read the digits off left-right. 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730. That was like 10 phone numbers. Yes, the text of her Guinness Record notes, some experts on prodigies and calculation refused to give credence to Mrs. Davy on the grounds that her achievements are so vastly superior to the calculating feats of any other invigilated prodigy that the invigilation must have been defective. She's too good. This bitch is too good. I can talk about it, but it's worth seeing in action. I'm going to show you a clip of Shakuntala on the Indian TV network Dordarshan in 1977

trying to figure out the second root of the third root of the fourth root of the number 1,677,716. So Josie, I'm just going to, I've got it queued up here and all. I applaud you for reading numbers. That is very hard for me. I do not enjoy it. You are about to be so much less impressed after you watch this clip. Oh, this is a very interesting number. Oh, good God. How did you work it? Work out all these numbers. But anyhow, this is very interesting. Now, let's say, oh, please wait a minute, because, you know, after that mistake, I'm worried, you know, but Ranjana, there is something phony about this number, something fishy about this

number. It's not in decimals, is it? Integer, but don't now come out with the answer, please. I'm going to find out the answer, but there is something wrong. You've left out a digit somewhere in between. You see, I don't say anything, please, please, because I'm going to tell you which number you must have left out. I'll see what number would have a perfect fourth root, then what number of that would have a perfect cube root, and what number of that will have a perfect square. I'll do all these operations in my head and try to find the missing digit. Just give me a minute. It's a bit tough, but I'll see what I can do. Yeah, I got the number. You see, there should have been a two here.

But Ranjana, why in the world did you leave out the two? My mistake, not purposely, I hope. Good. Not like our Sardarji friend there. Oh, my God, how could you do that? I didn't even give the answer, Yogesh. I only said, oh, you're writing the whole thing upside down again, Yogesh, please. This whole thing is wrong. I'll tell you, wait a minute. I remember the number perfectly well, because when I found out that missing two, I had to exercise the number several times in my head. So I'll dictate the digits. Ranjana, you check and see if it is correct, and then I'll come out with the final answer. The number, according to me, please, Yogesh, please write down, should be, please rub off

your number. This number is a mess anyway. Now, the correct number ought to be one, six, seven, seven, seven, two, one, six, the fourth root of that number, the cube root of that fourth root, then the square root of that cube. Okay, two is your answer. So that's kind of the way that her average show, first of all, get your fucking shit together, Yogesh. Get your life together. Yeah, rub off that number, because it's a mess. She was hardcore on her Blackboard dudes. I think a bit as part of her kind of general personality, but a bit as part of the show. No, she has a good performance, and it is this kind of like, oh, I don't know if I'll get it right. We'll see if I get it right. Oh, I'm not too sure.

I have the answer, but you messed up. So let me tell you how you messed up. Yeah, it's so good. Invariably. So the way that it goes is it's open season. You and me have brought, everyone has brought a fucking problem from home. And if you're coming to this woman, you've brought like the grossest problem that you can come up with. And now mind you, at least until the end of her career, this was like a largely pre-calculator time, or calculators were things that maybe a university or an office might have one calculator that it used. It wasn't like now where you could just type any old thing into your iPhone and see if it was right. Yeah. So it was you and the wife, or the husband, or the son, or whoever,

you'd sit around with your pen and your paper, and you'd come up with like the gnarliest problem that you could for Shakuntala Devi, and you'd spend the night checking it over, double checking it, and then you'd be like, oh, we're going to fuck her up with this one. And then you'd come in there and she'd be like, you forgot it too, and here's where. Yeah. And here's the answer for the full number. Here's the answer that you wanted to get. Yeah. Then she would do the calendar trick, read out all the numbers. She might, she would do like birthdays from the audience, this sort of thing. And you just watch the person like break out into a smile universally. The response is like, whoa. So like when you say like, oh, I'd be bored of shit by that show. No, she put on a good show

of math, man. Yeah, because I think I was just imagining her like, with the mic, just like, I was kind of twitching and then being like, five, seven, eight, one, nine, five, and then that would be the show. She like quits with your boyfriend. Yeah, as she does it. Yes. What? Anyway, Shakuntala Devi was born November 4th, 1929 in Bangalore, India, now called Bengaluru. She was born to an Orthodox Brahmin family. Her father may have been a circus performer, maybe not. We don't know. I will say the way the story plays out and the fact that Shakuntala does have these kind of like performative gifts makes it not impossible to me. But again, this is someone who will learn, loves to kind of fluff her own mythology and be a bit saucy with the way she

tells stories about her life and so on. Right. Yeah. Yeah. The showmanship. Yes. The show woman. Yes. The prestige, folks. The prestige. Her considerable mathematical gifts seem to have been the result of nature, not nurture. As I said, she had no formal schooling. Her family, having been too poor to afford it, instead, her father, CV Sundararaja Rao, claimed by Shakuntala to be a circus performer whose talents include your piece, tightrope, lion-taming, and human cannibal acts. It does sound fake, but it could be real. People did do these things. It could be real. Yeah. Yeah. The past is fucking weird. The past is and so is the present and so will the future. Yeah. It's all a little weird. He was teaching her a card trick at the age of three, and he

realized that not only could she memorize the cards, but she could like kind of instantly understand what that information meant in terms of what the next move was to do. Yeah. At terror in casinos, should she have chosen to use this power for evil? Change. Yes. It says Shakuntala in her book, Figuring the Joy of Numbers. At three, I fell in love with numbers. It was sheer ecstasy for me to do sums and get the right answers. Numbers were toys with which I could play. In them, I found emotional security, two plus two always made and would always make four, no matter how the world changed. Yeah. That's nice. From there, Shakuntala's skills developed until at five years old. She was capable of performing complicated mathematical equations.

