[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, James was always really good at that where he would pick the inside and then all of a sudden you, you watch video and you're like, dude, you got smoked off the gate or got smoked down the straightaway, but he sucks around the inside and he comes out in third.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, and that was the perfect scenario. That was the perfect first turn because everybody would go deep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And go outside because it kind of had two turns to it and then it leaves the whole inside open. Um, so I think that's where I would have gone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I think that number one, looking at it, you know, like say for the listeners that are, that are listening, we're watching, uh, clips of, of these starts why we're really been able to, to dissect this and, and it looked like you got a decent jump off the line.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But right out front, Kenny had a grip in front of him and Kenny controlled the situation, which was on the inside of him. And also Jason Anderson was on the inside of uhm, of, or no, ABC it looks like, on the inside of uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, grip or half a wheel in front, you have no control over the first turn and your, you know, your, your best option is, is to watch some things play out so you can understand what's going to happen and then hopefully find a hole and didn't really find a hole in that, on that third start. He came out around fifth or sixth and you can't give a guy like Eli or Chase.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, first and second position when you're fifth or sixth, especially with a track that is kind of hard to pass on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And even to that, remember we were talking about a Triple Crown event this weekend or last weekend and, uh, you know, less time. And so you're in a situation where, like you said, three seconds the first lap, two seconds next. And if you're only a couple tenths quicker.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Through, and you have a shorter time of making that time up, it's, it's probably not gonna happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have to agree. I think it was, it was some poor decision making on, I just, I'm looking at some of these guys when they're out, even Eli, you know, like, but he was able to pull it off. He's been getting, I think it's probably the best starts he's had, I think in his career, potentially.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For sure, consecutively even where he's doing it every weekend, he's showing up and he's, and he's putting himself in a great position. Well, that just makes your championship fight that much easier when you put yourself in that position, starting first, second, third. Um, you know, it's, it's, uh, it makes such a, such a difference to be up in the front of the pack on the first lap.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To hopefully have Jason get on the breaks, which Jason is in that guy, he's gonna stay in it. And, uh, you know, watching, you know, live and watching replay that we're watching currently.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If it were me, I would have, I think he should have held it up and made that move.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To the whoops. Right before the turn before the whoops. And why I say that is because he could have potentially put himself on the inside. He was on the inside for the whoops. At this point...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He didn't make the pass stick in the turn before the on-off triple, before the whoops. So now he's now on the outside. So there's no options here. He even, he's got a half a bike on him, but he's still behind, he's on the outside. He's put himself on the outside. I think I would have waited to put, to, to make that move before, uh, in the turn before the whoops.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jason almost went off the track because Coop's right throttle hand grabbed Jason's clutch hand and it twisted the wheel. So he almost went off the track.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I think if that would have happened at the same scenario, but in the right hand turn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Coop obviously stayed straight and Jason went towards off the track.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a set of whoops. You gotta have your drive. You gotta make sure you get through the turn clean and get through those whoops. They were tough all night. And, uh, I think he would have made the past stick if he would have waited one turn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, because they come to, it looks like, you can watch Chase right here, like once again, folks were watching replay, and, and Chase got all squirrely coming, cause Kevin hit him too, and then blew into the side of Eli, and then it spit, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It spit Kevin off, and uh, you know, I mean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey, uhm, you know, like, every guy on that gate's up there for the same, same exact reason, uhm, you know, but, watching and, and, and,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Breaking this down, he didn't have the wheel to the first turn. Eli was coming in there on a lean, coming in faster, had the line.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just blew into the side of Chase, then into Eli, and then it just spit him off and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, he comes in and it's like, okay, I'm in the first turn, but then it's like, it keeps going. And that's when he blows into Eli and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uh, yeaah, just the wheels fall off the, off the wagon for sure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, I agree, uhm, in that, in that position, uhm, you know, like, like, like you mentioned, like, they're all out there for the same reason, there's 22 gates out there on, on the line, and, uh, they're some of the best supercross racers from first to the 22nd, you know, they're out there for, and they've made that main event, you know, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they, they should be out there, but yes, I, I agree. I do agree with you that in the first turn, you know, we do race different other guys in that position do race different. Um, you know, nothing against Kevin, like he's, he hasn't been in that position upfront, like rate, you know, racing. So, and, and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, because I think the first turn was so fast too. It wasn't a tight first turn where guys were really on the brakes and they were really slowing down. You came into that first turn with, with, with a lot of speed. And uhm, you know, I think he was, his plan was to probably hope those guys were gonna go, go wide.