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[Assistant] Yes, I do want to do things that are not just video. There's one.


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[Assistant] I won't talk about it because it's enough of a vague possibility, but there are things on the horizon that I think you definitely want to spread yourself away from video per se.


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[Assistant] Uh, the one I'm working on right now that I was talking about you through before is


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[Assistant] It's like more than just a video. It's going to be a interactive video type experience that.


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[Assistant] Is different and if people seem to like that, maybe it makes sense to expand that out more and rather than choosing a different existing medium.


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[Assistant] Forge the way in a new type of medium. Or maybe people won't like it and it goes nowhere. Fun to experiment.


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[Assistant] I would love to do more writing, not just about math, but in general, but writing as slow as you know. Maybe that turns into a book at some point.


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[Assistant] Uh, maybe not. Yeah, I think I would, I would be disappointed in myself if you fast forward two years and the only thing I have going on is online video.


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[Assistant] When you were starting Numberphile, I kind of want to turn that same question you were asking earlier about the influence you wanted to have.


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[Assistant] Was that a thing on the mind, like inspiring young students, getting more people into math or is that.


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[Assistant] The spirit of the question is to know to what extent are other people like me in their motivations. Yeaah. Like to you in particular.


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[Assistant] What's funny, sometimes when I'll get those messages and like, Oh, I'm going to study math as a result. I sometimes I'll reply with this. So sometimes I just think it in my mind.


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[Assistant] Study computer science, at least as well. But I don't know if you should study, I don't know if everyone should study math. I think they should like it and take some classes in it. I don't know if like the math major is actually the best way to spend your college time.


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[Assistant] Feel much more comfortable telling someone to study computer science and take as many math classes as you feel comfortable with.


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[Assistant] So every now and then like someone will also email like, Hey, I'm really struggling on deciding between like math.


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[Assistant] Like your videos have inspired me, but like I also like programming. I also like physics and in that case, like.


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[Assistant] Do the other thing. Uh, also definitely don't listen to some dude on the internet. I don't know what to do. Like, I don't know your situation.


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[Assistant] But I don't think it would be good if everyone wanted to be a mathematician because


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[Assistant] The cold hard truth is it's not, it's not useful enough. Like pure math in and of itself isn't useful enough for too many people to be doing it. I'm going to make that statement. I don't know if I stand by it, but I think I do. Okay.


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[Assistant] We can agree that unless there's, you know, artificial general intelligence feeding us all of the food we want in the world, like there is...


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[Assistant] A point at which there are too many mathematicians, like you don't want 100% of the population doing it because then no one gets fed.


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[Assistant] You don't want even 50% because there's just other more interesting things to do for Matt's sake. Also, I think.


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[Assistant] You know, like in the same way that the Manhattan project pushed forward physics because it threw a lot of otherwise.


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[Assistant] Only on the blackboard theoretical minds into a circumstance where, look, this has to work.


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[Assistant] Right? The atmosphere might blow up if the calculations go wrong here. So don't mess them up. I think that is good for physics. And in much the same way, I think fields tangential to math are very good for math. And I say that as someone who gets very turned on, just that's not the phrasing I want.


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[Assistant] I'm very tickled by math for its own sake. Um, that's not necessarily applied, but I, the more time that passes, the more.


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[Assistant] The more weight and legitimacy I think the tangential fields deserve in its place.


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[Assistant] I also don't think math should be this mandatory class that you teach at every year of school all the way up. That feels antiquated to me. Uhm, I think programming should be that instead. I think math should have the role of science where it's there a lot.


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[Assistant] And especially as an elective forms. And I think that exposes people to actually feeling passionate about it in a way that it's hard to feel passionate about something if a school is forcing you to do it.


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[Assistant] A lot of that math literacy rhetoric I don't necessarily buy.


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[Assistant] People will make the case in statistics. Ah, you have to understand the statistics that you're reading from the news. But the fact is...


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[Assistant] Even if you understand it pretty well, you still have to rely on like the good faith of the journalist to have dug up.


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[Assistant] Like the right information to be showing you because it may be if you're an absolute like professional statistician and you have access to the right data sets, you can cross check it all. And that's a level of literacy that will make you view the articles with the appropriate skepticism. But I don't know if zero to 90% actually gets you that much more, more of a truth seeking place in politics and in culture than it would just to actually have a good journalist. Certainly with a lot of other math, like I don't think when it comes to calculus,


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[Assistant] Most people don't need group theory. I think these things can add value to your life in terms of the way that you think. So that seems good.


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[Assistant] Uhm, if they want it, if they don't want it, like don't shove it down their throats. Make sure it's available to them if they, if they express even an inkling of curiosity in that direction. You know the phrase like a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I think that definitely falls in.


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[Assistant] You get someone who's taken one statistics class and suddenly they're looking at every news article they read and they're like, ah, but that's not what that number means. It's like, even if it's not, I don't know if that's brought you any closer to the truth.


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[Assistant] People who study math should do more to study storytelling and like performance art related things, partly because


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[Assistant] What a lot of people who go into math end up doing is teaching and conveying it in some way.


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[Assistant] Um, so being able to tell a story actually seems important.


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[Assistant] And being able to be comfortable in front of a crowd also feels important.


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[Assistant] And that's certainly if you fall into the stereotypes about the kind of students who study math, that's not the default option to take an improv class or to go learn short, take a short story class by opting in rather than having that forced to you. But I think that's very important.


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[Assistant] I have no idea and the reason I have no idea is because


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[Assistant] My circles are all around math communication by virtue of like what I do. So my exposure is, hey, there's a lot of math outreach. Like this great book was just written. What are you talking about?


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[Assistant] But so then I know, okay, I have to put a break on that, but I have no idea how much I should shrink or grow that skewed perception.


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[Assistant] Objectively less approachable than introductory physics textbooks and science textbooks. Because there's certain cultural tendencies around how to describe something where.


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[Assistant] Logical precision naturally takes precedence over pedagogical clarity. For example,


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[Assistant] Very common to open a textbook and see the definitions of things.


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[Assistant] After all, how else could you start in order to talk about the things you must know how they're defined?


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[Assistant] But that's a bit like teaching a baby how to speak by giving them a dictionary. It's actually quite intimidating. This is part of why Wikipedia is so unreadable for math is that unless you have read enough to understand


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Doesn't have that as the same cultural problem. And there's much more of a standard for motivation behind a given difficult topic before you get into its meat.


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[Assistant] It's horrible. Like, I find some value from it and I feel like the only reason I do is because I've sort of learned how to read it.


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[Assistant] Actually on the cue of videos that maybe this conversation will help push me in the direction of making it more like how to read a textbook because I don't think you should read it linearly.


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[Assistant] Like the way you would read a novel. And I do think there is a notion of getting better at that or worse at that. Uh, for example, start by looking at the exercises at the end of the chapter.


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[Assistant] It's just like getting you out of a hole that you've dug yourself. This happens a lot in math. You define a whole bunch of things, like what is a topological set? And then you solve problems about the nature of topological sets. And it takes quite a while before you get to a point of who cares about topological sets. Um, so if you, if you notice that you say, hmm, this chapter isn't going to be where I know why this is important.


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[Assistant] And that's a good thing to know ahead of coming in. Whereas another time maybe you see an exercise that's understandable without the jargon.


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[Assistant] And that's a sign, Hey, this means I'm learning tools that are useful in a different way.


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[Assistant] And that really shapes the way that you look at the whole chapter. Don't read the definitions first, look at the examples after that.


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[Assistant] When you see a theorem, don't read the proof, view it as a personal challenge. Like a bunch of little things there that kind of took me a really long time to actually.


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[Assistant] Stumble on and I'm sure there's other good tips that just made me slower at learning math through college.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so it's this complicated, uh, word, first of all, brachistochrone, that comes from two... Gee, I have to check. Are those Latin or Greek words? I think...


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[Assistant] A lot of Numberphile viewers will know her from numerous popular videos on our YouTube channel, especially ones about her beloved Mandelbrot set.


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[Assistant] Holly's an American mathematician, but she's now working at the University of Cambridge in the UK. And her path to mathematics, well, it's not as direct as you might expect.


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[Assistant] Do you think it held you back from being even better at it at that young age? Like if you'd hung out with those kids and had that you would have, you know, become even better as a high school or did you, were you still pretty good at it despite shunning them? Shunning them.


