[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nope, I was, I did things properly. Right. And I was just like, ah, it's so funny. All right. And it was that kind of weird, not trigger happy TV or jackass, but something like weird.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was a while into teaching when I was like, I miss.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like teaching as a creative outlet, don't get me wrong, but I missed that kind of comedy, pure creative outlet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At the end of the year, I would do a entertaining lesson for the students, which wasn't on something they had to know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I did like, you know, I'm going to do just a whole talk about Pythagoras, right? And I'd put in some things that I thought were kind of funny teacher jokes, which math teacher jokes are very specific genre.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But then I'd go, oh, the students from the lesson next door would come in and do that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And one time when I was teaching in the UK, uh, the school I was at forgot to book. They were trying to book Simon Singh's Enigma school visits, which James Grime now does, right? But this is before James did it. I knew James before he was doing that. And this is, this was 2006. I think Claire Ellis was doing it at the time and they forgot to book.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Simon Sings Enigma Machine, but we had all of year nine and I was like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'll give it a go. This is your moment. This is it. This is my time to shine. I'll do a talk. And that was it. And so I did a interesting mass talk.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which now obviously Simon Singh has written a book about. So anyway, I, I replaced it with what would future be a Simon Singh topic. And I talked about some probability stuff. I did the birthday paradox, which is a classic of the genre. Was this a funny talk or was this a... It was an entertaining talk. Again, they're teenagers and to this day I still do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Big talks for teenagers, something that's entertaining for teenagers is an unusual form of entertainment because they're teenagers and they have no life experience.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they don't like to think you're trying to impress them, but they do find things funny. And so you got to entertain them despite themselves, which I love doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was nearly proto version of that. I wasn't cracking jokes, but I was doing entertaining things with the maths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I did some work on a summer school at Imperial College. I helped in the branch, which was teaching students programming.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then occasionally there'd be some dead time, like in the morning they'd come in, they'd be like an hour before we got going. And I was like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ah, I do a morning puzzle or a morning talk and I started.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Filling in whenever there was a gap in the schedule, I'd do a bit of a talk and I loved that. And that is what then made me think, Hey, there could be a career doing this bit that I enjoy. The talking about maths, which the students don't have to know, but in an interesting way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With another math teacher, a guy called Julian Smith, we filmed, but never finished a YouTube video about similar triangles.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause we were like, Hey, this YouTube thing just happened. That's exciting. Let's do some videos about maths, but we're filming it on like TV tapes. And then we never got it finished because we originally thinking it'd be useful for teachers to use in their classes. And at the same time, I was thinking.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wouldn't it be great to do the fun bit of teaching, but for adults? And so all of this was kind of happening at about the same time. And then I thought, you know what?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If I want to be serious about doing these talks for students and doing them well, and if I'm serious about thinking maybe this would work for adults and possibly doing it in video and other forms, I need to get better at public speaking.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I'd worked for Imperial for a while because after the summer schools I stayed on and did some work with their outreach. And then I went back to teaching for a while. And when I went back to teaching, that's when I went right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm going to go back to teaching because that's a good stable job while I work out how I'm going to do this dream job I want to do. And I realized I need.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Public speaking training, but I looked up public speaking training and all the options are very corporate, how to give a business presentation, how to sell. And I was like, no, I just want to be entertaining. And then I saw you could do a course in standup comedy and I've got a very academic approach to life. And I was like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's perfect. I'll do that as an evening course. It was one evening a week for 10 weeks. And you finished by doing like a show where everyone on the course does their bits. And it was like fundamentals of standup comedy. I was like, brilliant. I'll go in there, get all those delicious transferable skills, right. And then apply them to math. And I did, I did the course.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I loved it. Absolutely loved doing stand up. And so instead of-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pure, but I still talked about being a mathematician.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sainsbury's, you can buy a cake from their in-house bakery and they will print any photograph you want on the top of that cake.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I, whenever I have to buy a cake to save money, I buy the cheapest cake they've got and get a photo of a really nice cake printed on the top. Right. And that's, that's not a mass joke. It's probably not even technically a joke, but that kind of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Self-referential humor, that log, that playing with logic, that became my shtick. It was, I'm a mathematician. I think the world should be logical. Here's some funny ways my logical view on life plays out. And here's when I get upset that reality is not as logical as I think it should be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I was a very nerdy character on stage, which was just me, but I didn't communicate any maths, but I talked about being a mathematician.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it was a special moment because it must have been two or three weeks into doing the standup course. And it was all very supportive and you get up and the first week is just talk about yourself. And then we'll gradually learning how to tell jokes and how to structure comedy. And a few of us were like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How hard can this be? Really? Like we're all killing it here, right? How hard can it be in the real world? And so I think four of us signed up for an open mic night. We're like, let's get out there in the real world. Let's see what it's really like. So we all signed up for this open mic night and on the night, only I showed up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The others just bailed. All of them. And I got there and no one else came along. I was like, you jerk. Did you have family or friends to help you? No one. Okay. So I walk into this pub where the comedy night was and everyone else is like, oh, I can't make it. Oh, I can't go anymore. Right. Everyone else dropped out. I was like, oh, for crying out loud.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I looked around the room, I said, those people over there look like they're also here for the comedy night. So I wandered over, hey, you guys here for the comedy night? They're like, oh yeah, we're all, you know, new comedians. I was like, brilliant.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're like, hey, it can't get any better than this. Close the club down. Right? And so they had an open mic and they're like, oh, it was terrible. It was so terrible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had a great time. I had a great time. The problem was what's difficult about open mic nights is it's very hard to get an audience.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's various ways to get around this, and the way this comedy-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so everyone else did their bits and then they're like, and here's the jerk who didn't bring anyone. And so I got up and did a two minute routine and at the end of it, the audience enjoyed it enough. Well, I think they voted or something. I got to do an extra minute.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I got up to three minutes of stage time, but I loved it and I got up and I did it. I mean, obviously everyone's terrible when they start and it's terrifying, but I gave it a go and I enjoyed it and people seem to enjoy it. Right. And so that encouraged me. I was like, you know, I can do this. Right. And you know, carried on from there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a problem with standup in that you need to have a certain amount of self-delusion to persist despite all evidence to the contrary. That is sadly, that is a lower threshold. There's no upper bound. And so some people get into it because if you haven't got enough self-delusion, you won't persist. You'll give up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But if you got too much and you never get any good, you just get stuck in this loop of doing terrible gigs. So thankfully I was delusional enough or, you know, adamant enough.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or, you know, I'm a finisher complete. I was like, I'm going to do this. And so I think I would have definitely persisted because not everyone finished the course. People dropped out of doing even the standup course, which was quite a nice environment. I was like, I'm going to finish this. I'm going to do the final show. I'm going to do some open mic nights to give it a go. But.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would have very quickly stopped doing it and just taken my transferable skills off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To come and be a comedian on a show. And I think if I hadn't gotten that reasonably quickly, I would probably would have packed it in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] None of this is the plan, but it is what I was aiming for. So my original vision was just picturing, I was like, ah, wouldn't it be great if I could go to a pub and do a talk about maths and people would come along and watch it. Wouldn't that be incredible?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And with Festival of Spoken Nerd, that's now what we do, right? We've got our own night and evening of unnecessary detail in London and we tour around.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've done my own tours and so I can still remember me as a teacher, picturing this tiny pub with like me on the stage, like a flip chart or something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Doing some interesting bits of maths. Thinking, oh, wouldn't that be incredible? And that I've achieved. I didn't, everything else that's kind of grown up around it, I don't do too many other things, have all just been me going, oh, wouldn't that be fun? So, I kind of had a vague vision, but I never had a plan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's probably 50-50 when I talk to university students or academics about outreach.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I say, why do you do outreach? Why do you want people to know about your subjects? You tend to get the worthy answers of, oh, it's important or I'm publicly funded. I should tell people, or, you know, a numerate and scientifically literate society is useful, which is all very true. But I'm also like, it can't just be fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I think it's pretty even maybe it's 60% fun, 40% useful where I love performing. I love doing the shows.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Actual mass content in the shows, but it would be a bit hollow and pointless otherwise because comedy is great, but you make people laugh and then they walk away and that's it. Right. And at the end of your life would have made some people laugh, which is wonderful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But then, you know, that's it. I was like, no, the reason I got into teaching as well as enjoying it was I like seeing people enjoy it and I can do some good PR for mathematics and I can get more people into it and more people can enjoy their math lives. And so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it's a pretty even balance. Particularly I still do a lot of shows for teenagers, which I could easily not do, but I think that's super useful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The creative process more interesting. And I like that constraint. Yeah, I would be disappointed and not satisfied if I didn't do it. So I don't think it's so much me turning down opportunities. I'm probably inadvertently shutting off opportunities. Like the number of people who were in TV or whatever, who've come to see a show and gone, yeah, but it would never work on TV.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Often a direct quote and that's fine, right? Because they come and they look at that and they go, yeah, it's obviously for a niche audience and I'm much more happy doing that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, obviously a fraction of a fraction of comedians go on to actually be successful in terms of TV. So I'm not saying like I turned down television, right? But I picked my niche and I'm having a great time in it. And it was definitely could be seen as an astute career move to pick on one little demographic and do it well. But also I think it's much more rewarding.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I last year did a small bit on a show at the Royal Albert Hall. It was this big space extravaganza and a spoken nerd, we went out and did like a 10 minute bit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In front of 5,000 people with Chris Hadfield, like absolutely phenomenal. I was there. I was there. Exactly. Peak of the career, right? And, uh, you know, you were, you were one of those 5,000, you were a member of the five kilo people that were there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This YouTube video I wanted to do out, I know I'll zip over to Hyde Park, which is like the park just near there and I'll quickly film it with the GoPro and I'll come back and I can do an edit because our sound check was so early because we were like the least important people on the bill that I had a big block of time. So during that time, after the sound check, which was like, honestly, we were there like eight in the morning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ten times the views on a thing I just banged out on a GoPro. Which don't get me wrong, I love doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But yet my focus is on this crazy going out in front of thousands of people. And you're right. It is different with a live audience. But then is that just because it's fun for me? Or is that because, is it important to have live?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Events is an interesting one and I have a real fractal approach to mass communication. You need to have it at all different scales, like it's maths all the way down on every possible scale. So you want to have big live shows and small live shows and big videos and small videos and, and cause the level of engagement and the type of engagement is different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I personally would miss any one aspect if I didn't do it. Like you're right, the buzz you get off the live show.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is incredible. You don't get the same buzz from looking at a number on a YouTube account and go, oh, and then you try and you're like, what would 3 million people look like? That's insane.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But they've watched some other video, then they watch the Numberphile video, then they watch some other video. But also rightly or wrongly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I only in one edition and I genuinely, you know, I'm going to print you out the email where I sent in the acknowledgements because it was originally spelled correctly and they messed it up, which was very disappointing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're going to move right on to a book about mistakes. Cause I figured, you know what, if I'm going to make mistakes, I'll do a whole book about it. And so actually just literally today, as you know, I picked up the first copies ever printed. So I'm going to ceremoniously hand across humble pie, a comedy of maths errors by Matt Parker. You were the first person other than me to be given an actual final copy of this book.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I did ask when they pitched this cover idea to me, cause with the design I come up to, it wasn't me. And I was like, that's great. I said, ah, but can it be a Boeing 787 or can it be like, cause there were actual planes in the book. Can it be a, you know, a BAC 111 and they're like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's going to be this made up plane or I don't know if it is an actual plane because that's the image they had the rights to, but they did a really nice job with it. I absolutely love the design. It's a beautiful, tell us what the book's about. It's just a lot of stories about maths mistakes. Cause I want to write a book about how maths is important.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For our modern society, everything finance, economics, medicine, engineering, you name it is based on math.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The publishers are like, well, you've got to make it interesting. Why are people going to read a book about why maths is useful? And I said, ah, what if I told it through stories of when it goes wrong? Cause it's a great excuse to talk about the maths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the context of it went wrong this one time and normally it doesn't. They're like, ah, people love reading stories about disasters. Go for it, right? And so that's how, because obviously there's a lot of people into maths who read stuff I write and watch the videos. And I was like, how can I hit a bigger audience? And so a book of maths mistakes, and this was announced about when the park square video came out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And everyone's like, that's clever marketing. I'm like, that's totally coincidental. And I have put a lot of plain stories in there and no one dies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the trouble is with disaster problems, particularly engineering and medical ones, people die and you can't, for a so-called comedy book about maths, every second story can't be, and then everybody dies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I've rationed the stories where everybody dies and none of the aviation stories involve any.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone survives in all the aviation. So if you're scared of flying, it's still a bit terrifying what happens, but it's always okay. You know, the first thing I want to do in this book, read it thoroughly from the beginning. I mean, that would be how, uh, are you chicken?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I go through and I give everyone who contributed something or helped me fact check something or have enabled my career in some way, get a reference in there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a sign of, a sign of my thanks. I'll tip my hat to that. I'll get it fixed in the, again, as tradition dictates, I'll get it fixed in future editions. So only the hardback, when it goes to paperback, I'll get it flipped over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if you buy the hardback through mass gear, I signed them all before they go out. So you can get a double signed, you got to hunt down Bradley afterwards.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I looked at that. I went, oh, look at that young optimistic fella. That photo was taken in 2011. Wow. How terrifying is that? Look at that fresh face. But I was also quite pleased because in there I talk about this civilization mistake where Gandhi.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As soon as you get nuclear weapons in the first civilization game, he started nuking everyone. And that was a mistake in the code. And I love, there's loads of things on like rollover and calculation errors in code, but in all future editions of civilization, they kept that mistake in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a reference to the original error. And so I thought I would keep the mistake in out of respect for the first genuine error.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Absolutely. Another podcast soon. As you know, I will show up and do a podcast or a video anytime you ask.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I watched the video and I did this video and my message from the video was give it a go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I just have a go in maths. And actually that's something that comes out in the book. I'm like, everyone thinks maths is all about getting the right answer. It's not. Most doing of maths involves getting it wrong, getting it wrong, getting it wrong. So I had a go at finding this magic square. It wasn't that good. You called it the Parker square. It was all very funny.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That hasn't got a name. I don't want to call it the Parker Square because it doesn't work properly. It would be like, oh, that's a classic Parker Square. Or someone would do something that's almost right but not quite like a...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we were both just like, I was just like, I can't believe this has happened. And you looked at me and said, I can not put the video out if you want. And I was like, it's fine. Number one, it's funny.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And number two, I think it's an important message to give it a go. And you were like, you'll never hear the end of it. I'm like, no it's fine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly, right? So I keep trying to bring the noble effort back to the table and other actors, I mean, I don't want to point fingers, seem to use it as a shorthand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A non-trivial amount, Brady. So I get the t-shirts, people show up wearing t-shirts to gigs, which I love, right? And everyone who does, I then take a selfie with them. One where I'm like, Hey, Parker square. And one where I'm like, Oh, Parker square, right? And so they get, you know, I love doing that, right? That's really good fun. The fact that people wear the shirts is great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a good go-to joke when I chat to someone cause a lot of people will.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Recognize me in the street and instinctively go, Oh, hi. And then they realize.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That they've done that without a plan, right? Cause I appeared out of nowhere. They're just going about their shopping or whatever. They're on the train. Suddenly someone from YouTube jumps in front of them and they're like, Oh, Hey, you're that guy. How you doing? And then they're like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I get the correct amount of annoyed, but I like the fact that people have embraced it as a me-me kind of concept. And I like the fact that it's to some extent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Reinforces the notion of giving it a go. The square is mentioned at the very end of the book. Cause I knew some people would expect it to be in there and I hold off, hold off, hold off. It's only like in the final pages. And actually I've got a, um, there's a square of photos of people wearing Parker square shirts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At my shows, right? Which I thought would be kind of fun to put in there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That took so many emails to Penguin, but they finally agreed to let me have a book with reverse number page numbers. So they go backwards.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My pleasure. I will be back for another podcast. We will finish off my life story.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pretty, pretty simple is to try and win as many championships as I can, no matter the way I do it, if it's winning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All of them coming second in all, every single race or going up and down, but all I need to do is for me and my goals is to win as many championships and try and actually get close to McGrath's winning, uh, race wins. That's the big one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Seventy-two is something that, I mean, you're just starting, why not? Exactly. We had zero, might not have it now. Started off strong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Look like the typical mathematician, but at the same time, I often like to counter that point by saying, well, what does a mathematician look like? To me, it's someone who's as maths. Like in any other aspect of life, that can be literally anybody.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What do people guess? I used to play this game with my friends actually when I was a graduate student. So we'd go out on these things, uhm, in Cambridge they're called swaps. Basically you have a group of guys, group of girls, you all go out for a meal together and sit boy-girl around the table.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, organized fun, we used to call it. And we used to always have a laugh, was that when you're, you know, you're sat down, you're introducing yourself, I'd often be sat near my friend Joe, and we'd say, what do you think each of us does? Because he looked very similar to me, he did chemistry, and I did maths. And everyone would guess English.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Art was quite popular, uh, occasionally like history, I don't really, I don't know, but it was more something that I think had an element of creativity, at least that people would think of as a creative.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Type subject. But yea, not, not so many guesses on maths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Warrington. Northwest England. It's about halfway between Liverpool and Manchester. I say near Manchester when I introduce myself to people because of football allegiances. When I was growing up at school, it was either you were a Liverpool fan,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are you a Man United fan? Yes. And so, because I was obviously on the Man United side, the correct side of the divide, then I would, I would say I'm from Warrington, near Manchester, but equally could say near Liverpool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think so. The main thing I do remember was I definitely enjoyed doing work. Like, like schoolwork. As in, I sort of saw it as it was fun, I enjoyed learning, I would come home and do my homework before I went out to play.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think my parents, to be fair to them, drilled that into me from quite an early age that you can go out and play as much as you want, just come home, do your homework, and then you can go and have as much fun as you want. Okay. I don't specifically remember when I was young, young, like maths over anything else, but I just do remember that I enjoyed learning. I would work hard and do well at school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A bit of both? It's quite hard to think about because one of the ways I explain this to people or...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thinking back, it's always interesting analysing your younger self in these situations, but I've always been good at football. And because I was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not the star player of the school football team, but I was like, you know, one of the, let's say first three names on the team sheet. And I was playing striker, scoring the goals, even though I was like nerdy in the sense of I'd always be doing my homework. I'd always not get into trouble and things like that. I think because I also had that kind of like the coolness of being on the school football team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perhaps was never seen as a nerd, in, in the typical sense. So I think, yea, that's why I would say, but then at the same time, like, I absolutely love Pokemon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is pretty nerdy. I have loads of Pokemon tattoos, I play the video games, I collect the cards, like, and that is typically, again, a sign of sort of like nerd culture is being into fictional video game characters.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I wanted like some big, sort of like powerful profession. I think I was aware that I was doing well at school, and so I thought, oh okay, what's like the biggest, flashiest, awesome job, like lawyer, doctor, I think I went through phases of thinking that. And then as I began to realise...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maths is what I enjoyed the most. So, so my earliest memory of that is maybe like year four. So when I'm like nine or ten, maybe? I think more and more from that point on, I began to realise that maths was actually the thing I enjoyed the most. Maths was what I was


