The Science of Coincidence

Stuff To Blow Your Mind

iHeartPodcasts

Science, Life Sciences, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences

4.3 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2015

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What are we to make of coincidence? From the numerological cats cradles we weave around famous events to the curious ways human lives converge through time, coincidence seems to fly in the face of reason and even suggest the supernatural. In this episode

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
0:03.5	Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from How StuffWorks.com.
0:16.9	Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
0:18.7	My name is Robert Lamb.
0:19.6	And I'm Joe McCormick.
0:37.5	Yeah, you all may remember Joe from Forward Thinking. One of our sister podcasts, I actually appeared on a couple of episodes to talk about monsters with you guys. Right. Was it last October? Yeah, I think so. Yes, but we talked about monsters and the future of monsters. That was really fun. That was.
0:37.9	That was a fun one.
0:38.6	Got into some of the sci-fi possibilities for the future in terms of monstrosity.
0:45.2	And Joe's joining me this week, filling in for Julie, to talk about the science of coincidence.
0:51.3	So I've got one for you, Robert.
0:53.2	Hit me.
0:54.0	Tell me if you've heard this one before. Okay.
0:57.2	Lincoln and Kennedy. Oh, yes. You know this? I was first exposed to this in middle school
1:02.2	when a teacher of mine gave us a list of these like it was some kind of really important fact
1:06.7	we needed to learn. But yeah, how about this? Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, two American presidents, both were elected to Congress
1:15.8	in the year 46, Lincoln in 1846, Kennedy in 1946.
1:20.8	Okay.
1:21.3	Both were elected president in the year 60, Lincoln in 1860, Kennedy in 1960.
1:31.1	Each of their last names both contain seven letters.
1:37.3	And then there's this whole list of coincidences that keeps going. They were both shot in the head.
1:44.2	They were both assassinated by Southerners. They were both succeeded by Southerners. Their vice presidents were Southerners.
1:47.0	Both vice presidents were named Johnson.
	...

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