[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's say one of these next couple rounds we see Jet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, give whoever's leading a little bit of leeway there so where they can run the first 10 minutes, sprint and get away and see what that gap looks like after 10-15 minutes and then we have to see where Hunter or where Jett is, how far he's come through the pack. I think that's their only chance if they're gonna


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, uh, try to beat him or gonna beat him is a mistake on Jett's part on the line.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so, you know, Kenny is, uh, you know, we, we, you know, Kenny has, has opted to do, uhm, World Supercross, right? And, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Look, let's face it, we know Kenny's been in the sport for quite a long time. I think we will, we'll probably see him out there another, I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say another two years probably, I think he races.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, if I'm Ken Roxton and I'm 30 years old or 31 or however old he is, you know, he's around that age bracket there, uhm, you're trying to, you know, maximize your career, maximize your earnings, and also maximize the fun side of it, you know, and I think with a platform


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Say like World Supercross, uhm, you know, I feel like for him,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We all as racers are looking for, I guess, the easier way out. Let's call it that way. Less racing, right? And I feel like, but we also, we know we've signed contracts with our manufacturers with all of our, uhm, with all of our sponsors to race US-based racing. So now there's a different platform out there to go racing on and a fair amount of money on the line.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, in that, in that series also, I do feel like at his, at 29 years old, uhm, I don't think Kenny was going to win an outdoor championship, I'll say that now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't think he's going to regret it, honestly. I know he rode phenomenal at High Point. So far we've had the closest race between Jet and another rider and that was Kenny and Jet. Uhm, so he rode phenomenal at High Point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But honestly, I think he's looking for the fun. He's looking for something to keep him busy, to keep him, to keep it fun, to still be able to make a good chunk of change. And no, I don't think he regrets it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ricky, I think, I think the one thing is too, is, is, is, is where Kenny's at too, is if he can still show up at a high point and, and get a second.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] BattleJet, if he can go to, uhm, the last three playoff rounds and put himself up on the podium, or win one, let's say, uhm, you know, if he's, if he's kind of like a jack of all trades, he can bounce around and stay relevant by being in


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, the, the fight for a win, for a race win in each one of those disciplines. I think his career.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We may see him race longer than two more years. And like I said, I don't know what his actual plan is for racing, but let's say two years. I think if he can stay relevant and in the, in for those, uh, uh, fights for some wins, podiums, things like that, and all those different disciplines or series is I see that, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, what a, what not a better way to, to kind of go out. Um, you know, I'm not sitting here saying he, he doesn't think he can win a championship because he, he races, um, Supercross.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, you know, to, to win a championship, but honestly, I don't think he's going to either, but as long as he stays up there in the top three, top five and he's a contender, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think his fan base grows, I think he can still make the revenue he wants to make, uhm, and he's having a hell of a time doing it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, I, look, 22, 24, uhm, I know it's 11 rounds, it's one race shorter, it doesn't really matter, I think if you can go 24-0 like you did and James did, uhm, so gnarly, if you can go 22-0 in Jett's case, so gnarly, it's so gnarly again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it's kind of lumped into as, as a whole now we're, we're, you know, with pro motocross and, and failed, um, kind of partnering together to build the, the playoff rounds. Um, honestly they have, uh, two more races.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, ultimately I would love to see a little more of a break. I'm going to go out and say, I'd love to see a little more of some off time for the racers. I would have loved to have it when I was racing. I would be totally okay with seeing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like nine outdoors and then even shortening supercross so the teams and the guys, I mean that's a whole nother topic that we can probably, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 30 minutes on, you know, like another show. But yes, I do think we could shorten Outdoors. We could shorten Supercross a little bit and we could give everybody the time off that everybody needs and heal up and things like that. Like I said, that could be a whole nother topic, another show.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Honestly, honestly, Ricky, I, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's, everybody knows what the screwdriver, when the screwdriver comes out, we know what we're doing. There's only four ways you can go. You can go stiffer, softer, faster, slower. And that's for the fork and the shock. And uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Honestly, I would love to see a communication at least for maybe not the racing side of it, but for, um, race day live and things like that, the where, where we can educate the, the, the watcher, the viewer, um, a little more on what's going on. Oh, you know, like, Hey, we're coming on. We're.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kenny wants it to be four softer, boom, and you do it. And, and, and I think, like NASCAR, NASCAR says they come in, they talk about it, they can talk, they can, communication with the driver and with the crew chief.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I really like that aspect of it. I think it could, I think it would be awesome for our sport. Now I said, I don't think we necessarily need it during the, during the main events, during the qualifiers, but practice leading into as the whole day goes through and what, what people are changing. Um, I think it'd be great to see it's like I said, it's nothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of the suspension guys, I mean, it's just like, they go from truck to truck to truck. What I mean by is one year they'll work at Cali for three years or, you know, and then all of a sudden they're at Honda and then all of a sudden they're at KTM and, you know, WP suspension versus Showa versus KYB.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's all the same. It really, really is all the same. I think it'd be great to have it open.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well it doesn't, it, it, cause it, it's so specific to each rider and motorcycle. So if I went for stiffer on my forks and you went for softer on yours, it's because your valving is completely different than mine. Number one, your chassis is different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your whole bike is, it's, it's a Honda versus a Yamaha or a Cowie versus a KTM and aluminum frame versus steel frame.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It really does not, it doesn't coincide at all. So uhm, I'd love to see it. I think it'd be great. Uhm, I think the fans would really dig that they could, they'd have a little more insight, like actually when it's happening and not waiting for uhm, you know, like, uh, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you to come down on the floor and be like, Hey, this is what they're doing to change the rear tire for the, for the moto, you know, or they're cleaning the mud off or whatever the case may be. I think they should have more in depth coming throughout the day and educate the viewer more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is F1 or any, any type of road racing, they have a wet tire, a rain tire, they have a, they have a rain tire, they have a medium compound, they have a, they have a, they have a hard compound, right? And those are up to the riders. Let's go to use a MotoGP for example, or F1.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some guys will run a rain tire longer than they'll run their medium tire or they'll be like, some guys will pull in, put their medium on while the track is still a little bit damp or one guy will say, Hey, I'm better with my rain tire and I'm going to push it another five laps. And at that point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe we're going to put ourselves, it could, it could work into our favor or it could work against us because if the track dries out, then the rain tire is going to be, going to be garbage on a dry track. So here's the way I look at it is, is you're the rider, you're the one riding it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know what tire you've put on your motorcycle. Now, let's use Highpoint as an example. Everybody ran the scoop. You needed to run the scoop for probably 90% of the track and 100% of the start. Uhm, but Highpoint does have those areas on the track that gets that hard clay base that comes through that's very slippery.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know what's on the motorcycle. You have enough time and experience on that tire. You need to, you need to know when you, where you can push that tire and where you cannot push that tire. That's rider air in my opinion. It has nothing to do with injuries, this or that. Does it have less side grip? 100% it does.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you know going into the race, it's not like you had a blindfold on and you jump on a motorcycle and then it's like, Oh, I didn't know I had a scoop tire on. You knew exactly what tire was on going into that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep. And we had the same, same, same issue when I was racing. We had the Dunlop came out with the tire called a 62 and it had a very, the carcass was very, very soft and you could feel the side of the rim.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I ran that tire at Phoenix while Dunge and a lot of the other guys were running a hard, uh, uh, actually intermediate to more of a hard pack tire. And by 20, and this is 20 laps, luckily we were only 20 laps then too, and not 20 minutes because by the end of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That 20 lap main event, I pulled and I ended up just inching out Brayton. Brayton, it was, it was, I think I passed him with 2 laps to go or 1 lap to go at Phoenix. And we came off the track and I probably had