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Best at, I think, as well, and just made the most sense to me. So I started looking at, like, jobs for mathematicians and things, and I remember at one point I went through a phase of wanting to be an actuary, working in insurance, uhm, and things, because it's very well paid, and you apparently do lots of maths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it wasn't at all what I thought the role was. So I got to test it out, but by that point I don't think I wanted to do it anyway because I was doing well at school and as I say, I think I was aware of that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was about 10 or 11. How'd that go? I didn't get in. I got picked, I got scouted, you know, they would come to the games and I got invited to come along to the session and the team I was playing for at the time, I think...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Three or four of us got invited because we were doing quite well in the league and as part of that team. And I think two of the other lads did, did get in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the things, I don't think I was good enough. I think, I think, I'd like to think I'm reasonable at football. I always used to get that I wasn't aggressive enough. That was what my managers and my coaches used to, because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I just don't think I'm a very aggressive person. In general I'm like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Try to be positive, try to be happy, smiley, and when you're on a football pitch playing against like, angsty teens, I didn't really have that, like, the, the Rooney-esque kind of like, anger thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I said, I think it just made the most sense to me. My brain tends to work in patterns. It's, it's often, it can be quite hard to explain this because obviously everyone's brain works in its own sort of way. When I see the world and experience it, I tend to see patterns in things. I tend to be almost like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Focused on the numbers. I think that's why I really like Pokemon, actually.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In general, that kind of like appeals to me. That's how my brain works. So yeah, I think my, my earliest memory, I was like nine or 10 year four and was just doing like long multiplication for fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I hope they don't mind me saying this, but I wouldn't say they were. They were definitely role models in the sense of, you know, working hard and everything else, but definitely not mathematical.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And tell us where you went. So I came to Oxford University, which I think I remember getting my GCSE results at 16, um, and doing pretty well and sort of my teachers saying to me, have you thought about Oxbridge, Oxford or Cambridge? And that was maybe the first time I'd sort of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause almost like GCSEs are like the first big result you get. You know, you've got like school tests, but it's like GCSEs actually can in theory get you a job and things. So that felt to me like I'd done well and I was like, maybe this is, you know, I want to aim for the top. I want to go for this. And so I settled on Oxford.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I just went to my local school. Uhm, and no, I think I was one of the first people from my school to, to end up going to Oxford or Cambridge. And, and I remember coming down for the, the interview. So the, the dreaded Oxford interview. Obviously now I now do the interviews, I have to say this, but it isn't as bad as you think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of course nervous, and, and my mum I don't think helped, because she had this kind of, as most mums would, this mindset that I was like, uh, I wouldn't fit in. She was like, you're going to just be treated as like the Northern Miner's son kind of thing. Billy Elliot or something. Yeah, yeah, basically, I think she'd, she'd, yeah, she thought Billy Elliot was real. And so she had this, of course it's not like that at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a very wide range of people, as in any other university. And, but of course I was quite nervous. I was going for a walk before my interview. I think it was reasonably early in the morning, which I didn't like, but it was like 10am. And I'm walking around the gardens of St. John's College where I'd applied and was having my interview. And I just do remember, and I can still remember this feeling, I'm getting goosebumps actually thinking about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like walking around and looking at the 500 year old buildings and being like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is awesome. I really, really, really like, come on, like kind of like psyching myself up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, like, and I feel like some people almost see that as like overwhelming. That can sometimes put people off, where you see it and you think, this is such a historic place, all of these amazing people that have been here before me. But for me, it was very much like psyched me off and sort of game face on, like, let's go, let's do this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it's hard to pinpoint exactly where that comes from, but I...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do have this idea of, I don't think that I need to be the best or anything in that sense, but I kind of, if I'm doing something I want to try and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can't really think like this when I was 11, making that decision between the school, but I'd like to think that, and I think this is why my parents sort of didn't in any way push me, because they were sort of being told by my


