April 17, 2024 • 33 mins
Right now thousands of people are on a mathematical treasure hunt from the comfort of their home offices. Our own Zaron Burnett is one of them. Here's how you can join him — and compete for $50,000.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Feart originals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original. Would you like to go
on a treasure hunt without leaving your house? Would you
like your name in history books? Would you like to
win fifty thousand dollars? Of course you do, and I
(00:30):
know a guy who can help. Okay, this is usually
where we'd play a sound clip from some interview. We did,
but unfortunately the guy who can help win us fifty
thousand dollars has been well dead for three hundred and
seventy six years. His name was Marin Mersenne, and he
(00:57):
was a friar, you know, robe praying everywhere, receding hairline
that even God couldn't save. Merceinne used to teach at
a little college in the city of Nevers, France, and
he was sort of a big deal. The humble friar
was a math genius. He famously wrote a book describing
(01:19):
the physics of music, and he was pals with thinkers
like Renee Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and Galileo Galilei. And while
Marsenne was nerding out over math in the sixteen hundreds,
he started talking about something weird. A prime number. You know,
(01:41):
prime numbers, those numbers that can only be divided by
itself and the number one without a remainder. Mersenne had
found a prime number that was well special, one that
was so special, so rare, that he bagged the naming
rights for it. Mathematicians call them Marsenne primes. Today, finding
(02:07):
a Marsenne prime in the wild is a lot like
stumbling into Bigfoot. It's basically impossible. Only fifty one Marsion
primes have ever been discovered. But there are more Marsens
out there just waiting to be found, and thousands of
people are on a mathematical treasure hunt looking for them
(02:30):
right now. Whoever finds the next Marsenne will get their
name in the history books and we'll come home with
a chunk of prize money. But the big secret, the
next winner could be you, And I'm going to tell
you how. Welcome to very special episodes and iHeart original podcast.
(02:56):
I'm your host, Dana Schwartz, and this is prime time,
the Hunt for Math's most mysterious number. I will say
that this episode did make me feel like I was
in like eleventh grade again, having to be sure I
understood what a prime number was. And I'm just so
(03:17):
impressed by the people in the world who devote so
much of their time and energy to just the pursuit
of knowledge for knowledge's sake. It's something very wholesome and
it made me inspire to learn more about numbers.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Well, Dana as somebody who has a GIMPS account and
does go on searching for prime numbers mers in primes
in particular, I gotta say thank you, you know, because
we do care about this.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
You're a hero, Sarin, you know what.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I don't mean to steal any valor on this one,
but thank you, I really do. I absolutely love prime numbers.
I've written two papers and published them about prime numbers.
I watch Burkhardt Polster from Mythology channel on YouTube. I
watched three Blue, one Brown on YouTube. I absolutely love
this and I cannot believe that we make this episode
and this is how I hear about it. I was like,
oh my god, Merson Primes.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Well, I'm picturing one of our listeners being inspired five
minding the next Merson Prime. Yes they'll get the prize money,
but I think we'll share in the glory completely.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
We will absolutely have the glories, and that's really what
this all is for. You probably learned about prime numbers
in math class back in elementary school. Shout out to
my fifth grade teacher, Missus Saban, if you weren't paying
attention during the cold open. A prime number is a
digit that can be divided only by the number one
(04:35):
and itself without a remainder. Take the number three, for example,
it's a prime number, so is eleven and seventeen and
two billion, one hundred forty seven million, four hundred eighty
three thousand, six hundred forty seven. So that last prime
(04:57):
was discovered back in the seventeen seventies by Lenhard Euler,
one of the most prolific mathematicians in history. Euler is
just one person in a long line of math geniuses
who have gone hunting for really, really, really big prime numbers.
(05:17):
And the reason I'm pointing out his discovery is because
Eiler's number two billion, one hundred forty seven million, four
hundred eighty three thousand, six hundred forty seven isn't just
a prime. It's one of fifty one known mersenne primes.
Let me introduce you to a guy who can explain why.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
I'm George Waldmorton. For the last twenty seven years we've
been searching for large prime numbers.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
George Waltman is a retired computer programmer, and he is
the king of the Mersenne prime number hunt. In fact,
when we met George over a video call late last year,
we could barely hear him over the sound of the
fans cooling his computer. Turns out his puter was hunting
(06:08):
for a Mersenne prime. As he tells it, he's been
obsessed with prime numbers for a long long time.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Yeah, it's basically fulfilling up childhood dream. My dad got
me interested in priding numbers back when I was seven
or eight years old.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
When George was a little kid. His dad got a
letter with a postmark that captured his imagination.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
The postmark had two to the eleven thousand, two hundred
and thirteen minus one is prime. And it just amazed
me that someone was able to prove that this three
thousand digit number was a prime number.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
The number on that postcard was a Mersenne prime, and
it contained the formula that makes finding a Mersenne prime
possible two to the power of p minus one. I'll
let him explain.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
That means you multiply too many, many many times and
then subtract one, and if you're lucky, you've got a
big prime number.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Here's a simple example. Two to the power of three
two times two times two makes eight. Now subtract one
that makes seven. Seven is a prime, and since we
can find it with Marin Marsenne's special formula, we can
call it a Marsenne prime. Now, let's try it with
(07:34):
a bigger number. Take two to the power of thirty
one and then subtract one.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
You got it.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, it's our old friend. Two billion, one hundred forty
seven million, four hundred eighty three thousand, six hundred forty
seven that's a Marsenne prime.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Two.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Now here's the tricky part. That formula does not always
give us a prime number. Two to the power of
four minus one makes fifteen, which is not prime. Two
to the power of six minus one makes sixty three
not prime either. Turns out, the chances that this formula
(08:15):
will find a prime are low. Frankly, you have a
better chance finding a needle in a haystack or dB
Cooper than you do finding a Mersinne and a major
reason for this is and I cannot stress this enough,
because Mersenne primes can get comically huge.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Currently we're looking for Mersenne primes of around thirty million digits.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
George didn't slip up there. Right now, he's looking for
a number that is thirty million digits long. For perspective,
that number is so big it would take me several
months just to read it out loud to you. But
right now, thousands of people are looking for that number,
(09:06):
and if some and finds it, they will win three
thousand bucks. But the fifty thousand dollars prize I've been
talking about.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
That goes to anyone who finds a hundred million digit
prime number.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Now I get what you're thinking, Dana. I would love
to win fifty thousand dollars, but finding the Sasquatch of
prime numbers sounds a bit too mathy for me. But
that is where you're wrong, because here's the best part
about the hunt for Mersenne primes. You don't need to
be good at math, and that's because our friend George
(09:47):
has made it easy for us.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
I wrote some software that can find these prime numbers
and put it on the Internet for anybody to download.
