[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then, uhm, but around about the time that I got it, the Fields of Metal, I was, uhm, had started my move towards more combinatorial things, and in particular a branch that's now known as additive combinatorics. And so perhaps the result, if looking back now, the thing which I'd be remembered for most out of those


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Results would be for a new proof of a result called Szemeredis theorem. It may sound a bit strange that finding a new proof of an existing theorem should be the thing that stands out, but it did do something that hadn't been done before. It gave a sensible quantitative


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A proof can be more important than the result that it proves and I think that's a little bit the case here that uhm, the ideas that went into the proof are more, the theorem is not something that you'd necessarily, occasionally it can be directly applied to another problem but that's less usual than the ingredients that went into the proof being applied to another problem.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, yes I do. I was summoned by my then head of department, John Coates, and so was someone else in my department, so he said, can you come and see me? And so we both went in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes. And then he said, uh, well, I've got some good news that you've both got, um, Fields medal. So this was completely out of the, it was very unusual.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can't remember, it was probably January or February that I was told and then August when finally it became public. Right. But I think partly because it was two of us then, there was a level of celebration and fuss that was made. Once it did become public within Cambridge and within Trinity, it was also at Trinity, was perhaps greater than it would have been if it had just been one person.


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[Assistant] I've put it in there and I haven't seen it since. I haven't sort of checked.


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[Assistant] So I did get a bit worried about it a few years ago, but I wrote to them and asked, you know, I haven't really heard anything about the safe deposit box. I thought that I got charged a certain amount per year. I've not really seen anything connected with it on my bank statement for a long time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm a bit anxious. And they said, oh well, if it was in the safe deposit box there, it would have been moved to this branch. So really there's nothing to worry about. But you haven't gone and had a look to see it. But I haven't actually got round to, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm allowed to, whether I can remember. Oh yes, that's, you know, if you've got your gong for, uhm, training horses or something, then the Queen's very happy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, you can see the look of sort of terror on her face, what on earth am I going to say? And, uh, so, I don't know whether I broke protocol, but I thought, um, she did look as though she was worrying about what she could possibly say, so I thought I might


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, help her out a little bit. So I, I said, uh, I don't know exactly how I put it, but, uh, roughly it boiled down to we last met when you came to Cambridge to open, um, the new maths faculty there. And so she was sort of relieved and said, yes. And something like, is it going well or something?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, before, once it's happened, the protocol then dictates that you aren't allowed to turn your back on the Queen, so you have to walk backwards away from her before turning and returning to your seat. So I sort of headed backwards and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, the Fields Medal is a complicated one, I mean I think you can't, unless you're, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A really 100% shoe-in for the Fields Medal, which I wasn't, but if you're somebody like Peter Schultz so recently, everybody sort of knew for years that he was going to get a Fields Medal, I think you feel a little bit of imposter syndrome because, especially as one progresses, you just see more and more younger mathematicians doing


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You feel more acutely that you're just one person in a large community of very good people. So, in a way, you start thinking, well, a Fields Medal doesn't mean all that much. But...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, you may be aware that there was some literature about that and somebody did a study of the subsequent mathematical output of one, fields medallists and two,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I suppose I was, yes. Uhm, I've never produced a huge number of papers, I mean I've always been a rather, my total number of papers is not that high for somebody of my age. But uhm, one of the things that was suggested was that if people who've got Fields medals feel freer to do slightly different things, it's not that they become


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I would estimate half my working time for about five years or something like that. So that was a big chunk to take out. But it was a project I believed in and possibly wouldn't, I probably wouldn't have actually been offered the chance to do it if I hadn't.


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[Assistant] But I also might well have thought I can't do that because my research is too important.


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[Assistant] And my research definitely did suffer while I was doing that.


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[Assistant] To some extent. It freed me up. I've got interested in, uhm, artificial intelligence and automatic theorem proving in mathematics, which are things that I've perhaps taken a bit more seriously and devoted more time to than I would have felt I could if I'd, uh, not somehow become fully established as a mathematician.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's changed a bit over the years, so when I was, when I started out it was just paper and pen and then I would try and have ideas and when I did have an idea I'd write them up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Using pen and paper and only when I was done would I then type it up because typing was so much less convenient. Now I use a screen much more and I also now almost all my


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So actually that works quite well because say I've got, sometimes it's quite nice to have a little time limit. So supposing I've got 20 minutes before lunch and I think I just want to make an iota of progress between now and lunchtime. Uh, I can sort of look at the blog, what was my thought just then? It doesn't have to be solving, you know, answering a question that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We've been struggling with for months. It can be just one idea.


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[Assistant] I think maybe the mysterious thing is when you read a solution to a problem it's just all there as one unit and everything seems to depend on everything else and so you might ask, how can all that come into your head at once?


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[Assistant] The answer is it can't come into your head at once. You have to break it down.


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[Assistant] And this breaking down process is quite an interesting one, but the fundamental activity is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would say the following, you've got a question, you don't know what the answer is, you think there's pretty well no hope of just seeing the answer to that question, so you ask another question. And the other question will be something that is something that you judge to be easier to answer, and something that will shed light on the first question, so once you've answered it, your task of answering the original question will have become just a little bit easier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if you can do that enough, and it may, this is an iterative process, so your first question may be very hard, you may reduce it to an easier question, or not necessarily reduce it, but you may come up with an easier question that feels useful in that way, which again you can't answer, and if you can't, then you try and find an even easier one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then the answer may be actually the question becomes cleaner and easier to answer once you've generalised it. Or it might be that once you've generalised it, you find a counterexample which tells you that the hypothesis that you got rid of was in fact necessary and would form an integral part of any positive solution to the first question. Once you know that, it's sort of your


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Finding it is not necessary to find it straight off, but just to narrow down the search for this chain of reasoning. You say, well, I don't know how to prove it, but I know that any argument that I'm going to come up with that works is going to have to have these properties. And, uh, the more you can get those properties, uh, to narrow down the chain of what the chain of reasoning can look like, the easier it becomes to find the chain of reasoning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have had a few moments like that, it's a sort of mixture, but quite often, uhm, it's...


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[Assistant] Been a case of needing, uh, so there are one or two examples where I think I've, I could pinpoint the moment where I went from feeling as though I really was quite a long way from having a solution to some sort of thing, maybe it's confident after that moment that it...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Much more common is to need five or six moments like that, but smaller moments. So you've done a lot of sort of reducing to easier questions, which are quite hard. And then you have a little sort of mini aha moment and solve one of those questions and then another one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Somehow it was a sort of, a three idea proof, not just a one idea that, uh, that unlocked the argument.


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[Assistant] Uhm, I don't know how long it'll take. I think, although I could be wrong, that uhm, the current burst of activity in machine learning, while it's amazing for certain applications, is not going to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] B is the thing that uhm, puts mathematicians out of business without a certain amount of input, which would not be easy input.


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[Assistant] I don't think that's very likely to be the answer. So that's not at all the way I've been...


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[Assistant] And I think that uhm, that's a fascinating problem in itself, and even if it doesn't lead to a computer program that puts us out of business, it's well worth thinking about.


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[Assistant] No, I think pattern recognition may well come in, because there's no doubt that mathematicians do use pattern recognition. I think it'll be some kind of hybrid of, of...