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, not told. Hinted by my primary school to say, Tom's pretty clever, like, he could do really well here if he went, he could get into this grammar school and things. I think they saw that I had enough self-motivation that I would still be able to have fun and I would make sure that I still did the work and still worked hard and studied.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, very, very, very funny. I'm so glad you asked this question. I haven't thought about this story in about five years. So we got a phone call. We're all having dinner on like a Friday night. I think it was two weeks after my interview. And, and the phone goes. And obviously it's the middle of tea, as we would say. So my dad wasn't very happy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because he was being disturbed from his tea. So he goes up, he answered the phone, and he's like, yeah, what? Kind of like, proper blunts on the phone. And then it was like, somebody who introduced themselves as, this is Professor Charles Batty from the University of Oxford. And so my dad go, and then they said, can I speak to Thomas Crawford?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And my dad was like, I think you'll want my son then. And he was like, yes, I think so. And then cause my dad's also Thomas Crawford, just to confuse everything. And so then he like shouts me over and he's got like this look on his face because he's thinking that I'm in trouble.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause he's thinking, I've gone down, you know, to the interview session two weeks earlier, and like, I'd kind of told my parents that, cause I'd just turned 18 the week before my interview.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Such a surreal, but like, cause I, when I clicked on the phone, I was like, oh no, I was so much like, cause just the look on your dad's face, you're like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone else is from all over. Yeah. So the way I used to describe it to my sort of home friends, the easiest way I felt to explain it to them, as I said, there's about a third of the people are sort of your, uh, went to private school, et cetera group. So posh sort of. Yeah, let's, let's call them posh. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm trying not to offend anyone because I had lots of friends who went to, you know, those schools. And then you had like a third of your people were kind of your, let's call them typical nerds.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think, I think a little bit of both, but mainly the amount. It was intense. I certainly remember, I obviously did quite well, but it took me, I think that first term, I'd certainly remember lots of like 3, 4 in the morning, 3am, 4am, finishing off problem sheets to hand in and things and having to get up at 9am for lectures. It felt like I hadn't quite yet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm sure everyone goes through this when you go to university. You've gone from