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, those guys are, they're so technically, you know, balanced when it comes to coming in there wide open breaks. I'm going to just hug the inside, you know, and he probably maybe wasn't ready for that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, to see how tight, you know, Eli was going to be able to hold it or Chase was going to be able to hold it. You know, a guy, I could say a guy like in that position.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Eli's position would probably come in right and blow the turn. He would go way too far outside because he's like, Oh, here I come. I got the whole shot. I'm going to run this thing in. I'm not letting this go. And then all the top guys go up the inside. Well, that's exactly what these guys were. They were coming in and Eli would have went even tighter if it wasn't for, for Kevin's Kevin coming into the side of him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I think Eli would have been able to come three or four feet inside of where he actually went.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I don't think Kevin was expecting, you know, how tight those guys were coming into that first turn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These dudes are going to be able to hug it tight or, you know, whatever that first turn scenario is. And if he would have come out in third or fourth and put himself in a phenomenal


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Passes him, he puts himself in a phenomenal position to potentially have one of his best finishes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, I, but I can tell you, I, I mean, I, I, I, for myself, and I could probably speak for you, no matter what position you're in, the, you want to start up front. So, it makes your life so much easier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think that was, that was, that was, uh, you know, I think, uh, uh, that was on his shoulders. That was some weight on his shoulders, I think, to finally knock that one out of the park.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, the way Hunter and Jet, we're talking about Jet currently, the way they ride the, the,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, there's, it's like three gate drops. You don't have to win all three of those gate drops to win the Triple Crown. It's putting yourself in the best position all three races and, and, you know, with the lowest points scored.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For the overall and, you know, that's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was balls to the wall the whole time pretty much. I had no in between, uhm, but that's rea- it's really kinda, it's, it's really cool to see the, the maturity that both of them have because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, they haven't been doing it for, for, for very long. Um, you know, supercross that, that is that anyways, and you know, Jett's moving up to the 450, uh, for outdoors. And I, you know, I, I think he's ready. It shows that he's ready. The, the decisions that, that, that he's making are, are 450 decisions. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, it's really cool to see. It's something that the Lights class hasn't seen in a long time, if ever maybe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This consistency, this uhm, you know, maturity in a rider that's as young as Jett is. So he's, he's, he's phenomenal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, but okay, that's, that's great. Facts are facts, buddy. I mean, it is what it is. They, the, they, they pick it up front every time. They don't make any dumb mistakes most of the time. I mean, it's, racing's racing, right? Things are gonna happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're non-stop adjusting, you know, not in a bad way. It's not like they're doing clickers, half clicks here, half clicks there. No, they're doing race decision and how can we be better? Like, hey, we know our platform's already good. It's not our platform that is making the mistakes. It's us that are making mistakes and then they correct it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To be honest, I'm going to say no. I think, uh, even if I didn't ride to my potential, um, and I got that win that night, it's still, it's, yeah, I, I, I honestly, I mean, sure, we go back and, and, and download and dialogue with, okay, it could have been better here, it could have been better there. But as for me mentally, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I, and I won, even though if I didn't ride to my potential, um, because you also have to look at too, like, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was racing the best, you know, in YouTube, I was racing the best guys in the world at Supercross.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I ended up winning that night and I was, and I was off. Well, hell, I think that was, that's a win in itself. You can't critique it that hard. Sure. Is there things every weekend we come back right after every, every, every time it's like, Oh, it could have been better in the whoops. Cut it on this, cut it on that a little bit better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, you hear it from the mechanic, you hear it from the truck driver, you hear it from your dad, you hear it, I mean, there's, there's noise and noise is just.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was always stoked just to get, you know, like I was, you know, maybe not from the fan's point of view, maybe it didn't look like I was stoked, but that was a ton of pressure off my shoulders that night.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, heart rate spikes, um, you know, in that position being, being, um, we've all had those, those, those moments, right? In the whoops, where it just, you hit something and the bike goes sideways or it starts giving you the huckabucks and, and your only option is to, to stay, is to hold that thing, it on. Um, and I think, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ricky, his rear tire missed two complete whoops. That doesn't happen very often without going down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I, uh, gotta bring up Levi, uhm, you know, it seemed like he put himself in some pretty good positions, uhm, I think it was Moto1, I think that he...