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, knowing, and even, uh, Brian at Dunlaps, like, dude, you're gonna have no knobs left. And I'm like, yes, but I know that I can ride my motorcycle the fastest up until I have no knobs left.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And maybe we can make it through the race. And I said, I know it's only going to come up three or, you know, call it three laps short if that's the case. Cause I ran this tire in Corona a lot. That's the only tire I ever ran. So I was very familiar with it and it made it to the end of the race with about 40% of the knobs gone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I won the race, but I knew what I was getting myself into.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think there's, we can elaborate on Southwick just a little bit, a little pre-Southwick pre-show here, Ricky.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think we could see some big upsets here at Southwick. Southwick is, I think, one of the, it's probably the, well, and this is why I think that, I think that, uhm, especially for the rookies that haven't gone to Southwick. It's a different track and I know Hayden's been there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In some practice days and things like that, but when you show up for the national, it's, it's different. It's, uh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it's a very unique and can be a very tough track to ride if you're not 100% flow, and I mean 100% flow, have the flow on that track. You're never going straight for very long.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, it's got a pretty hard sand base to it, which we're going to run the, everybody's going to run the paddle again and it's great in a straight line. And then I know the newer tire, the new paddle is better on a lean, but still Southwark, you're never going straight very long. It gets very rough. Um, it could be hot, humid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, it's, it's, I think, I think it's going to be a great race weekend. I don't think Jet's going to get upset because I think he's going to, I just think he's going to do what Jet has done in the past. But as for the lights class, I think we could see some, some, uh, some, uh, rider swapping.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Out in position finishes uh, compared to what we've seen in the past.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Looks like, yeaah, yeaah, looks like we have a high of 87 in the scattered thunderstorms.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hi folks, Lee Diffie from NBC Sports here. If you truly enjoyed what you just watched, you can get more news, interviews, and highlights by subscribing to the Motor Sports on NBC YouTube page. You can get it all, so go for it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Keep the shiny side up. Are you training for the two stroke raise?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So are you aware of the penalty that was assessed to you? Yeah, it was. I think it sucks. Yeah, it was. Apart from that, it was great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hi folks, Lee Diffie from NBC Sports here. If you truly enjoyed what you just watched, you can get more news, interviews, and highlights by subscribing to the Motor Sports on NBC YouTube page. You can get it all, so go for it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hi folks, Lee Diffie from NBC Sports here. If you truly enjoyed what you just watched, you can get more news, interviews, and highlights by subscribing to the Motor Sports on NBC YouTube page. You can get it all, so go for it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The boys were, the boys were smart that one and, uh, in both races and we just, uh, they were putting the whole packs together then. I just, I couldn't get a, quite get my start sorted that one, uhm, and yeaah, the first one I had, I think, too, uh, too much supercross here and I was bouncing all over the place, so we ended up making a quick change.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, Eli was able to, uh, not get tangled up, but definitely slowed him down. Here's the pass, uh, Justin coming up the outside of, uh, Coop, get a little squirrely in the whoops in that, that line down the center.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, we see him coming through the whoops here, you know, kind of closing in on Kenny right towards the end. Uhm, and this is the on off right before the main triple. It just, I personally think drug foot pegs and I would, people were asking me what I thought, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, the old Eli at Daytona, but main event comes around, lights come on. He was able to pull it out at Daytona, but, uh, kind of the same thing here, a little off in practice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and you'll find him in that scenario.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it looked, um, it looked surreal. You know, I was able to, to, to be there live in person and, uh, you know, watch those laps click down, Justin putting massive amounts of pressure. Um, like you said, we've watched you have.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some ups and downs and some struggles and move to a new team and it's probably.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, Kenny, I got a question for you. I think this was on a lot of people's minds, especially mine. We know that the Suzuki really hasn't been raced since James raced it and developed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, watching you guys put that thing together as quickly as you guys did. Like you said, three weeks on the motorcycle and then you're able to come out here and round nine and get a win. It's uh, it's phenomenal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's uhm, I was able to have a chance to go up and, uh, and, you know, check out their facility there in, uh, at least the tracks anyways, in, uh, Madeira. And, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, it's, it's definitely not a, a full factory gig. It's, it, the story is, is pretty unbelievable to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So uhm, you know, Dustin Pipes and his dad put this, you know, put that program together, uhm, and to gamble on, on swing, having Kenny swing his leg over the bike was, was huge. And I think they've done a phenomenal job being in the position they're in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, you know, like Kenny just said, um, how hard it is, like he was talking to Chase on how hard it was to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is for sure. And when we can't, uh, we can't skip on this one where we got Cooper Webb coming in with, uh, with the red plate first time this season, as we see him going through the whoops here, uhm, and Indy close race between him and Barsha. So I think that's going to be interesting to see how he, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, I definitely don't think I would have counted as a prodigy. Uhm, it's very interesting looking back because at the time I never- I was always quite good at maths, maths was-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Probably my favourite subject at school, most of the time in school, so...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was definitely never clear to me at a young age that I wanted to be a mathematician or anything like that or even that being a mathematician was a job that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, sort of when I was choosing school subjects and things at each stage. Okay, yeah, maths is one of my favourite subjects, so I guess I'll continue doing maths. But it wasn't that...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, I definitely want to be a mathematician or I'm clearly going to be a mathematician or, you know, maths is the one and only thing for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's very difficult to say when you're a kid, sort of, you definitely like things that you're good at, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I think it was a bit of both that I definitely liked it a bit more because I found it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More straightforward, and I thought I was good at it, and I would get high marks in things in maths without too much effort, so that's one thing that I liked about it, but...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had music lessons. I was learning the violin. I was pretty pathetic at learning the violin, but I was learning- I was struggling along either way and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For one year, I was particularly pathetic at learning the violin because my violin lessons were always directly after my maths class. And I was constantly just thinking about the maths that I'd been doing in the maths class when I was supposed to be playing the violin with my violin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. And certainly the more it went on, the more I got more and more into trying to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Think about these things more independently and go a little bit beyond the standard syllabus and things. So yea, when I was in primary school it was more just thinking about what we'd done and thinking about the ideas and trying to understand them a bit better and things like that. As I grew a bit older,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yeaah, you bet. There were lots of different, uh, aims for my life and mathematician was never one of them when I was a kid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was one phase when I definitely wanted to drive a tractor, uhm, I wanted to be an astronaut for a bit, uh, I remember I had a big dinosaur phase and I wanted to be a paleontologist, so I think that would have maybe


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yeaah, I think particularly maybe it was when I was a younger kid I really liked dinosaurs and then I had another dinosaur phase around when Jurassic Park came out I think. Of course.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Again, it's very difficult for me looking back, to be honest, that my sort of initial answer would be that I didn't think of primes as particularly different or.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Particularly special, but having said that, I remember from my university applications, I explicitly put down that I was interested in number theory.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really being aware of it, because for me it was just all sort of fun, different logical ideas.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, yeaah, not at all really. So, both my parents were linguists. They were both essentially French and German teachers. So, we've gone on holiday quite a lot abroad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But there was no one in my family who was explicitly mathematical or even scientific. Yea, if you look at my family, I'm definitely the black sheep of the family, the rest of them are all


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a sort of niche interest where there's a very brief joke about me testing them to see if they can tell someone else the sorts of things that I work on. Uhm, but normally once I've made them sweat a little bit after that, then it's accepted amongst everyone that we're not really


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe infinitely close together? Something like that, yea. Prime numbers close together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I think I was good. I was, I was not one of these child prodigies who was miles beyond everyone else, but I was definitely getting good marks in maths, I'd say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that was when I sort of got more into sort of proper maths in a certain sense. So there's a fairly big difference between the sort of maths you learn in high school and the sort of maths you learn at university and so I think