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, yes, this is back at high school. So I'm, I'm 17 and, and there was, um, you had to pick six maths modules that made up this qualification. And one of them called Further Pure 3 was optional and it's quite difficult. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was very much on the position I was in of thinking, well, why make this harder for myself than I need to? I'm just gonna do additional statistics, because stats was known to be a bit easier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] than doing this perhaps more interesting but harder course. But anyway, it turns out that course contained matrices.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I'd never seen a Matrix. And when I turn up my very first lecture, the lecturer just like starts writing all these matrices on the board. And I just remember sitting there in the lecture theatre and turning to my friends next to me and being like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have no idea what this is. Like, like I'm like, what is a matrix? And they're kind of like laughing and then I'm like, no, no, seriously, like, is this like a vector? Like what's, cause I just never seen it before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I had to actually spend the next week basically learning Further Pure 3. Cause I was worried that I'd missed other stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But my two, I remember my two friends next to me were like, did you not do further pure three? And I was like, no, it was optional. Like, easy route.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My perception certainly changed, whether it was to do with this beauty aspect. Whilst I'd not had much experience with proof, because you don't really when you're in high school. You do a little bit, but it's very much just a taster. So there was certainly, that's another thing that I see now with all of my first year students. A lot of them struggle with that. That's very new.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The whole range of subjects, which brought in applied maths, so things like fluid mechanics, which eventually I went on to do my research in, that appealed to me a lot more. But when I was 17, 18,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was lost. Whereas I was like, oh, I love the prime number one. I was like, I don't really care for that applied rocket thing. Which is now really quite funny looking back when I'm so much on the other end of the spectrum.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, by this point I was, I was doing the right subject. I definitely can remember a couple of points in my first year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where I was like, this is hard. Like, like because of the workload, you know, being up till 3, 4 AM and also just some of it, something that's really hard to get used to as transitioning from a high school student who has applied to Oxford or Cambridge or another very good university and then coming to the university is you're no longer going to get everything right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I'd kind of gone from doing my high school work where if I didn't get 100%, I'd be like, oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Come on, you can do better than that, kind of. Whereas then you come to university and it's like, if I'm scoring above 60 or 70, if I'm scoring above 70, I'm getting the top class mark I can get. First class is 70 and above. And I think that took a little bit of transitioning. Yeah, maybe because I had been so used to, you're the big fish in the small pond to being the


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Many fish in the bigger pond kind of vibe. That maybe shook my confidence a little bit. And as I said, I think it was that adaptation period in first year. So like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For example, my exam scores in first year were the lowest of my years, right? So I did better in second year, third year, fourth year. And I think I really was adapting. But they were by no means bad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Actually goes back to probably my second year and I think that was the first time I'd ever heard about a PhD.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I had no idea that it's, I mean, no one in my family had really been to university. Obviously some of my friends went to university, but I'm the oldest sibling, so I don't know, it just never really come up. I knew that you could keep studying maths to become a doctor of maths, but I just hadn't quite realised how that happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I began to realize and look into a lot more during my second year of my degree. This idea of a PhD and the concept that I could keep studying after my undergrad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And actually be paid to study this time, not have to pay fees. It was awesome. So I think once I found that out and I was still enjoying what I was studying and everything, it felt like, I dunno, I think I kind of went towards that path sort of during my second year. Right. So I became aware it existed and then


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In terms of figuring out what I was gonna do, and I also think it fit in actually towards the end, like, let's say start of my fourth year, when you're...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I stayed for the masters and then I felt like I wasn't ready to get a real job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a recurring theme. And so the fact that I could keep studying everything meant I was like, right, I'm going to do the PhD. And then it was a case of figuring out what to study. And I just thought about what have I enjoyed the most so far.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And again, it started in my second year when I did my first taste of fluid mechanics and then I picked.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it's that, I remember my lecturer in second year was really good, actually. He was a really, he just had like a passion, and he's also a very good lecturer. Because some people can have a passion or can be very good mathematicians, but lecturing is a whole other skill. So I think he had that kind of, you could tell he really enjoyed what he was talking about. I really enjoyed