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Correct me if I'm wrong, it's either first or second moto where he made a ton of mistakes and after the race I actually, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Before doing the interview down there, uh, by press conference there, I asked him, dude, what?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, and I'm fairly close with Levi from, from Washington state, you know, we're, we're buddies and I'm like, he goes, dude, I don't know. I'm like, dude, you lost, I mean, you lost two or three, two positions, two positions, uh, missing rhythm sections. Um, and he says, dude, I don't know what happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I don't know if it, uh, you know, but, but he's been riding phenomenal. I also got to bring up too with Levi, uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep. So, so if you really look at it, yes, he's a little bit older. I think he's 22 years old.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, he might look like a veteran, but, but, but, uh, folks, he's only got seven races under his belt in Supercross and, and I don't, and maybe a whole outdoor season.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I think he's doing a really good job. I would, I would like to see him get more consistent because I think he's got the speed, he's got the talent. He reminds me of watching Kevin Ride, Windows.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, long and lanky and, you know, can do some really awesome things on the motorcycle. His potential is there. I think if he, if he really could, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, if he, if he was a little further along the road, I think he could give a run for, I don't, I don't, I don't know if I would say championship, but definitely more race wins.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so yeaah, he's a, he's gonna be contender for next year, for sure. I think he will be a title, he will be a title contender. He's gonna be one of them for sure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean how interesting would it be if it was every round?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, think about all the conversation and the racing and the things that come from the Triple Crowns. Uhm, to be honest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If Feld turned around and said, Hey, we're going triple crown all the way through. I'd be like, dude, this is going to be epic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From a fitness standpoint, which I was thinking about this the other night, I was like, how would you, how would I think about this? And I know for me and you, fitness was a huge strong point for us when we were racing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we could, we could bank on guys falling apart from lap 10 to 15 or even lap 18 and we knew we had it in the tank still. Uhm, but it brings in a whole other element of other winners when you have with less time. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, your championship gets even deeper with how many guys are involved because not everybody can do 20 minutes and win a race. There's only about four of them that can. Actually a true 20 minute wire to wire battle it out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's, there's probably only, you know, three or four out there that could run, uh, toe to toe in 20 minutes. So when you shorten those times, uhm, you add yourself from three or four.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you're going to get up into, into eighth place that potentially could win. We haven't seen it, but you know, you go down the roster list of, of who's in, in, in, that's racing and it, you know, there's factory teams back to eighth, ninth, ninth place.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For a Supercross Championship or Trill Crown? I mean, look, I, I, it's cool they have a series inside of a series, but there ain't nothing like that big dog sitting right behind you right there. Uhm, you know. You got, you got four of them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly. So I mean, I got the, I'm in the hotel room now, but yeah, at home there's four sitting in the office and, and, uh, there's no one replacing that folks. I can tell you that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, Riderode, uh, rode really well. Juju was, was phenomenal also. It's really cool to be able to see, um, you know, this, the futures be able to have this platform because I mean, the guys is like, you know, me, you, Ricky, and pretty much everybody other than, you know, from three years previous has never had this opportunity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, to be able to go and race, uh, a legit supercross track in front of, you know, I think we had a, there's about 45,000, I would say for this weekend.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh man, I was always expecting the track to be this way by from always watching in the stands at, at, at, at bird's eye view. And you know, like, oh, I could jump that or I can do those flips. It looks easy in the stands. It does, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a couple that had some legit cups in them, but also, I was more, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, looking at the whoops that they were very kind of almost uneven and pockets were coming apart and all, let alone all the, all the tire marks on them. The Dunlop tires were just, you know, obviously hooking up because they were just leaving rubber on the track everywhere. I mean, there was patches of blue groove through them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So to your point of these, these lights or these futures riders being able to get, get that under their belt and be like, okay, well man, it really wasn't as bad as I expected.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, I think that's a big thing is the unknown for a guy coming out of Loretta Lynn's like, okay, what am I up against? So now I just want to know what they're up against. And that's a huge thing to know what you're up against or to just show up. Like I showed up at Anaheim one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's a scary thing, but if you want to be able to ride like to your point of being that they were, uhm, four motos in, I believe, four motos.