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[Assistant] Somehow it's, that seems to be what machine learning is good at, it's doing things that you do sort of instinctively and can't really explain, so I can't sort of explain to you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How I know that a line drawing of a cat is of a cat, and to some extent maybe a little bit, I say it's got a pointy ear there, but, uh, I couldn't sort of give you a systematic procedure for distinguishing between cat pictures and dog pictures.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think they'll do the whole lot, but I think that part, the sort of instinctive judgements that we make, which aren't completely illogical, but they've got a whole


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What you might call probability judgments. If, for example, you are trying to solve a problem and there's an intermediate statement that would imply an answer to the problem that you want to answer. It's not enough to say, okay, well that would imply it, so I'm now going to work flat out on the intermediate statement. There's another thing you need, which is some kind of judgment of whether the intermediate statement


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean that is a huge part of efficient research, is judging the return that you'll get on some kind of intellectual investment, or time investment basically.


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[Assistant] I think it does, yes. I mean I think that's sort of strategic. I do think it


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[Assistant] It's very tempting not to, it's very tempting just to, and I've succumbed to this temptation the whole time, uh, just sort of get interested in something you're not quite sure why, it's maybe not the most important thing in the world, but it becomes the most important thing in the world for you for a while.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or another temptation that it's very easy to succumb to is just deciding.


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[Assistant] Because you just become emotionally attached and you want that problem to have a positive answer and not a counterexample. There's one example in my own career where I really was keen that it would be such a beautiful theorem and I never proved it and eventually some other people found a counterexample.


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[Assistant] I do think time management is an important part. I've just said, just talked about examples where I've...


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[Assistant] I mean that is another consideration I think when you're doing research, one of the things you've all, one of the very important judgements you have to make all the time is not just is this likely to be true, is it likely to be easy to prove.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is this likely to be the way of solving the problem, given that several clever people have thought about the problem and not solved it? If it's a fairly standard thing, if the idea, if there's no quirkiness to the idea,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have to have some plausible story as to why nobody solved a problem. Sometimes it's just, it's a problem you came up with yourself and it hasn't been something that other people have thought about. But if it's something that other people have thought about, it actually helps this thing of narrowing down the search for what a proof could look like. It can be very helpful to say,


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[Assistant] It cannot be this because this is something that other people would have thought of if correct.


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[Assistant] Definitely research, although at the moment I'm feeling a sort of pressure that, uh, it comes in waves but, uhm, a pressure of things that are basically done but not yet properly written up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is, it is, but it, uh, when you've got enough of them, it...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Can induce a sort of paralysis and one always wants rather than, particularly if they've been hanging around for a while, so it takes a while to get back into it enough to be able to work out how to change an old write-up, uhm, that sort of thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A few months ago I sat down and just wrote a list of all the things that I've proved that I've not yet put out there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, uh, you know, sort of, if I were to write up everything I know, everything I've done, what would, what would there be? And there was a, it was slightly depressing because I mean, there are things there that I quite like, but I just kind of know in my heart of hearts, they're not, not ever going to get done because there are other more important things that still need writing up, particularly ones with research students where it matters a lot to them, obviously.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When one's writing up, it's usually a fairly thought provoking process and one always, it's always much more fun to be thinking about solving problems than just writing up things that one did some time ago. Anyways, I'm in a phase like that, I need to do something about it and clear my backlog a bit and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did you ever grow a beard? Uh, no, basically. Actually this summer, just for fun, I decided not to, uh, shave for a week or so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It didn't get, a week wasn't enough for it to become more like, more than sort of designer stubble really. Right. It was, uh, it was interesting, but I, it's not, uh. Not your look? I don't think so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of course. I don't want to speak out of turn, but I feel I'm a founding member. Founding father. Yeah. Maybe this is over emphasizing my influence, but I feel like we found the tone at the beginning. Yes. I mean, how do you make a maths YouTube channel? We were finding the tone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, I'm really not urban. I'm really not gritty at all. I think you're onto a wrong in there. So I think I was just too dorky to pretend to be.


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[Assistant] I was right about the brown paper though. You were right about the brown paper, and I thought you were right about the brown paper when you mentioned it to me. I said, good one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We went through all this together at the beginning, didn't we? The ground paper, all that.


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[Assistant] People ask why the brown paper all the time. Do you want to give the definitive answer? You've probably done this loads of times.


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[Assistant] And I was all for it. I thought it was a really good idea that you had. And people are disappointed when I don't turn up with brown paper. When I go and give talks, where's the brown paper?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, this is a Numberphile brand thing, so maybe with different hats on, I do it in different ways and different styles.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, I think definitely. I think when we started, the first idea, the original idea, which I still think is a good idea, is each video was about a number, wasn't it? It was riffing on your periodic videos and the 60 symbols. It's a hook to hang it on. I was all for that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So definitely even more so at the beginning though, today's number is whatever, 496, right? And then you talk about that. And then I always hoped and thought we would be able to branch away from that once we got


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Established, and we have done, so we kind of talk about maths generally now.


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[Assistant] I also feel like the level has gone up. As in complexity? Yeah. I think the videos we do now are at a higher, slightly higher level.


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[Assistant] I tend to do five in a row. Are we giving away secrets?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly, and it makes sense, doesn't it? So we do five in a row, but then I tend to break it up. I like to have a meaty one, a really good, proper, serious maths one, and then I throw in something slightly


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whimsical or something at a lower level. Partly it helps me because doing five heavy ones in a row.


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[Assistant] It's actually hard work, but also I think the channel should mix up the level.


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[Assistant] Where did it all start? Where were you born? So I'm born in Nottingham. Although my family are from Lancashire. So they moved to Nottingham. I was born in Nottingham. I lived in Nottingham until I was 17.


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[Assistant] No, not Math Nerd Boy at all. In fact, no one really mentioned that I might be...


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[Assistant] Better than average at math. No one even mentioned it to me, so I didn't notice. And no one said a thing to me.


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[Assistant] What I was obsessed with was TV. I mean, I could dress that up as media or filmmaking, but that's, that's just dressing it up. I was obsessed with TV. I watched so much TV. Trashy junk stuff or wholesome, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Consistently, when people ask me, what do you want to be when you grow up? My answer was, well, it was cameraman. Cause, yea, but I was a kid. We've got it wrong, James.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know. I wanted your job, but I wanted to be probably more a director, I think. I probably wanted to be making the TV.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really? I mean, that was my consistent answer for very long time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, and that's still an interest of mine, which is why I'm interested in doing the YouTube stuff, because it's still there as an interest of mine. I feel like I get to do a bit of that as well, as well as with the maths stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was analyzing it. So obviously I have an analytical mind. I mean, I must do. So I was very interested in the process of making the TV. I'm not saying I watched.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Behind the scene documentaries or anything, I do now. I watch loads of those. Because you just take what you're given on the TV.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And someone came up with that idea, who came up with that idea to do that episode on that subject. That was very interesting to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've watched so much, but let's say, I mean, what turned out to have a big impression on me is the science programming, of course, in another way. So there's, on one hand, I'm watching TV thinking, how is it made? At the same time, I am watching the science programming and thinking, oh, that's a thing, is it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So when I said I was consistently telling people that I wanted to be a cameraman, in the back of my mind, I secretly was thinking, I know that mathematician is a thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not going to tell anyone that I want to be a mathematician because they might ridicule me. That's beyond my station. So uhm, I'll keep that in mind and I'll just keep working. I don't want to have ambitions above my ability.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thinking back about it, so let's say at junior school, so yeaah, when I was 11 and under.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Probably was finishing a test sooner than other people and I put my pen down and that's the test done and waited for the other people.