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The rigor of the logical ideas and things is when I sort of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really was quite keen on, yeaah, maths is the sort of subject for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that's right. So I then came over to Oxford to do a PhD, did a PhD here in Oxford. And then after that I had a few postdoc positions. I spent a year in Montreal. I spent basically a year in the US, partly in Berkeley, partly in Princeton, but otherwise I was also back in Oxford for quite a lot of the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, yeaah, not really at all, so I guess they were working on optimizing lots of the really nice ideas that, uhm, Zhang had come up with and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was thinking about something that was a slightly different approach that I've been thinking about from before Zhang's work and things and it turned out my thing worked out in a way that it was way better than I possibly expected.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Big polymath project that we had as this collaborative project to try and reduce the gap down as small as possible has ended now. So I don't think there's a team that's actively working on the problem because we seem to have reached the natural limit of most of the ideas and to really make big progress we'd need to have a big new idea. But I think this is also very representative of how mathematics works. That in some ways it's very collaborative, you have lots of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Colleagues are bored and things and you're trying to come together to mesh ideas together and then, uh, understand new ideas when they come out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no more than 246. So we know there's infinitely many prior subprimes that differ by at most 246. So if we could bring 246 down to 2, we'd approve the twin prime conjecture.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You should always say, well, the length of time that a conjecture's been open for, because if you're just randomly disputed in time, you're most likely to be around the middle of when a conjecture is. But that doesn't even work for the twin prime conjecture, because there's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People don't really know how long it's been open for. It's certainly over 100 years old.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But some people speculated it could be thousands of years old. So even if I was trying to use this...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Way of suggesting how long it should be open for, uhm, it's not clear what the answer should be. It could be thousands of years. It could be thousands of years for all we know. That again, this is another feature of mathematics that somehow we make big breakthroughs, but then we get stuck and we're stuck on patos for quite a long time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's clear that for the twin frame conjecture, you definitely need some big new idea from somewhere, so...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In my day to day research, I'm thinking much less directly about twin primes or gaps, small gaps between primes now. I'm thinking more about developing other techniques for understanding the primes in different ways that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so yeaah, the twin prime conjecture has a sort of special place in my heart, and so yeaah, it would be amazing for me if someone proved it in our lifetime, that uhm, it's sort of my favourite problem in mathematics, I guess.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However, I guess, unlike Andrew Wiles, there doesn't seem to be any clear route to proofing the twin prime conjecture. It really needs some radically new perspective from somewhere. And so...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because of this, I tend not to directly think about the twin-frame conjecture so much, but more a circle of different easier problems where hopefully we can build up enough of a toolkit to make


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Progress. But whenever someone does come up with a new idea


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Suddenly, I guess we have a new hammer basically and everything looks like a nail. So it's very natural for me to think through a whole list of different problems that I have in my head and to say, hey, we've got this new idea. Can this idea help with any of these different problems?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One smallest new development could really make big progress on TrinPrimes. It's certainly one of the things that I mentally test against.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, I'd like to think for myself that it's not just downhill from here, and I don't really buy this idea that mathematicians do their best work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When they're young, that there's always a slight advantage of young people in the sense that their minds aren't set into ruts in the same way that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, there's that one advantage, but I definitely wouldn't buy this idea that mathematicians are there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Peak when they're less than 40 and they are on a gradual decline after that I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so I'll be playing around with equations and things on pen and paper and sort of writing down rough ideas and maybe trying to visualize things, so it's often a...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Very good tool if you can somehow draw a picture. Somehow, that seems, to me at least, to help me try and understand what's going on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I've certainly heard mathematics described as you sort of spend six months blind in a dark room, fumbling around trying to look for a light switch and you're just spending the entire time tripping over chairs and things. And then eventually you find the light switch and then everything is straightforward and you go into the next room and then it's another six months of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bumbling around in a dark room. And so, I'm very much doing this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Manipulating equations and looking at toy examples of the problem. And most of that is pen and paper in my office.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I guess I have a few different sort of little tics, if you like, that uhm, I find that going for a walk often helps clear my mind a bit, that uhm, it gets pretty depressing if you've spent


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Three hours straight, sort of intellectually banging your head against a brick wall, and so going for just a wander around the maths department.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Things like that that I, yeaah, walk in and try to distract myself a bit because...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's some very strange process that I never quite understand where I think the subconscious is doing a lot of the thinking for you. So I'm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Consciously trying out a few ideas, but the real sort of...


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[Assistant] By going for a walk and drinking water and clearing my head slightly to try and process some of the things that I've encountered during the day.


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[Assistant] And then suddenly you have the light bulb moment, but then you completely understand what's going on, so it doesn't seem complicated at all. So, uh, I look at other people's work and I think, oh my goodness, they're so clever, they're doing all these really complicated things that I don't understand at all.


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[Assistant] The sort of, well I hope it's just the different perspectives that you naturally have.


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[Assistant] But yeaah, that's one funny thing with maths that somehow everything that you understand is easy and everything that you don't understand is impossibly complicated and there's no in-between grounds at all. Uhm, similarly if you have proven a result that


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[Assistant] Sort of, you know, other people have tried hard to prove things and is a cute result in itself. It's really rewarding when you feel like you have this break through moment. And so I tend to get this big adrenaline rush and I get very excited, but I also get pretty scared. So after this like,


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[Assistant] Wave of adrenaline and euphoria. I also have this like big fear that I'm about to.


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[Assistant] Uhm, claim a big mathematical proof which has some really obvious flaw in it and I'm gonna destroy my reputation in the mathematical community. Uhm, and so I start getting very worried that maybe I've made some really idiotic mistakes.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so it's a very important mathematical skill that you gradually develop about being sceptical about your own work.


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[Assistant] And having an intuitive idea of what feels right and what doesn't feel right when you try and do proofs. So when you're, like, very new to a problem, often your intuition isn't...


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[Assistant] Too well developed and so it's much easier to make small mistakes and things, but this mathematical intuition I find is a very good guiding.


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[Assistant] Being skeptical of your own work and being able to look at it critically and be like, hang on, have I really proven this?


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[Assistant] There's so many different, really interesting mathematical problems out there and, uh, you really don't need to be a genius to make


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[Assistant] Even if you lose a sort of creative streak or something, then there should always be


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[Assistant] Well, but I think this grunt work is really important for the whole of mathematics. So grunt work sounds maybe a little bit negative.


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[Assistant] Lots of the slightly less glamorous work is still hugely important for mathematics and you wouldn't possibly be able to have the breakthroughs without this.


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[Assistant] Grunt work, as you say, being done. So I feel that there's always going to be...


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[Assistant] Lots of fertile problems where you can make good progress and understand techniques and push things forward. But at the back of my mind, there's always this fear of what if suddenly the tap goes off? That at the moment, as I say, I feel like I've got more things to work on than I have time to do. But often if I'm working on a challenging problem, I'll go.


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[Assistant] Three or four months with making absolutely zero progress. It won't be.


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[Assistant] Three or four months where I feel like, oh, I haven't proven the thing, but I've understood the problem a lot better.


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[Assistant] Uhm, I can go three or four months and feel like I've made no progress whatsoever on this. And so this can be a little bit disheartening if you're, certainly if you're not used to this. Certainly after a while there's a little bit of, is it?


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[Assistant] Obviously I have to choose a prime number, um, and, but two is somehow special and...


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[Assistant] Don't choose 1 as a prime number is because...