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was still a lights main, the last lights main in the 450 main.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they, like you, to what you were saying, the track was, they didn't get a clean, they didn't get a heat race. They did not get a heat race track. They got a legit supercross track.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I, I, Jet moving up to the 450 is definitely going to be a jump. Uhm, and I just, I, I,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So racing a 250 and racing a 450, yes, they're very similar, but there's also, they're not similar at all in, in certain aspects.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think the, that what could catch him off guard is the things that, that catch him off guard that a 450 does, which would be, you know, like Outdoors or Supercross. When those things get sideways and things like that, not that he's not strong enough, not that he's not a big, that he's gonna be able to handle it, but,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's different racing at that pace on a 250 that only has x amount of horsepower and is quite a bit lighter. Then you get yourself in that 450 position.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that sucker gets sideways on ya, or maybe you weren't expecting it, because what happens with a 450, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is, is a lot of things will pop up that w- that's unexpected that a 250 won't do. Like you'll be just blitzing the whoops a hundred times and you're fine and all of a sudden you hit one wrong with the added horsepower, with the added weight, you know, things like that. Now I don't, I'm not sitting here saying that's going to happen to him, uhm, but it very well could.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, there's gonna be some learning, there's gonna be, he's gonna have some learning time there, I think. But I think the biggest, biggest thing is, and everybody deals with it, I mean, I dealt with it, you dealt with it, everybody that's made the move is the, the workload. The workload of...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 17 rounds of supercross and it will be 11 rounds of, of outdoors this year. Uhm, you know, this year he won't get that load factor because he's coming from, from uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that is, you know, that's no joke, you know, like it's just like, um, you know, baseball or, or, or football where these guys play, you know, a couple of games a week. Well, we race every single Saturday, like everybody knows. Well, you twist an ankle, you hurt a finger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, you're just not feeling it. Like it doesn't matter. The race is happening and they're happening, like I said, in 17 races in 18 weekends. And then next year when he does a full schedule of Supercross and a full, you know, and then whatever that break is that the promoters.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If it's a two weekend break, if it's a one weekend break, like that's not a lot of time to make the transition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, well, I just got informed that I think I only have one win at, uhm, Atlanta.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, and then I have, um, another one where I went over the bars and, and shoved the tailpipe full of dirt. Bike wouldn't start. So, um, I always loved Atlanta. Only be, well, big reason why is, is they sell the stadium. Well, at the time when I was racing, it was downtown Atlanta. Um, I know it's different now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, it, there's nothing like racing against, I know, I know 40 is great. That's all good. But when you sell out a stadium and you get the crowd involved.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And like, that's where the, where the finishing is. I mean, that's where they finish.


[User] Please transcribe this text

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


[User] Please transcribe this text

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


[User] Please transcribe this text

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


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and it didn't really sink into like a day or so after, I'm like, holy fuck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My hardest change out of all four of them I think would have been my first one in Outdoors. I think that was the most challenging because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My starts weren't that great that year. I just, I was versing Justin Cooper and he was, uhm, always up front for his starts, you know. So, it was, that was probably the most difficult one. I got into a pretty deep slump, you could say, through that, uh, season 21. But since then, I mean, the championships have been fairly, I wouldn't say easy, but fairly decent. I mean, the last,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With uh, uh, kind of macro crashing and RJ having a few bad ones, so. But, I'll definitely say the last will have been the most easiest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I feel like East Coast has more of those pretty cool named tracks. Obviously you have the two speedway tracks that you don't get on West. Uhm, you get, uh, I mean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I feel like they're a lot more technical and rutted, especially Indianapolis this year. I mean, that was one of the most rutted ones. I mean, we had Oakland this year that was pretty, pretty rutted in the rhythms and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're all just, not like they're, they suck, it's not like they suck, but it's like they're, there's not much hype around them as much as like Daytona, Atlanta, it's a speedway, something different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have to be thinking the whole, the whole rage, you can't just go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Breakdown, I can't have to change. This really have to go 2-3 instead of going 3-3 or whatever it was. So, I'd say he's got small my favourite, I'd say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, and the biggest thing is, for me as a writer, it was a lot nicer because you could kind of tell.