Welcome to The Recalibrated. I'm your
host, Meade Kincke, and
I'm here to take us through
the journey of being in the service,
transitioning out, and
what today looks like.
Our guest, Scott Flansburg, served over
six years with the United States Air
Force Office of Special
Investigations working in the
Tech Services Division
supporting high-level investigative
and intelligence operations. Today he is
the founder and CEO of Herkimer Originals
and its foundation, where he preserves
the true origins of
basketball.
The National Counting Bee,
a contest to encourage mental maths
exercises, and Scott is
known worldwide as
The Human Calculator, where he helps people
of all ages see the beauty and
power of numbers with confidence.
Scott holds the Guinness World Record for
fastest human calculator and
he is the best-selling author
of Math Magic and Math Magic for Kids.
He has been featured on
countless talk shows sharing his work
and encouraging a better understanding
and appreciation of mathematics.
Scott, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
I'm glad to have you, good sir.
So, as we always do in the wonderful
tradition, let's start with "The Why".
What drew you to the Air Force?
1988 or 1982, I was getting out of high
school and I was going to go to a college
in upstate New York near my hometown.
I had a personality
conflict with my English teacher.
I took advanced English,
AP English it was called.
He ended up giving me a 69 average.
You have to have a 70 to
get a credit for that class.
In the state of New York, you have to
have an English credit
in order to graduate.
It was my senior year.
I had signed up for delayed enlistment
program for the Air Force.
It was still optional, like I could have
withdrawn, but I had everything done.
As soon as that happened, my scholarships
for math and everything else evaporated.
I was very distraught.
I only found out two
days before graduation.
I had to turn my gown back in.
I didn't get to walk across the stage.
I had to cancel my party.
I didn't go to any other parties.
I was so upset, and just left for the
Air Force like the next day.
I just said, "Hey, let's go." Oh my goodness!
So, that was a... So full blown scorched earth,
just like, "No, I'm
done. We're done now."
I knew I didn't want to stay where I was
in upstate New York in that little town.
I had been there my whole life.
I thought going a couple hours away to
college would be enough.
When that all disappeared, I couldn't
wait to get the service just
to have that option available.
So, I got lucky that I had set up for
that DEP beforehand.
Okay.
Well, that's uncustomary.
I'll say you have a unique tale.
So, tell us about humble beginnings.
You go from day one going,
"I guess high school is over," to
"Bam, in the service."
How did you start out?
I didn't know what was coming.
Honestly, I was so unprepared because I
I really thought I was going to go to
college and take math and play baseball.
That was my whole world.
You're going to get an extremely short
haircut and you're going to have somebody
telling you what to do for the next
several months, if not years.
It was quite an adjustment to go from
one extreme to the other.
Yeah, but, my dad served in the
Air Force for a brief time.
He actually ran a farm when he was put in
the Air Force or went in the Air Force.
A bunch of stuff happened back in upstate
New York where people had to go back to
help with their farm.
So, my dad actually went back.
But he always said he loved the Air Force
and had a great time.
So, it was okay.
I wasn't totally shocked,
but I wasn't mentally prepared.
It sounds like not mentally and probably
not emotionally as well.
You know the joke thing of you break up
with a girl and you
get the breakup beard?
You kind of did the opposite of like,
"Okay, broke up with the high school, had
the head shaved," and then
just went straight into it.
Yeah, it was quite a shock.
It was probably a good way to go in
though because I never could have been
prepared for what
life in the military was like.
I just, you know, I was a sports guy and I was a math
person always thinking about math and
numbers and things like that.
To go into a space where you really need
to be focused when
you go in the military.
You know, they don't accept anything less.
So, yeah, it was quite an adjustment.
Yeah, it very much
Again, we've talked about this a lot.
It's regimented.
We can say it that way.
You know who you're answering to.
You know who you're answering
to you and what time you eat.
You know what time you do things.
So, it's a little bit jarring.
That's hilarious.
So, going from day one just thrown into
the dark, how did you end up
in the tech services division?
Yeah, I got really lucky.
I was down in, let's see, Lackland
Air Force Base doing my basic training.
And, I ended up at
Keesler, Biloxi for my training.
I was 702 is what
they ended up putting me.
I've been to Keesler.
Yeah.
And so, you know,
everything is different.
I mean, not just the job, the
environment, the location.
And I didn't know where I was going.
You know, at Lackland, you just sort of
find out what's going on.
So, yeah, there were a lot of surprises,
a lot of twists and turns.
And it just helped me realise that I was
completely out of control
of what was happening to me.
And so, I was at the base and somehow a
TV station heard about my abilities to do
numbers in my head very quickly.
Oh, that's so funny.
And they asked permission to
come on base to interview me.
And the base commander was like, "What?
Who? What's this guy? What's going on?"
And so, he had me go into his office and
he goes, "Why do these
people want to talk to you?
This is very, you know,
not normal in the service."
And I told him, you know, what I could do
and gave him a
demonstration, him and his staff.
And they said, "Oh, you know what? All
right, we'll let them interview you."
And that moment of having to be in front
of him is what afforded me the
opportunity to get a special duty
assignment to work with the OSI in Japan.
And so, I went from being a... I was
supposed to be a 702 at a church, an Air
Force church up in Northern California.
That's so funny.
I ended up being in Japan working for OSI
District 46 and got into the
counterintelligence division and got to
see all the crazy things that we were
doing, you know, even
back then in the 80s.
That is, to say, a stark difference.
Now, I know you technically already have
the moniker of the,
you know, the human calculator,
but it sounds like it would have been
much more apt to just call you the
human kite because you were just tethered,
like, "Where's the wind blowing? I'm
going to Japan? Is that... sure.
I'm a little tall for Japan,
but fine. That'll be fine."
Yeah, that worked out. Well, I ended up
getting married over there and stuff.
But, the first job that, you know, when
you get your job offers, when you're
going through the training, the first one
was a refrigerator repairman.
And I was like, "Well, I got no
inclination towards that."
Freon not in the future?
Nah. And then the 702 thing came up and
it was very flexible and the assignments
were very cool. Like, you know, 702 opens
up the whole world for you.
And, then this meeting with the base
commander where he just, you know, a week
later, I was told that I was offered a
special duty assignment to
go to Japan for four years.
And I was like, "Yeah,
that sounds fun. I'll go."
I can only imagine, like, again, the
playing back that particular exchange,
we'll call it that way, of, "Hold on a
moment. Why are the news
cameras? Who know we're here?
Who's causing trouble? What's
he called? Scott. Get him in."
Like, it's just one of those kinds of
things of like, "We don't have
celebrities here, sir
What are you doing?"
Yeah. And it came out of right field,
even the interview. You know, I think it
was one of my family members lived nearby
and, you know, knew somebody or something.