She displayed her skills at the University of Mysore at the age of six. And from there, the sky was the limit. Papa Rao recognized a golden goose when he saw on an in short order the two of them were on the road. Shakuntala became her own traveling show, mentally calculating large equations of the audience's request all while making amusing powder with the crowd. In a 2000 interview with Hinduism today, Shakuntala said, when I was young, I didn't want to do the shows because I didn't like them. My father would beat up my mother in anger and my mother would beat me up. It was a very traumatic experience. Oh God, that's horrible. So not an easy childhood. No, no. Shakuntala was the sole breadwinner of her family with all the pressures that entailed

an unusual position for any Indian woman of the 1930s and unheard of for a six year old girl. Yeah. Meanwhile, down the street in Shakuntala's hometown of Bangalore in 1933, we see a parallel drama playing out spotlighting the struggles of women in STEM. According to Amrita Dutta, writing for the Indian Express, Nobel winner C. V. Raman had refused to allow Bombay University topper Kamala Bhagwat to carry out research in biochemistry at the Indian Institute of Science because she was a woman. Raman had to relent in the face of Bhagwat's persistence, but allowed her in on the condition that she not distract his male students. You know, you know how that goes. Oh yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. Idiot. So this anecdote, while unrelated,

gives us an idea of the adversity Shakuntala will have encountered during her rise to prominence, even in Bangalore, which I believe is largely seen as among the more quote unquote progressive Indian cities. Okay. Okay. In addition to her mathematical prowess, Shakuntala was also known for her fiery personality in the vivaciousness of her public persona and her occasionally stormy demeanor in her private life. For example, when her boyfriend revealed to her that he was marrying another woman, she shot him. Fair. He didn't die. What? What'd she shoot him with? With a gun. Oh my God. A pea shooter. With a gun, Josie. She clipped his ear, but she took this as a sign to move to London, England in 1944 to ply her unusual stage show there, sending money back

to her family. So the shooting. Okay. You may be wondering if this was a tall tale. Seems to be true. Seems to have happened. Okay. The details are, are vague, but there are enough disparate. The daughter said it happened. One of Shakuntala's relatives back in India said that it happened. The director of the movie said that it happened. So I'm willing to buy that it happened. The boyfriend didn't say anything because he's lost hearing in that year. Yeah. If he was fucking smart, and if he was two-timing his fucking, because it was an arranged marriage thing, right? India. And so he'd already been set up to marry this other woman. And so he came up to her like, Hey, I'm marrying someone else. And she was like, not with two years, you ain't.

And then she went to London. Build on that. That's beautiful. I mean, I do not support gun violence. Don't shoot people. But also, you know, don't be mean to people. Don't be bad to people. Keep your promises. You can shoot people if they're mean to you, folks. That's our official stance. No backsies. That hurt my feelings. Dang. No, don't, don't do it, folks. Listen. Mill your guns, mill your guns to somebody who can melt them down into play guns for our children. Okay. So after this, Shakuntala's mother is okay. So Shakuntala's in England, leaves some bad blood with the family. Just like, I think there was inevitably resentment around this little girl who everyone had built their entire life around, right?

Well, yeah, a little honey boo boo vibes. Yeah, rough. So after this, Shakuntala's mother believing that math had destroyed the family made the rest of her children promise that no one would take up math and no one has to this day. Oh my God, it's not math's fault. No, math is evil. Math destroyed this family. Math, we were one number, but then we were subtracted from one another. I see it. I see it. Shakuntala's breakthrough moment came in that 1950 VVC performance that I mentioned at the beginning of the story. The exposure that gave her the nickname the human computer buoyed her fortunes and suddenly she was in international demand touring America and Europe. In 1976, she was profiled by the New York Times. In 1977, she performed one of her best

known feats at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where she extracts go pods. So when she was at this world acclaimed university, she extracted the 23rd root of a 201 digit number in 50 seconds, beating a Univac computer by 12 seconds. Fuck you, Univac. Fuck you. Where's Univac now? Can't get arrested. Like, come on. Yeah, yeah. Winner, winner, chicken, dinner, Shakuntala. They did a study that I'll talk about the study that they did on her at the end of this. She, her incorrect rate for equations was absolute zero. It never happened. I'm sure she must have fumbled a Sunday once or twice on stage and been quite embarrassed about it, but like in terms of when they were studying her and asking her all this crazy shit, they were

like, oh, the mean, the mean rate for your average, um, high level mental calculator or whatever is da-da-da-da-da, your average student, da-da-da-da-da, Shakuntala's rate was absolute zero. They were all right. Fuck. Upon achieving international fame, she returned to her home of Bangalore, where in 1955 she joined the Chitra Artists, a popular theater group for whom she often took the starring roles in full length plays. What? Says Navaratna Lakshman, who starred alongside her. While we invariably used our dialogue sheets during rehearsals till we had memorized our lines, Devi had her own way. She would read the master script just once and reproduced her dialogues in hours, scene by scene, without leaving out a single word.