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[Assistant] They get better behaved the bigger they are. So in many ways, two's the worst. I think the phrase that other people have used is two is the oddest prime. But then three would maybe be the next.


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[Assistant] So primes are like the atoms of arithmetic that the


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[Assistant] Key point about prime numbers is that every whole number can be broken up into prime numbers. And so if you can understand the prime numbers well, then you can understand the whole numbers well. So somehow to me,


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[Assistant] The most fundamental objects in mathematics and somehow there's all these questions about whole numbers when you're looking at them being multiplied together that boil down to just questions about prime numbers.


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[Assistant] And even though whole numbers maybe sound like the simplest questions in the world, they boil down to these questions about prime numbers that we somehow don't understand at all. So we have the most natural things in the world, but they're built out of these objects that somehow we don't understand.


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[Assistant] So there's lots of questions about whole numbers that turn into questions about prime numbers.


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[Assistant] So, for example, maybe one of the most famous questions ever about whole numbers was Fermat's Last Theorem, which is asking, are there solutions of x to the power n plus y to the power n equals z to the power n? And,


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[Assistant] This is now a theorem due to Andrew Wiles, but one of the


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[Assistant] Like, very basic first steps in the theorem is to say that because prime numbers generate all whole numbers, if you want to show you that there's no solutions to x to the n plus y to the n equals z to the n, it's sufficient to consider only the case when n is a prime number.


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[Assistant] Prime numbers, especially in many different ways, it's much easier to understand the situation when n is a prime number than when n is not a prime number. And so this is maybe


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[Assistant] How to prove that there's no solutions to x to the n plus y to the n equals z to the n when n is bigger than or equal to 3.


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[Assistant] Yeah. So, and again, you have this slight issue with two coming up that, uh, when the exponent is two, then you do get solutions to x squared plus y squared equals z squared. Cause of course that's just Pythagoras' equation.


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[Assistant] Okay, so I think the Riemann hypothesis is clearly the most important problem on prime numbers, and that's the problem that I would really love to see chalked off.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so I think of it as just a problem about counting prime numbers. So, how many primes are there? Up to a million. There's...


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[Assistant] A very natural guess as to approximately how many primes there should be. And the question is how good is this guess? And...


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[Assistant] The Riemann hypothesis just says that this guess is actually very accurate indeed. And so...


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[Assistant] If the Riemann hypothesis is true, um, regardless of what number you chose, whether it was a million or a billion or a gazillion,


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[Assistant] Then we would have, we would know that the number of primes up to a gazillion is...


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[Assistant] This natural guess plus some very small outer term which is basically as small as you could possibly hope it to be.


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[Assistant] Okay, so as I said, the twin prime conjecture is the one that sort of sits specially with me, and yeah, I really like that because...


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[Assistant] Uhm, if you're interested in the distribution of primes, somehow the Riemann hypothesis is talking about the large-scale distribution of primes, how many primes are there up to a gazillion, whereas the twin-prime conjecture is talking about the small-scale distribution of primes, how many primes are there that are really close together.


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[Assistant] So in some ways they're like the two extremes of the most natural questions you'd ask about the distribution. So for me, those two are both the most, two


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[Assistant] Famous problems, but the most important problems as well. Then for other problems, it turns out that


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[Assistant] Goldbach's conjecture is very closely related to the twin-prime conjecture. So Goldbach's conjecture is probably, um, one of the most famous problems in primes. Uh, but for me, it's very likely that if you can solve the twin-prime conjecture, you might well be able to solve Goldbach's conjecture. And so you kind of get two birds with one stone.


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[Assistant] But it sort of means that because I'm in love with the twin prime conjecture, Goldbach's conjecture isn't.


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[Assistant] So important to me as it might be to, uhm, some other people in it.


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[Assistant] Prime values are polynomials, so are there infinitely many primes of the form n squared plus one? This is another one of these very simple to state conjectures, and


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[Assistant] The answer, as with lots of these things is, oh, it clearly should be the case that there's infinitely many times in the form n squared plus one. How could it possibly not be? But if we had...


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[Assistant] Okay, so there's two reasons in my head. The first reason is that the primes are an interesting sequence, and if you can't get really good, specific mathematical control over the sequence, you may be asked statistical questions. Like, how many primes are there? That's the Riemann hypothesis. Uhm, but also, in general, if you want to understand a sequence, as well as


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[Assistant] As I said, looking at these large-scale statistics, you also often get a lot of information about small-scale statistics. So how well they're distributed in short intervals and how often they come close together and things like that. And so if you can prove the twin-prime conjecture, then it's likely that you'd know roughly how many primes there are that differ by...


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[Assistant] Two, but also how many diff by four, how many diff by six. And the question, although the twin prime conjecture is stated as just, are there infinitely many times you get these lucky coincidences, it's quite likely that


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[Assistant] Sort of the real twin prime conjecture is about how often do you have gaps of a certain size and it's all about a statistical understanding of


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[Assistant] When crimes come close to each other. So it's just the same as the Riemann hypothesis, but looking at small scale statistics rather than big scale statistics. And that's what sort of statisticians might do for any other sequence that comes out of physics or nature or something.


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[Assistant] The second reason that I, so I, that's why I view it as a natural problem in and of itself if you accept the prime is interesting. The second thing is that, uhm, it mixes multiplication and addition and


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[Assistant] They're defined by every number can be multiplied by primes put together.


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[Assistant] But then you have this plus two feature that


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[Assistant] Means that there's this slightly mathematically jarring interaction between addition and multiplication.


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[Assistant] And lots of our ideas behind it are trying to understand how multiplication and addition interact with one another. And so for mathematicians, the sort of technical side of things, I think the twin prime conjecture is fascinating because it's really trying to understand on a, it's a sort of


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[Assistant] Toy case of trying to understand a much bigger problem of how multiplication and addition interact with one another, and there's lots of very different subtle questions about how


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[Assistant] Uhm, this comes about, and if you could prove the twin prime conjecture,


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[Assistant] You've likely made a big advance on how you can understand this interaction between multiplication and addition, which are the two most basic techniques in mathematics operations.


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[Assistant] Blurred statistical way of trying to understand them because this is the only way we have hope of getting any sensible answers. And so these sort of overall patterns of prime numbers are definitely the sorts of things that interest me and not any individual number itself where you write it down explicitly.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's, it has some interest and it shows sort of the computation, how far computational techniques and things can go and sometimes


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[Assistant] Saying something interesting about the prime numbers themselves, but I definitely...


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[Assistant] Few prime numbers as some huge family and I'm only interested in properties of the whole family rather than properties of any one individual in the family.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I don't really do this, that uhm, I definitely somehow notice numbers a lot more than I think a normal member of the public. So, I remember those.


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[Assistant] I finally experienced that my girlfriend was showing me her old textbook from undergraduate studies where I think it may be a biology textbook, I can't remember exactly. And she would just flick to a random page and was sort of showing me some of the things that she'd learnt during her undergraduate studies. And I looked at one of the diagrams.


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[Assistant] And so I pointed this out and she found it completely bizarre that the first thing she did was open a random page of her textbook to explain some of the things we were doing. And because I just zoned in on the numbers, I noticed a typo on this textbook that's famous and is on its fifth edition or something.


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[Assistant] Just because the numbers didn't quite match up. So I definitely have something slightly odd about noticing numbers, but I don't tend to test an individual number for whether it's a prime number or not. Uhm, I'm normally much more interested in the sort of vague properties of numbers rather than the individual properties of individual numbers.


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[Assistant] Actually, they don't do that as much as you think, so I certainly get asked a little bit, uhm, oh, what are you working on at the moment, but I think this is normal for mathematicians, that it's, uhm, sort of,


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[Assistant] Maybe British people talk about the standard opening line is what's the weather. Maybe mathematicians are like, Oh, what are you working on at the moment? Because you get a good feeling for what other people are working on. So beyond that, I find that.


