Was ancient India the world's forgotten superpower?

And, you know, whenever you look at a phone or a

computer keyboard and

you see those numerals, That is an Indian invention.

Zero and those numbers.

Now, in Europe and America, we call those numbers Arabic numbers because we got them from the Arabs.

It's not an unreasonable name for Europeans to call it.

Which we

Arabs shouldn't take the credit for.

You guys know that they came from India.

And in many sources, they're called Hindi numbers in many Arab countries.

And you guys certainly transformed them and took them out around the world, but you did not invent them.

They came to India.

And there's a whole history of how they arrived initially in Baghdad.

There are these extraordinary viziers, the Barmakids, one of whom Jafar.

I wanted to ask you about the story of Jafar.

Please tell me.

It's a great story.

It's a great story.

So, everyone that's ever watched that Disney Aladdin knows Jafar.

He's the slightly dark-skinned guy who is the snappy dresser, has the parrot on his shoulder, and is slightly the villain of Aladdin.

More than slightly.

More than that.

He's the villain

of

Aladdin.