So just a photographic memory, like. Clearly, again, we'll get into what part of it all is, because I did read the paper about how our mind works, and I'm going to attempt to try to describe it. Okay. Part of it is clearly insane recall. Yeah. An endless volume of facts. I love that movie. That's my favorite movie. Insane recall. Is that the Amazon Prime biopic? She had six titties in that one, yes. That's the only thing I know about total recall is there's a lady with three titties in it, right? I've never seen it, I don't know. Sleepless in Seattle? Yeah, I think that's Sleepless in Seattle. Sleepless in Seattle is the one where Meg Ryan has three titties, right? Yeah, on a houseboat. Sweet, yes. Navaratna, who did plays with Shakuntala, tells another story.

Once we were to stage a popular play at the City Town Hall, where Sangit Vidushi Chenama was to perform for about half an hour between to enable us to change the stage settings. A little intermission performance. Yeah. Unfortunately, she had to drop out at the last moment due to a sore throat, as we were worried about keeping the packed audience fully engaged during this interval. The curtains parted suddenly and they're set to be on stage before the microphone poised with a flute in her hand. Before we could realize it, she was enthralling the gathering by rendering three Kirtanas and a couple of popular devotional songs pulling off a brief but mature solo concert. Is it Lizzo? Is she just like morphed into Lizzo? In that moment, yes. Later, her brother

Srinivasa Rao, from whom I was learning flute, told me that she had picked up all of that on her own simply by listening with no guidance from him. So she just heard her brother doing flute and she was like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Oh my god. Oh my god. And the action being her sibling. Yeah, no, uh-uh. You could, uh-huh. If I understand why, I understand the families hate boner for her as unjustified as I think it is, because I have to imagine that everyone had to live their life in this woman's shadow. She was just the most charming, intelligent, smart, funny, she could do this, she could do this, she could do this, she could do this, she could do this, this, this, this, this, this. I can imagine being like, okay, bitch, stop, stop doing so many things.

You're doing it all. You're doing it all too good. Can I have something? Can I be good at something? Yes. Or I don't even have to be good at it. Just let me do it and enjoy it and not like pick it up in two seconds, yeah. That wasn't Shakuntala's only extracurricular, as she said about writing a series of instructional texts to demystify mathematics and make them more accessible to young learners. Okay, okay. Said Shakuntala, numbers have life. They're not just symbols on paper. I cannot transfer my abilities to anyone, but I can think of quicker ways with which to help people develop numerical aptitude. I don't understand math, so that sounds very cool to me, because it sounds helpful. Well, I have good news. If you go to archive.org, our old friend,

you can see any of the series of math and memory education books she released, including Super Memory, It Can Be Yours, Math Ability, Awaken the Math Genius and Your Child in the Wonderland of Numbers. Finger, fingering, oh no, figuring the joy of numbers, who? Animal. I was doing Lou Jester's, folks. Lou Jester's. So I kind of skimmed one of these books, because I wanted to see how she would explain math to somebody like me, who's not, who I think, I think if I put my mind to math, I could be better at it, because I was quite good at it in my youth. But I think I became intimidated by it as it became more complex. I also became a bit less interested in it as I pursued the other side of my brain, because I'm an artist, right?

Turns out numbers are very useful in a lot of art. It's a shame. Yeah, they don't tell you that. They don't tell you that. An anatomy. Folks, learn anatomy. Legit. Anyway. Okay. If you take one thing from this episode about math, it's learn anatomy. Shakuntala is really fond of little number tricks that show you how fun and individual and unique each number is, and how to make a little square that always adds up to this, this, this, and this, which I think are all like gamifications of the complex library of knowledge about each unique number that she constantly has in references. Do you think she has like characters for each number? Like two is like, like, oh, little miss two, going to parties,

and four is like a dapper dan, and like... I don't think she conceived of it in that particular way, but she has such a love for each unique number based on its specific characteristics, to the point where like, God forbid you walk down a hotel room hallway with this chick, she'd be like 147. Let me tell you something about 147, folks. Let me tell you how you can multiply six numbers and it will always add to 147, no matter what you do. But that's not all she wrote. She also wrote cookbooks and short stories and murder mysteries, including her 1976 book, Perfect Murder, which you can get on ebook for your kindle or whatever if you want. What? She parlayed her gifts into a very successful career in astrology, both in India,

where astrology is massive, and as well as internationally, and who wouldn't want to get their charts read by this woman? There would be no errors. Numbers, baby. Never be an error. Never be an error. Whoa. She ran as an independent for public office against Indira Gandhi. Oh shit. Oh my. Wow. She came in ninth the rare like L on this woman's record, but that's a fucking good effort. Yeah. I mean, a solid, solid square root three, you know, that's nice. And Josie, in 1977, she wrote a book called The World of Homosexuals, one of India's first ever books on homosexuality. At a time when homosexuality was federally criminalized, Shakuntala Devi called for full understanding and acceptance of same-sex attracted people.

