Ideas

Twenty-seven can be a pivotal and tumultuous age. It’s held up as the year of peak performance in many sports and it's also seen as a cursed age for pop and rock stars, exemplified by the so-called 27 Club. Artists like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, all died at 27. As part of our series, The Greatest Numbers of All Time, IDEAS producer Chris Wodskou makes the case for a number that may not stick out in your mind but is more significant than you think.

More episodes in this series:

Listen to 12 is Sublime

Listen to The Curse of 13

Guests in this podcast:

David Awosoga is a PhD student in Statistics at University of Waterloo and sports performance data analyst.

Alan Cross is a music historian, broadcaster, and host of The Ongoing History of New Music podcast

Dianna Kenny is a professor emerita of psychology and music at University of Sydney and psychotherapist in private practice.

Michael Owen is a retired clinical psychologist and author of The 27 Club.

Maria Westerstahl is senior lecturer at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

Complete. Whole. Divine order. That's just the start of what makes the humble dozen extraordinary. It's one of only two numbers ever discovered in mathematics to be “sublime.” Twelve makes a number of appearances in pop culture, in religion, in non-fiction, everything from the 12 days of Christmas to the 12 people it takes to form a criminal jury. Still need convincing of 12’s perfection and indispensability? Check your watch.

More episodes in our series, The Greatest Numbers of All Time:

Listen to The Curse of 13

Guests in this episode:

Glen Van Brummelen is a professor of mathematical sciences at Trinity Western University.

Ainsley Hawthorn is a cultural historian and nonfiction writer. She has a PhD in Near Eastern Civilizations from Yale University.

Has there ever been a number more maligned in western culture than 13? So feared, it's got its own horror-film franchise. So infamously unlucky, a good many of us avoid it en masse. We've just blindly accepted its bad reputation. As part of our series, The Greatest Numbers of All Time, IDEAS explores where our irrational fear and uncomfortable feelings about 13 began. *All five episodes in our number series will be available daily in our feed this week.*

Listen to 12 is Sublime

Guests in this episode:

Stephen Winick is a folk life specialist at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress.

Barry Markovsky is distinguished professor emeritus of sociology at University of South Carolina. His latest book is Everyday Extraordinary: A Scientist Ponders a Lifetime of Magical, Bizarre, and Paranormal Experiences.

Claire Potter is an author of parenting books, including Getting the Little Blighters to Behave and the creator of the online programme Tiny Bites for parents of picky eaters.

Rabbi Heschel Greenberg is the founder and director of the Jewish Discovery Center in Buffalo, New York. He has written many books including Tefillin: Judaism's Crown.

It's tempting to think suffering should be avoided at all costs, but moral suffering has its own distinct standing. It signals a moral conscience. Every day people consume real time violence, grief, war and genocide through screens and experience moral upending. Without a moral compass there’s no motivation to address necessary issues.

Guests in this episode:

Cynda Rushton is a nurse and a professor of nursing and bioethics at Johns Hopkins University.

Robert Meagher is an emeritus professor at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Thea Lim is a novelist, culture writer, and creative writing teacher in Toronto.

Former IDEAS writer-broadcaster David Cayley passed away at his home on Wednesday June 10, surrounded by family. To honour his legacy, we wanted to share part of a 2006 conversation David had with Irish philosopher Richard Kearney on the space for theism within atheism, and/or atheism within theism.

Richard Kearney is a philosophy professor at Boston College and University College, Dublin. He has written many books on modern philosophy and culture, including The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion and Anatheism: Returning to God After God.