You need no mathematical backgrounds to run this software.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
You can find the software George made online at a
website called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, better known
by its acronym gimps.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Yes, gimps, but founded gimps in nineteen ninety six, and
we found seventeen world record primes.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
Over the years.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Over twenty seven years, Georgia's software has helped regular people
like you and me find insanely large Marsenne primes over
and over and over, which is a huge leap forward
when you consider the history of Marsennes. For centuries, the
(10:47):
only way to dig up a Mersenne was to sit
down with a quill and ink and divide by hand
potential numbers. Later, new and better algorithms with names like
the Lucas Lemur test were developed to help speed the
job along. Eventually it got too difficult for our three
(11:08):
pound brains to do the math. The last time somebody
dug up a Mersenne prime, mostly by hand, was back
in nineteen fourteen. Another Mersenne wouldn't be found for another
thirty eight years. When computers hit the scene in the
(11:29):
early nineteen fifties, computers were finding Mercenes left and right.
Five Marsennes were found in nineteen fifty two alone. Two
were found on the same day, but eventually even the
supercomputers got stumped. By the late nineties, the best way
to search for a Marsenne was to use a Kray
(11:52):
T ninety four, a supercomputer that ran so hot that
were it not for an internal coolant system, it would
literally melt itself. And that is when George would in.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
I thought, if I made this software put it up
on the internet, maybe one hundred people would pick it
up and start using it.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
George wanted to help regular people, people without access to supercomputers,
hunt for mersenes. He wrote software that could be used
on a personal computer and posted it to the gimps website.
It immediately surpassed all expectations, and.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
By the end of the first year they were well
over one thousand.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
More than two hundred thousand people have tried the gimps
software since, and you're invited. The software runs in the
background of your computer. All you have to do is
pick a potential number and wait and wait and wait
some more.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
If you're looking for thirty million digit prime number, he
will take your computer about a week to test that number.
If you're going to go for the big money and
look for one of those hundred million digit guys, it's
gonna take probably one to two months.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Using the GIMPS software is like playing the world's longest
game of roulette. You pick a number, you spin the wheel,
and then you wait eternity to see if you've got
a winner, and chances are you won't.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
I've gone through probably thirty thousand numbers at estimate, everyone
of failure.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
That's right. George, the founder of gimbs, has tested more
than thirty thousand potential numbers, and he has never found
a Mersenne prime. And even though the odds are against him,
even though he's failed thirty thousand times, he's still looking,
and so are thousands of other people. And that's because
(14:04):
the chance of hitting it big turns some people into fanatics.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
The number takes on a life all its own. It's
a life that you and your computer nourish with CPU cycles.
Even though only a tiny fraction of the test could
have possibly been performed. You check on it several times
a day, just in case something goes wrong. You get
to know it like a friend. The time invested on
each exponent is what makes gimps special. It teaches the
(14:32):
user patience and perseverance, and devotion and loyalty soon follow.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
That's a line taken from the GIMP's website and Frankly,
the whole devotion and loyalty follow Shpiel sounds a little
bit well culty, and maybe it is. The people who
love gimps really really love it.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
The typical per sen prime hunt. This probably won't be flattering,
but they're probably nerds or geeks. I proudly label myself
a geek runner, and so I don't view that as
a derogatory term.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
These nerds and geeks can become addicted to this digital
treasure hunt, and some go to extreme lengths to find
a Marsinne. We wanted to get inside this world of
Marsinne obsessives, so we went on a hunt ourselves and
found this guy.
Speaker 7 (15:30):
My name is Curtis Cooper, and I'm a retired professor
of math and computer science at the University of Central Missouri.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Chris Cooper taught at Missouri for thirty nine years, where
he lectured in calculus, number theory, and computer science. And
when we talked to him, he seemed like a regular
humble guy.
Speaker 7 (15:53):
My wife would say, maybe you need a lie or something.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
But the truth is Curtis is a gimps legend. He
is the nineteen twenty seven New York Yankees the nineties
the Pele of Marsenne hunting, because Curtis has found not one,
not two, not.
Speaker 7 (16:14):
Three, but we found fourmer Sinn primes.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Four Mersenne primes, which, if I haven't already stressed this enough,
is insane. Curtis has found more Mersenne primes than anybody
in living history, and judging from our interview, it couldn't
happen to a better guy. Curtis's love for mersennees just
(16:40):
radiates from him.
Speaker 7 (16:42):
I've always really enjoyed studying them because it seems something
that's so pure and so natural. From my perspective, those
are kind of jewels in number theory.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Curtis has been hunting these jewels, basically none stop for
more than twenty five years, and he's been throwing everything
at the wall.
Speaker 7 (17:04):
When I initially got started in GIMS, I was using
three or four of my PCs at the time.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Curtis believed that four PCs was a little overboard.