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[Assistant] People are always interested in what everyone else is working on and it's always good, I find, because I'm still...


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[Assistant] Relatively new to the subject and junior overall, it's good to see how other people pick their problems and how they choose what to focus on and where they put their focuses. But I don't think I get asked what am I working on much more than any other mathematician.


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[Assistant] Uhm, so I would have a certain affection if that's the way that you wanted to say things. I, I would say Grant, Grant Sanderson.


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[Assistant] I've never been asked about how to pronounce my name. I've always thought of it as a, a standard non-mispronounceable thing.


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[Assistant] I'll start by saying there's two ways of explaining it. So the first is the very direct. It's a weird name. It's named after the logo, which is a loose depiction of my eye color, which is three quarters blue, one color brown on the right side.


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[Assistant] Although the closer I look at it, sometimes I realize it's not as clean a fraction as that, but whatever. Give me a look, hang on. Alright, alright.


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[Assistant] Either way, you know, we can acknowledge that's a weird name. Putting it as the logo, I mean, there's some meaning to that because in the same way you'd put your name on your work.


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[Assistant] Uh, like having a genetic signature and the whole channel is about seeing math and seeing it in different ways. And to some extent maybe like.


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[Assistant] I want to show people the way I see it, right? So some sort of individuality there maybe makes sense.


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[Assistant] Basically it's just two colors. So there's like a segment that's brown. And then the rest of the eye forgot to pigment itself. So it's a different color. Like you see it in dogs a lot, huskies that have multiple different eye colors.


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[Assistant] I used to notice, like if someone would notice it in my mind that would up them in the like ladder rung of friendship as, oh wow, we've made enough eye contact that we're now at this point where you've noticed this weird and otherwise not super noticeable feature about me.


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[Assistant] Which is maybe why I had that as a weird part of my identity, so much so that I'd be willing to name a YouTube channel after it.


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[Assistant] You also have to remember, like, I wasn't necessarily thinking of this is going to be a channel that's going to grow and I want to have it out there. I was just putting a name for a thing that I wanted on a particular project that I


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[Assistant] I didn't necessarily think strategically, oh, if I want this to be


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[Assistant] Well, also this gets to the second answer on why to name it. I have a strong belief that names should be weird.


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[Assistant] Should be something notably different. You know, if you're, if you're running like a pie shop in your town, it should have the name pie and it's so that people know what they're looking for. But if it's an entity on the internet, you know, I do think there's an element of building your own brand into it.


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[Assistant] You know, you look at whatever your most popular website is, uh, Google or Facebook or Twitter, they're objectively weird names. The first time you ever heard one of those names, it's just weird.


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[Assistant] So I kind of wanted to lean into it that way. The only name I can think of for a company that I actually think is actively bad is a place I used to work for. I think it might be, yeah, I'm wearing their shirt right now.


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[Assistant] Its name is Affirm, A-F-F-I-R-M, which is a fine name. They do things associated with payment and they want to affirm that it was a valid payment.


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[Assistant] The problem is then you're talking to someone, they say, where do you work? You say, oh, I work at a firm.


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[Assistant] There's also in Silicon Valley, someone named accompany as in they accompany you through your life, but boy is that not.


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[Assistant] Unless there's name collision, I think not only is it okay to be weird, there's an advantage to that. So I don't know if I would change it if I went back in time.


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[Assistant] In the same way that Kürzgestadt? Kürzgestadt? Whatever it is.


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[Assistant] The fact that that's the first example that comes to my mind for weird names is good for their branding, so they shouldn't change it.


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[Assistant] Yeah, a little bit, but it's not, I'm not, you know, George Clooney walking down the street. Someone's saying, Hey, look, there's the three blue one. No, it's because I don't really have a recognizable face either. It's not like a main part of the channel that someone would note. So every now and then it happens that someone might, uh, recognize.


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[Assistant] Honestly, usually how it happens, like, oh, can I see your eye?


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[Assistant] And then it's like looking at the hope diamond, you're pretty disappointed that it's not actually that noticeable a feature.


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[Assistant] I don't know if you'd call it hype, but the fact I named a channel after my eye to what it actually looks like. That ratio is the same even though the absolute magnitudes are quite different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, math, yes. Filmmaking, no. Right. I did not know and still really don't know how to make videos. Um, but I've always been into math and I think some of my earliest memories to point to this fact, I had a dad who was very interested in making me be curious about the world. One game that he would play.


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[Assistant] Uh, he'd stack sugar cubes in interesting geometric patterns. You know, maybe it would be like a three by three by three cube of sugar cubes and say, how many are there in here?


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[Assistant] So, you know, if you're very young, you don't really know about multiplication and maybe you try to count, but there's one you can't see. So there's some notion of pattern recognition there. And if I would get the answer right, he'd feed me a choker cube. So.


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[Assistant] He also, man, he put, he must've put a lot of time into this project. He made this thing where you could sort of stack marbles in interesting pyramids, but one was like a hexagonal pyramid. So he would drill these very precise holes and everything.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it was like a sphere packing thing, I guess. And again, it was a notion of just counting things in certain patterns. And at that point, more so than the lesson itself.


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[Assistant] I think looking at your dad be so willing to spend a lot of time in a project about a thing makes you interested in that thing. And he himself, you know, he's not a mathematician. I don't think he actually went much beyond calculus in school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's comfortable with numbers. He loves reading about sciency stuff, right? Like he follows your channels, that kind of thing. Uhm, but this wasn't like the mathematician trying to make his son into what he is. He was actually very...


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[Assistant] Adamant that my brother and I not following his footsteps into like.


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[Assistant] Navy and commercial pilot, I guess he thought that was becoming a more and more difficult career path.


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[Assistant] But as far as like instilling a love for curiosity and that a specific character of that curiosity is towards patterns and numbers, that started very young.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I think if you interviewed someone in my high school and you asked about like that Grant Sanderson kid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yeaah, he has eyes like the Hope Diamond is, uh, at least what all the ladies would say, uhm, at that time.


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[Assistant] So I went to college at Stanford, um, and it's at that point I started getting pretty heavily seduced in the direction of computer science. Um, and you know, there's a lot of parallels between computer science and math, not just insofar as the latter applies to the former, but the structure of writing a good program is similar to the structure of writing a proof and things like that. Um, and I loved it, right? I think one of the first.


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[Assistant] Things that I made that wasn't assigned to me was a four dimensional grapher. So I just wanted to see what four dimensional shapes look like. Hey, I can make the computer show me what their shadows look like. And that just felt awesome. And it's very empowering and it's very.


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[Assistant] Different from math in that you have an entity telling you when you're wrong.


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[Assistant] The compiler. And you have to own up to that fact. It's not like an English essay where you can argue about whether your point was interpreted appropriately. No, you're wrong. You have to live up to that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that makes you improve yourself. And it's also very precise and technical, so obviously that aligns with math.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, computer courses, yeaah. So I was major- I was majoring math. I always knew I would want to major in math. And then, I'll always take a computer science class as well because, you know, math is actually a fairly light major as far as units are concerned.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and the people I started to hang out with were much more on the computer science side of things.


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[Assistant] Much more influenced by the people you spend your time with than you are by


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[Assistant] Pre-established passions in some way. Yeah. So, uh, like the first summer after my freshman year, I, um, sort of landed an internship that I.


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[Assistant] Didn't have the merit for but was happy to be given the opportunity at a certain place in Silicon Valley that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Started off as a less than fully technical position, but you know, once you're in an organization and you sort of.