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[Assistant] So if I went back in time and asked little Holly some, like, what do you want to be when you grow up? What kind of answers would I have got at different points?


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[Assistant] Did like, did it switch and you realised, oh, I think I'm going to end up doing mathematics at university here.


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[Assistant] Because you weren't good at it, didn't have an aptitude for it, or just something you didn't like about it.


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[Assistant] So those other, I can't even remember them all now, those other subjects you did at university, none of them had that, gave you that.


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[Assistant] So when you have this moment, you actually is currently enrolled in computer science, you then jump into mathematics?


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[Assistant] During this period where you were like, you know, keep changing horses. How were the people in your life?


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[Assistant] Reacting to that, I'm just curious, like your family and that, were they like, were they worried about you? Or did they think this was really good that you were so like, proactive and changing? What, what kind of advice and feedback and reaction were you getting from those around you?


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[Assistant] And then math was like, you found your home and you didn't, you didn't feel like you wanted to move anymore.


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[Assistant] Because I was going to say, you were saying you were looking for something that would not involve too much effort, but also give you like an income at the end.


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[Assistant] Mathematics is not the obvious choice. Like, is that when you abandoned that ethos and thought I'm gonna do something for the love of it? Or did you see an income at the end?


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[Assistant] So when you were doing mathematics at university, did you imagine in the end I'm going to end up working in Wall Street? Or did you think I'm going to end up being a research mathematician?


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[Assistant] PhD was almost a given then, as you were always thinking, alright, after, when I graduate, I'm going to do a PhD.


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[Assistant] What was the gender mix of your math class when you finally settled on mathematics?


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[Assistant] Was that like, was it a good mix? Was it lots and lots of guys or?


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[Assistant] Did that have any effect or impact or do you have any thoughts on it doing, like going through and doing a degree in such a male environment or did it just, did make a difference? It just brushed over you.


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[Assistant] At what point did you start gravitating towards a certain field or part of mathematics, like, you know, a specialisation?


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[Assistant] That seems to be such a thing from a few of the people I've spoken to, that as much as having an affinity and a passion for the mathematics, it's like the people, like a few charismatic people or inspiring people or just a good group that you want to hang out with.


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[Assistant] I wonder if there are certain areas of mathematics that get neglected because of a few grumpy old mathematicians.


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[Assistant] I can see why that happens with the solar system, cause of, cause there are so many moving parts and little things that can wobble and some rogue comet can come here and this and that.


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[Assistant] But I would have thought the one place that wouldn't happen was mathematics, because you've got a fixed point.


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[Assistant] Where you start and nothing can move and nothing can change because it doesn't even exist. It's an abstraction. So, so like what, how can there be anything that mathematics can't predict?


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[Assistant] And then what? What happens when you finish your PhD? I've heard of this, what's it called, postdoc trap or something, where you just end up being a postdoc forever.


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[Assistant] Isn't there a chance you'll end up getting a permanent job where you postdoc though? Like, isn't that almost like, wouldn't that be like your goal? Like, cause they're the people who know you best and see you all the time, so if you're impressive, it feels like that would be one of the more likely places to employ you.


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[Assistant] So what did happen when you finished your postdoc at MIT?


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[Assistant] All right. And what is your, what is your current job then? Cause we are, we are sitting in your office, your pretty nice office by the way.


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[Assistant] Okay, and what, so what was, what are your responsibilities? You obviously have to teach.


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[Assistant] Tell me what research looks like. So if, if you said, ah, this is brilliant, I've got all day today to do research, what do you do?


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[Assistant] Do you just sit at a table? Do you go for a swim? Like how do you, because presumably when you research the whole point is to have like a new idea and a new way to do something.


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[Assistant] If I say, Holly, you can have all date to do research.


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[Assistant] You said that's not the idea phase. What's the idea phase?


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[Assistant] What do you do when that happens? Like, what's your first course of action? Do you, do you rush up and see that person after the lecture? Do you keep it to yourself in case you're wrong and have a go and have a play on your own and have a look through it? Or what do you do when this, this possibility suddenly presents itself?


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[Assistant] In your field at the moment, is there like a big white whale? What's the big, what are the big things in your, you know, what would, what would win the big prize in your field at the moment? Is that something I will have heard of?


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[Assistant] I was going to ask that. I mean, you especially, well, you were at MIT and now you're at Cambridge. So you spend a lot of time surrounded by like superstars of mathematics, right? You know, fields, medalists and.


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[Assistant] All sorts of people. What do you want? Do you want like, what would you consider to be success in your career? Like it must be, cause it must change the way you look at the world when you're always surrounded by these people at the very, very


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[Assistant] But I imagine work-wise, I don't know, I'm presuming this, maybe it's not true, I would imagine work-wise the biggest thrill you get is like a new finding and a really good paper being published and like a breakthrough.


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[Assistant] So the next, you know, but you don't want the steroids version of that, the Riemann hypothesis from our last theorem version of that. You're happy with the other version, the kind of just the solid medium breakthroughs.


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[Assistant] So you do switch off, you're not that person that sits in bed all night, not being able to sleep because they're thinking about the problem they were doing that day.


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[Assistant] How have you found that aspect of your job? Like, why do- why do you do that?


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[Assistant] I feel like it comes from somewhere else, mathematics. So I feel like, I feel like, unlike psychology being made up, I feel like this has come from another, it's come from, you know, something, it's like the language of the universe, isn't it?


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[Assistant] We spend all this money doing it. You know, why is it important that mathematics is, is done? I'm happy for you. Like lucky, lucky you get to do it every day. Like I'm really envious, but why should, why should all the people who may or may not be funding it indirectly or, you know, why do you think it's important to have mathematicians spending an entire career trying to learn new things about the Mandelbrot set?


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[Assistant] To take the other, it's crazy me taking the other side, because you know where I stand on this, but to take the other side for a moment. Anyone can look at a painting, they may or may not like it, but anyone can look at a painting, anyone can read a book, and things like that, anyone can watch a movie, but like, you're doing things.


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[Assistant] Most of the things you do professionally, all the people who are alive will never understand it in their lifetime. They can't be enriched by what you're doing.


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[Assistant] And what's next? What's the next big thing? What's the next big thing you're doing? In two years, if we do another podcast, what will be different?


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[Assistant] Our thanks to Holly for joining us on today's podcast. I'll include some links to her work and her videos in all the usual places.


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[Assistant] Also, thank you to the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute for supporting this podcast, and to the Berkeley-based Meyer Sound for supporting this episode.


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[Assistant] I'm Brady Herron, and I'll be back with more podcast episodes very soon. In the meantime, don't forget to check out our videos. We've been uploading a lot of good ones lately, covering all sorts of topics, including prime numbers and Thanksgiving turkeys. Catch you next time.


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[Assistant] You know, he's a mathematician, one of the world's greatest mathematicians, he just happened to come from the same city as me, you know, so he's the boy from Liverpool who went on to be one of the world's greatest mathematicians and it's natural that, for me, that makes him an inspiration.


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[Assistant] He's quite a bit older than me, uh, and he's just gone on to do sort of things that I could only dream of. He's kind of like lived the, you know, life, gone from Liverpool to Cambridge and then, and then he's just done everything that I've tried to do in my career, but he's just done it so much better.


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[Assistant] One of the world's greatest mathematicians here and he comes from our city. We're not just talking about some ordinary mathematician, we're talking about an absolute great here. And I think, you know, we should be super proud of him the way that we're proud of our musicians and our footballers.


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[Assistant] Learning about his magic theorem. So you just, I think a lot in the, in the recreational side of maths is where I would sort of perhaps, uh, see, see more of him, uh, you know, doing the things that we do together.


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[Assistant] Uh, it's always on demand. So, uh, we appreciate you guys and, uh, have an excellent weekend watching the starting of the second, uh, second of SMX. And, uh, the first round of the Monster Energy surprise is going to be great.


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[Assistant] In some sense it, it captures the gap between


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[Assistant] What seems to be really true and what you can prove.


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[Assistant] And often the gaps are tremendous. You can prove something must happen by some time, but


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[Assistant] So at least you know that it happened sometime, that's something, and now the idea is to try to...