Oh. She said in the forward, my only qualification for writing this book is that I am a human being, and I wish to write about a group, a minority group of my fellow human beings who have been very little understood and have been forced to live in half-hiding throughout their lives by a society that is merciless towards everything that differs from the statistical norm. She continued, homosexuality is basically as old as humanity, but what is comparatively new and urgent is the need for contemporary society to come to terms in its thinking and its lawmaking, both with psychological knowledge and human behavior. Whoa. In 1977, a woman in India writing this. That's dope. So far ahead of its time, right? Yeah. The book explained in lay language that

sexuality was a spectrum and that people could feel attraction to different genders at different times. Mm-hmm. It frankly and compassionately discusses a thorny subject in plain language and put the burden on society to improve itself. Shakuntala says in the book, it is not the individual whose sexual relations depart from the social custom who is immoral, but those are immoral who would penalize him for being different. Boom. Yeah. Unfortunately, the book of homosexuals was largely ignored at the time of its publication. However, it remains a milestone in Indian text about homosexuality and is seen in a modern context as being decades ahead of its time. Says queer activist Harish Ayer, it is a book without judgments and it is a book

about facts. It is a book that is empathetic about homosexuals and looks at it from that angle. It has a patriarchal tone to it if I look at it from today, but if I look at it from the days that it was written, I would say that it is quite astonishing that someone could write about it at that time. Yeah. Also, there's something, because I think my initial reaction was kind of like, she says, oh, okay, where is she standing on that? Could there be some issues of appropriation or, I mean, it's a different time. I don't even know what that would be there. Right. But then that kind of just hits into this idea of why is she writing about this? But there's something very cool about this woman who is known for having all of the facts. Yeah, for being the literal smartest

bitch anybody has ever met and funny and handsome and taboo. And that she's writing it and taking this message upon herself and giving her brand, lack of a better way to say it, to it is very cool. Very cool. I really want you to put a thumbtack in that thought of why is she doing this? Because this is something we will come back to. The question of appropriation kind of, I guess, did come up at the time. And I think that for my satisfaction, as one homosexual from the world of homosexuals, for my satisfaction, I think she kind of explains it quite well in the forward where she says my only qualification is that I'm a human being, but I'm interested in other human beings. And I fancy myself kind of smart. And the numbers agree with me. No pun intended.

Remember the math lady? That's me. Yeah. And I write murder mysteries also. Perfect murder. Download it on your kendo anyway. And vote for me. I'm going up against Indira Gandhi in the by-election and I can do your charts if you want. Coffee.com. So for me, her explaining that quite clearly. And I think she has a real facility for explaining herself in like really good lay language for someone who's best known for numbers. She has quite a way with words. The other thing is that what she writes and the way she writes it is very compassionate. And in particular, there's an interview with this guy named, this is a pseudonym, Venkata Subramaniam. And he's a high level executive at a white collar company. And I've actually pulled a little excerpt from this interview.

And do you want to be Shakuntala and I will be Venkata? Yes, please. And the reason I pulled this out is because I think it's it's such an honest and Shakuntala is a very honest interviewer, like disarmingly so. And I can understand how she got this guy to talk. And he's and he conversely is like incredibly almost brutally honest. And they both say things that are really interesting. So I'd like to share it with you. Pardon me for being so direct, but you're such a handsome man. Lots of young girls must be losing their hearts to you. How exactly do you tackle them? That's always been a problem, you know, the girls think that I look like Rock Hudson. I think so too. You certainly do. In fact, I wanted to say so myself, but I didn't want to be so

forward. Just like Rock Hudson, same height, same build and good God for an Indian, you're so fair. I could have sworn that one of your parents was a foreigner. Certainly not. Both my parents are South Indian Brahmins as orthodox as they come. If only things were different, you would affect the highest dowry in the marriage market, I bet. Well, you've won the bet because I've fetched a very good dowry, perhaps one of the highest in my community. What do you mean? I've been on the marriage market for the last two years and I'm going to be married next month. My parents are very hard bargainers, you know, they've struck the best deal, particularly mother. She's a great bargainer starting from brinjals and onions up to a matrimonial dowry. She has wangled out quite a

lot. Diamond earrings, diamond necklace, a fiat, silver utensils, lots of cash, and she expects to squeeze more out of them just before the marriage at the 11th hour. You know the old trick. But really, you're not serious about getting married, are you? I am. I'm going to be married. The reception is in La Bague. I hope you'll be in town. You must Now look, I just don't understand. There's nothing to understand, really. I'm 30 now and my parents have been after me to get married for the last six years. They started getting horoscopes from girls' parents almost from the time I left college. And after all, I have a duty towards my family. How do you expect to make a success of your marriage? Look now, you're talking

like a foreigner. What's success in marriage in India anyway? It's only a commercial arrangement, no question of any love or companionship. All that's expected is mere conformity. That there'll be in any marriage, rest assured. But still, the whole thing sounds so cruel to me, to marry a girl knowing very well that you can't make her happy. Who said I can't make her happy? I agree I can't make love to her, but why should she expect romance in an arranged marriage? After all, her father is technically purchasing a bridegroom from the marriage bazaar and they'll get their money's worth. The entire city is going to admire her father for having been able to find such a fine match for his daughter. Social image,