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just mention, like, the fact that it, it just, yeaah, the fact that it was so practical felt to me like a, like a nice, and then when I was actually looking at PhDs,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I actually spoke to some of the other tutors at St John's. It was actually an engineering tutor. I remember going to his...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So like formal hall, so the, the fancy uhm, where you go to dinner in your like gown.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and they bring you like a three course meal, like the most ridiculous Oxford thing ever. And as a student at the college, it costs you about four pounds. So obviously you did it pretty much every day because why would you not want a three course, like amazing meal? So it takes about an hour and a half, you know, you have to kind of plan around having this whole incredibly cool experience. And, and then, and I think, I think it was just after a formal and then we were literally like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of those crazy experiences that almost doesn't feel true, where you're just like sat in this very ornate room where you go to after formal, like, literally drinking, I don't know, port or whiskey or something, and just having a conversation with some amazing professor in engineering about fluid mechanics. And he just mentioned that, in his opinion, the best place in the world to study fluid mechanics was Cambridge.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I found that in Cambridge they had a laboratory. And now this is something else that really caught my attention because I'd never done experiments before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I can do maths, and I can do experiments, which sounds kinda fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's in fluids and sort of, and that kind of led me then to, to go to Cambridge, well to apply to Cambridge and then do my PhD.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's kind of both. I think you're onto something with, with saying it's, it's uhm, there's lots of approximations for sure. Again, as you said, we've talked a little bit before in a Numberphile video about the Navier-Stokes equations and they are based on fundamental laws of physics.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So conservation of mass and Newton's second law of motion. So kind of the grounding.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the problem is when you plug in the required bits for a fluid into those two laws of physics, you get very, very, very complicated mathematical expressions, which is the Navier-Stokes equation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We just don't really understand those equations. So that's why there's a million dollar prize.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the millennium problems. And I read that book when I was a kid, actually. Uh, when I was 16, when I was applying to university, I read The Millennium Problems by Keith Devlin. Awesome book, explains all seven problems to like, understandable for like a 16 year old. So I wonder whether that played a little bit into my choice to go to fluids that I knew maybe there was this chance, I don't know, of like a million. I never studied.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's in that sense, but that kind of hints that the maths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The equations themselves I think are solid because they're based on laws of the universe. But then because we can't at the moment, we don't have the mathematical tools to properly tackle them. What we have to do is then make simplifications, make assumptions, simplify things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As you say, to kind of make it all work. So it's not quite precise, but I think for me, I enjoy the fact that you can make these simplifications. So you're studying a problem, you're like, oh, gravity doesn't matter here. And like a normal person would be like, well, it clearly does because everything isn't floating.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then we compare it to the real world or we compare it to the experiment and it's the same.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I think I like that insight that you can get about what approximations or simplifications work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, was there a plan is the question. I think I decided I wanted to do the PhD. Definitely wanted to keep studying. And when I started my PhD, I was absolutely certain that I was just going to keep studying maths forever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That mathematical research, or research in general.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or one way I like to think about it is one of the main reasons that I'm attracted to maths is that there's a right or a wrong answer. Right. You know, it's not like writing an essay and someone thinks it's fantastic. And then somebody else is that can be quite, there are certain things, right? Whether or not you're using true statements and things, but generally it's quite.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Subjective. Whereas with maths, it's like, this is the answer. You can get there in different ways, and that's where the creativity comes. And I do enjoy that. This is something I definitely try to hammer into my students. You can be very creative with how you get to the solution.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once you get there, it's a ticker, it's a cross. And I think I enjoyed that and that fitted in with how my brain works almost. But then when you're doing research, you can like, you get to an answer and you're like, I think this is right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and it's very difficult to, to, even to prove it, even if there is, you know, if it's a proof rather than an answer. When you're doing research, you are literally at the forefront, you're at the boundary, you're pushing forward the knowledge. And so you don't actually know if it's right anymore. And I think, I think that may have played a role into...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perhaps why I didn't quite enjoy it. I mean, I did enjoy my project, but just the general feeling of research and also like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Focusing on one area. I've heard people describe doing a PhD as being like, you basically become the number one expert in the world on your incredibly niche, like the title of your thesis, you are officially the world's expert on


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What's mine? Experimental study of the input of buoyancy into a rotating environment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That is so niche and narrow, and I think I kind of missed the


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Variety and the bigger picture stuff rather than just doing the same thing all day, every day. Even though I could, something that was good about my PhD was I could do an experiment and if I got bored of being in a lab, I could go up to the office and do some calculations and switch between them. So I had a bit more variety than most normal mathematicians perhaps, but I still didn't feel like there was enough in terms of the content.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This sounds like re- it would- I'm gonna learn something from this. I'm gonna enjoy this experience. And even if what I learn is, I'm not made out for this or this isn't what I actually like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It just seemed very cool. It's quite hard to pin down, but I just remember getting the email thinking, yeah, I'm going to apply for that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not so much media, uhm, so in my, I think it would be my second year of my undergrad, I joined an outreach group at the university which was called Marcus's Marvellous Mathemagicians.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it was kind of, you know, you were going to school and doing like a lesson, one hour workshop, or like a science festival, you'd do maybe like, again, stop people on the street and be like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Come and look at this awesome thing. And then don't tell them it's maths until the end. And then they're like, oh wow, I just learnt some maths. And so I kind of did that a little bit. And during my undergrad for sort of, for a couple of years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, absolutely, a hundred percent, but I don't think I'd got to the point yet of thinking that. So cause I did this in terms of the end of my third year, which is about when you're thinking, what am I doing in a year's time? It's kind of like you're entering the final year of your current thing. You begin to think what's next. And almost, I was very fortunate in that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I enjoyed the placement so much, like it just didn't feel like a job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it was two months. Okay. So I took two months out. So yeah, I have to get my supervisor's approval. Fortunately, I had the most awesome supervisor I could have. He was very much of the, he's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he would say, yeah, that sounds cool. If you think you'll enjoy it, you'll learn something. Yep. Go for it. Okay. He was very, very sort of supportive and relaxed and, and everything else.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two months, I had a chat with uhm, the person in charge, my boss.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And sort of, you know, sort of, I guess it's a classic end of internship. How was it? Blah, blah, blah. Feedback thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I basically said, I've absolutely loved this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is there any pos- possibility of me coming to do this after my PhD?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And various things and we set up this position and it was a one year position after my PhD, minimum one year to start with. I was going to go and I was going to go and make, get more mass content into the show. And also we were going to branch out a little bit into trying to do some video stuff as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just because I sort of said lots of the maths things, it needs, like, if you're talking about an equation or a shape, you kinda need to see it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Purely based on, on the radio and the audio, but you, sometimes you need that visual aid. Yes. So that was kind of the plan. So I went there and did that after my PhD. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're not there now, so what happened after, what happened, what happened next? What's the next step? So about maybe six or seven months in, we're still loving it, still really enjoying the job. And I kind of, I think I sort of missed actually doing maths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So even though I was able to pick and choose the topic I was covering each week, and I would- I would-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If possible, I would try to cycle to keep that variety. I'd maybe be like, chemistry, I'm going to do a chemistry interview this week. Then the next week I'll do something biology. Then maybe we'll do zoology and go talk about birds. And I try and keep a bit of variety and of course trying to do maths as well because that was mainly why I was added. They went to bring me in to help get maths into the show.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I just kind of, I think I miss doing actual maths, and so I began to think, well, how can I do actual maths?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I started doing this in evenings, weekends with my full time position. And then I began to realize that I enjoyed the YouTube side of thing more than the radio stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think rather hilariously, I don't listen to podcasts or the radio. My job was to make a podcast slash a radio show. So I, you know, other than having to listen each week to give feedback on that week's show, I