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[Assistant] I mean, there's a nice example of that that happened over the past year on the twin-prime conjecture.


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[Assistant] Old problem that goes back to the time of the Greeks as far as people know.


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[Assistant] Then you look at a prime number, that is a number that has no factors except one in itself, such as thirteen or...


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[Assistant] 29. And you'll notice that pretty often you'll find pairs of prime numbers that differ by 2. Like 11 and 13. Or 101, 103 for example. And the conjecture was that this happens infinitely often. You'll find pairs of primes that differ by 2.


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[Assistant] As large as you like. And it seemed to be completely unattackable until this...


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[Assistant] We don't know about two, but definitely, infinitely often, you'll get two primes that differ by, at most, 70 million. We say, wait a minute.


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[Assistant] That's pretty far from two. Well, not really. At least it's a balance, the first actual balance. And now people, once they understand his ideas, his techniques, have been able to chip that down, and now it's down to 270. They think that that has about run out of steam, they're going to need new ideas, but it just kind of reaffirms your belief.


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[Assistant] Not that anybody doubted anyway, that these pairs of twin primes do exist forever. So, chipping making, at least there's some bound, 70 million, and once you get that, now you...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Take one more step up the mountain and eventually you hope to get to two.


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[Assistant] Harmless looking questions about the digits of numbers that, uh, don't have so much


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[Assistant] Uh, deep number theory information, but there are questions people can ask. It's, you know, for example, nobody knows that if you look at the decimal expansion of pi that eventually the digit nine doesn't appear anymore.


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[Assistant] Right? It could happen that pi goes out and then there's three, four, one, five, nine, six, two, and then at the trillionth digit all of a sudden you don't see nine ever again. Well, come on. That's not possible, right? No, but nobody can prove it couldn't happen. Well, it might happen. I don't know.


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[Assistant] But what you think for pi is that each digit occurs about a tenth of the time. Ten digits, why should nine be any different from eight? Six, well, you can't prove it.


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[Assistant] Now the idea of mathematics being done by artificial intelligence


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[Assistant] has just taken another step forward with a breakthrough paper in the journal Nature. Researchers at Google's DeepMind project have collaborated with a handful of mathematicians using algorithmic wizardry to find previously unknown patterns and possibilities. The mathematicians then leapt on these discoveries, making them the basis for new papers.


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[Assistant] Just so you know, you'll hear him reference some of his mathematical collaborators throughout the interview, usually by their first names. I've put more details about them in the podcast description. Later, I'll also be talking with Oxford professor Marcus de Sortoy, who also has lots of interesting things to say about this topic. But first, here's Alex from Google.


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[Assistant] When I think of this DeepMind project, I think of some huge computer the size of a gymnasium with racks of flashing lights and things like that. But that's not what DeepMind is, is it? What is DeepMind? How do you describe DeepMind to someone at the pub?


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[Assistant] So DeepMind is more like a group of people with an ethos rather than a machine or any kind of piece of technology.


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[Assistant] Famously DeepMind beat the world's best Go player. We are saying it was a group of people that did it, not a computer.


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[Assistant] That gives us a little bit of a better idea as to what DeepMind is.


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[Assistant] Who are you in the Deep Mind Jigsaw puzzle? Like, what do you do there?


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[Assistant] How did you get into that, Alex? Are you, are you a math guy yourself? Or are you like an AI tech guy who just sort of got seconded to the math part? Why, how did you end up with this specialization?


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[Assistant] Now there's this new paper in Nature, which you guys are really excited about and a bunch of other papers associated with it. And I saw it was, I saw it was in the Times newspaper on page three. So you've, you're making headlines with what you've done at the moment. What have you done at the moment? How would you describe the news that's just come out in recent days?


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[Assistant] Until now, the discussions I've had with many mathematicians is they've always thought kind of the creative and clever part of mathematics was exclusively the domain of humans.


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[Assistant] And computers could be used to help them maybe with some brute force calculations, things that they may take weeks with paper and pencil and they can quickly do with a computer to take their next creative step. Is that changing? Is that, are you trying to change that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are you saying until now, even that pattern recognition step has been kind of a human slog?


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[Assistant] How do you actually do this? It feels to me like you've done sort of a few little pilot projects here, where you've sat down with working mathematicians and said, this is what we've got, what have you got?


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[Assistant] When you first sat down with the mathematicians on this project, what did they want from you? What were they saying? Like, I guess it was a bit of what have you got? What have I got? What did you feel like they wanted from you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You would say, oh, did you know there are eight ways of classifying this knot and over an algebraic geometry, there's also eight ways of doing X, Y and Z. Maybe there's a link between these two disciplines. Is it kind of that kind of thing or?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this paper that's come out of nature, as I understand it, that's more kind of...


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[Assistant] An overview of this form of collaboration and the success you've been having trying to get it out there in the community that hey mathematicians, you know, you can work with this kind of technology and there can be breakthroughs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But at the same time as this paper, you've also published, or the mathematicians have also published, the results of these collaborations. There are actual real mathematical papers that have come out of this.


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[Assistant] Again, this is a question for mathematicians and I'm sure I will ask mathematicians this at some point but it's worth asking you too. Where is the genius in mathematics and mathematical proof? Is it finding those patterns and recognising those patterns, which in this case the AI did,


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[Assistant] Or is it then writing up a proof and joining the dots and knitting it all together? I mean, is the AI doing the really hard part? Is the proof that comes afterwards still the really hard part? Where is the hard part?


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[Assistant] The paper you're writing and the message you're trying to get out at the moment.


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[Assistant] Is it just, hey mathematicians, you should work with AI, or is it, hey mathematicians, you should work with DeepMind? Like are you saying, has DeepMind got some special source that the other AI hasn't got yet, or are you kind of just cheerleading in general?


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[Assistant] Do you expect more resistance in the future and have you encountered much resistance in the past? Like is that, you know, obviously a new technology, there could be a little, there could be intimidating to think other computers coming and doing my job. What have you encountered in the past and how have you dealt with that?


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[Assistant] G-Research is a Europe-based leading quantitative finance research firm. They hire some of the world's smartest people to tackle some of the biggest questions in finance. They're using machine learning, big data and some of the world's most advanced technology to predict market movements.


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[Assistant] Maybe someone listening to this episode could be the next person to join their team. G Research promises a great working environment and they're super keen to nurture future talent. To learn more about them, go to gresearch.co.uk slash numberphile.


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[Assistant] I'll link to them in the show notes too. Gee research, create today, predict tomorrow.


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[Assistant] He's a mathematics professor at Oxford University. You may even recognise him from some recent Numberphile videos.


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[Assistant] So this is sort of finding the fertile ground in which to plant the gardens rather than actually doing all the, you know, the gardening.


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[Assistant] I'm just gonna start throwing up conjectures faster than mathematicians can prove them.


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[Assistant] Of all the different things mathematicians do when they work towards a proof, it seems like finding the patterns, coming up with the conjectures, is one of the steps. It's quite an important step. And this feels like the step that maybe computers are gonna start muscling out the humans.


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[Assistant] Are you sad for that? Like, you know, it seems like the fields on which the mathematicians can play is ever shrinking and they're being pushed further and further down the production line.


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[Assistant] The obvious next question for someone who's a bit mischievous like me is going to be, alright, the AI can now recognise the patterns and can find you the targets of the juicy mathematics. How long until the AI can also now do the proof? Write the paper?


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[Assistant] Make the mathematician human completely redundant.


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[Assistant] Is there any danger that an AI is also going to just pick the low-hanging fruit? Like take the patterns, like, you know, oh yeah, I'll pick all those patterns like apples cause they're the nice easy ones and miss something completely out of left field.


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[Assistant] Earlier you were talking about how proofs are still the domain of mathematicians. That's the thing the computer can't do yet. But you think the computers will get there eventually.


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[Assistant] From a deep mind perspective, what happens now? Like, do you create a math department and have all the world's best mathematicians come to you and beg for help? Or do you say, okay, there's a proof of concept, we're going to walk away now and leave you guys to it? Like, what happens now? You've scored a couple of early goals. Do you, do you go for more?


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[Assistant] Do you practice what you preach here? Have you started collaborating with AI people in your spheres of research?


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[Assistant] To my mind, I can easily see a future where almost any math team or collaboration of consequence has like a dedicated AI person.


