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Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Little Happier: When Zero Isn't Nothing: The Fresh Eyes of a Basketball Beginner

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin / The Onward Project

Education, Health & Fitness, Self-improvement

4.713K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2025

⏱️ 4 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Through my "Operation Knicks Knowledge" experiment, I was astonished to learn that some professional basketball players have the number zero for their jersey number. Sometimes, a newcomer notices things that people with more knowledge take for granted.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

The weather is warming up and it is time for picnics. At Whole Foods Market, you can save every day.

0:06.3

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0:13.7

Find them with their responsibly farmed Atlantic salmon, no antibiotics ever ground beef, and bonelessless chicken breasts plus more throughout the store yellow

0:23.6

really means savings at whole foods market because their sale signs are also yellow so basically

0:29.6

wherever you see yellow you know you're saving money save on the best of spring with great

0:35.1

everyday prices at Whole Foods Market.

0:40.8

Lemonada

0:41.2

I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.

0:47.9

I've talked about my Operation Nix knowledge where I've decided to take a deep interest

0:52.7

in New York City's basketball team,

0:54.9

the Knicks. I wanted to see if I could make myself get interested in a subject, and I have.

1:00.7

Going to Knicks games have led me to many questions, observations, and many trains of thought

1:05.5

that I would never otherwise have had. For instance, I grew curious about jersey numbers. Did players get to choose their

1:14.0

own numbers? I looked it up, and the answer is, yes, within certain guidelines and restrictions.

1:20.1

Interesting. Then, at a game in Madison Square Garden, where the Knicks played the Denver Nuggets,

1:26.8

I saw that Nuggets player Christian

1:29.0

bronze jersey number was zero. The fact of players could choose the number zero for their jersey

1:35.8

absolutely astonished me. First of all, I was surprised that zero was considered a number for the

1:44.0

purposes of basketball jerseys.

1:46.2

This policy actually demonstrates an extraordinarily sophisticated understanding of numbers.

1:52.6

The fact is, humankind was very slow to recognize the idea that zero could be a number.

1:58.7

How could nothing be something?

...

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