I mean, it was just so random. The whole
thing was that I went from being a
refrigerator repairman in Mississippi to
being a 702 in California at a church.
For an Air Force preacher or not a
preacher, whatever they call them. And... Pastor.
A pastor. And then a special duty
assignment to Tokyo.
So, yeah, all within a couple of weeks.
And so, yeah, it was interesting. And
then I ended up meeting my wife in Japan.
And, you know, that was fantastic. She
was a daughter of a chief master sergeant
who his his wife was full Japanese and
they had lived there forever.
So, I got totally integrated into the
space. You know, I learned Japanese and I
got to do a lot of stuff for the Air
Force, you know, in a role where I could
use my fluency to, you know, just help
out in certain situations like golf
tournaments and softball tournaments.
So I ended up doing all these things
that, you know, I just never saw coming.
Definitely not. Oh, my goodness.
And then go figure that, you know, I got
divorced years and years later, but the
next girl I fell in love with turned
turned out to be from where I was
supposed to be
stationed as the preacher's 702.
So you came back around.
But I never lived there, but but I ended up I ended up
having to go there to visit her family.
So, yeah, it was just very surreal.
Oh, that's so fun. So, yeah, like one way
or another, there's this there's a little
pin in space and time with
with with her name on it.
You go like, no, no, no, no, no. You took
a detour. We got your back.
Yeah, I just and, you know, that's it. It
was interesting because I guess just
because maybe my math brain, my numbers
brain, I love to understand and I don't
want to say control, but, you know, sort
of know what's going on.
You know, it's like math. You just you
know... See through the fog.
Yeah, and, then to get thrown into six weeks of
basic training where I had no control and
didn't know what was coming.
The word "surrender" might come to mind.
I learned quickly. I learned quickly to
surrender. And it just wasn't my it's not
my skill set. I'm just the way my brain
is wired and my, my nature. It was it was
it was awkward with the military.
Even when I was in it full force, you
know, I just I never
felt comfortable completely.
Yeah. Being like the entrepreneurial
mindset, it's not exactly the place where
it it's a bit more
rigid. So that that tracks.
Well, like you said, the regiment, the
regiment, the structure did help me in a
lot of ways because I didn't have any
structure. I wasn't regimented.
We had eight kids in my family. You can
get away with anything. You know, you
disappear for a week. They didn't even
notice. So to go from that to, you know,
here we are. Well, what's the old phrase
that people, it's coming back around. But,
the television advert that was on late
night and it says, you
know, "It's eight o'clock.
Do you know where your children are?"
And, people think today that that's a joke
thing. And it's like, no, that's real.
That's one hundred percent.
You go like just be in by the time the
street lamps turn on, and you go, yeah,
no, that's that's a thing.
That was the rules. Be home when it
when it's dark out, you know.
How do you wrangle up eight kids and feed
them and count them and make sure they
all went to bed and didn't sneak out a
window and, you know,
Not missing body parts.
It was so, yeah. And then to go to basic
training where somebody knew where you were every
second and what you were going to do
next. And so, yeah, it
was it was a wake up call.
But at the same time, I there are certain
things about the military environment
that were very satisfying and very I
liked the predictability
of it once I got situated.
So, yeah, a lot of good lessons for life.
I love that. Okay, let's do this. What's
something in your "kite flying adventures"
We'll say it that way.
That you are ever so glad that
smartphones were not around to record?
Oh, man. Listen, I wish they still weren't around
for the most part. I think it doesn't
help as much as we think. That's fair.
You know, in some ways, I wish there were
smartphones because there are some
moments in your life that
you truly wish you captured.
But who carried around a camera all the
time? Social media, you know, using
social media as your storybook for your
life and stuff like that.
So, but no, I got to travel the world.
You know, when you're overseas in Tokyo
in the Air Force, the one cool thing
about being at Yakota Air Base was
several planes coming and going.
And I was living right on the tarmac,
basically in a dorm. And you can walk
down to the flight ops and for five
dollars jump on a C5 to Hong Kong for the
weekend and stay at a ten dollar hotel
for military guys over in
Hong Kong and go shopping.
You know, a hundred dollars, you couldn't
carry it all back. So, yeah, there was a
lot of cool stuff I
wish I could recapture.
I like it. You flipped it the other way.
We a lot of times have stories on the
show where, let's say, infantry and
shenanigans and things, and you go like,
oh, no, that one really
didn't need to be on film.
Well, I don't know how I got picked as a
basic training. I got picked
as the guide for our watches.
You looked confident. That's what it is.
Worst, worst guy ever to
have in front of
A large group of people trying to look
structured. And I, my whole goal...
No crowdome for you yelling at the crowd?
No, my goal was to make everybody laugh.
So I could get people smirking and Fair.
laughing to the point where we got in
trouble many times, you know, by our
folks. So, yeah, it
was a tough adjustment.
I get it. Okay. Okay. Oh, goodness.
So, nearing the end of your service, what
kind of drove the decision to retire?
Well, I didn't retire. I got out after
six years. I had signed up for four, and
then I re-listed for six, not knowing
what I was getting into because just a
couple months later, my supervisor's son
failed second grade math.
And, I spent some time with him and I
showed him how to do some stuff that I
knew. And I got a call from his teacher
and he said, are you the guy that's
talking to this kid because he's the
worst math student in our class. And now
he's teaching me stuff. What happened?
You're like, this is, I've never seen
this kind of a turnaround. What is, what
magic are you just
like sprinkling on this?
Yeah. And so I got invited to go speak at
a school and, I went to my supervisor, my
other supervisor, and I said, hey, can I
get, you know, an hour or two off in the
afternoon to go speak to these kids down,
you know, like 15 minutes away.
And he goes, no. I was like, oh, okay.
That's what we're at.
How very kind of you.
Yeah. Yeah. Like zero. Yeah. Anyway, I
remember his name just
got, never forget. But yeah.
And so I had to take personal time off to
go visit the school and I never performed
in front of kids or at a school or
anything like that before. I just did
this stuff for myself.
Like no public
speaking, no anything like that, at all?
No, I was 18. I, you know, I didn't even
make it out of high school, you know,
what, what, no college. Fair enough.
And, you know, the last thing on my menu
was, you know, go, go perform in front of
a lot of people and, you know, teach
them. So I do this 30, 40 minute show in
front of the kids and the teacher said,
can you show some of the
things you taught Travis?
So I showed him some shortcuts in mental
math and how to think about numbers. And
I got a call back the next day and they
invited me to speak at every school in the school district.
So now I didn't have enough personal time
to do that. So I had to go back and ask
for time and they said no. And so I
took more personal time and I went and
started visiting the schools.
And, one of the schools invited the
parents, and one of the parents was a
reporter and wrote an article in the
Montgomery newspaper about this guy who's
serving in the Air Force who came to my
kid's school and freaked us
out and beat the calculators.