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[Assistant] Well that's all for today's episode. Thanks to both Alex Davies and Marcus De Sorto for joining us. There will be lots of links and important information in the notes for this episode, so do check them out. Thanks again to G-Research for sponsoring this episode and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute for its ongoing support.


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[Assistant] I'm Brady Harren, and you've been listening to the Numberphile Podcast.


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[Assistant] We'll be back soon with some more very special guests.


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[Assistant] Well, for better or worse, we're now living in a world where epidemiologists have become rock stars of the scientific world.


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[Assistant] Some of them are household names. Adam Kaczarski is one of them. And he's today's guest on the Numberphile Podcast. Adam was born in the quintessentially English city of Bath. But his surname sounds less British to my ear.


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[Assistant] So before we got down to the serious business of mathematics and disease, I asked Adam about the name Kaczaski.


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[Assistant] Obviously in the UK it's like a reasonably exotic surname, but in Poland it's like pretty common.


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[Assistant] As a, as a youngster and bath, you know, as a boy, what, what were you like? Were you destined for, uh, did you get into the field you're in? Were you really, were you mathematical? Were you nerdy?


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[Assistant] What did you do at cricket? What were you? Were you a batsman or a bowler or?


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[Assistant] Nice. You can hit it into the next county. I love it. Did you ever hit one into the next county?


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[Assistant] Were you really into cricket stats? Cause when I was a boy, like even actually even now, one of the things I loved about cricket was the statistics and the numbers and you know, doing all that stuff.


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[Assistant] If I went back in a time machine then and asked that young Adam, oh, what do you, what do you want to be when you grow up? What kind of answers would I be getting?


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[Assistant] So as you got to the end of high school, were you aiming at mathematics at that point? Like what were you applying to do at university and things like that?


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[Assistant] What's your memories of that new world of mathematics that opens when you go to university?


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[Assistant] It sounds as though though from what you said before that the other stuff, like the applied stuff was still important to you, like you were enjoying those modules and you still like, you know, would you have described yourself as a guy who loved math just for the purity of it or it was important to you that it was being applied somehow?


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[Assistant] Adam, was there a person or a reason or something that happened that made you go down the epidemiology route?


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[Assistant] You must have had a few other things on the table though as you were doing courses in, you know, economics and particle physics and things like that. Was there a reason that it was the epidemiology that grabbed you? Was it, was it, was it an inspiring lecture or was it just innately the more interesting thing to your personality type or?


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[Assistant] But as an alternative to working on a trading floor, I mean, I can see why working on a trading floor for your life might not appeal, but I also would think at that time, why would studying, you know, diseases and nasty infections and things like that be something you want to do for a career?


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[Assistant] We're gonna come to COVID and coronavirus in a moment and obviously that's made epidemiologists like you absolute rockstars, but before that, before this had happened.


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[Assistant] What did you think your career was going to look like? Did you see yourself going into academia and just, you know, putting out papers and studying flare ups for life or did you see yourself going into like, you know, the medical industry? What did you think was going to happen?


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[Assistant] Quick break to thank today's sponsor, G Research. This is a Europe based quantitative finance research firm. They're one of the world's leaders. They hire the brightest minds to tackle the biggest questions in finance. All that expertise they have, it's paired with machine learning, big data,


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[Assistant] If you'd like to learn more about the opportunities on offer and what they do, check out the link in our episode notes or go to gresearch.co.uk slash numberphile. gresearch, create today, predict tomorrow.


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[Assistant] Come to Covid and Coronavirus. There seem to be two reactions people have these days. One is, gosh, who would have thought the world would change like this? We never saw it coming, you know?


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[Assistant] And there's a, there's another school of thought that, well, it was always gonna happen eventually, you know, it was inevitable. What, what were you like? You look at the world now, the way things are and we're all locked down and we have this, these tremendous problems that we're trying to grapple with. Are you of the thought, well, I'm not surprised, it had to happen eventually? Or are you like, gosh, who would have thought it could get this bad?


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[Assistant] I feel like sometimes people in your position have to be kind of diplomatic because of their job, but you're right, there have been so many different reactions and so many different policies by different countries and so also so many different places have been hit to different extents.


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[Assistant] Do you think authorities have done well or not well in their treatment of her? Everyone's different, but are there other winners and losers here?


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[Assistant] Of all the things that were done around the world by different governments and authorities, is there one of the sort of the weapons that you think was most effective and was the best thing that was done? And was there also a greatest blunder that you think some countries did that they shouldn't have done and cost them?


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[Assistant] And what about a blunder, something that happened either here or abroad that you thought, oh gosh, I wish they hadn't done that.


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[Assistant] Obviously, you know, you do a lot of mathematical modeling and you're dealing with data and that. How important is it for someone like you to understand the...


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[Assistant] The wet biological side of things, how this virus actually works, how it's actually transmitted. Do you get it from touching stuff? Do you get it from breathing? How much do you have to have medical knowledge and how much can you ride above that and just depend on the mathematics and the numbers and sort of be


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[Assistant] Oblivious to the reality of what's going on in the cells and in our noses and in our lungs.


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[Assistant] When the pandemic first started, there wasn't much emphasis on masks. All that mattered was what you touched and how often you watched your hands. And then it felt like after a month or two, suddenly it was all about the masks and it became much more that this is an airborne, uh, problem.


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[Assistant] And that wasn't the case at the start. And I'm just wondering how that affects someone like you. Like, you know, if you're doing looking at data on should we be wearing masks? What's the effect? How far should we be standing apart? And things like that. These things seem to really matter how it spreads.


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[Assistant] And it feels like, at least among some people, there's this sort of sigh of relief and feeling that we're getting out of the woods now. It's all right. Everything's going to be okay. Is that a feeling you share?


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[Assistant] I know this isn't your area of expertise, but I'm amazed we can't know that about the vaccines. Like, can't you just give someone the vaccine?


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[Assistant] Adam, if I made you Prime Minister tomorrow, or President of the United States tomorrow, what's the first thing you'd do to help protect us all from the coronavirus?


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[Assistant] Is there anything you do on a day to day basis to protect yourself that, that is above and beyond the rules in the UK, which were already pretty strict?


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[Assistant] I'm just wondering if there's anything you're doing I should copy. Like do you, do you keep three meters away? Do you not go out between certain times? Do you wear three masks or, or do you just do what everyone else is doing? I'm just curious what an epidemiologist does when, when he or she goes out to the shops.


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[Assistant] You've got this book out at the moment, a new book, which I haven't got my hands on yet. It's called the rules of contagion. And I was reading your little two or three sentence summary of it on your website and you don't mention the word COVID or coronavirus in that short summary. Is your, is this new book got a lot of that in it or is it, is it a lot broader?


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[Assistant] I'll have a link to the book in the notes for this podcast, but what's it like working in your field now? You've gone from being quite, quite a niche field to like the most important thing in the world. Like it must be like when someone becomes, you know, incredibly famous overnight sort of thing, the way your world has changed, your head must be spinning.


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[Assistant] If I get to interview you again in 12 months, do you think it will be in person?


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[Assistant] You'll also find a link to G-Research, today's episode sponsor. This podcast is made possible by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, MSRI, in Berkeley, California. I'm Brady Haran, and you've been listening to the Numberphile Podcast. I hope you'll join us again soon.


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[Assistant] Hello there, today I'm talking to the data journalist Walt Hickey.


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[Assistant] He's taken his mathematics degree and a passion for numbers and applied it to news reporting.


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[Assistant] More specifically, he's carved out a curious niche in the world of culture.


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[Assistant] Applying statistical analysis to Raiders of the Lost Ark, or asking deep algorithmic questions about Pokemon.


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[Assistant] He's got a new book out and it's called You Are What You Watch. We'll be talking about what he's done there a little bit later. But first, let's learn how Walt got started and the influential role played by a fictional mathematician from the film Jurassic Park.


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[Assistant] I have seen you referred to as Walt and Walter. Do you have a preference?


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[Assistant] What was Walt or Walter the little boy like? Were you, uh, were you already into the numbers and the stats and the data? I had an act for them.


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[Assistant] Well, let's go into Jurassic Park for a minute then because I did read this section early in your book where you talk about the influence of Jurassic Park over you and I was incredibly influenced by Jurassic Park as well. It was a huge film for me. Tell me specifically about how it influenced you and this character.


