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The Allusionist

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A PODCAST ABOUT LANGUAGE
BY HELEN ZALTZMAN

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The Allusionist

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Allusionist 142. Zero

September 25, 2021 The Allusionist

Did any number cause as much trouble as zero? It stranded ships; it scrambles the brains of mathematicians, calendar users and computers; it even got itself banned in Florence. Math(s) communicator and drag queen Kyne explains the Terminator of numbers.

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In episodes Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Helen Zaltzman, history, Kyne, zero, nought, nothing, math, maths, mathematics, arithmetic, numbers, numerals, negative, counting, Mayans, India, Brahma Gupta, Italy, Italian, Fibonacci, eponyms, Hindu-Arabic numerals, Arabic, Sanskrit, Florence, calendars, typographical, placeholder, illegal math, imaginary numbers, Aristotle, voids, fraud, debt, Renaissance, printing press, errors, hippuric
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The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.