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, so I felt like I was, that felt more at home to me, felt more comfortable. And so I began to then think, how can I make that, as you said, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A job that was advertised via email, I took quite well off this, was about going, uhm, it was a teaching position, uhm, purely just lecturing. They call it in Oxford, it's a lectureship, and it was at St. Hugh's College. And so I thought, oh, I'll apply for that, because it was, uh, eight hours a week during term time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that's 8 hours of teaching, with the prep and everything, you're maybe looking at 20-30 hours of work a week. But, that's just for 3 lots of 8 weeks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So 24 weeks of the year, and then the other 28, do what I want.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But obviously the salary was like half of a normal full-time salary because you're sort of only working for half of the year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I decided it would just about, I sort of did some rough calculations. I had a little bit of savings. I was like, I can do that for a year and live off the teaching thing and have six months of the year to really get stuck into the YouTube stuff and let's see where it goes. So I kind of pieced together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I did that for a year. As I said, the St. Hugh's position was for a year. And then, after that year, I then realized, well, my money had run out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, so I was like, right, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get two of these teaching gigs. So I'm gonna do, instead of doing, let's call it 20 hour weeks or 30 hour weeks, I'm gonna do 40 to 60 hour weeks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is obviously intense, but it's only for eight, for 24 weeks of the year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. And then, because it's two of them added together, it equates to like a full-time salary. So I ended up getting a second one. The St. Hughes one was renewed, and then I got a second one at St. Edmund Hall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is another one of the Oxford colleges, but teaching the same stuff. So the hours actually weren't quite double because I was generally teaching the same courses. So I had twice as many students. And so I then did that for two years, both of them. That's a fact.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I figured, well, I need to make this an actual permanent job because I'd been on a year-by-year contract until this point. And whilst there's, I certainly saw pros in the freedom of that, didn't feel like I was tied down or anything. I was like, well, you know, I probably should maybe, you know, just have like a proper contract and things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uhm, fortunately, so I've been at St Edmund Hall, or Teddy Hall, as we affectionately refer to the college, for two years, and I remember, uhm, when I started, they'd actually, they'd just had a new principal of the college, who's kind of in charge of the overall view.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We were all on the same page. They wanted me to be more closely associated with the college because they wanted to make the most of my online presence, let's say, and all of the talks in schools and things I was already doing could be now come under their remit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And for me, it was like, this is great because I wanted like a more permanent home, as it were. Like, rather than having several colleges and being spread out, I wanted to be like, my college is Teddy Hall, this is like, you know, my students are there, this is me, this is like where I belong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To then apply for an early career fellowship. It's a three year position and you, uh, would normally do a bit of teaching and it allows you to really focus on your research to kind of create a real research portfolio to then go for like a more tenured position or something beyond that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And here what we've done is we've replaced the teaching and research with teaching and outreach.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It kind of, uh, you know, there's like a formal thing of what this means, but what I've interpreted as and what they're happy to be interpreted as is all of the stuff I do with Tom Rocks Maths is now just actually part of my job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So all the YouTube stuff doing this podcast here with you is now part of my job, basically. And they've been really, really good in giving me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like they've trusted me to just be like, just every now and then let us know what you've been up to. Yeah. So they can sort of document it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I present a famous equation, and I strip the equation back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Layer by layer. So it's making it more and more understandable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I just, you know, we cut and then I come back in and say, stripping back to layer two and I happen to have one less layer of clothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and there's two reasons behind this. So, I was kind of influenced for when I was at The Naked Scientists. So they were started around the same time as like Jamie Oliver was The Naked Chef. And like, from what I remember, he didn't ever cook me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I felt that we should have had more fun with that because we were a radio show so no one could see.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I was like all about the innuendos when I was writing scripts. I was all about making comments about what's a bit chilly in here today, even though I'm sat there fully clothed, probably with a hat on or something, but I'm like, so I tried to have a bit of a laugh with it because I think a lot of our listeners and when we had guests, they would make that kind of joke.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] About, oh, I hope I don't have to turn up naked. And so I think people were already kind of making that association. I think I was probably maybe too keen, but I think that kind of put the idea in my head of being about, this is quite fun, let's like riff off this. And then the other thing was when I started doing the YouTube and things, I wanted to find out what kind of place I was


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Filling in the market, almost? So I wasn't just like, am I just gonna make other maths videos? Well, you know, Numberphile already does that really well, so like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What can I bring that's a bit, especially when you're starting out, I think you need something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the thing that I thought was, well, I'm up for doing the naked thing, and it also...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From talking to lots of people who didn't engage with maths. So like friends, family, etc. Something that came back to me that surprised me was they said it's a very serious subject.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For me as a mathematician, I now completely understand it, but for me at the time I was like, is it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I'd never thought of that, but for people outside of maths, I can definitely see why you would see it as serious. It follows a set of very strict rules and everything's like in order and correct and there's not, it feels like there's not much creativity. There actually is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To an outsider, I can understand why it might look very serious. And to me, the easiest way to make something not serious...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, they were a bit like, are you really going to do this, Thomas? Are you sure? And I was like, yeah. But I think by this point, you know, I, I was, when I started, what, maybe 27 or something like, I think they realised that,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It just did fit with my personality. Whenever we'd have fancy dress parties and things, I'd always be the guy in body paint and whatever. I was just generally, I wouldn't say like, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Enjoy being naked, but I just never really thought much of it. You know, some people really don't like that. I'm just kind of like, whatever, everyone looks the same. Like kind of, I don't know, I'm quite chill about that whole thing. And I think that kind of also obviously meant the fact that I was open to doing this in the first place. But yeah, no, at first, at first my dad in particular,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But to be, but both of them now are so, like, so supportive and like, you know, even, one thing that really got me was quite early on actually, one of the early videos I made, like, my dad just saying


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, it was quite a, it was quite a touching moment that he'd actually gone out and thought, you know what, if this is what my son's doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, agree or disagree, this is what he decided he's gonna do, I'm gonna, you know, watch some of these videos, and every now and then, sometimes, you know, he'll just message me and be like, oh I really enjoyed your video this week, and it's still sort of, cause he's very much not that person.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So like I, I think that's really cool. So I think they're both super, super supportive. They obviously think it's ridiculous. And they, and they always give me like sort of quips and comments to be like, when are you going to get a real job? When are you going to grow up? But I think they can see that I'm enjoying what I'm doing. And so they're like, you know, I'm doing, I'm doing all right. So they're just like, cool. Go with it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that's a really common view, actually, you mentioned about some of the best mathematicians or other scientists, like, the teaching, they're like, oh, I can't teach today. I definitely have days when, you know, maybe I've got to do a 9am lecture.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm like, you know, going to bed at two, be like, do I really have to get off in five hours and go give this lecture? But in general, I absolutely love it. It's just kind of an extension of, of doing YouTube.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Performing. Yeah, it's just performing. It's, it's, I happen to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, have learnt this stuff myself. I haven't had the knowledge of, of this maths. How can I explain it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that the students understand it. Can I make it entertaining? I think I did this anyway because I did a lot of teaching during my PhD to earn extra money. And I think even then, before I was like performing on YouTube,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I always tried to make it entertaining because I felt like people are just more interested and enjoy it and remember it more if it's entertaining. It just makes it more engaging. And so I've always tried to do that when I teach. And I think that's sort of, yeah, so I now just sort of see it as like an extension of doing a YouTube video, except it's just, you know, me and my two students in our little Oxford tutorial for an hour each week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Other people I know in the department who are very keen on trying out new things, who in particular have been very keen in adapting


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Scientific evidence behind teaching. And that was really interesting, because it was, you know, my background as like mathematician scientist was using the scientific method.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Learn about this. So obviously there are lots of other people who clearly care about helping their students learn in the most efficient way. But then at the same time, as you sort of said with previous guests, you have people who just kind of want to focus on their research, but they know that they have to do a bit of teaching to sort of keep the university happy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think that system in general is actually wrong. And this is something I found when I was trying to apply for positions a few years ago, earlier on in my career. Because when I was applying for a teaching only position in the job description, not everywhere, but in the job description of some of the Oxford colleges, it would say you need a strong research profile. And I do not