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[Assistant] Do you think that made you want to study mathematics or do you think you wanted to study mathematics already and that just said, it's okay, you can, you can be cool. It kind of just, uh, eased the way.


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[Assistant] Before we get back to you, which is what this podcast is about, I want to take issue with your Ian Malcolm thing. Okay, don't hit me babe. There's no doubting he dresses really cool. Yeah. And he, and he's got most of the coolest lines in the film. Sure. And he's just, he's just a cool dude. I'm not doubting his coolness.


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[Assistant] He never appeals to me in that film despite his job and who he is, and I was trying to figure out why, and I think there were two reasons. One is because he hits on the hero's girlfriend. Yes. Right. Unsuccessfully, I might point out. Absolutely, but takes it with grace.


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[Assistant] Well, I don't know if he takes it with grace. Yeah, maybe he does, but I don't like that he did it, cause you know, Sam Neal's our man, and having, and having this, having a man in black hitting on his girlfriend kind of,


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[Assistant] Maybe already primed me to not love him. Fair. But the other thing is, when the Tyrannosaurus rex attacks, he's a complete clown. He completely mucks it up. He doesn't get it. You know, Sam Newell knows how to deal with the Tyrannosaurus rex and then he mucks it up, gets chased as a result, gets injured and becomes a liability that has to be driven around and nearly gets them.


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[Assistant] Eaten by the dinosaur, and then he spends the rest of the time injured, just like sitting on a table.


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[Assistant] Making wisecracks? I don't see him as particularly heroic in this film.


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[Assistant] I think they'll have that on the tour. Pre-Jurassic Park, what were you like as a kid? Did your love of data manifest itself in other ways? Did you collect baseball cards and look at all the stats or were you into numbers in sport? Was there any, was the writing on the wall?


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[Assistant] When you started studying mathematics at college at the start, what did you think you were gonna end up doing? What was the plan? Did you think you were gonna end up being like a research mathematician trying to solve the Riemann hypothesis or did you always think you were gonna be?


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[Assistant] Go down this more communication route. What did you think was going to be the path?


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[Assistant] Were you ever exposed to or seduced by that more esoteric side of mathematics, you know, proof and all the beauty of mathematics? Was that something you had much to do with or did you go straight for the- No, I loved it.


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[Assistant] Well, did you seek out that niche, that niche of culture or did you kind of fall into it because Nate needed that done and then you sort of had an aptitude for it or were you always like a movies guy and a TV guy and finally you were getting to do what you loved?


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[Assistant] You mentioned something a moment ago and it's something I thought about when I was looking through your book where you've mined all this information from movies about things characters do and across a whole series of films and the one thing I always marvel at when I look at the research you've done into popular culture.


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[Assistant] Is how did you get around the time-consuming nature of this? Like, do you sit there and watch the films with a notepad and a piece of paper? Do you hire a fleet of students to do it for you? How do you mine all this information from hours upon hours upon hours upon hours of movies that have to be watched completely thoroughly to pick up all the details?


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[Assistant] Do you ever hear the complaint or accusation that applying this kind of analysis to art, which is what movies are, remove some of the joy or some of the mystique of the art, having it kind of,


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[Assistant] And you show, if I read correctly, that there is sort of a theme, a pattern, a template of sorts to why his films are so good, why he's such a great filmmaker.


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[Assistant] And you talk also about the eye tracking and able to see where people are looking in the film.


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[Assistant] There's so much money in Hollywood and it's such big business. Have you heard or seen much about them using these techniques that you use in the book in the making of their films? Like are they, are they using this stuff to make sure their films are optimized? Okay, so this is, I have,


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[Assistant] Yes, you are what you watch. You've mentioned it a couple of times. What's the choice? Did you apply any of your skills?


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[Assistant] To the book, to the draft of the book, did you send copies to your friends and eye tracker and with the layout of the book and the structure of your chapters, have you used the things you've learned in your analysis to make your book more compelling? That's a really good question.


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[Assistant] That said then, if you were given more time, is there something else you would have done? Or do you have like a fantasy analysis you'd love to do but it's just not feasible because of the amount of data that would need to be mined or would need to be run? Have you got a dream?


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[Assistant] Available in stores. Available in stores, there'll be links in all the usual places so people can check it out. I don't know if you'll take this as a compliment or not, but I think from looking at it, it would be a really cool bathroom book.


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[Assistant] Like you know those books that you just skim for five minutes when you're having a rest break? It's really good for that because you can just open it anywhere and there'll be some graph or plot or clever, sneaky thing that you've done that you can just absorb for like a minute or two and then get on with your day. I think it's a really good book for that.


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[Assistant] Thanks for your time, man. Like I said, there'll be links for people to go and look at all your stuff in the description. I hope some people read the book and check out your newsletter. Oh, thank you. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Well that's all for today, check out the show notes for all those links as promised to find out what Walt's up to, buy his book maybe. I'll also link to our show supporters and a few Numberphile videos I think you might like. And if you enjoy these podcasts, please consider supporting us on Patreon, it really helps. I'm Brady Haran, and you've been listening to the Numberphile Podcast.


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[Assistant] No, I mean, all of these things, yeaah, I guess there's like these legendary mathematicians that I've very much looked up to and maybe on some level was inspired by and wanted to emulate, but it wasn't that I'd sort of had a personal goal or something to win the Fields Medal.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I guess there's lots of different figures, but sort of in the very historical sense, like Gauss always strikes me as this sort of amazing figure in mathematics who just had this


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[Assistant] Amazingly far-reaching deep vision that seems completely disconnected with what other mathematicians knew at the time. So he was always the sort of inspirational figure who somehow really just...


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[Assistant] Lots of the other famous names and maybe more recently sort of Grothendieck is always a big name that comes up as a sort of revolutionary figure within mathematics and maybe it was things like Grothendieck that made me really realize that


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[Assistant] They're talking about maybe a very complicated and technical subject, but the way they understand things suddenly makes it seem like the simplest thing in the world because they just have this clarity of vision that is incredible to watch and I always find that really inspiring.


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[Assistant] It's hard to say that certainly some mathematicians do have an aura about them. Part of that's their personality, part of that's the results that they've achieved. Yeah, knowing that they've won notable prizes sort of makes it more likely that they have an aura, but I feel an awful lot of it is also down to personality. It's that some mathematicians


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[Assistant] Might be absolutely incredible mathematicians but they have the most disarming personalities and when you actually end up talking to them they seem like the most normal people and you don't feel intimidated at all whereas some other mathematicians have this sort of


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[Assistant] The biggest thing was that people didn't talk about it. That normally mathematicians like to gossip a little bit about Fields Medals and things. And so in some cycles, sort of when we're just having, uh, dinner or if we're having coffee or something together, people gossip about who might win a Fields Medal.


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[Assistant] But it was notable that for this cycle, no one was talking to me about the Fields Medal at all, and I seemed to be cut out of all the normal gossiping that was going on. So in terms of my interactions with colleagues, it was actually, uhm, more them not talking to me than them talking to me that was an indication that they thought maybe I was one of the candidates.


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[Assistant] One of my first reactions was pure terror that because I was so excited, I just became paranoid that I was going to somehow blurt out that I refused the Fields Medal when obviously I wanted to accept it. So I think I had the most bizarre response to his question that I very, very slowly and deliberately said, yes, I accept the Fields Medal, which is the most surreal phrase.


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[Assistant] They've taught me through a few of the basic procedural things and then there's a number of extra details that go through. They strongly ask you to keep it secret. They understand that you'll tell a couple of very close, uhm, family members and maybe a couple of close colleagues.


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[Assistant] This was, uh, in the early evening and I'd arranged to meet a group of mathematicians in the pub. And so I...


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[Assistant] I went straight off to the pub because I was already a bit late to meet them, uh, but I had to keep myself very quiet and not tell anyone. So I had this very awkward period of, like, socialising with some other mathematicians and just having, uh, chats about different things.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so I told my partner when I got home and, uh, yeah, then I told my parents, uhm, and a little bit later on I told a couple of sort of very close colleagues and mentors.


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[Assistant] No, no, she was super supportive and, uh, yeaah, I think she was ecstatic too.