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[Assistant] I'm just totally unaware. I'm not, I guess, I'm not someone with a massive ego. I'm slightly concerned about talking about myself for an hour already. I'm not someone with a massive ego. So no, no, it just didn't occur to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, yeah, they should have mentioned it. Cause I genuinely didn't know. Maybe they should have mentioned it. I mean, there is, and we're talking about when I was under 11, there is the lovely story though, which we did on Numberphile with the little toy that I had. Do you remember the little Professor toy?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like a reverse calculator, it gave you problems and you had to answer them. Alright, and I was good at that. That worst calculator ever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was really good at that. And so I had that. And when other toys get thrown out, I still kept that. Even when it was younger than my level, I kept that. And then when I got to a point where I said, I'm actually quite far along the road.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On this road of being a mathematician, I should really keep that toy now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because that toy now is something that did help me along the way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More than a teacher at the time, I suppose. I guess it shows I was, and still am, a very independent learner as well. So I'm afraid I wasn't taken by the hand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By any figure, I was very much an independent learner, so I do these things at home for myself because I'm a curious person who likes to learn stuff. I wasn't necessarily a maths nerd or a science nerd.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's learn a thing. Oh, that's an interesting thing. Like curious facts. And I watched all the telly because I wanted to learn everything possible. I wanted to know as much as I could. So I watched all the telly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Talking about figures who might have led me through my career, led me to my career, it would be more like the science presenters on the telly, rather than anyone at


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They bought me the Little Professor, didn't they? They obviously thought, well, maybe we should be encouraging this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But not generally, no. So I don't come from an academic family. To be an academic is not something that was expected in my family. I think my dad would be the first to go to university. Well, university means polytechnic. He did economics, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh no, he's a good guy, my dad, but not an academic. My dad will never listen to this, so I can probably say this. He has working class ideas of what your station is and not going above your station. Dad will not listen to this, so that's fine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bless him. My dad wanted me to go further than him. It's the same as he went further than his dad.


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[Assistant] When he's very much of the, I don't understand what you're doing, he does have the opinion that the higher you're educated, the more money you should be making. And that turns out not to be the case.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you're right. So I guess then at secondary school, so to add to my previous problems, my secondary school was rough. I went to a difficult secondary school, so I was a clever kid in a rough school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, I mean, I was sat there and really 50 minutes of an hour lesson was telling people to shut up and sit down.


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[Assistant] And I was twiddling my thumbs. Boooore, that was really going out of my mind. Not the teacher's fault, but I'm afraid it was just a, yeah, kind of rough area.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Were you able to stay out of trouble at least? Yeah, cause I'm totally not that. And I had a very secure and happy family life.


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[Assistant] Which might be not the case for the other people in the school. So I was lucky. I had a better foundation to work from.


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[Assistant] Quite frustrating because imagine how much I could have learned at school if school was able to teach me.


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[Assistant] So then that again goes to, fortunately I am quite an independent learner, so I'm afraid I decided to do it myself.


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[Assistant] Yeah, just read it. Just read the textbook and then read books for myself and then stuff for myself. I mean, my aunt used to get me encyclopedias. It was quite nice. Yeah, children encyclopedias, not like Britannica. Like a one volume encyclopedia. I used to sit and read it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Through entry by entry. I used to sit and read that. Now, I did start to get encouraged by one of my teachers at secondary school, one of my maths teachers at secondary school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who did recognise me as being the best one in the class? I don't want to say that, it sounds awful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, I guess he did recognise, I mean, he said, you know, I can imagine James becoming an academic at a university. I went, oh, well that's one other person who thinks I can do that. Cause at the moment it was just a secret idea in the back of my head. No one else had said that before. I went, oh, well that's two of us. And when we came to A levels,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So what you choose next when you're 17, 18, I wasn't going to do maths.


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[Assistant] Crazy problems, really hard math, but I can't do it. I'm not going to do that. And this math teacher said you are doing math.


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[Assistant] That was it. Do you remember the teacher's name? Yea, Mr. Rossinger.


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[Assistant] Yes, I might be wrong because I've got this second hand knowledge. I think he went to South Africa in the end and not a teacher anymore, something like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this is the teacher that at least backed me up on, I was like, this is something I could do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, well, it was one teacher saying, you're definitely taking maths. And I went along with it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But eh, when I was 17, media studies was a punchline. People treated it as a joke. Oh, what are you going to do? Media studies as a non-real subject. And you can see why I wanted to do media studies. So I went, well, I don't want to be a joke.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I was discouraged from that and I went, well I'm going to go the complete opposite. I'm going to take the most academic thing to media studies. The complete reverse.


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[Assistant] It's the purest, most academic of the subjects. Where did you go? What university did you go to from there then? University, I went to Lancaster University. Makes me feel awful saying how great I am all the time. I did well. I did well. So I could have picked any subject. I have the luxury of picking any subject I wanted to because I was quite good. As in?


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[Assistant] What is it, these days people try and get like three A's or A stars and all these sort of things? Yeah, so they, they, since my time they introduced A stars and now it's new again because they've introduced numbers to it. It's not letter grades, it's number grades.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We recently moved, so I was a Nottingham person, and then between GCSEs and A levels we moved to Lancaster. So I had already moved recently, I didn't want to move again, that's part of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lancaster's really nice as well, so we had a lovely day when we went to see it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And also maybe so, okay, I've got three A's and maybe that's grades that can take you to Cambridge and Oxford, but then I did not have the confidence to go to Cambridge and Oxford. I would have drowned in Cambridge and Oxford. I wasn't ready for that. I didn't have the confidence for it. I needed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To be a big fish in a small pool. And that's what Lancaster did for me. And I'm very happy about that. That was what was right for me at the time. I did not have the confidence to go somewhere like Oxford and Cambridge. And Oxford and Cambridge is not everything.


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[Assistant] First of all, the GCSE maths has just felt so woolly.


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[Assistant] I thought this is so trivial and so woolly. It was like, how do you tessellate a plane? It's like children's stuff. I'm not interested in this. And then at A levels, A levels is very much learning algorithms and having an equation at the top and then getting an answer at the bottom. So it's very procedural.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so that's the end of school life. We've not got to like, proof.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yet. Now, I went to university and I'm thinking...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now this I can get on board with. This I'm interested in. Because that's a creative process.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You see, now, I don't want to feel like I'm doing down the education system or teachers or anything like that, but at least my A-levels felt very rote, rote learning. I learnt the algorithms and I could do them. There was no creativity, so I thought it's this maths. I mean, this is simple, this is lazy, because I just bang through these algorithms.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's no creative thought. What about my creative output? And I do feel that I've had a creative output because I did want to be making film and televisions. And then yes, great. University, now here's what a proof is. And it involves a creative idea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, the proofs you learn, but then you have the questions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you are doing questions where you are proving for yourself. That's the coursework, the homework. So you're in the lectures, you're teaching the traditional proofs, the famous proofs, the traditional proofs. You're learning the methods of proof. These are the classic methods of how to prove a thing. And then, you know, in the coursework, the homework.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're getting questions where you're doing it for yourself. And also, if it's good coursework, they're giving it a twist to see who's got some original thoughts who can


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Make some connections between two different things and put them together. You know, that's a creative twist there. And then of course you get to the point where...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're actually doing an original result for yourself, which I guess is maybe when we're going into PhDs then beyond university maths. But then I do an original result that has never done before for myself that I solved proved to be true and is true forever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, I think that's it. It's the point where, you know, we're going to do proofs and now here's your homework and it's proofs. And I sort of relaxed. I can even think about it now, physically going, ah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, this is far more interesting. No, I can do this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or did you sign on for mathematics? I think it was a surprise. I did think it was rote. Why did you sign on for it? Just because Mr. Rossinger told you to? Yeah, laziness. Total laziness. And that's not a good answer. I admit, that's not a good answer. It's the true answer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However, I am very thankful that at university I discovered there was more to it. I would have been bored. If it was rote and I thought that was what was going to happen, I would have been bored.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So as you move through, how long was your undergraduate course? Three years? It was a four year one. I did an extra long.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I guess that's where I was starting to think. Because that was that secret idea, wasn't there, in the back of my head. I know it's kind of contradictory that I'm thinking,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I seem to be bored by it because it's all rote. But also I know that mathematician is being a thing. I think maybe I like the kudos of it as well. So that's in the back of my head.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was academic. It was only academic, yeaah. And then at university I saw that I was actually quite good at the actual proper maths. If I may call it that, the proper maths.