Speaker 7 (17:16):
I thought, wow, for is pretty good for trying to
look for prime numbers.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
But remember it takes about a week to test a
number four PCs. We'll only test two hundred and eight
numbers a year. This wasn't good enough, so Curtis would
enlist more computers. He and a colleague began asking the
university for help. Could we use the PCs in the
computer lab? What about the library? Can I use the
(17:45):
machines in this building that building. By two thousand and five,
Curtis had a lot more than just four computers scavenging
for mare senes.
Speaker 7 (17:55):
In our heyday when we had a lot more labs
on campus and stuff, probably between maybe seven hundred and
eight hundred computers.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Yeah, Curtis had about eight hundred couters looking for Mersenne primes.
And even with all that computer power, Curtis spent eight
years finding absolutely nothing. That is until December two thousand
and five. One of his computers was testing a number
(18:25):
with nine point one million digits. The gimps software chewed
on the number for about two or three weeks, but
when it finished calculations, it notified Curtis that it was
a Mersenne prime.
Speaker 7 (18:42):
The feeling was almost like surreal, like is this really happening?
I was like a Christmas present in a way.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Curtis earned three thousand dollars, which was given to the university,
and then Curtis went back to work enlisting his army
of eight hundred sum computers to keep searching for mersennes.
Just a few months later, in two thousand and six,
he struck again.
Speaker 7 (19:08):
And then we found a second, And then.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Seven years later in twenty.
Speaker 7 (19:12):
Thirteen, we found the third.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
And then in two thoy fifteen.
Speaker 7 (19:18):
And we found the fourth.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
The last number contained twenty two million digits. It was
triple the size of his first mersine, and the thrill
of finding it a fourth time was just as intense.
Speaker 7 (19:34):
It was sort of the same exhilaration, almost like winning
the lottery of powerball or something.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Today, Curtis no longer holds the record for finding the
world's largest Mersenne prime. Since his discovery, two hunters have
upped him. The first was a guy named John Pace,
a church deacon in Tennessee who had installed the GIMPS
software on a church computer. Pace spent fourteen years looking
(20:05):
for a Mersinne before the church PC spit out a
Mersenne prime. That number was so big that when Pace
printed it in two point font on eleven x seventeen paper,
it took up sixty nine and a half sheets of paper.
The latest and largest Mersenne discovered was found in twenty eighteen,
(20:29):
when a Florida Man, You Go Florida Man named Patrick
Laroche found a prime so big that if I tried
reading out all twenty four million digits, this podcast episode
would quite literally become the longest podcast episode ever recorded.
(20:50):
So I'll just give you the shorthand. The world's largest
known Mersenne prime is two to the power of eighty
two million, five hundred eighty nine thousand, nine hundred eighty
three minus one. The crazy thing about that discovery it
(21:11):
happened on Laroche's fourth try. For comparison, George Waltman has
tested thirty thousand numbers and has found zilch. Curtis Cooper
told us he finishes testing forty numbers every day, which
goes to show this is anybody's game. A complete newcomer
(21:32):
can swoop in and find the next prime, and eventually
someone will find the one hundred million digit Mersenne four
fifty thousand dollars. But while prize money is always nice,
there's more to all this than money. Big numbers have
(21:59):
an undeniable allure. Back in two thousand and seven, Jeremy
Harper of Alabama caught the world's attention when he set
a record by counting from one to one million out loud.
Thousands of people watched as he live streamed the count
over the internet twenty four to seven. It took him
(22:23):
eighty nine days. Meanwhile, YouTubers like Matt Parker of number
file have posted unboxing videos of them opening up printed
versions of the latest Mersenne Prime. Big numbers are just exciting.
(22:43):
Think back to the schoolyard playground. Who among us in
a quest to one up our friends hasn't gone from
the double dog Dare to the triple dog Dare to
the triple dog Dare. Time's infinity. Immense numbers were our
way of winning the day. Frankly, the only people more
(23:03):
obsessed with huge numbers than little kids are well mathematicians.
A few decades ago, a mathematician named Ronald Graham came
up with a number so big that were it written down,
the observable universe could not contain it. And then, in
two thousand and seven, MIT hosted a big Number duel
(23:28):
to find an even larger number. The Mexican philosophy professor
Augustin Reo eventually found a number so big that, by definition,
it cannot be expressed through language. All of This might
have you wondering, what's the point. There's got to be
(23:48):
some practical application to finding huge numbers like Mersenne primes, right.
Speaker 7 (23:55):
I almost hate to say this. I don't know of
any application that this great big number. I don't know
how we could use that.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
That again, is Curtis Cooper, and as he explained, most
Mersenne primes are so big that they are basically useless.
But that's not to say they're completely useless. One Mersenne
four billion, two hundred ninety four million, nine hundred sixty
seven thousand, two hundred ninety five is the largest memory
(24:28):
address for CPUs with a thirty two bit address bus.
That might sound like a bunch of computer gobbledegook, and I,
to be quite honest, have no idea what it means,
but just know that this has practical consequences for a
lot of computer systems. In fact, in two thousand and
(24:49):
four that Mersenne was used to control the timers on
all radio air traffic around Los Angeles. When the timers
hit that number, it caused air traffic control to lose
contact with more than eight hundred aircrafts. Or consider oilers mersin,
(25:09):
which we talked about at the top of the episode.
That number is the highest score you can get on
most video games. In Grand Theft Auto, it's the maximum
amount of cash you can hold. These small mersins are
everywhere we go. They're used by Apple to encrypt and
decrypt messages. They're used to encrypt sales over the Internet too.