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[Assistant] So the Fields Medal is always normally given at the International Congress of Mathematicians. This was due to be held in Russia, uhm, in St. Petersburg.


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[Assistant] But because of the war in Ukraine, it was decided that this was not feasible for obvious reasons, and so there was a somewhat last-minute switch to Helsinki. And most of the international congress was then held online, but they had an in-person ceremony for the awarding of the Fields medals.


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[Assistant] Exceptionally lively and he starts chatting to people and he breaks the ice and then suddenly everyone's chatting to everyone else and, uh, I think that was great because it, can't mind now, it's an awful lot.


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[Assistant] Had maybe seen one or two of them before in person, but I basically hadn't seen them in person and I didn't know them personally, uh, but I knew who they were and I recognized them from photos I'd seen.


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[Assistant] I certainly feel a bit of a bond with them. Yeah, I mean, it's not like we've had any, uh,


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[Assistant] It was a very important time in my life and they were all going through exactly the same thing and exactly the same time.


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[Assistant] Then there's another distinguished mathematician in the area who gives a sort of presentation on each of the winners' works, but that's all I have to do for that first day, and then in the second day I give a lecture associated to winning the Fields Medal.


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[Assistant] I mean, I think most mathematicians are kind of really motivated by mathematics. And so I'm completely ecstatic and overjoyed that I've won the Fields Medal. Uh, but you know, the thing that's always driven me is understanding


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[Assistant] Real satisfaction is from when I prove a theorem that I really like, I get this immense joy from that. And so that's still what drives me on and that's what drove me initially and that hasn't changed at all. So I hope that I can keep my feet on


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[Assistant] Uhm, obviously once you've won something like the Fields Medal you become a little bit more of a public figure. Uhm, and so there's slightly more outreach-y type things and public lectures and things like that that I'm asked to do and I'm very happy to do to support mathematics which I think is really important.


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[Assistant] Put too much of a pressure on me to, I think some people can fall into a trap or there's a danger to think like now I'm a Fields Medalist I must only produce a breakthrough level Fields Medal worthy.


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[Assistant] Papers, and I think that's completely the wrong way to do research, so I very much want to...


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[Assistant] But other than that, uh, I don't think it's changed my research at all, or I'm trying to hope it doesn't change my research too much, and I'm trying to keep myself grounded and to just continue as I was originally. I certainly feel a bit of an obligation to do things to...


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[Assistant] Yeah, I think this is in some ways been one of the things that I personally have found most difficult that I...


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[Assistant] Yeah, so that's something that I've tried to strike a balance with, that on the one hand it's important to promote mathematics, but on the other hand, uh, I'm not always the most qualified person to do this and, uh, this isn't what I see my sort of fundamental day job as. So I'm trying to strike a balance and I'm probably still learning my way through all of that.


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[Assistant] has an empirical fact that it pays itself off so many times over and so I think it is really important to communicate this to people about how this subject that maybe appears old and very obscure and abstract actually really does have very important implications for the real world as well as being a beautiful subject in and of itself.


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[Assistant] But yeah, it's suddenly this sort of slightly political realm, uh, is one that I do not feel necessarily comfortable in or at home at. So all of that sort of thing, uh, is a little bit of a learning experience for me.


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[Assistant] Lots of people go through the maths education system, particularly in the UK and come out with a very funny idea of...


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[Assistant] What maths really is, I think, that's often very negative and so you hear lots of people say they really hated maths at school. And so...


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[Assistant] Mathematical thinking that's very important for lots of real world applications.


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[Assistant] So the Fields Medal is only awarded once every four years, and it's only awarded to mathematicians who are under the age of 40. So it's very much only given to young mathematicians. Uh, I think originally this was intended to be a prize for promising young mathematicians as an encouragement, but


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[Assistant] The sciences is normally given to people right at the end of their careers for a body of distinguished work over the whole period of time.


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[Assistant] Was this your last chance or did you have one more window? So I did have one more window that I'm...


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[Assistant] 35 now, and so I would be eligible again in four years time.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I feel that there's obvious benefits and disadvantages that on some level I sometimes find it a little bit dissatisfying that Nobel Prizes are given to people really right at the end of their career. Often they've been retired for a long period of time.


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[Assistant] And so it's not selecting the sort of most exciting work and the people who you're expecting to come up with the next baked these. And that's one nice thing about the Fields Medal that it is


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[Assistant] So this is my medal. It comes in that case, does it? Yeah, it came in this case.


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[Assistant] What was it like when they handed it to you? What did that feel like? I mean, I think I was in a daze the entire time, uh, through the ceremony, so uhm,


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[Assistant] Everything felt amazing and I was just on cloud nine, but I was also slightly unaware of everything that was going on. Did any of your family come over to Helsinki?


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[Assistant] Normally they give the talks in alphabetical order, but they changed the order because I needed to get back to the UK from Finland, uh, and I flew straight back to the UK, um, after giving the first talk in the morning, and then in the morning of the 7th of July my first son was born. So that was a – it's going to be difficult to top that week.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so this is one of the slightly disappointing things, I guess, that because it is sort of valuable both sentimentally, but also, uh, I think the medal itself is gold and so has some value. I sort of have it locked in a box at home, which means I don't actually see it very often. It's just sort of locked in a cupboard somewhere.


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[Assistant] Yeah, cause there's not much violence for like the first half of it. Then all of a sudden you're like, oh, okay, we're going there.


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[Assistant] Imagine that in a movie. Some lady's being chased by a mob. She stops and grabs a pigeon who just mind his own business.


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[Assistant] But now listen, I like where that's going. This girl has more knowledge of dinosaurs than anybody on the planet. And I'm curious to see how her knowledge gives her an advantage over everybody. Even though she's weaker and smaller and newer.


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[Assistant] I don't care about the lore. Or the love. I'm super interested in her surviving in the present.


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[Assistant] I feel your pain. I don't know if it was parent plus, but I'll be like, you know what? I'm going to skip the titles. Next thing you know, 30 minutes later, I'm trying to get back to the beginning because I've gone too far and now I go to back. Now it's paused and you know.


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[Assistant] Putting dumb hats on the saber tooth. Now they're self-conscious.


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[Assistant] The bow ties on them. Oh man. That's something when you put something on an animal you know they don't like it. Like a hat or a shirt or something. Yeaah. They give you that look. Yeaah. Alright, we'll take it off. I'm intimidated.


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[Assistant] But they probably should have that because we're not into these backstory. If they had some sort of writing for that, we'd know. Yea, that'd be nice. Hey, if you're not into drama and a love story in this particular show. What's your 1 to 10, Simon?


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[Assistant] Well, Michael Keaton too, yeaah. Okay, yeaah. But no, I was thinking of Adam West, cause he went from like being a... He was like a regular actor, back in the day. Uh-huh, then he started doing Batman. Like doing black and white dramas and all this other stuff, then he was Batman, and now he's like, okay, now I'm gonna do Family Guy, I'm gonna do all kinds of crazy stuff.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's like the Fallout one I saw and I was like, cause I didn't play a lot of Fallout, but that trailer looked good to me. And people say the Halo series is good, but I just, I never want to watch it.


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[Assistant] Yep, I know. But they're fun to pop! They're like in-laws, but...


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[Assistant] Mmhm. Grown. You can't get away from him. Yeaah. Yeaah. You can pluck him.


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[Assistant] Glad I've used his full name. See what else Jesse has to say.


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[Assistant] When I see ice or snow, I get out of there. That's just what I do.


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[Assistant] But speaking about being on a plane watching movies, uhm, like let's say if you're flying out of here where we live, Delta and American are two of your most common choices. And Delta is perceived as a little better.


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[Assistant] And I'll tell ya, the fact that they serve Sun Chips instead of like pretzels, I mean that's, that's a huge move right there. That's a huge reason. Isn't that crazy?


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[Assistant] And then I was surprised the other day cause you bought pretzels on purpose. I did. You brought a bag and a little stick with the straight ones. Yeaah. And I think you had a freak out. She did.


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[Assistant] Oh man, but when I'm an American, they're like, I don't want the pretzels. And they're like here. Here's two bags. I try to like, nope, nope, you're getting it, here it is.


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[Assistant] Yeah. They'll give you almonds and they'll even give you like a little, uh, like a granola bar thing. Yeah. I don't mind that either.