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[Assistant] It's a hurdle. Each time I was passing a hurdle, because I didn't tell anyone I wanted to do this. Can I pass my GCSEs? That was my first hurdle. Oh yes, I can. Next, can I do the next level? Oh yes, I have passed that level. So each step was just, can I pass this hurdle?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I'm socially active. I suppose I had my probably unsurprising nerdy interests. My big interest was the juggling club. I'm a very good juggler, I'll have you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is something I did a couple of times. Two term president. Well, I did it at Lancaster and then I did it at York, which is my next university. We'll get there. Juggling club, pretty social guy then. And well, part of that job is to be the social guy, to welcome people in. Now it turned out...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is something I could do. I discovered. Turns out I'm quite personable.


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[Assistant] You're right, you're right. The people who tended to be attracted to the Juggling Club fell in two camps, which were the Nerdy Sciencey Camp.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who look different on the outside, cause I can say that the nerdy kind of people maybe would be.


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[Assistant] Conservative of the small c, if you know what I mean, maybe a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, very conservative. More grungy, alternative people.


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[Assistant] So, from the outside, they would look like different people, different worlds. We're brought together by the love of juggling.


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[Assistant] Because I'm not the kind of person who would put myself forward. I hope I've kind of been saying it in this podcast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not someone who thinks I'm great. No, no, no, you're a very self-deprecating person, but someone has to be president. But it turned out I was the most sensible choice as being someone who knew everyone because I'm quite friendly and personable and would meet people anyway.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I was doing that, and also sensible enough to actually run a society. Because juggers are not necessarily sensible people, wacky, crazy people, not really people who can organize a group to do a thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that was actually a significant thing to me because it meant for the first time, because I'm not someone who seeks being put forward, for the first time I was put in charge of a thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People listened to what I said, so I said, I think we should do this. And people went, yeah, okay. Alright. Oh. Oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've never had people listen to what I said before, so that was actually...


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[Assistant] A big deal to me, putting myself forward in that way, show that it was something I could do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It turned out I could rise to the occasion so I could take that leadership role. I know, it's just a juggling club, but it was the first time I ever tried to lead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A thing. We would do shows, because that's what a jogging club might do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, I'm the president, I'm in charge, so I would have to be the compare. You know, I'm in charge of the show. Turned out I could do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, when I wanted to be media TV, I never wanted to be the presenter. So I always wanted to be the person behind the scenes. Never wanted to be the presenter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this is the first time where I said, oh, I can actually step in front.


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[Assistant] I was amazed that I could do perhaps a joke or something and then produce a reaction from another person. Like those two things are connected and I did that. That was new to me because I was very much wanted to be in the shadow


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[Assistant] No, you're right, you're right. So maybe third year is when you start specialising, which means I started to specialise. You can get to choose the courses, because the first two years you just do the courses you're told to do, so that you get a broad overview of everything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then, yes, you start to specialise, you get to pick your courses. So I was leaning towards, eh, the pure maths. Which is actually the algebra. It's called algebra. Which is not like school algebra.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, it's not solving equations. I call it, uhm, chunky maths. You're taking a step back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From the math. And you're seeing the mathematical object as one thing. You've seen the whole thing. You've seen the edges of it. You've seen the whole object. And then you take another.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Chunky bit of maths. You see another mathematical object, and you put them together like Lego, and you're creating another thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's taking a step back where something like analysis is very much about the details. So zooming in to the fine details. The patterns that are in the fine details. Whereas I prefer to take a


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that's the spies. Yeah, the code breakers. So it was an internship. I mean, I was there with several people, right? But people, you were put forward as one of the best in your university and then we all went and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You got given a test. What are you in like some secret bunker for? Yeah, we were at GCHQ, which is now actually changed. The building I went to is not the building that's GCHQ now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it was whatever building it was before that. And well, I can tell you the story. I mean, I was sat there.


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[Assistant] Waiting for this interview, there's a sign on the wall that says status black eagle. I'm thinking even the signs on the wall are in code. What does that mean?


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[Assistant] Either I'm safe or I'm about to get bombed. It's one of the two. Not sure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, then we were sent, oh you have to go to this building, and then we as a group got lost, so we were wondering around GCHQ, the buildings of GCHQ completely lost, is this the first challenge? To find the building?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyway, so we had to take a test, and it was Maths and Computer Science. Now, I'm not into Computer Science, so I'm afraid there's nothing I could do on that part of the test. You know, and I had a crack at the Maths, and there was stuff that I hadn't seen before, which was quite difficult.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I didn't know, but obviously there was a whole section I couldn't do because it was about computer science, and so maybe that was important to them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, it wasn't, it wasn't an interview like that. Did you ever find out what status black eagle means? We weren't bombed, so I assume everything was fine. But that was my first taste of failure, actually. Did you feel like a failure, did you? Yeah, that was the first test I'd ever failed. I have a work ethic. I'm not a genius, but I have a work ethic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Quietly, I was bashing through these hurdles that I had to bash through. And I always did. And that was my first test I've ever failed.


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[Assistant] And again, I've never thought I am the big I am, but that was a new experience. I did have a crisis of confidence. Yeah. I went, oh, maybe I'm not the best.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was going to be something that would have been in between university and PhDs. That's what it would have been.


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[Assistant] So I was already on the road to PhD anyway. So I did my PhD at York University. Lancaster and York traditionally have a rivalry, but who cares about that. What a load of old nonsense.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, amongst other people who are also the best at their university, I'm not so special after all. We can start with group theory, which is maths of symmetry. Symmetry of shapes, but in maths, symmetry means there's something that you care about that you want to stay the same. So it might be shape, volume, angle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Magnitude, something that you care about, you want to stay the same, and then you want to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Keep the same shape, it doesn't bend or anything. But you can rotate it. So that's symmetry in math. So that's group theory.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then representation theory, which is what I was doing, is a bridge from this abstract maths of weird symbols and wibbly wobbly maths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To a more concrete world of matrices, which is what you would use in computer science and what engineers would use. So a matrix would be an array of numbers and that's very well understood, well studied, concrete thing. But there's a connection between those two worlds, between this weird abstract world and this very concrete world. Now how do you make that bridge? So, well there are ways to make that bridge that involve more maths and formulas and wibbly wobbly stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I prefer to do it with pictures, which is more combinatorial, combinatorial representation theory. By using pictures, which by using pictures makes the maths easier to understand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you don't have to get lost in the Greek letters. So using pictures you can make that bridge between those two worlds. But it's a very pure maths thing to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, you know, being quite personable and I'd like to think I can teach things and, you know, explain things. And so I started to think, okay, I do want to go into maths, but also I have skills that perhaps some of these other people don't have. So it's hard to compare yourself.


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[Assistant] Especially if there are people who are doing really really well. But you have to remind yourself that you have other skills. What was the title of your PhD thesis?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I almost can't remember, I think I can remember. So it was the hook fusion procedure and generalizations. Are you proud of it? Is it a good one? Well, the best work in it, I actually did in my first year of my PhD. So I started off thinking, hey, I'm doing really well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bang, done. I must be really good at PhD-ing.