(25:34):
But the really big mersins are too big for their
own good.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
The uses are rather few and far between.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
That again, is George Waltman.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
Maybe when quantum computing comes along in fifty years, maybe
we will need a twenty five million digit key, but
today there's no need for it.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
So big mersens are pretty much useless. But there is
use to searching for mersins. Testing Amersen is not easy
for your computer. It takes a lot of computing power
and as a result, it's a great stress test for
(26:18):
a processor, and so some companies use gimps to test
their computer chips before shipping them out to market.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
One weird benefit of the search for Mersen primes is
it actually is so hard on a CPU that Intel
was using it to find flaws in their chips, and
over the last twenty five years, two or three times
we found flaws in their CPUs. Just five years ago,
AMD found a flaw in their CPU based upon running
(26:50):
this software that's so brutally hard on the floating point
unit in the chip.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
These sorts of stress tests can have a huge impact.
In nineteen ninety four, a mouth professor looking for prime
numbers stumbled upon a bug in Intel Pentium chips that
later cost the company four hundred and seventy five million dollars.
So the Marsenne hunt isn't completely useless, but usefulness. It's
(27:20):
not the reason people hunt for them.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
Chris Caldwell, who brand the largest prime number website, compared
it to the Hope diamond. It sits in a museum.
It has no use. It's just there to sit there
and look pretty and for you to admire. A Mersinn
prime is kind of like that. It's the largest of
its kind. It sits there and looks pretty and you
(27:47):
can marvel at it, and that's that's about all it's
good for.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
And a lot of people are content with that because
people like Curtis and George, they aren't looking for Mersenne
primes because they want to change the world. Their motivation
is simpler.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Yeah, you could be in a for the prize money.
You could be at it for the glory of finding
a numerous in prime, or you could be at it
for advancing mathematical knowledge a little bit.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Chris Caldwell, a math professor at University of Tennessee Martin,
has compared the hunt to competitive sports. It's the thrill
of competition, He says.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Why do athletes try to run faster than anyone else,
jump higher, throw a javelin? Further? Is it because they
use the skills of javelin throwing in their jobs?
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Not likely. I've kind of always equated it to people
who climb mountains and their ultimate goal is to climb
Mount evereston no practical value in it, personal accomplishment in it.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
When we asked Curtis why he hunts fourmer sens, he
made the same exact comparison. They were his Everest. You
don't make the climb for money. You do it because
you feel called to climb, because the climb in itself
is beautiful.
Speaker 7 (29:15):
I think a lot of that is beautiful. Maybe I'm
too much of a geek on the digits of the number,
but the four that we found I kind of tell
my wife, I said, I'll never forget. You know, the
exponents that are there and well, if I think I'll
go to my deathbed knowing the four that we found.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Saren, I have to say, just finding out that you
were a Merson Prime guy, how did you get into it?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (29:44):
So I actually like their uh, just like their twin
sister twin brother, which is called perfect numbers. Every mers
in prime has a perfect number, and every perfect number
has immersed in prime. So I love perfect numbers. An
example is twenty eight, and a perfect number is the
sum of its divisor. So you have one, two, four, seven,
and fourteen, right, and those you had those up together
(30:04):
twenty eight And that's totally honest.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
I just sort of went somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Anytime my fiance I talked to her about math, and
I can just watch your eyes like the curtain lowers.
It's just amazing. But basically the point is is that
the thing about math that I loved and was drawn
to is it's like if art could be entirely in
your imagination or in your mind. Right, you can appreciate
the contours, the lines, the symmetry, and you don't actually
have to have a physical thing, and then you can
(30:31):
talk to another person about that. They look at a
couple symbols and then all of a sudden, that same
symmetry and beauty appears in their mind. That's what I
love about math. It's like music, but it's.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Numbers that's so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Saren, is your computer running at all hours?
Speaker 1 (30:44):
It's currently looking for two different number. Actually, actually right now,
it's confirming the work of others because I don't have
a number i'm searching for. I'm actually calculating a new
one to look for, and it is currently doing the
work that gims wants, which is helping others. I'm just
letting my computers check somebody else's work and being like,
come on, buddy, I hope you get it. It's a
team effort.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Have you ever met anyone who's found one.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
No, they're so rare. There's fifty one of them, and
most recent ones have been found by a couple of guys,
and uh, I've never had the joy of meeting like
Curtis Cooper, but I see their names on the gimp
site all the time because they are checking so many numbers.
I saw his name was like, I know him, but
I do not know him. By the way, who was
your guys' favorite character? A special episode character for this one,
you know.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
It's Mersenne, he gets the name shot.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
Yeah, he's the MVP.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Do you guys cast this one? Danage, you cast Jason?
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Can you cast this one?
Speaker 4 (31:35):
You know?
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Watson from IBM and also Deep Blue from IBM. The
two so the Jeopardy supercomputer and the Chess supercomputer. They
are the stars of this episode.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
I thought about Marin Mersen. He could be played by
Edward Norton if you made the movie. Just to pull
from your board, I mean, I thought he got He's
got the monks vibe. You can totally feel him out there,
like in the Abbey by himself. Leonard Euler. I was
thinking Giovanni Ribisi because if you've seen a picture, the
famous image of Oiler, it looks just like Giovanni Ribisi, right,
(32:07):
George Woltman, this is a little bit out there. But
Francis Ford Coppola, he's a kind heart chasing after greatness.
He gets it. And then Curtis Cooper, because I got
to give a shout out to my man, Cartis Cooper,
Mark Ruffalo, the cozy, rumpled yet ambitious nerd. And finally
the next person to find immerc in Prime me so
there you go. That's all my casting.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
This show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett and
me Jason English. Today's episode was written by Lucas Riley.
Our producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by
Emily maronof mixing and mastering by Behid Fraser. Original music
(32:52):
by Elise McCoy. Research and fact checking by Austin Thompson
and Lucas Riley. Show logo by Lucy Quintinia. Special thanks
to Carl Catle for some excellent voice acting. I'm your
executive producer and we'll see you back here next Wednesday.
Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Feart originals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original. Would you like to go
on a treasure hunt without leaving your house? Would you
like your name in history books? Would you like to
win fifty thousand dollars? Of course you do, and I
(00:30):
know a guy who can help. Okay, this is usually
where we'd play a sound clip from some interview. We did,
but unfortunately the guy who can help win us fifty
thousand dollars has been well dead for three hundred and
seventy six years. His name was Marin Mersenne, and he
(00:57):
was a friar, you know, robe praying everywhere, receding hairline
that even God couldn't save. Merceinne used to teach at
a little college in the city of Nevers, France, and
he was sort of a big deal. The humble friar
was a math genius. He famously wrote a book describing
(01:19):
the physics of music, and he was pals with thinkers
like Renee Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and Galileo Galilei. And while
Marsenne was nerding out over math in the sixteen hundreds,
he started talking about something weird. A prime number. You know,
(01:41):
prime numbers, those numbers that can only be divided by
itself and the number one without a remainder. Mersenne had
found a prime number that was well special, one that
was so special, so rare, that he bagged the naming
rights for it. Mathematicians call them Marsenne primes. Today, finding
(02:07):
a Marsenne prime in the wild is a lot like
stumbling into Bigfoot. It's basically impossible. Only fifty one Marsion
primes have ever been discovered. But there are more Marsens
out there just waiting to be found, and thousands of
people are on a mathematical treasure hunt looking for them
(02:30):
right now. Whoever finds the next Marsenne will get their
name in the history books and we'll come home with
a chunk of prize money. But the big secret, the
next winner could be you, And I'm going to tell
you how. Welcome to very special episodes and iHeart original podcast.
(02:56):
I'm your host, Dana Schwartz, and this is prime time,
the Hunt for Math's most mysterious number. I will say
that this episode did make me feel like I was
in like eleventh grade again, having to be sure I
understood what a prime number was. And I'm just so
(03:17):
impressed by the people in the world who devote so
much of their time and energy to just the pursuit
of knowledge for knowledge's sake. It's something very wholesome and
it made me inspire to learn more about numbers.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Well, Dana as somebody who has a GIMPS account and
does go on searching for prime numbers mers in primes
in particular, I gotta say thank you, you know, because
we do care about this.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
You're a hero, Sarin, you know what.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I don't mean to steal any valor on this one,
but thank you, I really do. I absolutely love prime numbers.
I've written two papers and published them about prime numbers.
I watch Burkhardt Polster from Mythology channel on YouTube. I
watched three Blue, one Brown on YouTube. I absolutely love
this and I cannot believe that we make this episode
and this is how I hear about it. I was like,
oh my god, Merson Primes.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Well, I'm picturing one of our listeners being inspired five
minding the next Merson Prime. Yes they'll get the prize money,
but I think we'll share in the glory completely.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
We will absolutely have the glories, and that's really what
this all is for. You probably learned about prime numbers
in math class back in elementary school. Shout out to
my fifth grade teacher, Missus Saban, if you weren't paying
attention during the cold open. A prime number is a
digit that can be divided only by the number one
(04:35):
and itself without a remainder. Take the number three, for example,
it's a prime number, so is eleven and seventeen and
two billion, one hundred forty seven million, four hundred eighty
three thousand, six hundred forty seven. So that last prime
(04:57):
was discovered back in the seventeen seventies by Lenhard Euler,
one of the most prolific mathematicians in history. Euler is
just one person in a long line of math geniuses
who have gone hunting for really, really, really big prime numbers.
(05:17):
And the reason I'm pointing out his discovery is because
Eiler's number two billion, one hundred forty seven million, four
hundred eighty three thousand, six hundred forty seven isn't just
a prime. It's one of fifty one known mersenne primes.
Let me introduce you to a guy who can explain why.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
I'm George Waldmorton. For the last twenty seven years we've
been searching for large prime numbers.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
George Waltman is a retired computer programmer, and he is
the king of the Mersenne prime number hunt. In fact,
when we met George over a video call late last year,
we could barely hear him over the sound of the
fans cooling his computer. Turns out his puter was hunting
(06:08):
for a Mersenne prime. As he tells it, he's been
obsessed with prime numbers for a long long time.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Yeah, it's basically fulfilling up childhood dream. My dad got
me interested in priding numbers back when I was seven
or eight years old.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
When George was a little kid. His dad got a
letter with a postmark that captured his imagination.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
The postmark had two to the eleven thousand, two hundred
and thirteen minus one is prime. And it just amazed
me that someone was able to prove that this three
thousand digit number was a prime number.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
The number on that postcard was a Mersenne prime, and
it contained the formula that makes finding a Mersenne prime
possible two to the power of p minus one. I'll
let him explain.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
That means you multiply too many, many many times and
then subtract one, and if you're lucky, you've got a
big prime number.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Here's a simple example. Two to the power of three
two times two times two makes eight. Now subtract one
that makes seven. Seven is a prime, and since we
can find it with Marin Marsenne's special formula, we can
call it a Marsenne prime. Now, let's try it with
(07:34):
a bigger number. Take two to the power of thirty
one and then subtract one.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
You got it.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, it's our old friend. Two billion, one hundred forty
seven million, four hundred eighty three thousand, six hundred forty
seven that's a Marsenne prime.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Two.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Now here's the tricky part. That formula does not always
give us a prime number. Two to the power of
four minus one makes fifteen, which is not prime. Two
to the power of six minus one makes sixty three
not prime either. Turns out, the chances that this formula
(08:15):
will find a prime are low. Frankly, you have a
better chance finding a needle in a haystack or dB
Cooper than you do finding a Mersinne and a major
reason for this is and I cannot stress this enough,
because Mersenne primes can get comically huge.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Currently we're looking for Mersenne primes of around thirty million digits.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
George didn't slip up there. Right now, he's looking for
a number that is thirty million digits long. For perspective,
that number is so big it would take me several
months just to read it out loud to you. But
right now, thousands of people are looking for that number,
(09:06):
and if some and finds it, they will win three
thousand bucks. But the fifty thousand dollars prize I've been
talking about.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
That goes to anyone who finds a hundred million digit
prime number.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Now I get what you're thinking, Dana. I would love
to win fifty thousand dollars, but finding the Sasquatch of
prime numbers sounds a bit too mathy for me. But
that is where you're wrong, because here's the best part
about the hunt for Mersenne primes. You don't need to
be good at math, and that's because our friend George
(09:47):
has made it easy for us.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
I wrote some software that can find these prime numbers
and put it on the Internet for anybody to download.