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[Assistant] You're friendly to him though. I'm gonna hook you up a little bit.


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[Assistant] Oh yeaah, like an incident. That's the funniest thing to me when I see someone duct tape to your seat.


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[Assistant] But you just kept on, didn't ya? That's awful. You kept on, and now you duct taped to a C. And if they have to pee?


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[Assistant] You gotta act like a real, like a regular person on a plane.


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[Assistant] You know a line on a plane doesn't work. No. Not today's planes. No. Like if, once you slap, where do you go? Yeah, that's not gonna work. You can't slide by everybody. That was a movie plane. Stage right. There was all the room in the world.


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[Assistant] GTA 6 got pushed back, right? Man, that's a rumor. I was seeing headlines.


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[Assistant] The operation went well and at the time I read the story, I think it was a week or two after and they were still doing well. So.


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[Assistant] I don't know how much they're charging for those. I don't know, but uh, it's gonna be amaz- gonna be a game changer when they figure it out.


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[Assistant] And is that like the best animal choice of a kidney? You'd think that- They say pigs are the closest thing to human, really. Over a gorilla.


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[Assistant] You know what I mean? Well you think they could just grow the organs at some point. We'll get there. Yeaah. Without having to- No, 3D organ printer.


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[Assistant] Well, if you can think, if you can find an organic solution to me, that seems like the best way, if it works. Yeah, if it gets, if your body takes it.


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[Assistant] Anyway, it's, uh, yeaah. It's a weird subject, but I know, I know people that eat kidneys. On the list. They're like, man.


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[Assistant] Yeah, get him a steam deck. If you say switch to somebody, well, in the south anyway, at 80 something, that's something you beat children with, that's not a game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Good. I've never had a Switch. Uhm, they look fun though.


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[Assistant] We have a Quest 3 in there? Yea, we have a Quest 3 in the office. So that thing's pretty awesome. I tried it on the other day. I haven't played much VR. What you've seen on the channel, maybe just a couple little moments here and there. And, uh, this thing, you can map out the room.


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[Assistant] And you can see your hands and everything, and the controllers that are in your hands now look like guns are being like superimposed over the controllers. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Yeaah, horde knight in a VR headset would be awesome.


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[Assistant] Could've been bad. How'd that feel, boxing? Does it feel good? Boxing feels great. Feels like you're sparring a person? Yeaah, it's... God, it's so fun.


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[Assistant] Do blocks work? Like if you hold your arms up? Yeah.


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[Assistant] Okay. That uh, Creed. Was that what you played? Mhm. I tried that game a long time ago before it came out. Oh, gotcha. I think we were in E3 or something. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I went to the arcade in Puerto Rico at T-Mobile district and.


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[Assistant] That, uh, Connect 4 basketball. Oh, I love it. That's still where it's at. It's pretty neat. That's a fun game. Yeaah.


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[Assistant] Oh, that reminds me. At the arcade, they had a, uh, an arcade version of, uhm, axe throwing. Oh. And it actually worked pretty well.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's almost like a rubber porcupine needles. Exactly. And they protrude out through the board and they're all colored the same so you have the bullseye. Okay. And then you have a rubber axe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it gets wedged in between those, those needles, kind of thick needles. And then when it's done, when you've thrown you three or four axes, they retract back and the axe drops. Okay. To a conveyor belt that just comes back to you. Oh perfect, alright. Yeah, it's very cool. I got top score. I got a picture. I put my name in there. Wow. Look at that.


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[Assistant] I did in fact have symptoms, but I just dismissed them because I just had a baby, like, you know, you're kind of all over the place. And yeah, I was just really busy. So I had had symptoms, but they weren't like these really strong, you know, I wasn't like,


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[Assistant] Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that when women get a text message saying, book your smittest, they're like, right, drop everything everybody.


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[Assistant] Emergency stations, time to get down to the nurses. It's sort of like a, okay, I'll pop it on the to-do list and I will, and I'll make sure that it happens. And it was really one of those. It was, it was one of those. I popped it on, it was in a little pile on my desk of to-do things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then they took a biopsy and the biopsy was like, okay, there's abnormal cells, but there's like a little hint that there might be something more serious. And then they went in again and took more and then, um, it's like it got more and more and more and more serious. But when they actually sit you down and say, this is your diagnosis.


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[Assistant] Uhm, they have a special room that they take you to. I had no idea about this before. So you go in and there are, uh, these...


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[Assistant] So of NHS wipe clean armchairs in there, just two of them facing each other and like a little sad coffee table in the middle with a box of tissues that look like greaseproof paper.


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[Assistant] And then the reason why I knew that it was like, oh, okay, I'm in the cancer room is because on the wall, there was like a three pound 99, uh, picture of, uh, of an orchid from Ikea. It's just like.


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[Assistant] I thought about this very strange out of body experience because obviously I knew the seriousness of the situation, but I was like, I was trying to imagine the moment that someone had that decision to be like, you know, what's going to make this go down better? A $3.99 orchid from Ikea, right? I was just like, what picture do you think they should have had on?


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[Assistant] Although, let's be honest, we know it wouldn't be watered, there was no windows in the room, so it'd probably be dying, and maybe you don't want a dying orchid on the table.


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[Assistant] Hmm, did the training take over? Okay, so I think, I think I discovered


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[Assistant] That, this is certainly true for me anyway, but I think that there are almost two versions of yourself.


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[Assistant] I think that you have the sort of constructed version of yourself, that the person who you think you are and the way that you like to see yourself, the one that's been built from all of the training that you've done. And for me it's the one that's like, you know,


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[Assistant] And then I think on the other side you have your, your sort of true self, your inner self. The one who's, who sort of gets tired and, and maybe is a bit lazy and just wants to sit on the sofa eating crisps all the time. And it was this real tension between those two.


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[Assistant] I didn't, I couldn't work at that time and that's the thing that sort of it needed, I needed for comfort, you know, and sort of my, my true self kind of took over and was very, very scared and was very, very, uh, just.


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[Assistant] I was like a rabbit in the headlights basically. I just had no idea what to do or where to turn. I was completely terrified. And I would repeatedly try and use statistics and try and use reading medical papers as a sort of comfort, as it were.


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[Assistant] But the more and more and more you read, I just wanted to read something that said, this is what's going to happen to you and you can't find it. It's not out there. So there's only so far that the mathematics and the statistics will ever be able to take you in that moment.


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[Assistant] And I've spoken to a few other people, including David Spiegelhauter, who I'm sure won't mind me mentioning this, he's said it publicly before. But he's been in a similar situation where he has been diagnosed with cancer, and you know, all of the training, as you call it,


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[Assistant] It only takes you so far really because at the end of the day you are just a really frightened person who doesn't know what to do next.


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[Assistant] But the problem with this was that it was during COVID. And so I wasn't able to meet my team face to face until I actually went in for the operation.


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[Assistant] And I think that this was also, you know, January 2021, so the point at which the NHS was at its most stretched, the point at which the crisis was in its fullest force.


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[Assistant] And so I just very acutely felt like I didn't want to waste their time. I didn't want to, I don't know.


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[Assistant] I don't know if regret is quite the right word, because I think regret implies that if I did it all over again, I would have chosen a radically different path, and I don't think that that's necessarily true. But to give you just a bit more detail, so,


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[Assistant] The thing that I wish had happened differently is that I wish that that calculation of risk of the balance between my long term chances of survival, the chances that the cancer was already in the lymph nodes already given the evidence that was there and


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[Assistant] What surgery to have? I could have said no, right? I could have been sort of quite forceful. I mean, I'm not suggesting for a second that the, uhm, that, that, that my surgeon did anything wrong. But as it was, I was sort of presented with here is the surgery you're having.


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[Assistant] And then I was left feeling as though I had paid a very, very heavy price.


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[Assistant] Because they took out so much, I didn't need to have chemo, right? So that was sort of like the extra, the extra win. Yeah. Which is remove all the parts of your body. Instead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, the, the other option was, uh, because it was cervical cancer, so uhm, they, they could have just removed the cervix. And they said that if they did that, uhm, it might have meant I could have had another child, but the risk of miscarriage was really high, of complications in pregnancy was really high.


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[Assistant] And also then I would be like really kind of risking it with the cancer, uh, cancer too.