that's what they want, isn't it? And they'll get it. After all, they're paying for it. He can very well afford it, he's a millionaire. But I still wonder what will happen to the girl when she finds out. God, the poor girl is being victimized by everyone, isn't she? I don't agree with you. Indian marriage is potluck. She gets what she's destined to get. And I'm taking the same chances, aren't I? Just imagine, I could have been what you would call a normal person, and she could very well have been a lesbian. In fact, she may still be one, I don't know. I hope she is, for her own sake. Well, what does society expect of marriage in this country? Stability? That there will be plenty and plenty of stability, because whatever the case

may be, I wouldn't dream of leaving her. After all, I have to think of my family name. I have three younger sisters to be married, and of course my wife would have no way of leaving me. Therefore, ours will be a very successful marriage. What do you expect to get out of this? Personally? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Then why do you want to get involved with this? To make everyone around me happy. My parents are happy because they get plenty of money to celebrate the marriages of their daughters. It would have been very difficult for them otherwise, and of course, there'll be more to come in the future. My future father-in-law is happy because he found an excellent son-in-law so well-placed. And the girl? I haven't even seen her. I only know that her horoscope tallies with

mine perfectly. She's going to be happy because she gets a husband, home, and lots of social prestige. So everyone is going to be happy. Well, both of them are being very warts and all here, and I think it's fascinating. I think it's like a, this is a part of a much longer interview. It is also, this book is also on archive.org. I really recommend reading these interviews specifically. The rest of it is like academic-type stuff on homosexuality that the literature has since caught up with or surpassed. You could kind of read it anywhere, but these interviews and Shakuntala's forward are really, really interesting. I wonder what ever happened to this marriage. Isn't and they're juicy too. They're actually very juicy as well. Yeah. It ends with him like

leaving on her because he has to get to another meeting and I'm like, no, this conversation is so interesting. Please don't leave. Yeah. As to why Shakuntala wrote this book. According to the woman herself, it was because her husband, an Indian civil servant named Paratosh Banerjee, whom she met in the audience of one of her shows, came out as gay and divorced her. Yeah, I hid the husband. There was no other place. I told you it was hard to tell this story in order. Secret husband. Secret gay husband, question mark. Question mark. Well, I knew there was a daughter with a different name. Yes. I figured there was a husband somewhere in the mix. Yeah. Shakuntala told Vismita Gupta-Smith in an interview for the

documentary Four Straits Only, which is about homosexuality in an Indian context. It created havoc in my life and in my child's life. And then I needed to look into it, study it more thoroughly. And then I realized that if this is accepted by society, so many victims would not be there, suffering the way they're suffering. And that's what prompted me to write that book. But also that changes so much of her responses to this rock-hugging guy. It's like, isn't that painful for the woman? Of course. No, of course. Isn't she being victimized? Of course. She's like, what about her? And he's like, oh, I don't even know who she is. She could be anybody. Yeah. It's an inspiring example of Shakuntala's empathy and resilience. Dot, dot, dot, if it's true.

The recent Amazon Prime film goes out of its way to depict the story of this divorce as something Shakuntala invented in a fit of embellishment in order to drum up more interest for her gay little book. You know, I still like it. I don't care. I like it. Yes, everyone says this and I agree. Okay. When interviewed about the film, Shakuntala's daughter, Anupama Banerjee, said her father was not gay and her parents did not divorce over his sexual preferences. She says, if daddy were gay, I would be the first to say that because it's fine to be gay. I have really close friends that are gay and it's no big deal. He wasn't gay. He was very popular. That's the opposite. He was very popular and he had a partner after mummy who was with him for a long time. It didn't matter

to daddy because he's so easygoing. Says Vismita Gupta Smith, who interviewed Shakuntala for that documentary. I suppose only Shakuntala Devi and her husband could have confirmed the facts. When I interviewed her 20 years ago, she came across as a strong ally of the queer community. She strongly advocated for an open conversation, inclusion and sensitivity towards gay and lesbian family members. Paratosh Banerjee, the man in question, died April 2012 in Kolkata. So let's have a chat here because this feels like a good time to have a chat. Okay, well, I'll just say this. Everyone's gay. So, you know, everyone's gay. Everyone's a little bit gay as Honey Boo Boo once, let us know. This is such a fun wrinkle that at first I despised

because I had this idea of this woman and a lot of, again, a lot of stuff reports as fat stuff from whom the source was Shakuntala Devi herself. And so people were like, yeah, her father was a circus magician. Her husband was gay, whatever. And the daughter is like, no, neither of those things are true. So what I think is it scans to me honestly as largely equally likely that Shakuntala's husband was gay. But for whatever reason, he didn't want to tell his daughter or the daughter is attempting to repair his image postmortem or whatever. Those could equally be true. It could also be true that Shakuntala just kind of made this up. If it is the case that she made this up, I would say one ends justify the means she wrote a very good book about gay people.