You need no mathematical backgrounds to run this software.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
You can find the software George made online at a
website called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, better known
by its acronym gimps.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Yes, gimps, but founded gimps in nineteen ninety six, and
we found seventeen world record primes.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
Over the years.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Over twenty seven years, Georgia's software has helped regular people
like you and me find insanely large Marsenne primes over
and over and over, which is a huge leap forward
when you consider the history of Marsennes. For centuries, the
(10:47):
only way to dig up a Mersenne was to sit
down with a quill and ink and divide by hand
potential numbers. Later, new and better algorithms with names like
the Lucas Lemur test were developed to help speed the
job along. Eventually it got too difficult for our three
(11:08):
pound brains to do the math. The last time somebody
dug up a Mersenne prime, mostly by hand, was back
in nineteen fourteen. Another Mersenne wouldn't be found for another
thirty eight years. When computers hit the scene in the
(11:29):
early nineteen fifties, computers were finding Mercenes left and right.
Five Marsennes were found in nineteen fifty two alone. Two
were found on the same day, but eventually even the
supercomputers got stumped. By the late nineties, the best way
to search for a Marsenne was to use a Kray
(11:52):
T ninety four, a supercomputer that ran so hot that
were it not for an internal coolant system, it would
literally melt itself. And that is when George would in.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
I thought, if I made this software put it up
on the internet, maybe one hundred people would pick it
up and start using it.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
George wanted to help regular people, people without access to supercomputers,
hunt for mersenes. He wrote software that could be used
on a personal computer and posted it to the gimps website.
It immediately surpassed all expectations, and.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
By the end of the first year they were well
over one thousand.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
More than two hundred thousand people have tried the gimps
software since, and you're invited. The software runs in the
background of your computer. All you have to do is
pick a potential number and wait and wait and wait
some more.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
If you're looking for thirty million digit prime number, he
will take your computer about a week to test that number.
If you're going to go for the big money and
look for one of those hundred million digit guys, it's
gonna take probably one to two months.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Using the GIMPS software is like playing the world's longest
game of roulette. You pick a number, you spin the wheel,
and then you wait eternity to see if you've got
a winner, and chances are you won't.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
I've gone through probably thirty thousand numbers at estimate, everyone
of failure.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
That's right. George, the founder of gimbs, has tested more
than thirty thousand potential numbers, and he has never found
a Mersenne prime. And even though the odds are against him,
even though he's failed thirty thousand times, he's still looking,
and so are thousands of other people. And that's because
(14:04):
the chance of hitting it big turns some people into fanatics.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
The number takes on a life all its own. It's
a life that you and your computer nourish with CPU cycles.
Even though only a tiny fraction of the test could
have possibly been performed. You check on it several times
a day, just in case something goes wrong. You get
to know it like a friend. The time invested on
each exponent is what makes gimps special. It teaches the
(14:32):
user patience and perseverance, and devotion and loyalty soon follow.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
That's a line taken from the GIMP's website and Frankly,
the whole devotion and loyalty follow Shpiel sounds a little
bit well culty, and maybe it is. The people who
love gimps really really love it.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
The typical per sen prime hunt. This probably won't be flattering,
but they're probably nerds or geeks. I proudly label myself
a geek runner, and so I don't view that as
a derogatory term.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
These nerds and geeks can become addicted to this digital
treasure hunt, and some go to extreme lengths to find
a Marsinne. We wanted to get inside this world of
Marsinne obsessives, so we went on a hunt ourselves and
found this guy.
Speaker 7 (15:30):
My name is Curtis Cooper, and I'm a retired professor
of math and computer science at the University of Central Missouri.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Chris Cooper taught at Missouri for thirty nine years, where
he lectured in calculus, number theory, and computer science. And
when we talked to him, he seemed like a regular
humble guy.
Speaker 7 (15:53):
My wife would say, maybe you need a lie or something.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
But the truth is Curtis is a gimps legend. He
is the nineteen twenty seven New York Yankees the nineties
the Pele of Marsenne hunting, because Curtis has found not one,
not two, not.
Speaker 7 (16:14):
Three, but we found fourmer Sinn primes.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Four Mersenne primes, which, if I haven't already stressed this enough,
is insane. Curtis has found more Mersenne primes than anybody
in living history, and judging from our interview, it couldn't
happen to a better guy. Curtis's love for mersennees just
(16:40):
radiates from him.
Speaker 7 (16:42):
I've always really enjoyed studying them because it seems something
that's so pure and so natural. From my perspective, those
are kind of jewels in number theory.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Curtis has been hunting these jewels, basically none stop for
more than twenty five years, and he's been throwing everything
at the wall.
Speaker 7 (17:04):
When I initially got started in GIMS, I was using
three or four of my PCs at the time.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Curtis believed that four PCs was a little overboard.