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[Assistant] Sniff around and find the right people and you ask what they're working on and you say, hey, can I help with that in some way?


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[Assistant] Uhm, got a little bit of more concrete programming experience. And again, you know, that just sort of bumps up the addiction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it's the difference between programming and software engineering where as soon as you have to make a bunch of different components work together in, I don't want to say unsexy ways because that makes me sound like a prima donna who only want to work on things that are super interesting.


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[Assistant] But there are, there are aspects that I just felt weren't in my wheelhouse as much and are kind of, um, I don't know.


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[Assistant] If you're trying to get some old system to talk to another old system and that's what it takes for the company to actually have a valuable product.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's less inspiring than creating your own four dimensional grapher and things of that sort, right?


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[Assistant] Like what programming means can be quite different and I think it becomes progressively less sexy the farther you trudge into that career is the view that I got.


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[Assistant] If I'm really honest with myself, I think it might've been kind of indulgent in that I felt like, Hey, no, I love math. And I had this notion of that is a possible career path is to do the PhD, be a mathematician, that kind of thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So maybe I should try some career path that lets me fulfill that love of math.


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[Assistant] Or not necessarily the traditional one, like try something a bit weirder. So like by the time I was finishing college, I'll probably jump back and forth here a little bit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I had made, I think one or two videos, um, that were on what is now the channel.


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[Assistant] And those had started as like a mix of math and coding project because I wanted to have my own tool for visualizing things. And one thing led to another where that made it possible to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Have this position at Khan Academy creating math videos. So I started to think, okay, maybe there's a possibility for a less traditional path into some career where you are engaging with the math and also programming for that matter in the ways that are more fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And let me see if I can try to forge something out here. It's a little weird. It's a little less known.


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[Assistant] I don't have a concrete plan about what three years from now looks like, but.


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[Assistant] I have a sense that like the positioning is probably not too bad if I have like


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[Assistant] You know, Khan Academy is a meaningful name in the world of like education. So it's not a bad feather to have in the cap.


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[Assistant] The most honest answer is probably like people like you, the fact that this was somewhat established.


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[Assistant] I didn't, so I didn't really know the notion of what it meant to like be a YouTuber. To give an example, when I did put that first video out, you know, you get some email from YouTube that says like, ah, you have 27 subscribers. And I remember thinking, what's a subscriber? And I, so I had a notion that like,


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[Assistant] Minute physics is a thing. Numberphile is a thing. There are humans behind it that in some sense, this is a part of their career. So that wasn't completely foreign, but anything more specific than that wasn't there. So I think if I had, if it had been, you know, five years earlier,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That probably wouldn't have been my instinct. I'm not really a first adopter in that way, uhm, that some other people, they see this new thing, they want to share what they're doing, so they put it out there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I mean, I think this is like, there's a whole category of importance for the kind of work that like.


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[Assistant] In talking to him, he said, my channel probably wouldn't exist if minute physics didn't exist because that provided a bit of the inspiration and also.


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[Assistant] You know, pattern matching isn't great, but it's a way to get started. And as soon as you get started, then you mold something into your own.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It provided a pattern to match from for a style that felt more approachable than like being on camera, which a lot of people aren't comfortable with.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What was more responsible for that was the conversations that started to be had where I, you know, went down there for lunch and I really connected with the people working on their math side of things. So I had these projects and I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At that point there was then enough goodwill that they could see the good in them and maybe look past the.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Amateurness of how they were put together. Also because Khan Academy isn't necessarily about like fancy videos that are super well polished. Maybe that actually played into it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whereas if I had been a trained filmmaker that might have counterintuitively worked against me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thought it could be a good idea to take a gap year at the very least between undergrad and PhD.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, having had internships that were totally outside of academia in that time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Realized it is very beneficial to get your head out of academia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For self improvement, for just better knowledge about how the world works, for just meeting a different kind of people, all of that. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I think it was much more likely if I was going to be a successful mathematician, it would be because I had a slightly different past than it would be because I was the greatest at math, because I wasn't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The other thing was a little bit of doubt about the specific field that I wanted to go into.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's I think very important, you know, if, if anyone's going into some PhD, do it based on who you're working with first.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right? Like what person will be advising you if you're in, uh, you know, more of a science, like what lab group you're going to be in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rather than what is easiest or what has like the best brand name associated with it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And cause I didn't have that clarity, I just felt uncomfortable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Setting in stone anything that would be effectively like a, a five year lockdown. So a little bit more time to explore different things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Felt like it was needed, but during, I think that first year it was definitely in my mind. This is a gap year and this is, I will at some point like go back and maybe go down that path.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I do want to keep my mind open to if there's a different path that exists. And another, another factor coming in here also is a little bit of skepticism about the stability of the university system and especially the American university system through the next few decades.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where I don't know if I want to throw all of my eggs in a basket that has like trillions of dollars of debt, uh, as like a direct consequence of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the background, it's hard to know how things pan out for.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like what happens to what currently exists as student debt that some bank counts as its assets?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When suddenly they realize that it won't be repaid ever, but I can't help but feel that the job prospects for working mathematicians aren't gonna be super great as a consequence.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Honestly, yeah, not YouTube per se, but the internet, like I'm much more bullish on the notion of establishing a platform for yourself rather than being in a old system.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe that's a little bit naive. I think that's definitely informed by having had one's formative years grown in like a Silicon Valley environment rather than other ones.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I do think that I don't think YouTube itself will be like the stable entity, you know, 20 years from now, but the things that it can lead to. Yeah. If it works.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At the very beginning, so they had this thing they called the talent search, which it was always unclear to me exactly what that was. Is this a recruiting thing I would ask? They would say kind of, but it was a thing where they invited people to submit educational videos and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They would select some winners and like bring them out to Khan Academy and to YouTube to like tour around.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was kind of a recruitment thing because they were growing their content team beyond just