Number two, Shakuntala, you can't do that. Number three, I told my friend Julian about this. I'll just read our discord exchange here. Hold on, I need to pull up our messages. He said he didn't know she was an ally. I said, well, she might have just made it up. Her husband might have not been gay, and she might just made it up to sell books. And he says, well, you know what we call that in the community camp. So that's kind of where I am. Was it right? No. It's like when she shot that dude. Was it right? No. Was it funny? Yes. Nobody seems to have been seriously hurt. But it may also have it may equally have been true. I can see both sides there. Like, you know, so how'd she do it? What made her brain work in this peculiar way? What was this? What was her process? How did it feel

for her? You see Berkeley educational psychologist Professor Arthur Jensen studied her abilities in 1988, and he published his discoveries in the journal Intelligence in 1990. So I'm about to yet again, apologize for a source before I even access it, because this is another kind of somewhat I feel like I need to give some caveats about the source. Number one, this this guy, Arthur Jensen, I guess, has like is a bit controversial in the study of intelligent science, because he's like a big, like, you know, some races might just be smarter than others. And you know, I, I happen to sit on on a couple of neo-nazi journal boards, but it's unrelated, you know, these kinds of things. I don't show up to the meetings on the email. I mostly just

do citations and, you know, and so there's there's that component. And then the second thing is that I feel like just from my own observation, this paper has a really shallow concept of autism specifically. Okay. So he thought as, as anybody listening may have thought, oh, perhaps, um, Shukuntala Devi is autistic. Fixation on a certain thing and like really, really good skill at it. We have this kind of cultural idea of the autistic savant, such as it is. Right. Yeah. Rainman. Yes. Well, this guy's like examination of her is like, she can't be autistic because she doesn't act like Rainman. Like he specifically references Rainman. He's like, she's, she can't be autistic. She's charming and a good, like she has like good showmanship. Social skills. Yeah. Yeah. She's not

as tall as Dustin Hoffman. Exactly. Exactly. She's taller than Dustin Hoffman. It's like, okay. Whereas nowadays in the modern context, we know that like people with autism can be hot and funny, like it's fine. So you know what I mean? So he had a really, and I don't want to like project a modern understanding of the autism spectrum back onto this paper from 1990. Right. But even in that context, I don't think his interrogation was particularly imaginative, e.g. it didn't make him think, oh, maybe I'm misunderstanding autism. It made him think, oh, it can't be autism. You know, we don't arrive at a diagnosis of Shukuntala particularly, but we arrive at like a paper that I would say is still worthwhile as a lucid examination of how this woman does what she does.

Yeah. Even with all of these other caveats that this guy may have been a Nazi and he does not understand autism at all. So the raw data of the article, that's the interest. Yes. And then any of the speculation, interpretation is just kind of like, oh, well, we'll just. Yes. So the last episode that we did about Wikipedia made me realize that there really are no perfect sources. There's sometimes not even good sources, and it's uncommon upon you to like kind of figure out which are the rotten parts that you need to eat around. Put it that way. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes you take a, you take a rotten bite. I opened an orange the other day, and there's a little like wormy worm. Disgusting. A nightmare.

Threw it away. Good for you. Put that compost. You're already, you're already getting eaten by worms. Let's put you in the compost. Yeah. So I've read this paper. I'll synth, I'll synthesize it for you with a few quotes here and there, some of which I've edited for brevity without substantially changing their meaning. Cool. What he found basically was this, Davy's rather unexceptional reaction times on a battery of elementary cognitive tasks contrasts so markedly with her amazing speed of performing huge arithmetic calculations as to indicate her skill with numbers must depend largely on the automatic encoding and retrieval of a wealth of declarative information in long-term memory rather than on any unusual

basic capacities. Some kind of motivational factor that sustains enormous and prolonged interest and practice in a particular skill probably plays a larger part in extremely exceptional performance. Shakuntala needed a visual of the number unmarked by commas and ungrouped in any fashion. Okay. She does not apply a standard algorithm uniformly to every problem of a certain type such as square roots or cube roots or powers, so she's not sitting there doing the number in like four, nine, x, four, underline the way that I might, you know? Yeah. Right. Okay. Each number uniquely dictates its own solution, so to speak. Hence the presence of commas only interferes with the natural and virtually automatic dissolution of the number

in Davy's mind. It just kind of falls apart in her mind. Okay. Okay. Jensen notes, and that has a lot to do with why you hear her writing Yogesh's ass so much about how like he put commas in the number you fucked up the number you put there. She needs, she's like, no, I need a fucking clear line of sight on that number and get, what is these fucking little commas? Get that out. Just draw the number. Don't write words and Yogesh, you need to go faster also. Yeah. Jensen notes of Davy's encounter with an irrational number, so he saw her originally at a show at Stanford University because Shakuntala would always go and whip it out in front of the academics, and of course they loved her and marveled at her. Yeah. She encounters an

irrational number in that show, which what is an irrational number? I sure don't know, but it ain't, it ain't a full integer. It ain't even as good as a decimal, which Shakuntala could do pretty well. It's a number that kind of doesn't, it's a funky number. Okay. Okay. That's yeah, I'm good with that. A funky number. I suspect that Davy could have solved it to at least two decimals, but the time required would have been too far out of line with her brief time on all the other problems to have made a good show. I got the impression that Davy's professional showmanship doesn't allow her to fumble over a problem or spend much time on it if she sees that she can't solve it rather quickly. One last fun incident just to drive the point home, quoting the Sydney