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I think the best way to do it would be just separate them. I'm aware possibly I'm in the minority as someone who just wants to teach, but have people who have that passion and that desire and that hopefully are good at teaching, have them do the teaching,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then have the people who are awesome at research have them do the research.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm, I'm, yeaah. But, it's, so it just seems very odd to me to sort of force people to do things that they don't want to do when...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I can see maybe in the past why it happened and I can see the draw of it because I know that some students might apply to a certain university or within Oxford to a certain college to be taught by this specific person because they want that interaction like I was lectured by Sir Andrew Wiles for example or something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At the same time, so I can see why it overlaps and maybe in the past, nobody wanted to teach. So you kind of had to say, right, well we'll make, if we all do a little bit, you know, come on everyone, if we all just do a tiny bit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'll kinda cover it. But I think now it seems...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Graduate level, when you're doing research, that's when you then need to interact with the actual research mathematicians. But I think for undergraduate degrees in particular, just, for me, you just have the best teachers. As long as they know their stuff and can teach, like, that's just the perfect way to do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so, there's that aspect. Uhm, but no, I think, uhm, I'm really, really enjoying what I do now. So, so this year in particular, even with all the challenges,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] of the current situation. This year in particular for me is, it's felt really nice to have that additional time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To really focus on Tom Rock's maths and YouTube and everything else. I've really been able to commit to that and I'm enjoying that a lot. So I'd like to keep doing that. I'd like to keep sort of doing more Numberphile videos. Stuff like this. I love it. I love talking maths. I just, it's what, you know, it's what keeps me going. It gives me my energy, I think. It feels like I just started this and, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The last year before that was kind of spent trying to put all of this brand new position together because that required quite a decent chunk of work to figure it all out. We had to get some funding and there was like a whole thing to put this all together. So I don't think I thought too much about it, but if I'm still doing what I'm doing now in 10 years, I think I would be more than happy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I am a twin. I'm fascinated by twinness. So am I, but then that's personal sort of experience or...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Victimization perhaps. What's that like being a twin? It's normal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, this is the question everybody asks when they find something unusual, right? Particularly maybe twins, but the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's completely normal for me, I don't know any other way, so it's very difficult for me to compare.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, some sort of normal existence where I don't have someone who's genetically identical to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it, it, you know, there are pros and cons, like many arrangements in this life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Identical twin, is it? Identical twin, not fraternal, what's the opposite? Monozygotic, is that the technical word? One egg.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One egg which splits, which is the opposite of if a twin- twins could come out if there were two eggs happen to be lurking around and they both get fertilised. Yeah. And that's just like siblings. That's non-identical twins. Yeah. I'm sure they spare- share a special bond, but it's nothing like the annoyance that I can create to my twin brother.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and vice versa. So yeah, we are genetically exactly the same. One sperm, one egg turned into two people. He's called Tim. And if people want to go and find him online, he's doing some awesome bits of music, so that's always fun to get.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think we are closer than most brothers and sisters, but we're also more annoyed by each other than most brothers and sisters, and you know, brothers and sisters tend to annoy each other by default, but so we're really close in that we are very similar, but we, he lives up north and I live down south, so we don't see a lot of each other, but we, we quite often hang out online, but we don't actually


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Chat about life a lot, we often just play games. I think we have both been surprised how similar we end up, particularly when we are separated, because we don't have the reaction response.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We tend to react off each other and diverge, because we see what the other person's doing. When we're apart, we just settle into our normal, uh, genetic material, and it turns out that's identical.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If we've both read a book recently, we'll quite often end up, you know, picking the same films or books just because we have the same interests from growing up and we'll end up talking about that and realising we've done exactly the same sort of process about reading books in some order. But then I think the most obvious effect is that within


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Within a few minutes, we have the potential to get seriously grumpy with each other because we... So I see Tim basically being a bit of an arse, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Horrible mirror, you know, it's a very sobering thing. It's probably a good thing, but it is suddenly like, ah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's being annoying and I'm annoyed by it, but that's exactly what I do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that, but Tim and I both, both experienced that and we'll tend to oscillate and then one person will be super grumpy and the other one's all carefree and just being, being themselves and then, uh, then it'll switch. Depending on who's drunk the most beer first, probably.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, a lot of people judge if they want to go and find photos. I, uh, he's a little bit, you know, slimmer and more handsome than I am.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But actually at school it was fun. We weren't in the same class, but we obviously had overlapping friends.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the nicknames were basically, Tim's friends would see me coming down the corridor and say, oh look, it's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's Tim, but he's smiling. So I got the nickname Happy Tim, because he just had this reputation for being a grumpy sword all the time. I don't quite know. Oh, okay. But I was Tim, but smiling, so I was Happy Tim for a long time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't think it's true, but certainly that's, you know, how these, these stereotypes start somehow and then exist as a joke for a long time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's an American guitar player who Tim is very frustrated about because he's brilliant, uh, and it's not my brother. There's also a-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, there's also a, a water engineer and he did a, uh, a degree in sort of a Remindable Engine Engineering. So Tim's been overlapped by two other Tim Sparks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not to my knowledge, but you know, I look at it and can't tell, you know. There's a giveaway in that he's playing guitar quite well. He's a much better musician in terms of practice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it's one of those things, the first glimpse of a twin, and we do look similar, uhm, the first glimpse is weird, and then within 10 minutes you'd have, you'll be noticing what, how could I have even confused these two, particularly


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, visually and our mannerisms will be the same and our voices will almost certainly be...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Good. Or rather, I found it straightforward. It wasn't that it was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A passion of mine. I think in general I felt like I did good at school and maybe got called a nerd and a swat and maybe that's not a surprise if anybody knows me now. But maths wasn't a huge passion. That did change eventually.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would have been up there. I don't remember it being quite so clear cut as that. But certainly I think I got disappointed if I did badly in maths. Like it was in my head that I should be able to do this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a very good question, I really should have expected that, um, listening to some podcasts for a number of files, but it's not obvious to me looking back, aside from being a kid and wanting to be a fireman or something, mainly because they drove red trucks, I'm sure that was part of my very small imaginings, but then I think I enjoyed messing around with computers, I was no particular sort of early


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like the more sort of social aspects and music and stuff. And so it wasn't a clear career path in my head. I wasn't like, I'm gonna be...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A musician. That never really crossed my mind. I also wasn't good enough. I already felt like that as music. But then I think I wanted to do something with computers and mathematics.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Actually, I was probably singing more. We've come back to twin stuff without you even asking, but it's inevitable talking about my growing up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Tim studied A-level music, he didn't do GCSE music but my brother did A-level music and sort of caught up on that and I did the maths, further maths, physics, chemistry thing at A-level. Really predictable. I'm kind of jealous now because he learnt a lot about just other stuff, music in particular, doing that and as a result he played guitar and he played the trumpet, I played the violin a bit but I was


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I just didn't put enough practice in. And that is the main problem. Thinking you're not good at stuff is usually equivalent to not doing enough time with it. But I sang and I used to sing in choirs and stuff and I didn't particularly enjoy the choral stuff and it really took off when Tim started realising he could play stuff on the guitar that we all knew.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I could sing it and we could sing together and actually that was one of the biggest things of having a twin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is that singing with your twin is like having a multi-tracker on demand, right? The harmonies and stuff, like, they blend very easily.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's still really fun. I love singing with my brother. So it was, it was singing for me, music, but then I learned the guitar when we both went off to uni.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And suddenly my accompanist and harmonizer had gone off to Cardiff, so I had to learn some chords on the guitar.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I think, I remember, maybe it was a karaoke thing at like the yokel, the local.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The yokel is probably about right. The local youth group drop-in regularly had like Friday night drop-ins and occasionally would do karaoke things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think we got up and sang together as a horrifying twin double act. Do you remember, uhm, they might be giants. I mean, they're still going, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They also did Birdhouse in Your Soul, which is a lot more famous, but we did a little double act to Istanbul, it was Constantinople, now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople, and I'm not gonna sing anymore. And it's probably looked like some horrible cabaret mess. But I think learning that we could sing together and it was fun and people liked it,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That definitely, for both of us, is a big energiser. This slightly egotistical performance thing is running through both of our psyches.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I did well, and I think I was in a class of people that were doing well, and it wasn't particularly unusual that a whole bunch of us did well, but it was then choosing A levels.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I remember having a conversation with my maths teacher saying, maybe I could do maths and further maths, because I quite like maths. And I remember them saying, nah, don't bother, no one needs really further maths unless you want to go and be an academic mathematician.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Actually, now I say it, I clearly didn't want to go that way because that put me off. Right. And I tried to do computer science instead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then there was some weird option mess up and I couldn't do computer science or they weren't offering it that year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I defaulted back to doing further maths, the second A level in mathematics in the UK. Okay. And that is when I started to realise, ah, there's, it's not just calculation, it's not just arithmetic, there's not, it's not just occasional easiness with an occasional smile, it's actually there's sort of mysteries of the universe and you start to get a glimpse into them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Things like complex numbers first turned up at that level at school and I loved it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I did it for the wrong reasons, in that I chose the one, the subject I was finding easiest. I was probably always gonna go that direction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I don't think I really understood what the subject was about, and when it got hard at uni, and it did get hard, and it got very abstract, I didn't enjoy it as much. So,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The honest judgement of my degree was that I didn't have a good time doing the subject.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I went to Oxford. I very nearly didn't. It didn't really fit my image of my own stereotype to go to Oxford to study. And I had an offer from Bristol to do mathematical engineering, which actually even now sounds like an amazingly interesting course full of artificial intelligence, mathematics stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you get an offer from Oxford, it is difficult to turn it down. And I didn't. And I'm very glad I went to Oxford. I had a great time there, but it has its issues.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's hard, right? And I found the maths more difficult than I was expecting. And this is really normal, I now know, as a teacher, to see the transition from school to uni and like, this is difficult.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's sobering, it's not pleasant, but it's also, it wasn't the end of the world, and what I think it made me do was treat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My degree, rightly or wrongly, as not the priority of my time at university. I wouldn't be the first to have done this, I'm sure, but I spent a lot of time doing other things, so I joined an acapella group, or I helped start an acapella group at Oxford, an all-male acapella choir, and we were singing pop and rock stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was, in America, college acapella is absolutely huge, it's like the equivalent of the first football team, it's like you can join the college acapella group, and there was an American guy doing a graduate program called Derek Smith, and he started this group called Out of the Blue, and there wasn't an all-male fun choir, it wasn't like, Oxford's full of choirs, full of choirs singing choral stuff, and this was funny, we were singing Red Hot Chili Peppers