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sal putting out videos. Nevertheless, it took a little bit of...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pushing and weaseling to turn that into any kind of job offer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like I will write some things, see if you like it and kind of let it grow out from there. Right. It's always a foot in your door situation. And so I was eventually hired again. It wasn't like a long-term thing. It was a one year fellowship. Um, and there were, so there was like a biology fellow, there was an electrical engineering fellow and it was people that they would bring in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, usually having just gotten their PhD, like the electrical engineering fellow had like finished a career at HP. So very different and strange group of people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Haven't been spending your last, you know, five, 10 years in research because it's a very different dynamic. So I start making multivariable calculus content for them, which is not just videos, but also like articles and exercises and such. And then like any job, there's a bunch of just odd job little things here and there outside of that. And.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I, so when I started, like 3 Below and Ground was not a big thing by any means. It was like a thousand subscribers. It was just a side project.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So then we progress, uh, further through the year and I, every now and then put out something on the channel and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At some point it fell, some of the videos fell into the good graces of the recommendation algorithm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not on like a viral scale of things, but you know, at that point, if you see that it says like 20,000 more views than the last month, like that can be a big thing to you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I did like a project with Steven Strogatz, which uhm, was really cool for me that he was even open to that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay. And so the channel grew a bit, long story short, like questions then started to arise. What is the relationship between 3Blue and Brown and Khan Academy?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The question should have been asked and addressed long earlier at the beginning, but partly it just wasn't big enough of a big thing. Partly they didn't have a precedent of other content creators. And as those questions started to arise, we did a couple of things where like, maybe we married the two.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then we realized, ah, that's actually a bad idea unless it's going to be a full like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It becomes part of Khan Academy and rebranded to Khan Academy for the totally separate things. And like long story short, it sort of made sense to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Part ways in one way or another. And either that would mean, okay, I'll get a job somewhere else or like go back to trying the PhD thing and the channel will still be a thing on the side.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It wasn't tiny. I think it was maybe something in the 60 to 80,000 subscriber range, right? So not negligible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not something I would recommend someone say, oh, I'm going to try this as a full-time job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I'm young and I'm not tied to a family or anything like that. So if ever there's a time, this is the time. And that, that, that proved to be valid. And again, I benefit from the fact that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, YouTube and the industry surrounding YouTube had existed for a while. So Patreon was a sort of mature or maturing thing at that point. A notion of, you know, like, uh, uh, sponsorships or such were there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I sort of was of this like, let me try all of the things and see like what works out. And then over time I've been a little bit more, I don't know, thoughtful about exactly how I want to approach stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More time into them definitely helps. You know, like I said, I still feel like there's a lot of aspects of just filmmaking. I don't really know, but certainly I've been like learning more over time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I like to think like the videos have been getting better and hopefully two years from now, I'll look back at the ones today and cringe for some aspect of them. Right. So I think that's it. I mean, there were, there were a couple.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I didn't know about that ahead of time or anything and I just noticed one day suddenly there's a huge growth and like you can see in comments like came here from Vsauce.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I had never met him, so I kind of reached out to say thank you in some way. And it turned out...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The way he came across the channel was one video I made called like who cares about topology.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I felt proud of that video actually when I made it. That was the first one that I made actually after leaving Khan Academy and really like pouring myself into it. So maybe in that way, that was kind of a nice little payoff there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One actually huge, huge helpful thing from, and I mean from the very beginning, Henry was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, very comfortable just providing advice and mentorship on various things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know, as he and I got to actually know each other more, we realized we connected in a number of different domains. Like, oh, we each play the mandolin after.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Having like grown up playing the violin and enjoy like the outdoors and running like there's, there's a number of ways we've like personally clicked a little bit more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Both providing advice and also like he was very kind in terms of mentioning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The channel on his which, you know, he didn't have to by any means.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We did a collaborative project later on. Things like that just sort of helped out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think also, you know, I think it's important to read the negative comments and when they're written in good faith, like take them to heart for improvement.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, you know, there's a lot of things I was doing earlier on that at the moment I felt was the right way to do it. That was just wrong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so the very first video I put out, I was talking pretty quickly in it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think at that point I was pattern matching more than I should have off of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Various, you know, like internet, Mimi, YouTube things where it's just this fire hose of information. You're talking faster than someone can understand, but that's exactly what's pleasing about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that has a role. That obviously can get very popular on the internet in some domains.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I think, I don't think I recognize that in the context of math, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It takes a lot of brain energy to understand what's going on. And it goes from, you know, in a context like history, it's kind of pleasing to have facts thrown at you in a certain mindset.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bring to mind days of confusion in school that were painful that you don't want.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What you actually want is to understand something and to understand it, it has to be paced better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which of the visuals were more confusing? You know, sometimes I would be hesitant to improve things because...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's going to take a lot of work to make it look in this different way. It's hard to think of more specific examples, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Obviously there's, you know, especially as things grow more, then you start to get negative comments that aren't even written in good faith. If you're small enough, luckily the only people who are crazy enough to stumble across your channel are into niche things and like willing to give you some sense of goodwill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I think a pretty good rule of thumb, if it's something written with proper grammar, listen to it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If it's something written without pro and you know, maybe disregard it and make sure you have a reason in your mind why you're disregarding it. Um, you know, I'm not saying listen to what people tell you because sometimes they are wrong for like whatever reasons. Uh, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do think the whole movement about like, don't read the comments or don't let that get to you or, you know, haters are just going to hate that. That can be taken a little too far. I'm super biased by having like a math channel on the internet, which is much less inflammatory than some other people's content. So I acknowledge that, but you know, I think, I think there's a strong role for criticism.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As far as those that are like ambiently coming in since then, you know, when you're like bored, sometimes you're scrolling through things and like one of the things I might scroll through is recent comments.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I almost never read replies to comments, right? Because probably because that's less visible in YouTube when you're just scrolling through things, which is unfortunate because that's where more substantive discussion might happen. But I don't know. It's certainly less than 10, but it's, it's, it's an unknown unknown because I don't stay exposed to it. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I go into math because I don't know that satisfies the intent of the question. I know sometimes people want to just shut down the conversation about what do you do, but more often than not, someone actually wants to have a conversation. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For God's sake, give them something to work with. So you say, I run a YouTube channel about math.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Usually the first question is what level of math? Like, is it for high schoolers or oh, do you make like tutorials to like help through homework? Or like, oh, is it like, you know, you put out one a day of like homework health and like, boy do I wish. And at this point, even though I've been asked so many times, I always just falter on what level is it? Who is the target audience? I don't know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If I'm doing a good job, I want the video to be accessible to a curious and smart high schooler, but still interesting to like a PhD student.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't always do a good job and those are like hard topics to find, but that's the goal and then I might give them some examples where I say, you know, a lot of the things would probably be categorized as like college math in some way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like I did series on calculus and on linear algebra, but I also try to do every now and then things that are


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not math per se, but can be a gateway drug into it. Like how does Bitcoin work or what are neural networks?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perhaps that's where I should start is I should say the thing that I try to make the channel do more than anything else is look visually distinctive and put animations first in the explanation rather than making them a supplement to the explanation. Like if I'm thinking of a topic, it's better if I think this is the core visual around which the narrative will revolve.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rather than writing a script and then later thinking, Hmm, what visuals will I put to this? I am definitely a big advocate also of while I'm animating things, letting what I discover while creating the visuals change what the words will be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know some creators, they'll do it the other way around where they like, they lock down the words and then they're just putting visuals to it because they don't want the scope creep that comes from that change, which maybe I'm a victim of because many of my videos are 20 to 30 minutes, but hey, that's what you get.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like what I mean by trying to put visuals first, uh, depending on what mood I am or what environment we're in, I might just pull up, pull one up and show it. Cause you know, I don't have the thousand words that match that picture.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So usually friends, um, or sometimes if I, the other day actually like ran into someone I just hadn't seen forever in a cafe and we were just chatting and rather than doing the traditional