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[Assistant] It was harder. So yeah, I mean, it's amazing to have your own results and you proved a thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But also there's work in there that I, you know, I nearly completed, but there was like a step that I just, this close to it, and then I didn't complete that step. So the work is in there, but it kind of feels like incomplete work. So I got this far, so this is only a conjecture because this is the sticking point that I couldn't prove.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If anyone proves that step, then that's now a theorem. So there's some bits of it that look like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's hard work. PhD is hard work. It's very frustrating. You talk to PhD students, they have this kind of grey...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pala to them. They start off all enthusiastic and then the second year they realise, oh, actually I better crack down on this because I better have something to finish with it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then by the time of the third year, they've learned that if you die during the course of a PhD, you automatically get your doctorate and they start to consider that as an actual option. Is that? I didn't even know that was... I mean, that's, that's one of the, maybe the myths that I've heard about PhDs that I was hanging on to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that does sound hard, doesn't it? So I think there are things that maybe I should have known.


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[Assistant] I shouldn't have been as hard on myself as I was then. So I was very much obsessed so you'd be waking up in the middle of the night and you're always thinking about the problem and as for strain, to be always thinking.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] About your mathematical problem. And more of a strain than it might be for other subjects. So if you were doing some other, an experimental science or something, at least you have days off where you're doing your experiments, you're planning your experiments, and then you do your experiments.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In maths, it's all brain work all the time, and I was very hard on myself when, you know, you have a day when you achieve nothing, and I'm terrible, I'm rubbish. That's really hard. What maybe I should have been told is that's an unreasonable expectation to be all maths all the time, especially in a subject like maths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That should be two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, right? And you know, have, treat it as a job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then, you know, having a chill out time. Were you still doing juggling and watching TV shows? Yeah, I was very social. Yeah. So my undergraduate, I was much better with a much better work ethic, which was, you know, I would work and then I would finish at six and then that's the end of working at six and then I'll do my social things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would normally impose on myself, I'm not that kind of person typically, the lines between work and not work.


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[Assistant] Yeah, good question. What I did is I did do, uhm, post-doc, so I went into academia, I did academic work. Where'd you do that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was at York to start with. I did do a little thing in Denmark as well. It wasn't even a year, it was less than a year. But I did something at Norhus in Denmark. Then came back and did something in York.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then I was thinking, I want to earn my stripes. I want to do a few years of this kind of academic work. But the stuff we're doing now was where I was heading. I was thinking, this is where I'm heading.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I thought I was going to get a few more stripes, a few more years, and then absolutely just start to do more of this outreach-y stuff. And I was, because, because, I was thinking, do I want to spend the next 40 years of my life becoming an expert in one really small part of maths? And the answer was no. I didn't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lots of things. And maths is a very broad subject too. So even if you're talking about maths, maths is a broad subject. And I was pretty much good at all of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not shallow, but I'm not the world expert at anything in particular.


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[Assistant] I mean, I guess I would, but that involves giving up what I've created for myself now. I'm very happy with what I've created for myself now. So would I do anything different? No, no, I'm where I wanted to be. That is fine. I am where I was heading.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Always this idea in the back of my head, you know, being a mathematician, but also, I mean, I was inspired by, if anyone, by these presenters on children's TV. And I was at a school where I was a clever kid in a rough school and I wanted to pay that forwards. So that was always the ambition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, exactly. So I was thinking, earn my stripes so that I have some qualifications to show off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Credibility and maybe then in future I could do a.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But this was an opportunity for me to practice doing that and that's what I did. So I started a YouTube channel and I started to practice how to present.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Singing Banana was my internet name, just generally anyway, so as a teenager.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or someone in their early twenties. And in the early days of the internet, you would have an internet name, wouldn't you? You have a handle. Anonymous internet name. And Singing Banana was my internet name. It came from my school's tuck shop. My school's sweets shop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. It was called the singing banana, which in turn came from an advert for yogurt that was on TV at the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I'm in academia and I'm thinking I want to do this communication stuff. I'll tell you what actually happened then. Just when I finished my PhD. So this would be 2006.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Royal Institution advertised a job. Now the Royal Institution of Great Britain, they have this program called the Christmas Lectures for people who are not from the UK.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which are lectures for children on Christmas week about science.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A big deal. I mean, that's part of the influence on me as well. Cause this is, oh, this is a scientist talking about science for kids.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So anyway, this was the year for maths. They were going to do a maths one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With Marcus de Soitoi, and so they needed someone to be the assistant. Help work on the scripts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Liaise with Channel 5, it was then. It's gone back to the BBC now. It was Channel 5 for a period. And liaise with Royal Institution. And I thought, this is a job for me. These are my skills. Because I'm interested in media. I'm interested in maths. I'm interested in communicating maths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This kind of presenting for kids is exactly the stuff I need. This would be a great experience for me. So I had an interview for that with Marcus and the Royal Institution told me