Morning Herald, Jensen set her two problems, the cube root of 61,629,875, and the seventh root of 170,859,375. Shakuntala Davy gave the correct answers 39 and 15 even before Jensen's wife could start the stopwatch. Regardless of the source of these abilities, which by the way Shakuntala always said God, she said it was God, that was her explanation. I have a gift from God, like Sinead, two gifted ladies with gifts from God. Yeah. Regardless of the source of these abilities, Jensen gives this description, which I find helpful in conceptualizing how she did these equations in which again I've slightly paraphrased for brevity. Most of the basic operations involved in Davy's performance probably became automatized during her childhood.

She obtained solutions through exercising different routines drawn from an immense repertoire of numerical information and strategies, and the peculiarities of the problem itself determine the elements that are drawn upon from this repertoire to achieve the solution most efficiently. Any given number lends itself to the application of some trick through which the required solution is quickly arrived at. Perhaps hundreds of hours of specially devised experiments using chronometric techniques could possibly decipher some of the specific processes of Davy's skill that have become so automatic that she herself is unable to explain them in detail. In the end, says Jensen, Davy attributes her unusual career to my love of numbers and my love

of people, but then she immediately corrected this apparent slip of the tongue. Oh, I should say it the other way around. My love of people and my love of numbers. This people first understanding reflects in other quotes she gave about her gift over the course of her life. In 1976, she asked the Boston Globe of what practical use is it really? It has just a limited appeal. I'm not particularly interested in math. What we need is more humanity. That's right. Well, I don't believe for a moment that Shakuntala was even slightly disinterested in math. Yeah, sure. It's her humanity, her effervescence and wit, her idiosyncrasies and showmanship, and her ways of forming connections with others that carry her memory for those who are fortunate enough to know her personally.

According to Shakuntala's daughter Anupama, Shakuntala loved wine and dessert and pizza despite being diabetic. And she had a great sense of playfulness, quoting Indian online magazine Boom. She describes Shakuntala's days as being action packed with people waiting to meet her by the time she was done her morning routine. She knew all of them, their lives, their deepest, darkest secrets. She could just look through people's emotions. She had a strong sense of intuition. The first time she met my husband, AJ, at a party in Bengaluru, she knew he was the one for me. Sometimes I wondered how she did that because she's a fucking expert astrologer, obviously. Yeah, yeah, she did that, yeah. She was like, don't shoot this one. He's good. Yeah.

As AJ by Kumar, the husband in question, when you think of geniuses, you think of boring, people with gray hair doing research all the time. My mother-in-law who'd been compared with Marie Curie was anything but boring. She was vivacious, lived every day as if it was her last. She partied, she had a thousand friends. She loved chatting and oh god, could she dance? Oh. It says Anu Menon, Shakuntala was someone who did what she felt like doing. I don't think she did it because she wanted to follow a trend. She was a feminist before it was even a movement. She never saw herself as a female mathematician. She just knew that numbers came to her and she embraced them. Shakuntala Devi died April 21st, 2013, of respiratory and heart and kidney

complications. Her exact methods of divining these extraordinary numbers died with her. Her mission of making mathematics easy accessible and fun is carried on by the Shakuntala Devi Education Foundation Public Trust, which provides educational opportunities to underprivileged children in Bengaluru. In 1970, Shakuntala, who until the end attributed her talent to a gift from God, as I said, set up her work as a child educator. I am not doing this for money. I get enough income from my shows abroad. This is my humble contribution to society. And that is the story of Shakuntala Devi, a woman who lived a life that was anything but by the numbers. Not bad. Not bad. That was good. That was good. Oh, man. She's a fun character. She's a really,

really interesting character. Yeah, what a badass. Do you recommend the biopic or not really? I think, yeah, I would say it's a little too long. It's a little, it's just over two hours. And baby, this is a 90 minute film if I've ever seen one. Oh, yeah. They've kind of really focused in on the mother-daughter thing too, and the family aspect, which it kind of gives it an anchor, but like, I want to know more about why she was running against Indira Gandhi. You know what I mean? Right, yeah. What was that about? Because I couldn't find that much on that, like what her, she thought Indira Gandhi was selling some kind of snake oil, but I couldn't even kind of quite figure out why. So I was frustrated. There's a couple of full length videos on YouTube of her

doing her show. One of them is the clip that I showed you before from Der Darshan. There's a really good demonstration that she does for ATN in Toronto in late 80s, early 90s, and it's just the whole show. It's just, it's basically an interview with her, just chatting shit, and then we've brought in the world's greatest mathematicians and some math students. They've brought their stumbers for you, and she's like, bring a, she's like, what's the, what do you got? Like, my, my failure rate is absolutely zero. What do you got? Please embarrass me. I would love it. Please, please show me, show me up, show me wrong. No irrational numbers. And then they've got a guy from a computer company there to show off the latest computer of the 80s,