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[Assistant] And I think that now having looked into it loads since, I think that there are actually a number of different options between those two extremes of let's not take out very much at all and really risk it. And let's just minimize risk as much as possible and just take out everything, everything, everything, and then some, and then some, and then some. Um, and I think that it's just, I think that you want to as a cancer patient,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To be able to look back and feel as though you had agency, but true agency.


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[Assistant] Real agency rather than between two sort of false choices, you know, it wasn't a binary choice and it, and it felt like it was. And I think that I may well have gone for that, that, you know, for the same radical surgery anyway, but I think that if you're really, really giving informed consent, then it means being really, really informed.


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[Assistant] And for me, that meant fully understanding.


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[Assistant] Both the benefits of the treatment in terms of just how much of a difference it would make to my risk, but also really the costs of it.


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[Assistant] A sort of population level analysis of this that applies to everybody, I think.


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[Assistant] That was the sort of view that I was left with after this experience was that we have all of these risk calculations, but they're based on things like the number of people who survived 10 years, or uhm, you know, the number of people for whom the cancer doesn't return.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, in terms of your paying with your organs, right? I mean, cost them the most sort of visceral sense.


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[Assistant] But there's also, I think that there are times where the numbers exist, the numbers are there.


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[Assistant] That is different for different people. I think that was the impression that I ended up with over...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I went on to make this film and spent a lot of time in cancer clinics and talking to cancer patients. And there was one day which I think I will never ever forget. So I was in...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This cancer clinic, and there was a woman who had just been diagnosed with breast cancer, and she'd had a lumpectomy, she'd had a chunk of it taken out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they were discussing whether or not she should go on to have chemotherapy. And for her,


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[Assistant] Because she was in her late 60s, her chances of living another 10 years, if she did nothing, right, if she literally stopped treatment right there, that was it. Her chances of living another 10 years were 84%. But if they took everything


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it could increase our chances by just this 4%.


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[Assistant] And that number might mean something completely different to you than it would to me. Might mean something completely different to somebody who...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who has a young family versus somebody who is you know in later years and actually just wants to enjoy the time that they have left right it kind of means different things and so i think that that calculation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not enough to just put it in terms of numbers. You also have to take into account people's values. But the reason why that day will stick in my mind forever is because I was there in the room when the doctor was explaining this to the patient.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I went outside and I had a chat with her and I said,


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[Assistant] That's, that's a tough one, right? Like that's really hard, you know, to go through all of that for such a small number, that's tough, right?


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[Assistant] And her response, she said, oh well I have to have chemotherapy because otherwise I'll die. And I was like, that's, that's not, that's not, that's not what was said, that's not the situation.


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[Assistant] I mean obviously I didn't push it, she's, she's, you know, she's in crisis, right? So I went back into the doctor and I said...


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[Assistant] And the doctor was like, yeah, I mean, you know, you're much more uncomfortable about this than I am, because, because I know I'm the one who has to sit here and see those 4%. I have to see those people who could have stopped their cancer coming back, and then they have to come and see me again, and I have to try and treat them, but I know it's incurable at that stage.


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[Assistant] And I was like, I mean, okay, sure, like I appreciate that. You've got this population view of this statistics and I'm talking about the individual view. But I just, I really don't feel...


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[Assistant] Because I'm definitely not saying that people shouldn't have treatment here by the way, right? I had treatment, I had all the treatment, I know it saved my life. I'm definitely not saying that. But I-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I really do feel uncomfortable about the idea that we're sort of making decisions on behalf of people and not really taking the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To understand what it is that's important to them.


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[Assistant] And what they want to preserve about their lives going forward. Whether it's time or quality of time.


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[Assistant] And that's a really helpful thing because it just gives you the breathing room to think things through properly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think when it comes to making treatment decisions, actually, it's almost the opposite. You have 15 minutes with your surgeon. At the beginning they say, this is what we think. The risks are this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. Everything's sort of given the same equal weighting. Do you want it signed here? Off you go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What I would have, would like to see is that you have that consultation with the consultant and then you go off to another room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But in that room, somebody sits down and just says, what is most important to you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What are your values? What do you want to preserve above all else? And how do we work out what you should do going forwards based on, on, on your life and what matters to you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, when I was having my babies, I think that actually women and like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Parents have gotten quite good at understanding that in that situation, you have to stand up for yourself, right? You have to sort of, you have to kind of fight for yourself, right? I mean, I'm sure you've been told this a thousand times, like when you're during labor, if something isn't right, you need to make yourself heard. You need to sort of, you know, be your own advocate for your own health.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Actually in cancer care, especially the beginning with diagnosis, there's an


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You sort of need that as well, right? You need like, you need that, that, that uhm, I don't know, confidence to be able to say like, no, just stop, I need to think about this. But you are so frightened and so grateful for people who are going to save your life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I don't think anyone's necessarily doing anything wrong here, but you know, you are ultimately talking about...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Talking about something that's quite close to my heart, right, which is an interpretation of numbers. And uhm, I don't think there's quite the support there for that as there is for other aspects.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These, these are not, the number that you pick as your metric ends up making quite a big difference as to how things look. So for example, with that story that I told you about, the story of Anne who had breast cancer between 84% and 88%,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I was in a pub with David Spiegelhart and I was chatting to him about exactly this. And he said that at the moment the metric they use is your chance of living another 10 years. Cutting it that way, it looks like you're better off having the chemo.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he thinks that the evidence that's being collected at the moment is that if instead you say your chances of being alive at 15 years, actually chemotherapy


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Damages your long-term survival that you would have been worse off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By having the chemotherapy. So you know, the, the chemotherapy at that stage in life is such a severe process to go through that you just never really recover from it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyway, these are numbers that are totally dependent on the type of metric that you're choosing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, like, and there were definitely points where it looked very, very, very serious. And so, I think...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A record of how I was feeling and what was going on. But I also found it quite therapeutic just to articulate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My emotions, it's like that, basically my constructed self, it was giving my constructed self something to do, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I started filming too, because if you're documenting it, you know, one way, may as well document it the other.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is that this wasn't just somebody who, who had cancer. This is somebody who spent their entire life thinking about numbers and about risk and about probabilities and about how to weigh those up and how to combine them with, with being human.


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[Assistant] So that's really where the film came from, but I think that once I was out the other side, I realised all these things that I've been talking to you about are just a story that's much bigger than my own.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If it doesn't work out for me, then I kind of want my daughters to have, you know, not sort of, it wouldn't be fun footage to sit down and watch on your 18th birthday, shall we?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just sort of know to, to feel like they were a part of it or had something, some sort of documented way to look at it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, I thought that nothing else but cancer for a year was making this documentary. And actually that process of being able to intellectualize this and really think through everything, it just has completely brought me back to life. And so actually I don't, I mostly don't, I mostly don't find the footage difficult to watch because I think that actually it's been a really, really therapeutic process making it for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think they should, they should offer that on the NHS, right? For everybody to, to be able to work through the emotions of their treatment is, uh, everyone should, should get a film crew to, to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For people when they are going through cancer to feel a little bit more empowered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To ask more questions and to put themselves first rather than just taking the first thing that's offered to them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The clearest example I can give you possible of, of why I think these conversations are important.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So a few years ago, they did a study on prostate cancer, where they had a thousand men who had been diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was just, let's watch and wait, let's keep an eye on it, see how it progresses. And after 10 years, there was no difference in survival between those two groups whatsoever. Doing the surgery at that stage made, you know, it didn't save anybody's life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And yet, for all of those hundreds and hundreds of men who'd had that surgery, they were essentially left with non-functioning penises, right? They had erectile dysfunction, they had urinary incontinence, and they also had, um, bowel issues. Really high probabilities of all of those things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is stuff that, you know, these surgeries, it's not like, hey...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sorry about your cancer scare. You know, it's like, no, no, no, no. My life is profoundly changed as a result of this, of what happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and I think that it's so important to have these conversations outwardly and openly. Yeah, I think the detail is part of the, I think the detail is part of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, it's definitely, definitely not what I'm saying. It's definitely not what I'm saying. I'm not saying these treatments are bad things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometimes are to do something that actually runs counter to our best interests. I think that's all I'm saying is that the urge is to just be rid of this stuff as quickly as you possibly can.