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then, woah, we had a great interview. Me and Marcus were getting on like a house on fire. And because I was the last in the day, because I went, I travelled the furthest, so they put me last.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I was last, I had all the time I needed. So I was just going, and then we could do this, and then we could do this, and then we could do this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I did not get that job. And I thought, that interview went so well. And I was so energized. For the first time, because, you know, PhD is hard work. And then I was so energized by this idea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, clearly this is what I should be doing because I haven't been this enthusiastic for a couple of years because I've been kind of stressed out. Well, yes, I should be doing it. And then that's when I had this plan of having earned some stripes and then really do this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when I started doing YouTube, so that in future, I couldn't be turned down. I thought maybe they turned me down because I didn't have enough media experience.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I need to make a CV that can't be turned down next time this comes up. And that's what I did. So I started making YouTube. It was partly practice for me. It was partly to have it on my CV. You can see who I am.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You see what I do. I started doing outreach work for the university. I started, you know, trying to put myself as the friendly face of the university, trying to put myself in that position so I could have a CV that can't be turned down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So then my post-doc was running out, as post-docs do, I'm afraid. So I then had to go looking for another job. And then a friend of mine sent me a job advert and I went...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's you, isn't it? Yeah, that is me. Basically what I had been preparing myself for. It wasn't with the Royal Institution, it was with Cambridge.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they needed someone to work publicly to talk. I thought, well, this is ahead of schedule.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause my schedule was to do a bit more academia and then do, and then do that. But...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'll go, actually I wanted to go for the practice of the interview. I thought I wasn't going to get it because I didn't get the other one, the Royal Institution one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was again just practice for the interview, so that I can do this right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that's right, yeah. Public and maths communication, public stuff, yeah. But in particular, they had an Enigma machine that was on loan to the maths department.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so the job was, who wants to show this Enigma machine off?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I thought because I didn't get that other one, I thought, you know, I did this one perfectly fine. I thought I wouldn't get that one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can't see any difference between how I performed in this interview and that interview. And then like 10 minutes later, cause I think again, I was near the end of the day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ten minutes later, they phoned me up and offered me the job. I was still stood at bus stop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I heard afterwards that they thought, cause I was the second to last interview, and then the person who was the last interview, they went in. They called during that interview halfway through. Wouldn't that be awful? He came out, this is terrible, he came out looking slightly grey. Oh dear. But I was still there cause it was raining.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was chucking it down. They thought I was hanging around for an answer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He seems to be very keen to find out. Tell him now. I wasn't. I was just waiting for it to stop raining. So I was, you know, waiting at the bus stop in the rain. That's when they phoned. I didn't take it because I was getting on the bus. You know, I got this job and that was a big deal to me. Yeah. Did you enjoy that? It was my dream job. I mean, I'm still doing it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, not for Cambridge, but basically I'm still doing the same sort of thing. Uh, I travel the world, I give talks, and of course I can do other things on the side, like I have a number file.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, paste event. So I traveled the world, traveled the UK mostly and traveled the world giving talks often about Enigma and I still have the Enigma machine on loan to me. So instead of being loaned to the university, it's on loan to me now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I give talks about how the code was broken and Alan Turing and it's about motivating, it's about inspiring people. Who do you give these talks to? So often I'm talking to teenagers or kids. I go all levels and I enjoy going through all levels.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is part of the reason why I enjoy the job so much. I talk to small kids, 10 year olds, 9 year olds, that kind of age. And then I'll talk to teenagers and then the higher end of that, so the 18 year old. Universities, I'll talk at universities. I talk to mathematicians.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I will talk to the general public. So pretty much any level.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that's it. I was very lucky because I inherited something from Cambridge. So that was all kind of set up for me because I've been inheriting something. And then when I inherited it, I said, oh, I could really make this mine. I think more so than my predecessors who kind of came into the job and out of the job. No, this is a job that I can make mine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is right in my wheelhouse. I already had that, so I didn't like have to chase it. And so word of mouth is actually how most of my bookings happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not very good at self-promotion. I'm now on a podcast, self-promoting it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it looks like a typewriter and telling them it's a code machine just sounds dodgy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, I tell them it's an old-fashioned typewriter. Has anyone ever said, no it's not, that's an enigma machine?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, what happened sometime last year, and I even forget where I was, at some airport, and I was doing this. Now normally that just goes through. They've got old typewriter, old fashioned typewriter, that's a weird thing to be carrying, but okay. Now they're too busy to really investigate that any further. Now there's nothing illegal about what I'm taking through, so there's nothing wrong with this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, they send it through the scanner, right? It looks like an old typewriter. But yeah, there was an occasion, like last year, where a guy went, oh, an old-fashioned typewriter?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, we'll send it through, and then he shouted to the person at the other end, at the other end of the scanner. We've got an old typewriter coming through. It looks like an Enigma machine, but it isn't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ahh, don't shout that out. What did you say? Did you say it is?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, it's just that a whole airport can hear this. That's not like someone's gonna steal it. Well, I wouldn't want to give people the opportunity. Yeah, it looks like luggage. Just looks like luggage. But maybe I'm giving away secrets.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's his personal Enigma machine that he lends to me? You've had it for a long time now, does he ever have to Simon ever ring you up and say can I see my machine?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They say the same or, you know, same-ish or on the same topic, relatively the same. But what I've got every day is I'm talking to a different audience, different age group in a different town, sometimes in different country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Different ability levels. I'm working really hard. The only thing that's actually constant for me is the actual talk. And now I'm sure every job involves some sort of repetition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do talk about other things. I should say I do talk about other things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Numberphile is very nice for me because I get to talk about other things via Numberphile, right? So I don't get too bored, but all those other factors means that I'm actually working very hard. I'm looking at my audience. I'm trying to keep them on board. I'm trying to judge their level.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that was before periodic videos in my memory. So periodic videos came along.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your chemistry channel, and I said, what a wonderful chemistry channel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What a lovely thing. Wouldn't it be nice if there's something like that for maths? I was actually trying to push that in Cambridge. I was trying to say to people in Cambridge, you see what that guy's doing with periodic videos, we should be doing that with maths. Why were you going to Cambridge and saying that? Weren't you just thinking, well I'm doing that. I'm doing it for mathematics. Because I thought we could do that with all those lecturers in the Cambridge University resources that we have.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was still, oh, I wasn't presenting. I was still the back, I was still organizing. I was the back stage of this. Oh, I still wasn't putting myself forwards. No, the idea was to do periodic videos with all these clever Cambridge people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Look, look out, look, I can do it on my own. Here's me just doing it on my own.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Imagine if you gave me a filmmaker and worked with me, yeah. So I was doing more singing but trying to prove to them that this is a thing that could be done. And then I think there was a video you did on periodic videos about ice, something like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I riffed off that. In the old days of YouTube, YouTube had reply videos, which I miss as a feature.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do you remember reply videos? Yeah, I've forgotten about that. I missed that. That was a good feature that they took away. It was more of a social network then. It wasn't just broadcasting. It was a conversation. You would reply with a video and reply with a video. I missed that feature. And I replied to your ice video saying, well, and you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Snowflakes are always hexagons. They're always six-pointed hexagons because ice molecules make, whatever, 120 degrees and then they must fit together to make hexagons.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you might have noticed that, I don't know. And also, the other thing is you had another channel called Bible Dex.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I've always been feeling I was getting from you because I was sending you, maybe I was sending you tweets or something, right? Saying, love your Bible decks because I'm not religious. I'm not necessarily, I don't know this stuff. See, I'm always the one to learn. I'm always interested to learn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe if I say this now, you might not realise I wasn't putting myself forward as a presenter. I was putting myself forward as a helper, resource, producer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause Google started to try and put out some channels of their own. There was a bit of a sponsorship or something, whatever you call it, a grant. And you did contact me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think I had the feeling you snatched me up. Yeah. I think we had that first conversation about it and I thought I had a few like maybe ideas which probably turned out to be the first few videos. I think the one that might have turned you


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was the amicable numbers. I told you about amicable numbers that first meeting. Yeah. Which is the, was it two eight four and two.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The other number. So the factors of 220 add up to 284. Factors of 284.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Add up to 220, they come as a pair, and in ancient times they would represent love. So it's not just a fact about a number, it's more than that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I read comments on Singing Banana. I used to read them on Numberphile in the early days, then Numberphile became too popular.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm afraid I haven't read them. And also if I dismiss the nasty comments by the same token, I have to dismiss the generous comments.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would love to, but I can't wade through all those other comments to get there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The singing banana, I do read all the comments on singing banana. And so it's very likely that I will engage with you via the singing banana comments section. I want to say, hey, I grew a thick skin. That's not true. Comments, nasty comments. Get under my skin. It's not nice. How could it be?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not superhuman. They're not nice at all. There are some comments you could dismiss in the early days of YouTube. Gay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My presentational skills or my mathematical ability are actually personal attacks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's not nice, is it? The only reason I'm here is because I'm supposed to have mathematical skills and presentational skills. So you've just attacked the exact thing I'm interested in providing and that's not nice. So I'm afraid I can't claim to have a thick skin about that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I took the opportunities very quickly because I knew that this is what I wanted to do. You know, if there was something like Numberphile come along or my job at Cambridge came along or, yeah, when YouTube just


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By existing had gave me an opportunity. Yes, I took those opportunity. So I am on a mission. I want.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As someone who came as a clever kid from a rough school, I want to find those little James Grimes, who don't come from academic families, who are in a rough area, who have not been exposed to this academic world, because that's exactly what my