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With 14 guys unaccompanied. And people go crazy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because it was kind of new in the UK, there aren't many acapella groups, there's still not as many as America, but it just took off and we went around the world several times, sang for Bill Clinton and things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It ended up being that that was what I spent a lot of my time focusing on during uni, was music, socialising, I was really into...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The church group I was part of as well, so there was a lot of other things competing from my maths time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I remember my tutor, uh, asking me, like, you know, is maths your priority at the moment? And I was like, nah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he brought this up at the end of the course after we'd all finished and like, you know, passed. He's like, I remember you telling me maths wasn't really your priority at the moment. He told me how horrified he was. And then I think he appreciated by the end that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was no point in pretending. But we both, yeah, he, he, he, he prevailed on me to do some maths sometime and I managed to do it alongside some music and that was good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think that the nature or the notion of a good work-life balance does not exist in Oxford. Right. So it was very imbalanced in that everything was mental. You get eight weeks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To be at uni, and then you're off. That's a term. So you're at uni for less than half the year, paying your fees. And everything is crammed into those crazy eight weeks. It's a very strange environment. That's four lots of eight weeks. Three lots of eight weeks. Three lots of eight weeks? Yeah, that's three terms. Didn't know that. Yeah, it's crazy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and all your studies and sort of extracurricular studies are happening in that time. And then you sort of go home and I had to go back to my parents' house in Dorset and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's fine, but everyone else was still at uni, all my mates had gone off to other places, my brother was at Cardiff, and they wouldn't come home at all because they had rented, you know, a proper flat and I was living in some crazy 14th century college room that they rent out to conferences, so I had to come home.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His daughter was at Oxford at the same time as me. Yeah. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, Chelsea was, uh, I think she was at New College. Or at least she had, there was a connection with one of the guys in the group who was an American, uh, Rhodes Scholar, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, I remember one rehearsal for Out of the Blue, Wes, who was this guy, he had sort of a secondhand connection with Chelsea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, he turned up late to rehearsal, and that was really, like, it was almost run militarily, it was like, you don't turn up late or you get a face full of, uh, uh, uh, president of the group. So Wes turned up late and on his phone, and then he got off the phone, everyone was expecting him to get, uh, yelled at, and he was about to, and then he said like, no, just listen, they're coming. I'm like, who's coming? They're coming!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it turns out, um, Bill was visiting Chelsea, and Chelsea had told Bill about this group, this Out of the Blue group that we were part of, and, uh, he just said, ah, let's just go and see what they're up to. So Wes had arranged for them to come and visit us during rehearsal, like 9 o'clock at night. So we all trooped out to this, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, so we sang him a couple of songs and he had a quick chat and then we sang another song and then shook hands and we all went back to rehearsal feeling slightly spaced out. We realised that no one had taken a photo so we ran back on mass to find him again and he was just coming out of the college. So there was a blurry grainy photo.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which I'll send if you're desperate to see it. All of us with Bill under some street light and almost none of us are visible because it's really dark. It's quite atmospheric.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We might have done some Chili Peppers. One of the songs that I used to sing the solo on was Other Side by Chili Peppers. We might have done that, although it's a little bit kind of harsh, brutal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was increasingly disillusioned with the pure side of things, which is ironic now, but I'm getting ahead of myself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or the abstract proof of like, yeaah, proof why there's only one zero and does it exist at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Genuine questions to deal with in the sort of basis of mathematics weren't exciting me and I increasingly went more and more applied doing sort of mechanics and physics applications. I did a course on relativity and quantum theory, which was fascinating, very confusing and difficult.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that was what I really got more into and I think I was doing the sort of thing that every student does. You kind of pick the courses you know you're going to get through rather than ones that you necessarily think are important.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I was getting through it rather than enjoying it. And after my degree, I went into teaching.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well the hedge funds are queuing up to recruit maths graduates and all the consultancies and, and then the other option is teaching. There are infinitely many career choices. I think I only realised that in my third year. Everybody's queuing up to get a maths graduate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that makes it harder sometimes to figure out what you want to do. And I think I'd always had teaching in the back of my mind what was more clear as I didn't want to go into the city and do finance stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You certainly could do and a lot of people said, I don't want to do it, but I'm going to do it for five years and my millions or whatever and come out. And I, I wasn't ready to do that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But someone offered me a job in this tiny private school, which I could take without doing any training, because it's a private school. Ironically, the schools you pay money to go to are the ones that can have people who are completely unqualified. Right. Round the side. I did that for a year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, but then I was teaching in a very small school where you have to wear lots of hats to sort of justify your existence. And I was also completely untrained, trying to figure out how to do a difficult job. I loved the teaching, it's hard work and it was, it was just a nice change after studying, I think, to do some sort of social interaction work and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The bits of teaching that feel a bit like a performance, I think that's where I noticed that, you know, that floats my boat, doing something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's not just what teaching is, but there's an aspect of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I liked that. I think that year made me realise I should go and train. You know, this is a difficult job, I really need some input. So that's what I did, I went and did a PGCE the following year, and that year I...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A PGCE is a postgraduate certificate in education and it's like a one year teacher training course that you would do after you graduated from a degree. So you do your subject, which I think, and it's a good way, you need to know your subject in order to impart knowledge about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then you do a year focusing on pedagogy, the science of teaching and how it fits with your subject. So it's very subject specific year, but it's also a teaching specific year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, although it's the primary route into ironically secondary education in that most people teaching in a secondary school would do it that route. And if you do a full degree in teaching, which is possible, a B. Ed or what they call it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't have time to get the subject knowledge that you need perhaps to teach at secondary level. So this is the way most teachers in secondary schools would have trained.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maths is great. The sort of the playfulness, like, I wonder what happens if...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Instead of following the rules that other people tell you, which is kind of how you pass your exams at school and uni,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It became, well just what happens if this, and what are the consequences of trying that, and I wonder what happens if you play with it like this.