And then he showed my kid how to do some
mental math. And that little story went
on the wire, and I got a call from a
national television show in New York City
called Regis & Kathie Lee.
It's a small show. You
may have heard of it.
Morning show 9 a.m. ABC. And, uh,
And I was like, oh, this is interesting. And, so that
inspired me to try to get out of the Air
Force because I knew I had found
something where I was
using my gift for good.
So, I went to my supervisor and I said,
"Can I please get out of the service?"
And he said, "No." And I was like, oh, okay. So I
manufactured an exit, and it took a couple
months. You know, it
was a little awkward.
I had to spend 30 days at the dorm during
my during my dismissal to clean all the
bathrooms and the dormitories, you know,
whatever manual labor...
They put you on latrine duty is what
you're trying to say.
For 30 days, in front of all these guys were I
went from OSI to be in, and then I was a
computer programmer at Maxwell Air Force
Base or Gunter Air Force Station. And... Gotcha.
you know, my dorm was near
the cops and all these guys.
And you know, I was having fun. They were
all friends. And then the last 30 days of
my Air Force time, I was doing latrine
duty and it was a very humbling
experience. And I just I remember how
excited I was to to start
this new part of my life.
I cannot get away from you all fast
enough. Yeah. And you know, I could I
could tell, I was like, oh, I'm going to get
invited to travel around the world and
speak and do things and go on
national TV shows and stuff.
And so that distraction kept me sane
through the 30 days of that. Yeah. And I got
out, and I started I started I went on
Regis & Kathie Lee, and at the end of the
interview, Regis says, "Scott, you're like a...
you're like a human calculator."
And that's where I got my name, and
I trademarked it, and within a year I was doing
TV shows around the country and I got a
book deal and did infomercials and on and
on and on. So that was back in late 80s,
even when infomercials are still a new
thing. So it happened quite quickly.
Oh, goodness. Well, first off, you
know, I think we have a giant thank you
to Regis Philbin for for giving you the
moniker, and of all things, you're like,
that does have a ring to it. Thank you,
sir. I'll write that down.
And what's crazy is Regis passed away a
couple of years ago. And before he passed
away, he was a guest host on a TV show in
L.A. that I had been on a couple of times
and they invited me back.
And they informed Regis of the situation
that, you know, here's this guy's the
human calculator. They told my story. And
then they said, by the way, we just went
there. Remember this, but you actually
nicknamed him The Human Calculator.
And he was so awestruck. He was just so
glad and grateful that he had such an
impact in my life and saw what I did with
it. So it was full circle for Regis. You
know, I got a great picture
with Regis and Larry King.
Oh, that's excellent.
That day. And I've been on Larry's show
many times. And for Regis to see that and
I got to thank him face to face. And
yeah, so full circle.
I mean, that that's just that's so
wonderful, you know, because a lot of
times you already know when you deal with
some people, some people, things matter
to some things don't.
And to have it where he's like, that I
did that. Okay, I did good. I did good.
You know, like that kind
of thing. I love that.
Well, it's one thing, like if I ran into him at
a restaurant, and I got to say thank you.
It's another thing when there's a camera on
his face and I got to see the replay and
see his reactions and how much of an
impact it had on him.
So, yeah, it was a great, it was a great
thrill to thank a person that had such an
impact in my life that
didn't even really understand.
I mean, the next day he was he had
another show with five more guests, you
know, so he can't keep track of
everything. So, yeah, it was
really nice to shake his hand.
Oh, that's so that's just so wonderful.
Like he gave you your name with a, with
just with just a conversation and you go,
I don't know how
that's just, it's perfect.
And Reg, Regis is just being Regis,
you know, he is... Just talking, just talking.
That's right. And he for him to just
throw out that nickname, if you will.
Yeah! In retrospect, it's really shocking
because, you know, let's see, 10 years
later, I discovered a pattern in numbers
that I believes help everyone
feel like a human calculator.
And so to go from just Scott to Regis
calling me the human calculator, then 10
years later, having an epiphany about
numbers that is going to revolutionise
the way people learn arithmetic and make
them feel like a human calculator.
I, Regis couldn't
even have ever imagined that.
Like you go, you just you just said
something brilliant and witty, but you
don't realise you gave me an identity.
And I'm like, yeah, that's huge.
And it was my first show. It
was my first national TV show.
Well, you did a bang up job, good sir.
I'll just say. It's crazy statistically.
Well, you already know it only needs one.
That's all that a win
starts with is just one.
Well, and I think that that really gives
me perspective, because when I'm
performing or working with a company or a
group or teacher workshops, whatever.
Yeah. I understand the significance that
one person can have in somebody's life.
And if I have a little kid in front of me
who's afraid of math and I
have a moment to change that.
I respect that opportunity tremendously
because you just never know what's going
to come out of that. Now I've been doing
this human calculator thing for let's
see, twelve, thirty, almost forty years.
And I've met kids of kids of kids that I
visited their parents school when they
were a kid. So I got to see a
full circle many times now.
Yeah, you're just a living legacy of
like, no, no, no, I like there's a film
Doc Hollywood with Michael J. Fox
Yeah, such a good. I feel like I'm the
only one that know about that, but it's
such a good one. And it's the you know,
the old town doctor and it's like, no, I
delivered your father.
And you go, I think Doc has
the keys. I'll just say it.
It's a it's very humbling to realise the
potential you have in a person's life and
to be haphazard about it would be,
excuse me, just terrible.
You know, I'm really grateful to have I
have an attitude of
gratitude towards the impact.
Saying thank you does a lot.
Yeah, it does.
Well, you've sort of, let's say, jumped
the gap a bit. But what was the first
moment, and it may be the exact same one.
But what's the first moment where you
realised, okay, civilian life is going to
be a touch different?
When I knew I was getting out of the Air
Force, I was in Montgomery, Alabama. And
I reached out to a friend of a friend.
His name's Don Davenport.
He was the biggest marketing guy in
Alabama, Montgomery, Alabama. And he was
he had a marketing agency and they were
working with all the biggest clients.
And I asked if I could take him to lunch
and just explain to him what was going on
and see if he saw an angle that might
help me, you know,
acclimate to civilian life.
And, Don, we had a great lunch. We ended
up having several more in
that next 30 to 60 days.
And, he really helped me understood the
opportunity that was available to me and
helped me skip many painful lessons that
I would have gone through
if I hadn't met with him.
So, always grateful to I call him Triple
D, Don Davenport, DDDs or
his initial. So 3D, Triple D.
Triple D. Oh, my goodness. Now, I'll ask
on the other end of it, is there anything
that did not translate well?
In regards to what?
Coming out of the service into civilian
life, is there something you go like,
this didn't make sense to try and keep?
No, I was. I was. I was very content.
I was, you know, you do 30 days latrine
duty or ready to exit.
