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Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The teenager faster than a calculator

Global News Podcast

BBC

Daily News, News

4.3 β€’ 8.2K Ratings

πŸ—“οΈ 19 October 2024

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Meet the 14-year-old human calculator. Aaryan Shukla has been practising mental maths since the age of 6 β€” and holds a Guinness World Records title.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service.

0:05.0

I'm poor Moss and in this edition we meet the teenage human calculator.

0:12.0

It feels good and amazing when I complete the task correctly.

0:17.0

Also, it was wonderful to be able to say because you helped us to complete this clinical trial we will now be able to use

0:26.3

this treatment or it to be available to other women in the future.

0:29.8

The new treatment which could slash the risk of dying from cervical cancer

0:34.5

and the festival hoping to change the perception of East Asian music.

0:39.2

There is a whole wealth of culture from all of East and Southeast Asia that is very very unique

0:45.7

and very very representative of day-to-day life for a lot of people. We start with a puzzle, or maybe two. What's the square root of 93?

1:01.3

All right, here's another one.

1:02.5

What day of the week was it on the 12th of August, 1832?

1:07.4

You don't know?

1:08.4

Well, me neither, but I have had the chance to speak to a 14-year-old boy who can work out the answer to questions like this and in the blink of an eye.

1:17.0

Aryan Shukler has just won the Mental Calculation World Cup for the second time and also holds a Guinness World Records title.

1:25.2

Arian spoke to me from his home near Mumbai, India and told me first how his

1:30.0

unusual talent was first spotted.

1:32.0

My parents noticed this first that I was doing his unusual talent was first spotted.

1:32.6

My parents noticed this first that I was doing something extraordinary

1:37.3

and my parents then researched about the mental match and its competitions.

1:42.1

One of the exercises you did was multiplying eight digit numbers together

1:46.4

and it says that you managed 28 of these in 10 minutes which I've got to say I find incredible I'm going to give you a chance to show us

1:54.5

here's two eight-digit numbers to multiply together 17,4872, multiplied by 12,945,190.

...

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