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Those programs, I discovered that that was a thing you could do and it was an idea in my head.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People saying thank you for the videos, which is lovely.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't, I don't feel that's what number 5 is, or singing banana. I don't feel that's what it is. It's because I think...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay. Now, you're at home. You've no peer pressure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With no pressure at all in your bedroom. I imagine I'm talking to someone, maybe a teenager who's watching that video by themselves outside of school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is not something that a teacher has made them watch. They've found it for themselves, they've discovered it for themselves. So therefore they're already engaged in it because they've kind of discovered it for themselves. And then from that you click on the other videos that's made, that comes up in the recommendations. If you like it. If you like it. If you don't like it, fine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No pressure. I'm not trying to force anything on you. But it's so minimum pressure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you just discover it, you try it, try another one, try the next one. I think we do reach those people who would not otherwise have been exposed to that kind of academic idea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes. Cause I get, I meet that a lot. Okay, then yes. So yeah, I do get emails first of all, and they couldn't, you know, they come in drips and they're charming, all of them. Now, cause we've been doing it for seven years, haven't we?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now I get people at a university talk or something like that who will come to me at the end of a university talk and say, actually I chose to do maths at university because of your videos on Numberphile.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I feel like, oh geez, I can't take the responsibility for your life choices. Don't put that on me. Um, but I mean, wonderful. That was the intention. So thank you very much.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When it first started to happen, I did not react very well to it. I did not go, why are you talking to me? I'm not...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Famous, stop treating me like I'm famous. I'm just a guy on YouTube, anyone can do it. Stop treating me that way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With better grace, which means if that happens, they come up to me, now I have to switch into that persona, that presentational.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Persona. I try to be welcoming and ask them who they are and what videos they like to watch and we have that moment. They're looking for a moment with me. That's the frustrating thing, isn't it? I'm just going about my shopping or daily life and they see me and they want to have a moment with me and that's the difficult bit. Giving that person a moment which is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just never happened with my dad or my parents and I've never told them that I get recognized. I've never told them about it because I think they need to see it for themselves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The impact and how much the viewers love what we have created if they don't see it for themselves. They have no understanding really of what we do. So I'm afraid we'll have to wait for that moment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I prefer to keep things on topic. I don't want questions about myself. I prefer not to have questions about myself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I tend to maybe arrange things so that I do get questions on topic. I rarely get questions about Numberphile or myself, right? But it's increasingly true that the audience are people who know me from Numberphile.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is actually a hindrance in some ways because it's a lot easier to talk to an audience who has no idea who you are and then to introduce yourself to that audience and win them over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then to have some people in that audience know who you are and they go, this is James Grime from


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, I'm afraid I don't have a good answer for this because I don't tend to get number file or personal questions in my talk.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When it's a bit more general, where I'm actually there as a presenter as someone who does Numberphile. So yea, favourite Numberphile video, yes I happen to have that. My favourites are the ones where I get to do something a bit meaty. Actually, some proper maths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A proper theorem and explain it and give you at least a good, decent explanation of the proof within that 10 minute structure of a Numberphile video. So I think some successful videos like that. Quaternions we did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think that actually turned out quite nice, so I explained what it was nicely in that 10 minute kind of restriction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So quaternions or the four color theorem, you know, like proper maths and also where I tackle the proper proof. Cool. Is that okay? How do you feel about that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah. There's some that I have my list of ideas, and they remain on my list of ideas, and then there's some that...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I like that, where maybe they're too much for me to take, I need to have some time to really learn that thing, and then it turns out someone does it before me, and then they always do a much better job than I would have done, and I watch them and I think, oh that's wonderful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a wonderful video. I mean, we did Marcus DeSortoi did girdle, the girdle incompleteness there. And that was on my list of ideas. But also I want, before I do that video, I want to know it properly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I want to understand it properly before I then regurgitate that for the Numberphile audience.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I've considered all those things. I have considered going back into academia. Yes, I have considered that, but I think, I mean, I'm doing what I do best. I'm using all my skills really.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's where I was always going. All these influences have all joined up and combined to what I do now. So how could I beat what I do now? What could I do next? I mean, I, if I was offered...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anything exciting, I will take anything exciting. And if I had the ability to do what I do now, but perhaps maybe not travel around so much, that would be less exhausting for me. I mean, I must be honest. I would be looking out for something where I can do more my communication of maths, talk to the public, and maybe stay still. That would be nice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Number one now, number one there, January 15th, 1802. This song was number one, one, one, one, one, one, one. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it was kind of, like as well as all of that, I did also have loads of dolls. Right. But they would, like I'd kind of build like houses and like there was, you know, the upper shelves of my bedroom would have like a little pulley system that you could use to carry things up to the upper shelves and things like that. Right. It was, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and I think maybe in terms of early influences, my second cousin was removed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The solid career that you get out of doing maths, and I think, like, I'm now the person who's buying him, like, recreational popular maths books, and he's really excited by those, so it's kind of, it goes both ways.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, the person who taught us mostly basically just kept bringing in interesting stuff and giving us little puzzles to do and that kind of thing and it kind of grabbed my attention and I was like, this subject is much bigger than I thought it was and there's a lot of cool stuff in here and this is now what I want to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, because as mentioned I was an awful nerd, uh, I was quite badly bullied in the first couple of years of high school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it was, it was a mixture of those two things. And I think it was really nice to sort of go to a different school and be like, oh, actually, no, people are horrible everywhere. I just need to deal with this. Like that was the main lesson I learned was that there are horrible people wherever you go and it's about your attitude more than anything else.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like no one's ever answered that question before. But you know, I just, I wasn't, I wasn't interested in following the sort of norms that people were presenting and I think having made that move and gone


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so you pick your A levels, uh, I mean it's all, it's all changed very slightly since then as well because...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, uhm, so you, you kind of pick maybe three or four subjects to do that and then the university makes you an offer that will be, uh, say for instance, three A's and a B or whatever, uhm, and,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Depending on the course and the university those offers might be higher or lower. If they like you and they want you to come they'll give you a lower offer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, or at least we'll have to talk, you know, like we'll have a more serious conversation, but yeah. So my offer I think was A in maths, B, D.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I was also doing an AS level which is like half an extra A level in further maths. So it was between those three kind of chunks of maths I had to shuffle everything around. I remember on results day kind of looking at this and going, okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is terrifying. Have I not got into uni and ringing up the admissions office that you missed and someone going, Oh no, no, don't be ridiculous. We definitely want you to come here. Don't worry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You missed, as was, merged with Manchester while I was still at uni, so there was a whole pile of...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We did a bit of that and we'd go to like the freshest fair at the start of the year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we didn't actually sign up for our own stall, we just, you know, stole things from other people's stalls.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, just me. Just me dressed as a pirate. I won the award for best dressed pirate one year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just flair, I think, just having, you know, having some piratey bits, but just...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But some good boots, some quality, like faux suede boots.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Goes and not everyone gets the opportunity to go, but it's such a really nice place to sort of be around people who are interested in the same things as you and are all working towards the same goal for a few years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, I think definitely, yeaah. Like, school maths is really just about methods. You know, it's about learning techniques that you can use to solve problems. And you kind of start to get glimpses of what maths really is, but it, you know, you're not really doing proper maths.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But also there's these beautiful algebraic abstract structures that don't really exist that you can just build.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You just hadn't even occurred to you were maths and it's a really nice place to be to sort of be able to look out across that vista, but you're also at the same time aware suddenly of how much you don't know, which you could take either way, but I think I took it as being quite exciting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Certainly now having kind of taught students at uni and things like that, you get a lot of these people who are like, okay, exactly how much work do I need to do in order to get a passing grade for this course?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like to the point where they're kind of working out which questions they can afford to not revise for.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hang on, why are you here? Like, if you're not here to just absorb as much information as you possibly can and, you know, improve yourself and enjoy this subject, then, you know, that feels a little bit...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I think it was still steadfastly not making a decision yet, uh, for a good while and I kind of almost didn't decide what I wanted to do afterwards until just at the end of undergrad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is there any way I can put off making a decision about what I want to do with my life for a bit longer? And I acknowledge that this is the worst possible reason to do a PhD, but a few of my friends were also doing a PhD. I was like, oh maybe I could do


