Who was Blaise Pascal?

Imagine you are playing a giant, complicated game where you don't know all the rules or if there is even a prize at the end. How do you choose a side? Travel back to 17th-century France to meet a super-smart prodigy named Blaise Pascal! Did you know he wrote a massive mathematical paper on geometry when he was just sixteen years old? Pascal was an absolute genius who helped invent the math of chance and probability. He even built one of the world's very first mechanical calculators, called the Pascaline, just to help his dad do taxes! But Pascal didn't just love numbers; he loved deep, philosophical mysteries. He wrote down his biggest ideas on little scraps of paper, which were published as a famous book called the Pensées in 1670. In today’s episode, Mira and Finn explore Pascal's most famous idea: Pascal's Wager! He argued that since no one can scientifically prove if God exists, everyone has to place a giant bet with how they live their lives. Join us as we use math to explore one of the biggest mysteries of the universe!