That's fair. That's fair.
I'm out.
So were there any kind of with the,
at this point, like four times reborn, were
there any identity struggles like when
you got out of the not
so figurative latrine?
Well, you realise that there's not a
cheque coming on the first or 15 from the
government that you know is coming and
it's going to be good.
You're all of a sudden, you're responsible
for generating revenue. And, you know,
that's quite a wake up call to go from,
you know, being an
employee to being an entrepreneur.
So, one of the things I've learned, Meade, is that
having a gift for numbers and being
The Human Calculator is one thing.
Being a business manager or an
entrepreneur or running companies, things
like that, that's a whole different skillset
that doesn't matter if you're
The Human Calculator when
it comes to that stuff.
And so, I've tried all combinations of
managers and different ways to manage
those parts of my life without being that
guy, because as I've learned, it's really
difficult to represent
yourself in any negotiation.
It's always better to have somebody else.
So I got lucky with a great attorney
early on, Mark Wright,
which helped me out a lot.
And, I tried a few different avenues and,
you know, nothing stays the same. You
always have to be evolving. And now I
have AI managers and agents
that do most of this stuff for me.
So yeah, it's a whole brand new one. Whether you want to or not.
Yeah, it's really exciting. I mean, where
we're at with this transition right now,
not to get too far ahead, but it is that
this environment really makes you rethink
how you do what you do and why you do
what you do and makes
it easier to package.
And having a professional always there
ready to talk to you or give you feedback
with no fear of making you angry or
upset. Just, hey, you asked, here's the situation.
No more yes, man, that kind of thing of
like, well, how about this boss?
And you go, yeah, we had a phrase we used
to call those brown noses, like not to be
crude about it, but it's real. And you
go, listen, if I wanted someone to say
yes to me, I'd get a machine that just,
you know, bash the yes button.
If I'm making a mistake, call me on it
because I'm about to go and perform.
There's nowhere to hide now. You know, so
yeah, I went through all that. So very
exciting, very exciting times. And, you
know, I'm called The Human Calculator.
There's the human. And then you got the
calculator, you know, the physical object
that people use the human, which is me.
And so I became the, I got in the
Guinness Book of World Records as the
fastest human calculator and knew that I
was probably the fastest
person on the planet Earth.
And that's quite a, quite a claim, quite
a honour. And...
Well, when you live up to it, though, so it's like, well,
there it is. But my I have some really good
friends. And they're very straightforward
with me. And the show
started being too much about me.
I was like, look at me. Look what I can
do. Look at me, me, me, me. They helped
me transform the show into, okay, show
who you are, but then how can you help
them? And that simple strategy or
approach just changed my entire
presentation, the delivery, everything,
because I was going somewhere with it
instead of just look at me,
which was very refreshing.
Yeah, well, it flips it on the head of
you're no longer peacocking,
you're teaching, you know, and... It's so great.
You can be great. You can be shiny. Yeah.
Well, that's the thing. And that's the
guy that no one invite to drink. You go
like, oh, let's go out and party not with
him. Like, oh, but he's famous. And you
go, yeah, he's also boring and rude.
You'll find out. I promise.
Yeah. And so that was my whole goal ever
since I guess it was 94/95. I just I just
decided to try to become a better human
instead of a faster calculator. And that
really created a situation where the
students reactions to my shows was so
much more genuine and authentic and
inspiring that I just, you know, to me,
it's a dream come true to have a gift,
that I can use for good to help others.
So, yeah, that's that's
really been satisfying.
That's just wonderful. And like, all I
can think of, like, really just
absolutely wonderful shows and, you know,
in the realm of science, like shows that
I absolutely adore, like Mr. Wizard's
World and and watch Mr.
Wizard and all of that.
I actually we have for my children, like
hand signed magazines from, you know,
that family and all of that. This is
stuff that yeah, stuff. It means
something. Those are things that you can
look at Mr. Wizard and like it was there
at the birth of like laserdisc
and really amazing technology.
And you're doing the same thing where you
go, well, what if we broke down the
walls? What if we taught someone
something like you go? Yeah, I like, and I
think that's the human aspect. You know,
there's there's the man that can be the
peacock and can be on the totem pole and
like, look how high I am.
Do you know what's really fun, though?
Drinks in the parlour and playing, you
know, fun tunes and sharing stories and
all of that, like being unobtainable,
I mean, that's that's neat for about a half
a second, I think is about the timeframe
where you go. That's cool.
But, people want to hear you, smell, share
the same air, and the fact that you're
doing that shows, you know, humility and
humanity. And I applaud you for it.
Well, I had an interesting moment. I was
I journal a lot. And I don't know if you remember Oh, okay.
the big pens that used to have,
well, they still do. They have four colours.
You could click blue. Oh, yeah. The ones you
could, yeah. And so... I always used to try and push
them all down at once at one time.
Oh, well, I would use different colours
for different things. You know,
obviously, green is money. Red is stress.
You know, like I just had a colour coded
journal. And when you flip through, you
can be like, oh, man, look how stressed I
was during this little run. Yeah.
Look how look how excited I was here. So
it really does add a whole other level of
understanding your journals. You know, so
I had a had a moment where I caught
myself writing and I started
a sentence with the word I.
And when you write a capital I, there's a
one. And then there's a bar on the bottom
of the bar on the top. That's how we
write a capital I. Right. And for some
reason, I noticed that if I'm that one in
the middle of that I, there's a bar above
me and a bar below me.
And it's just me bouncing back and forth.
Me, me, me, me, me, me. It's like my ego.
And so I decided to rewrite the letter I
and I made it a small I. And when you do
a small I, you've got the one. But then
you got a little zero, a little halo on
top. And I said a prayer. I just said,
help me understand how to be a better
human. And that was the portal. That was
the difference. That
silly little symbology.
Of allowing things in instead of me just
talking about me. And I went through this
transformation because of one letter and
just writing it differently. So I share
that when I speak at events and it really
resonates with a lot of people because.
And I can understand why.
Yeah, you know, we all get stuck in our
own way. And it really
helped me get out of my way.
I love that. Well, to those of you listening at home,
if you're loving what you're hearing as
much as we're loving what we're doing,
smash that subscribe button. And we've
touched only just a little bit. But what
if you needed to wrap it up in a little
parcel? What is your mission now?
Well, I didn't know this when I started.
I really just thought I was going to be
an entertainer and became an "edutainer",
educational entertainer. And, the late
90s, we were all going to die from Y2K.
And, I was really nervous about that.
That was true. Oh, my goodness. The
computers with the
stickers of like, are you Y2K compliant?
Yeah. And, I was I was a programmer for
the last two years I was in the Air Force,
so I knew a little bit about
understanding what was
going on with Y2K. But... Sure.
And when I got out of the service in 88,
I, I ended up in Los Angeles for a month
because I had been asked to go on
The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. And it
took a lot longer than I
thought to get out there.