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What have you been up to? What's going on in life? You know, after getting through that a little quick, I said, hey, can I try to teach you? He said, do you have a half hour?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that, I mean, that's fun for both of us, I think, because I knew he was uhm, at least somewhat into like technical topics. Uhm, I also teach. I have a couple like private students that I like tutor now and then. I'm very on and off about it because you know how it is with like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, some of the topics I do on the channel are conducive to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Using them, they're high schoolers as sample students. Some of them maybe less so, but when it's possible I try that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think, well, so, I mean, I've been with them for a long time, long before the channel existed. So I think they're just sort of bemused from the sidelines about the fact that I went from just being like the random dude who would occasionally come over and teach them things to like, I guess there's a channel associated with this now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because it started much younger and we just, they're more like cousins at this point really. That was never something that colored the relationship.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Much more back of the napkin. The goal is to find the things that are confusing that I didn't think were confusing. Right. That's, that's the end goal. And so who knows? Maybe if I was on top of my game, I would come with better prepared articulations of the points.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But part of it, it's a forcing function to actually get the writing done, right? Because it's hard to write things, but if you're speaking to someone, you will output words. And sometimes you output some words and you think, oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Usually not because it's earlier in the process. So instead people have to deal with my terrible drawings. Um, so yeah, there are definitely, so there's the phase of,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Letting people inform what it'll be and then while I'm animating and like put together stuff, then that also helps shape what the words will be. So those are usually two distinct phases. Sometimes like I could, I don't know, like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I might even try this with you after we record. I have a couple animations for what will be a follow on project.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, that I could just like show and it would be interesting to see like reaction or what questions come about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but that's a sign that I'm ahead of the game more so than I usually am.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Very short answer, I did, I tried it a little bit, uhm, having other people on board, uh, just to kind of experiment with that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think that could have been a proper and successful path if the goal is more content.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, and if the way to do that is with multiple channels where you're giving complete autonomy, uh, to the individuals. What I found is it's actually very hard for me to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Often hard for me to articulate what I don't like about something. And when you're doing that in your own head, that's totally fine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can say no to yourself 20 times and not sacrifice any social capital. I just felt like this constant divide on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't want to rob someone of autonomy if presumably you found someone because they're able to create really good things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I also have a particular character that I think is in the channel and I don't know if the smartest thing for the channel would be to compromise that character.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do believe that and I feel kind of weird and mildly egotistical to even say it out loud because it's like, Oh, you have such a great personality that like your content will be better than someone else's. And it's like, not necessarily. It's just, that's what it is. And that gives it a certain consistency.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The analogy I kind of made to a couple people when I was talking that is maybe tortured. If J.K. Rowling when she was writing Harry Potter books after the third book said like, hey, this is going pretty well. I've got more funds now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I could bring on some of the world's greatest writers. We could have a hundred Harry Potter books.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's something wrong about that and it's hard to put your finger on why that's wrong. There are better writers than JK Rowling. Absolutely. There would be more Harry Potter content. There would be niche fans who would love a hundred Harry Potter books. And yet there's something that's just not, it would have lost its magic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, no pun intended. Again, it feels kind of weird and egotistical to say that cause it's like, oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your eyes are like the Hope Diamond. Your videos are like Harry Potter. Like that's not necessarily what I mean. But uhm, there are difficult to, I wrote a whole like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Patreon post sort of trying to express my thoughts on this because I wanted again like when you're forced to articulate something it clarifies thoughts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, you tell me, but I would imagine a large part of what goes into the creation of your work is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Making the choices for what is interesting and it's not just this rote grunt work of oh, you're editing it, you're cutting it down. No, that's the substance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also, the way I just thought about this is, uhm, I previously had had thoughts, okay, I just want to produce a ton of content.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I could even have like one video out per week. If I could have like essence of blank series and all the topics of math, that would be great. And kind of backing up and saying that's not necessarily what I want.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I want there to be more math content. I don't think the best way to do that is for it to all be under one umbrella, but to like inspire people, maybe even provide them with the tooling for it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Shout people out when they deserve it and it's appropriate. Like all of that will help there be more math content.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My role should just be to spend as much of my own time, not on anything managerial, but just on like creation of things that I think wouldn't be created otherwise. That means there will be less content.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was talking to you before recording about how I'm feeling antsy that it's been 40 days since I've published a video. Part of the reason for that like-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The project that's coming up, I feel really excited about and it'll be distinct. I can almost guarantee it's a project that wouldn't have happened if I was like running a small company because it just, it would make zero economic sense to like throw my time into it that way. But maybe there's a certain beauty to that, that like, this is the kind of thing that in another


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Instance of the world wouldn't have existed. Maybe people like it, maybe they don't, but the more you do things like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, that's the only way you'll expose to yourself to creating something that people find genuinely special.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I mean I think there's some YouTube creators, sort of, there's like different generations of educational creators, you know, I think there are some in like the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I did, I didn't think YouTube would be that career path actually. Like this is part of why being a part of an organization like Khan Academy felt so alluring.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I thought, oh, this is great. I can have my YouTube presence be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An aspect of my like online identity that helps me move from one place to the next, but like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, math is niche, like it wouldn't necessarily work out. Um, I thought it would be much more akin to, you know, how like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Katie Mack being popular on Twitter probably helps. It's hard to know depending on like which academic environments, but that's not a bad thing to have.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Going into doing something like slightly different, but you know, obviously at some point on my mind that was like a path.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To address your original question, do I wax poetic about the influence it might have on...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a way that I'm very sincere when I say, I want to inspire more people to love math. I want more people to self-identify as loving it. Whether that means fanning the flames that already exist, which with a channel like mine or yours probably is 90% the case. Or in those rare special cases, sparking that flame to begin with. I'm sincere when I say that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it wouldn't be the full truth if I didn't acknowledge part of the reason I make the videos. I just like making them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think there's an element of enjoying learning something. And if you want to explain something to someone else, that's what's going to make you learn it the most. It's purely self contained, purely in my own world, the pleasure and value that comes from it and that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If no one else was watching them and or rather if as many people were watching them, but somehow I could put on an omniscience cap and know that it had zero influence, right? Like the ones that were going to love math, loved math. The ones that were going to hate it, didn't see it. There was no influence.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would still really enjoy making them for those more selfish reasons and I don't, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's hard to know if you can break it down. Oh, it's 40% this, 20% that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like anything in life, you know, the motivations for doing something are extremely muddled and it's hard to be honest with yourself about where they come from.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I animate things programmatically and I love programming and I think it's, here's what I like about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's just, you know what needs to be done. It's kind of grunt worky, but there's tiny little micro problems to solve, but they're not too hard. So like a lot of people disparage the notion of grunt work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's, that's the most relaxing and get into flow kind of style of things. The part that will be the most uncomfortable is writing it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uhm, especially if I like haven't done sample lessons or if it turns out I wasn't clear on what the idea would be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's the part that's the most creative, but it's also the most painful. And I think this lines up with a lot of other like quote unquote creative work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is the thing that people like to think they enjoy. Ah, this is the kind of creating a book or writing it in some way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's actually a very painful process. And then the more rote things, if it's like mowing the lawn or something like that, it's actually quite enjoyable because you know, you're making progress. It's very clear how much progress has been made and it's easy to get a little bit addicted to that. At least I think maybe that's a personality type.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not as much of that personality type where, you know, you get neurotic about it. Certainly maybe I used to get more butterflies in the stomach as if you're about to give a talk when you hit publish, which is silly because you're just in a room alone. These days I'm much more...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I try to early release it to some people so that they can catch mistakes. Uh, so there's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like if I outputted things as frequently as you did, I would never output anything at all. Right. Because nothing would get done. Yeah. I think it's actually fun. I enjoy that part. Um, I also like, I enjoy public talking and that sort of thing because you can get energized by that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like the more nitty gritty you get into in the details of making a video and the more time you put into it, it feels like that's all the more weight that goes into that moment of publication.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, part of me is just aware that I'm not that good. I think there's some things that I'm quick on. I think there's some things I'm really slow on. Sometimes that's to the benefit because understanding something slowly can give you something better than understanding it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Over a longer sense, maybe part of the reason I never actually did follow through on the traditional PhD path.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As much as I would like to claim odds and cynicism about the university system and it was a calculated choice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An element of that was an insecurity knowing that there's just a lot of people way better than me. I don't know if my predilection for math is well tailored to research as opposed to trying to come to clear understandings of already known things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I also, uhm, in a way that is silly, if I'm honest with myself, can get just intimidated by mathematicians when I'm talking to them. They're all nice, normal humans, but it's a little bit of an inferiority thing knowing, uh, you, you have a background and a...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Patience with the subject that I don't have and maybe haven't displayed the same way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A little bit. I mean, I've got a long list. I have the list of topics that I intend to cover. And then as people make requests, maybe it goes on there. As I stumble across something, maybe it goes on there every now and then I resort the list.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the way it goes, you know, someone says, oh, let's do this thing. You do that thing or you come across some random little thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Often if I've just done a very big project, I want to sort of exhale by doing a smaller one.