Speaker 7 (17:16):
I thought, wow, for is pretty good for trying to
look for prime numbers.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
But remember it takes about a week to test a
number four PCs. We'll only test two hundred and eight
numbers a year. This wasn't good enough, so Curtis would
enlist more computers. He and a colleague began asking the
university for help. Could we use the PCs in the
computer lab? What about the library? Can I use the
(17:45):
machines in this building that building. By two thousand and five,
Curtis had a lot more than just four computers scavenging
for mare senes.
Speaker 7 (17:55):
In our heyday when we had a lot more labs
on campus and stuff, probably between maybe seven hundred and
eight hundred computers.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Yeah, Curtis had about eight hundred couters looking for Mersenne primes.
And even with all that computer power, Curtis spent eight
years finding absolutely nothing. That is until December two thousand
and five. One of his computers was testing a number
(18:25):
with nine point one million digits. The gimps software chewed
on the number for about two or three weeks, but
when it finished calculations, it notified Curtis that it was
a Mersenne prime.
Speaker 7 (18:42):
The feeling was almost like surreal, like is this really happening?
I was like a Christmas present in a way.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Curtis earned three thousand dollars, which was given to the university,
and then Curtis went back to work enlisting his army
of eight hundred sum computers to keep searching for mersennes.
Just a few months later, in two thousand and six,
he struck again.
Speaker 7 (19:08):
And then we found a second, And then.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Seven years later in twenty.
Speaker 7 (19:12):
Thirteen, we found the third.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
And then in two thoy fifteen.
Speaker 7 (19:18):
And we found the fourth.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
The last number contained twenty two million digits. It was
triple the size of his first mersine, and the thrill
of finding it a fourth time was just as intense.
Speaker 7 (19:34):
It was sort of the same exhilaration, almost like winning
the lottery of powerball or something.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Today, Curtis no longer holds the record for finding the
world's largest Mersenne prime. Since his discovery, two hunters have
upped him. The first was a guy named John Pace,
a church deacon in Tennessee who had installed the GIMPS
software on a church computer. Pace spent fourteen years looking
(20:05):
for a Mersinne before the church PC spit out a
Mersenne prime. That number was so big that when Pace
printed it in two point font on eleven x seventeen paper,
it took up sixty nine and a half sheets of paper.
The latest and largest Mersenne discovered was found in twenty eighteen,
(20:29):
when a Florida Man, You Go Florida Man named Patrick
Laroche found a prime so big that if I tried
reading out all twenty four million digits, this podcast episode
would quite literally become the longest podcast episode ever recorded.
(20:50):
So I'll just give you the shorthand. The world's largest
known Mersenne prime is two to the power of eighty
two million, five hundred eighty nine thousand, nine hundred eighty
three minus one. The crazy thing about that discovery it
(21:11):
happened on Laroche's fourth try. For comparison, George Waltman has
tested thirty thousand numbers and has found zilch. Curtis Cooper
told us he finishes testing forty numbers every day, which
goes to show this is anybody's game. A complete newcomer
(21:32):
can swoop in and find the next prime, and eventually
someone will find the one hundred million digit Mersenne four
fifty thousand dollars. But while prize money is always nice,
there's more to all this than money. Big numbers have
(21:59):
an undeniable allure. Back in two thousand and seven, Jeremy
Harper of Alabama caught the world's attention when he set
a record by counting from one to one million out loud.
Thousands of people watched as he live streamed the count
over the internet twenty four to seven. It took him
(22:23):
eighty nine days. Meanwhile, YouTubers like Matt Parker of number
file have posted unboxing videos of them opening up printed
versions of the latest Mersenne Prime. Big numbers are just exciting.
(22:43):
Think back to the schoolyard playground. Who among us in
a quest to one up our friends hasn't gone from
the double dog Dare to the triple dog Dare to
the triple dog Dare. Time's infinity. Immense numbers were our
way of winning the day. Frankly, the only people more
(23:03):
obsessed with huge numbers than little kids are well mathematicians.
A few decades ago, a mathematician named Ronald Graham came
up with a number so big that were it written down,
the observable universe could not contain it. And then, in
two thousand and seven, MIT hosted a big Number duel
(23:28):
to find an even larger number. The Mexican philosophy professor
Augustin Reo eventually found a number so big that, by definition,
it cannot be expressed through language. All of This might
have you wondering, what's the point. There's got to be
(23:48):
some practical application to finding huge numbers like Mersenne primes, right.
Speaker 7 (23:55):
I almost hate to say this. I don't know of
any application that this great big number. I don't know
how we could use that.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
That again, is Curtis Cooper, and as he explained, most
Mersenne primes are so big that they are basically useless.
But that's not to say they're completely useless. One Mersenne
four billion, two hundred ninety four million, nine hundred sixty
seven thousand, two hundred ninety five is the largest memory
(24:28):
address for CPUs with a thirty two bit address bus.
That might sound like a bunch of computer gobbledegook, and I,
to be quite honest, have no idea what it means,
but just know that this has practical consequences for a
lot of computer systems. In fact, in two thousand and
(24:49):
four that Mersenne was used to control the timers on
all radio air traffic around Los Angeles. When the timers
hit that number, it caused air traffic control to lose
contact with more than eight hundred aircrafts. Or consider oilers mersin,
(25:09):
which we talked about at the top of the episode.
That number is the highest score you can get on
most video games. In Grand Theft Auto, it's the maximum
amount of cash you can hold. These small mersins are
everywhere we go. They're used by Apple to encrypt and
decrypt messages. They're used to encrypt sales over the Internet too.