And I didn't have any resources. I just
got out of the service. I had no paycheque
coming in. I mean, you know, I was
whole new thing. And I ended up in
Florida. A buddy of mine flew me down
there to help him with his new company.
And, I was like, yeah, I'll do anything,
you know, because I wasn't monetising
this human calculator thing. I was just getting
started. And he had invented
a glow in the dark doorknob.
That he was selling to hotels as a safety Wildly specific.
device for people in a room that don't
know where it is. So if the alarm goes
off at night, you can at least find the
door. And, I was like, all
right. Well, he's paying me.
And I got to go try to sell these things.
So I got a he gave me a rental car and a
hotel room for 30 days down in Florida
and said, Okay, here you go.
Go sell some light bulbs.
Glow in the dark doorknobs. And after 30
days, I had sold exactly
zero glow in the dark doorknobs.
To be fair, this does sound like a weird
bar wager, like a pub wager where you
go, like, hold on, I have an invisible
fire extinguisher. You go.
It was, you know, I was in I was in a
tough spot. So it seemed like it made
sense. And, so after 30 days, I lost the
car, I lost the hotel room,
and I wasn't sure what to do.
And my sister bought me an airplane
ticket to fly out to Phoenix, Arizona,
where I ended up living for over 30
years. So, you know, I flew in and like
and it was it was beautiful
weather during the winter.
I said, okay, what is this? Never left. But,
the day before I left Florida, I was
waiting for my plane, and I walked into
the West Palm Beach Public Library, and I
was just, you know, I go to the math
section, which is not very crowded.
And it's always in the back. And,
I found a book, and this guy said, hey, there's a
pattern in our calendar. And if you're
good at crunching numbers, you can figure
out what day of the week a date falls on.
So I wrote this formula down on a little
three and a half by five index card with
a little pencil at the library. And I got
on the plane the next day, and I was
wiring this equation,
this algorithm into my head.
And I could do it. You could tell me a
date and I could figure out what day of
the week it was on. And I landed in
Phoenix. My sister picked me up at the
airport and I said, what's your birthday?
Tell me, tell me a date like your
birthday, whatever you want.
I'll tell you what day of the week it
was. And she tells me her birthday, and I
said, oh, that was a Saturday. And she
goes, who cares? I was like, oh, man,
I just did a lot of work there.
Thank you for deflating my
feel good. I appreciate that.
I was on cloud nine. I went to cloud zero
and that's how I landed in Phoenix. And I
borrowed her boyfriend's bike and went,
rode a bike from school to school, asking
them to let me come in and talk.
So whenever I went, you know, it's just I
go back to those days and I think, holy
cow, you know, I was sleeping on the
couch, riding a bike to schools
unsolicited, hoping they would book me
days, weeks, or months later.
And so it was it was a rough start.
And that was back in 88/89.
But things picked up very quickly after
that. So yeah, it was very humbling. That
was a tough year getting out of the
service and starting something that, you
know, I had no idea what I was doing, basically.
So, what was the turning point? When did,
when did the as people were lovingly say,
when did the overnight success hit?
My first business partner, JB,
he said, hey, let's sit down. Let's let's
make a book. Let's sell something so you
don't have to be there all the time and
just tell me materialise this business.
And, we started a company and we moved to
Washington, D.C. We thought we had to be
near the National Education Association
and all these big organisations to have
an impact with education.
And, I started, we hired a big PR firm
and they were supposed to help me get on all these shows.
And, after two weeks of sitting in their
office, watching them try to book me on
every show around, in D.C., they booked me
on exactly zero shows. Ouch.
And I had been sitting there for two
weeks, watching them, listening to them.
How do they do it? What are they doing?
How do they approach it?
Then I said, you know, give me an office
for a day. Let me try to book myself. And,
less than a month later,
I was booked on CNN, and I'll never forget
the date. It was April 4th, 1990. It was
a Wednesday. And, I went on CNN.
Bobbie Battista was the host and it was,
you know, they were giving me like 15
minutes on CNN. And, you know, couldn't
believe it. I don't know
how I talked him into that.
But, so J.B. and his business, his
brother, Dennis, is another partner. They
decided to set up a 1-800 number so I
could say that 1-800
number and sell our books.
And, we got it all set up like to the day.
We were checking the numbers. We were
driving into CNN. Denny had one of the
new mobile phones in his car, and we were
driving to CNN... Oh, big Motorola.
Oh, the car phone. Gotcha. Oh, man. It was a big
deal. We were mobile, and... That was space age.
At the time, he was cutting edge. And,
we pulled into CNN. We're all excited. The
800 number is going to this big place in
Nebraska where there's thousands of
people ready to answer the
phone and take our orders.
And, we pull in and I get to the green
room, and J.B. and Denny are with me. And,
the producer comes in and says, Scott,
you know, this is a remote. You're going
to go in this room. There's a camera.
Bobbie's in New York. She's going to
interview you from New York.
And, all we ask is you can't say any 800
numbers. We don't allow advertising like
that on CNN from our guests. And all of
us were just so bummed out. And, Denny
says... How do I decodify this?
Yeah. So Denny says to me and J.B., I
think he goes, he goes, hey, if you get
out the 800 number, we'll go buy you a
new car. And I needed a car. So I was
like, all right, I'm motivated. So, I get
on CNN and I'm killing it. And Bobbie
Battista says, hey, do we have any do we
have any people who want to
calling in and ask Scott a question?
People were calling in. And the first
person that calls in says, Scott, how do
we get a hold of you to book you to come
to our school? And, do you have any books
that I can get for my kids? I said, well,
I do. And I do visit
schools. My office is in D.C.
And we have a, and Bobbie breaks in and
says, Scott has a 1-800 number. It's
1-800, you know, tri-math, whatever it
was. And. when she said it, I was just so
freaked out. And I said, that's right,
Bobbie. It's 1-800-879-6284. She did the
letters. I did the numbers just to double
it up. And I could hear J.B. and Denny in
the green room
yelling and screaming. Yeah.
Just losing it.
And so, and that ended up going 20 minutes
live on CNN. And at the end of the
interview, I said, Bobbie, if you could
just give out that number one more time
for the people that missed it during the
interview. And she said it again. And I
repeated it numerically again. I walked
out. We all did a group hug and went out,
bought me a car that next day.
So, and then, you know, we did a quarter
million dollars in sales that day off of
CNN. And I was like, okay, we found our
niche of how we need to do this. Yeah, definitely that.
So, I went from trying to book one school at a
time to one show at a time. And we fired
the PR firm that we had hired
to book me on all these shows.
I can't imagine why.
And so, yeah, it was. But but again, I
wouldn't have understood or respected
what it takes to get people on national
television unless I had to do it myself.