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, like I was peer pressured into it because they were like, yeah, of course you could do that, you'll be great. Uhm, and I was genuinely partly like, are you sure that I would be good enough to do that? Uhm, and I don't know if that's just imposter syndrome or whatever, I've always sort of had that as a constant companion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was okay actually. Maths at undergrad tends to be pretty evenly split and I don't know why that is. There's obviously something weird about maths that uhm, kind of, you do tend to get a reasonable number of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, women on the course, it does drop off once you get to research level.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's kind of hard to say, I guess. There's a lot of personal decisions, I guess, that make a difference. To some extent it might be about why people are choosing to do a maths degree. One completely valid reason to do a maths degree is because it sets you up for a good career in finance or accounting or...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, it's, I'm not saying this is the only two types of people that do a maths degree, but there are some people who enjoy maths and go and do a maths degree because they want maths, and there are some people who go and do a maths degree because they want a maths degree, and I think maybe


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe girls tend to be more in the second category. Maybe they want to go and teach maths or they want to go and do something else with it. This is a massive generalisation, but it may be that that's part of the reason. Also, I mean, research is massively intimidating.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and I think that, you know, that there's this potential idea that women kind of take a look at that and go, actually, you know what, no.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'd go and do something else, which is a completely sensible decision, but I think, you know, in terms of...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How that environment works. There's a lot of improvement that could be made in terms of how well that as a career actually functions and how inviting that is to people. Because there'll be a lot of people who get put off from that and not just women, but people who could do a really good maths research career who just don't because of that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just, it's about kind of what the job of a lecturer is, what the job of a researcher at a UD is, because yeaah, there's this massive overlap with lecturing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And depending on the university, sometimes you get this sense that people are there to do their research and there's this inconvenience of lecturing alongside that, that they occasionally have to, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's whether if everyone else took the brakes off slightly, if the levels that people were working at were slightly lower, people could take a bit more time over things, be a bit more considered. But, you know, game theoretically, there's no...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Incentive for anyone to do that, you know, you always gotta keep pushing and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, this was interesting because I kind of didn't choose it in some sense. I was sort of just like, yeah, I'll do whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, some baths, it'll be great. You sound very easy going, Katie.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I started off, as everyone does, at the, you know, kind of the bottom end of the back row, as it's known.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So kind of studying the motions of things that evolve over time. He was stealing PhD students from topology. So topology was the topic that I'd done for my kind of final year project in fourth year. I'd done a thing on, oh, what was it called?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there are various other things that you can do to connect them. And he just basically went, do you want to do this?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like a friend of mine was doing a project in the year above, so she was already on a PhD doing...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sort of related to the stuff that I already knew, sort of something a bit new that I hadn't done much on, so I had to kind of learn a lot of the dynamic stuff from scratch at that point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's one of the many contradictions about my existence. And uhm, it was looking at n-body problems. So thinking about, you know, groups of particles moving around in space.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's, if you imagine, you know, a set of particles orbiting, but they're all following the same path, one after the other. And...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The particles have moved around one, so there's, there's like, there's various different...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It should be, yeaah. It was a kind of alternating nightmare of not having any idea what I was doing and then having loads of stuff to do and then suddenly not knowing what I was doing again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but it was a lot of kind of peer support and chatting to each other and going, no, no, that is completely normal, don't worry. Uhm, was, was the way that a lot of people got through it, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I guess sort of, yeah, in that kind of thing. And we did a little bit of demonstrating and teaching during the PhD, like they allow you to do paid work teaching for lower years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I brought them all together and I had just got involved with a little project that someone was doing called maths busking, which was this idea to kind of take mathematical ideas and just show them to people either in the street or in a, in a context where you were kind of just going like, have you seen this thing? Isn't it cool?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kind of pile of karma that I need to dish out. But yea, it was, it was a bit of an experiment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Again, I was very lucky in terms of the connections that I managed to make. So some of the people that were involved in the mass busking project essentially just sort of took me under a wing and shepherded me and gave me opportunities.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So as a part-time job that I just sort of build hourly, I would do maths emails.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we kind of developed a set of talks that he already did and kind of built versions that I could do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wake up in the morning and think, what am I? I'm still a mathematician, so I've never kind of lost that love of maths, but I just basically do whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Either because someone saw me do a thing and thought, oh they're alright, let's get them to do this other thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I know some topology. I could, I could talk about the Poincare conjecture and I did sort of consulting on that to make sure that the maths in the show was right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But also did a little workshop that was performed alongside the show.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we'd kind of work together on things like that. And I would do all of the tedious admin stuff, which meant he didn't have to. I feel like I've almost had a sort of personal revelation there when you describe that as third-corner stuff. I kind of just realised that's exactly what that is. But I think it's also a very important aspect of it. And I know a lot of people that I've worked with over the years that have been professional project managers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's incredible how much work they have to do that people just don't appreciate at all. And so it's, it's good for me to see kind of both sides of that. And I feel like it makes me better as a presenter to work with because I can go to a science festival and they'd say, can you do this? And I'd say, well,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, which is obviously a very difficult thing to pin down, but kind of looking at that, potentially going more into that kind of stuff might be fun, but I don't know. And I guess I'm also just open to whatever comes along really.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've done okay with, with people just approaching me and saying, do you want to do this thing? I've done bits of TV stuff, which has been fun, but, but a nightmare and difficult and TV is awful. Uh, but it's also brilliant. Potentially something like that, but I don't know where that would go. Like I am, I am genuinely open. I've got an idea for a book. Haven't written it yet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why isn't there a UK one of these? Because there's certainly a large community of mass communicators. And we all just looked at each other and went, should we just, should we just make one?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I think it's useful to see, like if you're either the one maths person in the place where you are or the one person that's doing outreach in the maths department where you are or, you know, the, the,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, which I think might be quite useful universally is to always remember that the person that you're talking to doesn't have the same experience of maths as you do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who's either, you know, missed a chunk of teaching or, or struggled with it for whatever reason, you know, their experience of maths is very different to mine. Um, and the one really nice bit of advice would be don't


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I never, I try never to describe something as being easy or kind of make any prejudgments about how people are going to interact with something. I'll say something's interesting or fun or, you know, whatever, but I won't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kind of tell people how they feel about something, I guess. And I feel like that may be useful advice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The ever present Matt Parker that I often repeat for people is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, so it's, it's kind of wanting that puzzle and wanting the thing that's gonna challenge you. And I think a lot of the problems that people have with maths are because they don't realise that it's normal to feel like it's difficult.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like they look at something and they go, I don't really know what to do here. And because they're not trained to go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Today's guest is Markus de Sotoij. A successful mathematician based at Oxford, Markus is more widely known for his public communication.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] BBC, TV shows, an assortment of books, and in more recent times even music and theatre.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I met Marcus at his home shortly after he'd popped some bread in the oven.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How do I pronounce your surname and where does it come from? Cause it's quite, to me, it's quite an exotic name, but you seem very English to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And give me a do-so toy. Do-so toy. Do-so toy. I mean, that's so long ago. Do you sort of identify with any kind of French heritage-ness or is it just a quirk of history now? Or do you, do you feel something about it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh wow. There you go. I have Googled you. I haven't Googled deep enough. I have not come across that yet. Have you gone back to France and got found some hole or cottage that they were from or something?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All right. Well, let's go to your childhood then, like after all this sort of highfalutin aristocracy and whatnot. What was your childhood like? What we, what was, where were you born? Where are you from?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maths wasn't your passion at this point, but you were obviously good at it because Mr. Bioson had seen this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How gradual or violent a process was Mr. Belson's intervention from this dream of lang- that seemed to involve language and music to becoming a mathematician? Was it- was it overnight or was it a gradual drift?