(25:34):
But the really big mersins are too big for their
own good.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
The uses are rather few and far between.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
That again, is George Waltman.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
Maybe when quantum computing comes along in fifty years, maybe
we will need a twenty five million digit key, but
today there's no need for it.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
So big mersens are pretty much useless. But there is
use to searching for mersins. Testing Amersen is not easy
for your computer. It takes a lot of computing power
and as a result, it's a great stress test for
(26:18):
a processor, and so some companies use gimps to test
their computer chips before shipping them out to market.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
One weird benefit of the search for Mersen primes is
it actually is so hard on a CPU that Intel
was using it to find flaws in their chips, and
over the last twenty five years, two or three times
we found flaws in their CPUs. Just five years ago,
AMD found a flaw in their CPU based upon running
(26:50):
this software that's so brutally hard on the floating point
unit in the chip.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
These sorts of stress tests can have a huge impact.
In nineteen ninety four, a mouth professor looking for prime
numbers stumbled upon a bug in Intel Pentium chips that
later cost the company four hundred and seventy five million dollars.
So the Marsenne hunt isn't completely useless, but usefulness. It's
(27:20):
not the reason people hunt for them.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
Chris Caldwell, who brand the largest prime number website, compared
it to the Hope diamond. It sits in a museum.
It has no use. It's just there to sit there
and look pretty and for you to admire. A Mersinn
prime is kind of like that. It's the largest of
its kind. It sits there and looks pretty and you
(27:47):
can marvel at it, and that's that's about all it's
good for.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
And a lot of people are content with that because
people like Curtis and George, they aren't looking for Mersenne
primes because they want to change the world. Their motivation
is simpler.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Yeah, you could be in a for the prize money.
You could be at it for the glory of finding
a numerous in prime, or you could be at it
for advancing mathematical knowledge a little bit.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Chris Caldwell, a math professor at University of Tennessee Martin,
has compared the hunt to competitive sports. It's the thrill
of competition, He says.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Why do athletes try to run faster than anyone else,
jump higher, throw a javelin? Further? Is it because they
use the skills of javelin throwing in their jobs?
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Not likely. I've kind of always equated it to people
who climb mountains and their ultimate goal is to climb
Mount evereston no practical value in it, personal accomplishment in it.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
When we asked Curtis why he hunts fourmer sens, he
made the same exact comparison. They were his Everest. You
don't make the climb for money. You do it because
you feel called to climb, because the climb in itself
is beautiful.
Speaker 7 (29:15):
I think a lot of that is beautiful. Maybe I'm
too much of a geek on the digits of the number,
but the four that we found I kind of tell
my wife, I said, I'll never forget. You know, the
exponents that are there and well, if I think I'll
go to my deathbed knowing the four that we found.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Saren, I have to say, just finding out that you
were a Merson Prime guy, how did you get into it?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (29:44):
So I actually like their uh, just like their twin
sister twin brother, which is called perfect numbers. Every mers
in prime has a perfect number, and every perfect number
has immersed in prime. So I love perfect numbers. An
example is twenty eight, and a perfect number is the
sum of its divisor. So you have one, two, four, seven,
and fourteen, right, and those you had those up together
(30:04):
twenty eight And that's totally honest.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
I just sort of went somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Anytime my fiance I talked to her about math, and
I can just watch your eyes like the curtain lowers.
It's just amazing. But basically the point is is that
the thing about math that I loved and was drawn
to is it's like if art could be entirely in
your imagination or in your mind. Right, you can appreciate
the contours, the lines, the symmetry, and you don't actually
have to have a physical thing, and then you can
(30:31):
talk to another person about that. They look at a
couple symbols and then all of a sudden, that same
symmetry and beauty appears in their mind. That's what I
love about math. It's like music, but it's.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Numbers that's so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Saren, is your computer running at all hours?
Speaker 1 (30:44):
It's currently looking for two different number. Actually, actually right now,
it's confirming the work of others because I don't have
a number i'm searching for. I'm actually calculating a new
one to look for, and it is currently doing the
work that gims wants, which is helping others. I'm just
letting my computers check somebody else's work and being like,
come on, buddy, I hope you get it. It's a
team effort.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Have you ever met anyone who's found one.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
No, they're so rare. There's fifty one of them, and
most recent ones have been found by a couple of guys,
and uh, I've never had the joy of meeting like
Curtis Cooper, but I see their names on the gimp
site all the time because they are checking so many numbers.
I saw his name was like, I know him, but
I do not know him. By the way, who was
your guys' favorite character? A special episode character for this one,
you know.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
It's Mersenne, he gets the name shot.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
Yeah, he's the MVP.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Do you guys cast this one? Danage, you cast Jason?
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Can you cast this one?
Speaker 4 (31:35):
You know?
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Watson from IBM and also Deep Blue from IBM. The
two so the Jeopardy supercomputer and the Chess supercomputer. They
are the stars of this episode.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
I thought about Marin Mersen. He could be played by
Edward Norton if you made the movie. Just to pull
from your board, I mean, I thought he got He's
got the monks vibe. You can totally feel him out there,
like in the Abbey by himself. Leonard Euler. I was
thinking Giovanni Ribisi because if you've seen a picture, the
famous image of Oiler, it looks just like Giovanni Ribisi, right,
(32:07):
George Woltman, this is a little bit out there. But
Francis Ford Coppola, he's a kind heart chasing after greatness.
He gets it. And then Curtis Cooper, because I got
to give a shout out to my man, Cartis Cooper,
Mark Ruffalo, the cozy, rumpled yet ambitious nerd. And finally
the next person to find immerc in Prime me so
there you go. That's all my casting.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
This show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett and
me Jason English. Today's episode was written by Lucas Riley.
Our producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by
Emily maronof mixing and mastering by Behid Fraser. Original music
(32:52):
by Elise McCoy. Research and fact checking by Austin Thompson
and Lucas Riley. Show logo by Lucy Quintinia. Special thanks
to Carl Catle for some excellent voice acting. I'm your
executive producer and we'll see you back here next Wednesday.
Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
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