So I'm grateful for the opportunity to
play most of the roles that I had to have
in order to get where I am.
Well, I think I'm required for everyone
listening. What was the secret trick to
get you on on CNN? What was the angle?
How did you just ring up and say, oh,
yes, I work in the in the mail room.
Also, I'm really good at maths.
Yeah, it was, the best part was listening
to other people try to sell me for two
weeks, and seeing the gaps they had.
You just got to see what not to do. Yeah.
And then I, you know, the first few shows
I hit up didn't get any response or any
reaction sometimes. But I was working out
my pitch. And I'm telling you, people
take that as frustrating.
And, I looked at it as, holy cow, I'm really
figuring this out. I'm learning
everything not to say and what they need
to hear. And boy, that really helped me
sell myself and sell my products. So I'm
grateful for that experience of going
through that tough time.
I love it. And, that's, you know, it's a
honest thing to say where you go, well,
who can who can talk about you better
than you? Roughly no one. So, I know what
you've wrestled with. And the whole thing
of like feeling like you're braggadocious
or otherwise, and you go,
no, I'm just a businessman.
And, it can sound flat or it can sound
however you'd like it. But the thing
about it is, I think where it really
breaks is you see that the you have value
just in you and you go,
well, how do I take care of me?
Like I've talked about, you know, being a
pilot. And what's the rule on on a
jetliner? Put on your oxygen mask first.
You take care of you, you get to take
care of everyone else. And, I think a lot
of people unfortunately have the...
I don't matter because, you know, I need to feel
altruistic or otherwise, and you go,
well, you can't help if you're dead.
So, you should probably figure out a way
to make sure that you're taking care of.
And it does come back to your point about
the I. And, there is that in the crisis,
there is that in the moments where you
go, where's the food coming from? And, as
long as you get out of that moment, I
think everything's okay.
It's priceless because as I meet all
these people in my life now, you know,
I'm the chairman of world championships
and meet most of the top kids from around
the world that are going to be record
breakers and all these things.
My experience is priceless to them just
because I can relate to their situation
and help identify what they're missing,
what gaps they have and how to help fill
them. So yeah, I'm grateful to not just
be The Human Calculator.
You know, but to understand all the
things that happen around
me to allow that to happen.
I love it. So, I'll ask this. How did you
get involved in the great story of
basketball? What's
the story with Herkimer?
The small thing.
So, yeah, COVID hit in 2020. 2019, my dad had some
health issues. So I was back home in
upstate New York from Phoenix. And, I was
introduced to a book from 1952 that
claimed that basketball was invented in
my little hometown of Herkimer, New York.
And, I read that book and I called BS.
I said, listen, I would have heard about
this when I was a kid growing up,
if it was real. I read the book and I
said, if this book is real, then Herkimer
deserves to be on the map.
So, I went to the Historical Society at
Herkimer, and decided I was going to snuff
out this story in a couple of days. Just
go look at the old newspapers and say,
look, this book is full of it.
There's no way this happened.
You're like, where's your microfilm and
microfiche? I need to dig this up.
And newspapers from the 1800s, you know,
this happened in 1891. So microfiche, you
know, that's all I had
for a lot of this stuff.
Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed.
After about a week, I found more evidence
to support the story of origin.
You went the other way.
I did. I was very surprised. And after
after a few months, I had created quite a
trove of evidence to show that there's
more to the story and Herkimer. And then
I ran into these two guys in my research,
George Fosty and Darril Fosty.
They had written a book called, "Black Ice",
where they rewrote the history of ice
hockey. They showed that coloured leagues
were the major origin point of ice hockey
and rewrote ice hockey.
And they got destroyed for a decade by
everybody in hockey. And now they're
honoured at hockey tournaments across
Canada. They dropped the puck to start
the game. And so they
went through heck with that.
Well, when they finished their hockey
story, they decided to try this Herkimer
story. And I found an article they
published in 2010 saying, hey, we're
going to start looking into this Herkimer
basketball origin story.
Okay.
So I reached out to them and said, hey,
you know, I'm from Herkimer, born in
Herkimer. I'm a best selling author. I've
got a TV show on the History Channel. You
know, I have access to some stuff.
What evidence do you guys have that we
can put together? So, for the next year
and a half, we worked on all this
together and we put out a book in 2022
called, "Nais-Myth", M-Y-T-H, and put our
evidence together to show not only all
the evidence in Herkimer that proves
something happened there before
Springfield ever heard of basketball,
but also, all the nefarious activities
that Springfield and the Naismith family
had done to hold this story back. And,
How about that? And now I got to tell you, it
has been the most contentious five years
of my life, you know, trying
to rewrite basketball history.
Springfield doesn't like you.
Naismith family is not going to like you.
Kansas University, they're not happy with my
efforts. Sotheby's on and on.
135 year old story that, you know, isn't
complete. And so to go from The Human
Calculator where you walk into a school
or a corporate event and everybody loves
you and wants to meet you afterwards and
do your birthday and have fun. And that
was my life. Play golf every
day and just have a good time.
To being hated by everybody I was up
against, including half the people in my
hometown. They thought I was crazy and
what am I doing? Are we going to
embarrass the village? And the village is
going to heck anyway. Main Street looks
like crap. All 7,200 of them.
That's right. And we got nothing to lose.
Why not go for this? Because Cooperstown,
where Baseball Hall of Fame is, is 28
miles away from us on Route 28. We're
literally that close to the Baseball Hall
of Fame. And if it's true that basketball
was invented right there.
Like maybe there should be a small
monument, a little
round thing or something.
Well, actually the big basketball is what
I brought in. I'm still ridiculed for that,
but, it's very symbolic, you know,
the big basketball. When I decided to go
all in on this story, it was 2020, 2021.
COVID was still going on. And I drove
across the country to go
back to Phoenix
because upstate New York is
just too cold in the winter for me after
living in Phoenix for all these years.
And, the surface of the sun does a little bit
to you. Just a little right.
A whole different mindset. And, I was driving to a
place in Illinois called Casey, Illinois.
Never heard of it. Never seen it before.
And the exit sign was huge. And it had
like a dozen things on it that you could
go and see, and I'm like,
how? In the middle of nowhere?
Is this little town got a dozen things that
you have to go see. Well, this well off
couple had purchased all the bad
buildings on Main Street in Casey,
Illinois, tore them down and then
commissioned artists to build the largest
things in the world.
Well, that's like public works projects,
you know, in the United States, like
places where you go, this place has
nothing. We should probably have the
world's biggest beehive. And you go, why?
We don't even have flowers. And you go,
make a beehive. I promise
people will come to see it.
Well, in this place, Casey, Illinois went
from nothing to I had the big thing on
Main Street is they have the largest
rocking chair in the world. It's three
stories high. And this is during COVID.
Remember, I had to wait in line.
