Up Next
Back to Show
It's Okay to Be Smart
How Did X Become the Unknown (and so much else)?
Season 11
Episode 17
Despite being one of the rarest letters in English, the letter X is everywhere. We sign letters with it, we rate movies with it, we name all sorts of things after it. We’re kind of obsessed with it. And that’s probably all thanks to math, where x stands for the unknown. But how x took on this role is a bit of an unknown itself, and the theories that are out there are truly bizarre.
Support Provided By
Season
12:15
These diamond makers create one of the most amazing materials on Earth — from dead people.
11:20
Learn nature’s ultimate game of hide-and-seek, and the way to win this game is all in the brain.
11:17
Nature has had to come up with some crazy ways to survive winter. None are weirder than hibernation.
12:40
Political scientist Don Green joins Joe to figure out the complex psychological and social factors t
16:27
Why do certain sounds make some of us so upset?!
11:43
Despite what you may have heard or learned in school, the sun is NOT the center of the solar system.
10:23
People see faces everywhere thanks to a quirk of the brain called visual pareidolia.
10:00
Why do the same, self-repeating patterns appear in trees, rivers, lightning, and even our bodies?
15:25
Our animal brains deal with quantities in very specific, and fascinating, ways.
12:54
Can new technologies make death prediction even more accurate?
21:33
AI may help us talk to whales soon. But should we?!
10:40
The cosmic distance ladder is the world’s longest ruler, built to measure the universe.