and he's wearing a shark skin suit that is wrestling really bad against the microphone every time he has to talk. Oh no, shark skin, it'll do it. He wasn't thinking. But it's just a full TV show of Shakuntala doing her thing. And it's so opposite what you would expect from a math show, because not only is it like, like watching her do it is incredibly cool, but watching the instant delight of everyone when, when she knows their day of birth moments after you give her the numbers. And you, you break, you watch them break out in this just smile of delight. And I totally see why this lady would be your like math is fun ambassador to like kids and stuff like that. Makes perfect sense. Yeah. What day, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. August 24th, 1989. I know what

day I'm born on. So let's do the second one. Okay. Do you have like Friday energy? You have Friday energy. Thursday morning. Thursday morning. So again, we're getting close. We're getting close. Okay. Okay. What's December 1st, 1988? Because I know. Pretty sure. Sunday. What is it? Thursday, bitch. See, we could take this show on the road. Yeah. Where we guessed wrong days. But then we go. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com. Or wherever you listen to podcasts, if you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks

via our coffee account at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweet. But no pressure. Bittersweet infamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at bittersweet. Or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would take it. Stay sweet. The sources that I used for today's infamous was an article from the Associated Press. Panama launched a futuristic oceanfront home, Goes Sideways, published September 23rd, 2022. I read an article from Architectural Digest entitled, Exclusive Look Inside the World's First Self-Sustaining Floating Home,

written by Catherine McLaughlin, published November 16th, 2022. I read a blog entry on OceanBuilder's blog, entitled Ups and Downs Along the Road, written by CEO Grant Ramund, published September 27th, 2022. And lastly, I watched a video of The Collapse, uploaded to Twitter by user CarlosQuadro at CarlosQuadro9. For this week's episode, I read The Obituaries for Shikunthala Devi from the BBC and The Telegraph, both published on April 22nd, 2013, as well as the Sydney Morning Herald, whose obituary was entitled India's Human Computer Brought Numbers to Life, and was published April 26th, 2013. I read Shikunthala Devi on Amazon Prime,

How Real is the Movie, by Archita Kashyap, September 3rd, 2020 on Boom, remembering Shikunthala Devi, who did much more than solve math problems by Abhinav Srinivasan, in The Wire, May 31st, 2020. Shikunthala Devi's family on MathsWiz, she believed the human brain was capable of far more than a computer, by Barkha Kumari in the first post, July 30th, 2020. Prime Woman, Why Shikunthala Devi was a Woman Who Wanted It All, by Amrita Dutta, for the Indian Express, August 1st, 2020. Why Shikunthala siblings gave up a mass in The Deck and Herald, by Nina C. George, August 8th, 2020. Reminiscing a Legend, also in The Deck and Herald, by Navaratna Lakshman, April 10th, 2019. Five Things to Know About Shikunthala Devi, by Priya Arora, for The New York Times, July 31st, 2020.

Shikunthala Devi's book on Homosexuality, Yay or Nay, We Find Out, by Mith Rayi, Ramesh, July 30th, 2020, for The Quint. I read and excerpted Shikunthala's books, The World of Homosexuals, and Figuring, The Joy of Numbers. I read Speed of Information Processing in a Calculating Prodigy, by Arthur R. Jensen in Intelligence, volume 14, pages 259 to 274, that came out in 1990. I watched the 2001 short documentary for Straits Only, directed by Vismita Gupta Smith, which you can find on the director's YouTube channel, and I watched the 2020 Shikunthala Devi movie, directed by Anu Menon, starring Vidya Balan as Shikunthala Devi. On YouTube, I watched Shikunthala's daughter reveal's relationship with mom, an interview with Anupama Banerjee, on Good Times.

I also watched Shikunthala Devi, AT&T's tribute to the Great Mathematical Prodigy, on AT&T Canada, and I watched and excerpted clips from Shikunthala Devi, Mathematical Bonanza, her 1977 Dodarshan special, preserved on the Prasar Baharati archives on YouTube. Thank you to our monthly coffee subscriber John Mountain. Our interstitial music is by Mitchell Collins. The song you're currently listening to is Tea Street, by Brian Steele. Now, I'd like to do an item before we run out of time completely, you know, and this is the recital of the calendar of the year 1977. This has been very popular abroad, and I'm sure you're going to like it very much. Now, let's say, where is the calendar of this year, please? Now, Yogesh

will need an assistant, please. Who would like to volunteer? We need a very tall assistant. Oh, you would like to? How tall are you? Oh, great. That's a good height. Yes, please come. I won't look too short then, you know. So, now, could you kindly stand here, please, and hold this calendar, not like this. Oh, no, no. Let's get the whole thing straight to start with. Yeah, that seems to be okay. Now, Yogesh, please, could you come forward? Now, they won't see your face. So, yes. Now, this calendar contains all the months from January to December. Can you see the calendar? Great. Now, Yogesh, all you have to do is find out the dates I'm going to call out. Now, in the month of January, in the year 1977, Wednesday falls on 5-12-19-26, February 2nd, 9-16-23,

March 2nd, 9-16-23, April 6th, 13-28-27, May 4-11-18-25, June 1st, 8-15-22-29, July 6th, 13-28-27. Oh, you're not showing it properly. My goodness, Yogesh, this is not fair. You have to show it properly. My mind works fast. What can I do about that? You see, please go on now.