In line to get a selfie at the rocking
chair. That's how busy Casey was during
COVID. And so, that's when it hit me is
like, okay, the biggest basketball for
the home of basketball, the birthplace of
basketball. We got to put the biggest
basketball in the world. So I put that in
our development plan. And to this day,
I'm still ridiculed
about the big basketball.
But when it does get put up, when we're
officially, like right now, we're down to
days to tomorrow, you know, within a
couple of days here, CBS is airing a huge
special about our efforts from the past
five years, but three days later, the
Hall of Fame announces who the finalists
are for the class of 26.
And I have the two guys from Herkimer
are on the ballot, our foundation, the
Herkimer 9 Foundation got both of
these guys on the ballot in Springfield,
which was extremely contentious, you can
imagine. So... As you've mentioned. So, now,
I think you're just a bit of a prima
donna. Like, it sounds like you you whine
about favouritism a lot,
Scott, are you aware of this?
But, here's my problem. I've identified it
very clearly. I learned, I learned
arithmetic in third grade, and I figured
out an easy way to get it. So by the end
of third grade, I was doing it my head
faster than my teachers. And I rewrote
how we do arithmetic.
In 1999, I invented a new calendar to
save us from Y2K, because I thought we
were going to die from the Gregorian
calendar we use. And then try to rewrite
basketball history. You know, like my
friend said, I don't take on anything
easy, I go for the big ones.
So there's, there's my three.
I absolutely love that. So, you know,
you've mentioned golf, you've mentioned
basketball, and I know you keep
particularly boring company.
People probably haven't heard of them. But like,
you know, guys like I think he's called
Charles, Charles, Charles Barkley, how
did how did you get involved with these
extremely boring people?
So, my first tour as The Human Calculator
was in 1990. And we picked Philadelphia
as the first city to tour. Okay. Symbolic
because you know, Philadelphia,
brotherly love and all that. And, I had
been stationed down in Alabama. And I
watched Charles Barkley go through Auburn
University and how divided the state of
Alabama was about Charles.
And, so I knew quite a bit about him. And,
I show up at my first radio interview
ever, as The Human Calculator on tour.
And I walked in the green room. And
there's Charles Barkley, he had just been
picked by the Philadelphia 76ers to be on
their team. And so Charles Barkley and I
sit in the green room, I've got 30
minutes with him. And, it was just an
amazing moment because I
knew so much about him anyway.
And, then a few years later, he got with
the Phoenix Suns. So he's been out in
Phoenix for 30 years, you know, so it's
just a dream come true. And Charles is
such a genuine guy, and doesn't BS you
about anything. He's like, dude, here's
what you need to do. Here's, you know, I
mean, he had, he was fantastic. So, I just
ran into him on a golf course a couple
months ago. You know, we see, you know,
just a, it's really an honor to,
to have Charles play a role like that in
your life, you know, to
be there and at that right
moment.
Well, it's also, I would say, it's very
kind of the Phoenix
Suns to, to bring on such
a short gentleman. You know, it's, a lot
of times it's, it's
the very overly tall men
that get placed in basketball and it's,
it's kind of them to
choose someone short.
Well, and you know, you can remember
Charles Charles took the
Chicago Bulls to game six
for, I mean, we were right there.
It was very exciting and
Charles was playing amazing.
I mean, he really was an amazing player.
So, he's become a better announcer, I
think, than a player,
but he was an amazing player.
So a great person to have
play a role in your life.
Too fun.
So going back a little bit to service,
what would you say to veterans
that are currently in transition?
What's something that they need to hear?
Well, thank you for your service.
First off, I never take that for granted.
I'm a big fan of the military
and realise the role
they play and the sacrifices
that these people accept when they go in.
And, to be on call 24 hours a day,
your brain constantly
being put into that situation
where you don't know and you just gotta
be ready at all times
is such a demand and a sacrifice to their
families and things.
So, I would just
remind them to be grateful
for everything they
got out of the military
and not treat it as a
disadvantage or a waste of time,
but as a blessing, an
opportunity to continue on
in our communities, serving our
communities as a veteran
who served in the military.
Still stands out to
this day, as you can see,
I was just at the Phoenix Open this week
and they had Wednesday was service day
and they had to fly over, big celebration
for all the veterans and they deserve
every ounce of energy
that these things happened.
So, don't be shy about being
a veteran, let people know,
put it on your license plate.
It's better than a college.
You see a bumper sticker
that they went to this college
or that college, that's great,
but man, you served in the
Marines for 20 years, holy cow.
I wanna hang out with you,
I wanna hear some stories.
So don't be shy.
Oh, there are stories to be had.
There are stories to be had.
Say it.
Unlike anything else,
you know, there's nothing that
compares to the corporate world.
So, I would just be proud and be grateful
to have an opportunity
to continue to contribute
to our society with that on your resume
because the more we have out
there, the better off we are.
Even now, you can see a lot of companies
are always searching
for veterans to employ.
The VA has an incredible program
that helps place
military folks getting out
into the corporate world.
And, you can see how their desires so.
Companies appreciate and understand
that these folks have sacrificed
and have been under a
system that is manageable
that can translate into
being more user-friendly
in the commercial spaces out there,
you know, in the commercial world.
Yeah, that's one of the things
that I love being able to help with
because I see both sides of it,
where I know what it
looks like on the in,
I know what it looks like on the out.
And you go, well, how
does that translate?
And you go, it works well,
you just need to know
how to reshape the lens
because the skills are transferable,
but the verbiage is
not, I'll say it that way.
So, you know, a lot of
people, they're in and they're like,
I don't know how this translate,
you know, you brought up corporate.
It does, but figuring
out how to tell your story
in a way that is, the
way I explain it is,
and it's like a good joke.
You know, if you need to explain the
joke, it's not funny.
And that's kind of the same thing.
If you can give someone
something that they get it
and it's like a little ball and you can
just pass it to them
and they go, great, I
can hold this in the hand,
then it makes sense.
And it's not easy, but it is rewarding.
I'll say it that way.
Yeah, I'm very grateful I got to serve
and I wouldn't have done it
if I'd have known what
I was gonna go through.
That's fair.
You know, so, how are you
for people that stick it
out for 20, 25, 30 years?
God bless you.
I mean, you really, you have to conform.
You're not gonna fit in
if you don't conform.
So, those people have that ability.
And I think companies are looking for
people that have that.
Sure.
Definitely.
So on the flip side,
what, as far as the world,
not military, like civilian,
if you could drop a thought, you know,
some realisation into
their minds instantly,
what's something they need to know?
Help me understand your question.
Like in reference to veterans,
those in the service, those
that have transitioned out,
what's something that
maybe they don't know
or misunderstand or like
they've got it all wrong?
What's something like
that you want them to know?
Oh, that's interesting.
I guess, I mean, the
first thing that jumped out
of my brain there is that
I think it might be hard
for veterans to
understand how respected they are.
I think they take it for
granted because they made money,
they have retirement, they
have a lot of these things.
I just don't think they
understand how important it is
for people to know that they did serve
and that they are veterans.
A lot of guys just
sort of go below the radar
and maybe not talk about it.
And I think veterans need
to realise that, you know,
it's a calming sense for a lot of people.
I still to this day
have many, many friends
that are veterans and
can still, you know,
just feel the difference.
You know, there's some
camaraderie that is unmatched
in the regular world.
Love it.
So what is something on a
completely different note?
What's a, say a telly show or a film
or something that is
either so ridiculous or bad
that you can't stop but laugh at it
or something where, you
know, like they go, wow,
they really nailed it on the
head as far as military life.
What's a favourite of yours?
A favourite show that's personified.
Film, movie, anything.
What's something that you end up watching
more than you realise it?
Well, I mean, I hate to say
I mean, this goes way back.
Some people probably don't
even remember this movie,
but the silly Officer And A Gentleman
Oh my goodness. To see,
How crazy that can... For those that don't
know, watch the scene
where he carries the woman out.
You'll get the joke.
Yeah, and the idea that
there's a person in charge of you
that can just control
your life, you know?
I mean, it completely, like you said,
right at the beginning of our interview,
the word surrender comes up.
I mean, you don't have an option.
So, that movie really
made it crystal clear
that I only feel like doing 20 pushups.
Well, we don't care what you think.
That's adorable, Snowflake, get going.
Yeah, exactly.
So I needed that.
You know, I had a pretty loose life going
and it was good to have that regimen.
Fair enough.
Oh goodness.
Well, Scott, thank
you so much for coming.
And I'll ask for everyone,
what's the best way
for everyone to contact
to get in connection with you?
HumanCalculator.com.
That's it, and on social media,
I'm @HumanCalculator.
And, I'm still performing at schools,
doing teacher
workshops, corporate events.
And, now I'm launching
The National Counting Bee.
But I also do corporate counting bees.
Companies have me come in and
do my human calculator show.
And then at the end, we
do a little counting bee
to find who their fastest math lead is.
And it's hilarious.
The last one I did was here in Phoenix
for an aviation company.
And, they got all these
sales people and CEOs
and smart executives and
we're doing the counting bee.
Very type A personalities.
And the winner was the
guy who runs the warehouse.
Not even, nothing to do with sales.
The man who does logistics every time.
It was amazing.
And everybody was in shock.
And he just stepped up
and destroyed everybody.
So it really humanises the numbers
because I'm not trying to
make everybody a math whiz.
I'm just trying to help
people feel more comfortable
and confident with numbers.
And there is one thing
I wanna share with you.
The pattern and numbers that I discovered
that I think is gonna change the way
people learn arithmetic.
So, I discovered this
right before Y2K on 9-9-99.
I was playing golf with Alice Cooper
who has been one of my best
friends for over 30 years.
Also really boring
company, might I say.
Amazing guy.
He turned 78 the other day
and he's still doing 200 shows a year.
I mean, he runs our Bible studies.
Brilliant, he's a wordsmith, on and on.
Anyway, on 9-9-99, I had
invented a new calendar
to save us from Y2K.
And, it was supposed to come out that day
in a big article in Phoenix.
And, I got a note the night before
saying they were gonna
hold it off for another week.
And I reached out to them,
it was too late at night.
I was like, next week is at 9-9-99.
The reason I had you do this article
was to capture the 9-9-99 for Y2K.
And I showed up at golf the next day
and Alice and I were playing and he goes,
"Hey Scott, don't worry.
Everything happens for a reason.
It wasn't supposed to happen today."
And I go, all right.
I don't know if I
agree with that, but okay.
And, we got to the 18th hole and he said,
hey, I wrote a song called 18.
One plus eight is nine.
Today's nine, nine, nine.
How come 18 adds up to nine?
And I said, Alice, that's easy.
Any number, times nine, that
answer will add up to nine.
Like three times nine is
27, two is seven is nine.
Six times nine is 54,
five and four is nine.
I gave him a couple
more examples and he goes,
"Okay, I don't care."
And I'm driving home thinking about this.
And, I had invented a new calendar.
It's a 13 month calendar
and I looked at the number 13
and for some reason my brain
went one plus three is four.
13 take away four is nine.
And it was nine, nine, nine, nine, nine,
nine o'clock in the morning and I'm like,
"What the heck is this?"
So I tried with the number 11.
One and one is two.
11 minus two is nine.
And I started trying it
with more and more numbers
and it kept working.
You're coming over onto my side now
because the magic is in prime, good sir.
13, 7, those are magic numbers.
Well, and my book, my best-selling book
is called "Math Magic" and I felt like,
what did I miss here?
What's going on?
And to be honest with
you, I kept doing it.
It kept working like I tried it with 22.
Two and two is four.
22 minus four is 18.
And that answer, one,
eight adds up to nine.
I was freaking out.
I called my old math teacher and I said,
"Hey, what is this called?"
Because I thought I had
missed one day in third grade
when they taught this.
It was so simple.
And I'm like, here I am
in the Guinness Book... Well, the obvious answer.
Well, and I'm in the
Guinness Book of Records
as The Human Calculator and I didn't know
this little pattern
that everything goes back
to the number nine.
And so, come to find
out, I didn't miss it.
Nobody really cared about it.
And it took me a
couple years to figure out,
but try this now.
All of your viewers and listeners,
think of your age, and now
add those two digits together
and take that total and
subtract it from your age.
And the answer you get will be a number
that adds up to nine.
And this simple exercise
is what I believe exercises
the calculator in our brain
because it's a natural pattern.
It's not
memorisation, which is over here.
So that's my mission that
you asked about earlier.
This is my mission as
The Human Calculator
is to reach every kid on the planet Earth
before they're nine
years old about this pattern
so that when they are
nine, every number they see,
every day for a whole year,
will go back to their age,
the number nine, and help
them learn all their math facts
and feel like numbers of their friends.
And now they can go learn higher math.
But right now the kids are just
memorising their math facts.
They don't understand the
logic or the patterns of numbers
and it all falls apart by algebra.
So I call it chapter zero,
it's the missing chapter.
It's gonna change the
way kids learn math.
That's my mission now.
And my calendar, I'm
still working on that.
Okay.
It's all brilliant.
And thank you so much for sharing.
Well, thank you for having me.
God bless veterans.
I'm grateful to be considered
one, but man, I'll tell you,
especially now,
everybody knows everything
with social media and for
you to sign up to serve now,
you know, you gotta have a good mindset.
You're not going in there by accident.
And so God bless the military.
Indeed that.
Well, we have more
brilliant stories coming soon
and to support the channel directly,
be sure to join The Tribe on Patreon.
Cheers all.