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whether the ride is good or not, like this year when we had the more rough, rutted tracks, like you could say, Anaheim was fairly rutted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, Oakland was pretty rutted, I don't think anyone else had really rutted ones, but those are two main ones I probably excelled the best on, that I got a decent gap, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't think so much in Anaheim 1. I think then I was just kind of keeping it calm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Basic track didn't get rotted so there wasn't like there was a limit to speed so I couldn't kind of go into my kind of corner speed and that stuff or that technique of hey you have to hit this line every single time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can, I can see this watching on, on videos of they, uh, sometimes they kind of...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That pass is a little bit more aggressive. I think to everyone else's eye, they don't really pick up to a race. You can see it's that little bit of extra like oomph about that pass. So I mean, and that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And to me that doesn't bother me too much because I know, for me it's a good sign. It's like, oh, I'm obviously doing pretty good then for them to try to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I still look at that like, kind of, yeah, okay, but I'll still try and pass them flinks. I know that wrecks a person mentally if someone passes him, then I'm dropping him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's, you could say I have it there, but once I'm on the track, I don't see that. I see where I, what I need to do and that's what I, I need to make sure I need to execute what I'm seeing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That, I, like, I think definitely last few years it's, you could see that, but,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It took me a bit to go, kind of realize like, hey, I don't have to go like 100% to like go fast. So I was trying to do like almost qualifying laps in a main event where it's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whatever would happen, I was kind of getting out of control and dropping back and kind of doing silly mistakes that I just didn't, I didn't have any experience of. So I was kind of learning throughout the way in 2020 and it ended up costing me at Anaheim too. I kind of got the faith, like a, sorry, got the muscle memory of, hey, I wanted to go faster, so I'd lean back. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, back then when I'd get Mr. Whoop, I'd go back even further, so then I'd end up kind of just clipping one at top and then going low again, where now it's kind of like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You just will tap the thing like it's a normal jump and stuff like that where you just, I think you just learn, I learnt over time. But the most biggest thing is just calming down, relaxing. And what we would say is not riding like an amateur.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We would call them Instagram clips almost, because it looks sick for Instagram, like an editor scrubbing this hard, doing this, you look fast, but I mean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But uhm, it's crazy cause I see a lot of guys running no, uh, no finger on the clutch. I'm like, dude, I can't do woops without it now. I mean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And a bad habit when I first went, uhm, in 2020, when I threw the whoops, a lot of the time I kept slipping the clutch.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I won't touch it through the woods, but then if I wanna jump out or something, you just spark it a little bit, just like, bruh, get out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, just so that engine doesn't die down so much in the GS, well it kinda really re-sparks it a bit to really get that grunt out of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The day before at Nations it was on Jiraiya and I could do those guys lap times but that was with 4 weeks of 450 before I think it was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think after I got to, after Nations, I got to spend six weeks and we found out that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So after Nations, I got even more, like, even faster from what I did at Nations, just because I had more time on the bike, and just got more in sync with it, so I'm-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Obviously, as myself, I want to, and going off 250, knowing where I am, I went out, okay, I have to win. That's what I'm meant to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I feel like I'm capable of that easily because when you look at it, uh, we've done kind of went down to data of last year 250, eh, through outdoors to 450. I mean, when Chase and, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where, so we're putting that to our frame in our training days the past few weeks with Hunter and I, and a lot of times we'll do a 40 minute moto and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Chase, obviously it's a sad thing, Tomac got injured, so I was looking forward to learning from him because that's kind of like one of our legends from, that I get to race.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, where I mean I feel like I can speak for a lot of riders to get either race you Ricky in your last year or RV in your last year to kind of get that chance as a rookie to learn from one of them legends. It's kind of like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For me as a writer, I'm like, Oh, I would have loved to learn that because they have so much more experience than I do. And obviously they have the stats to back it up. So I mean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would have loved to got to race Eli, but I guess I get to learn some more stuff off of, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Chase, I think maybe Dylan Ferrendez also, and a few other guys out there, but I'm...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] First four rounds and then if it's going good, maybe we switch it up a bit, change the plan, but we'll uh, we'll see how it goes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was swinging, I kept like lifting up, it was so bad, so there was a lot of like safe shots everywhere, like you're just topping it then like running out to like the start of the fairway and then hitting again. So uhm, wasn't the best, wasn't the best.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do too. I mean, he was riding really well. Uhm, you know, Bud's Creek, the track looked really good. Uhm, I know some of the guys were talking about a little of the line selections, you know, meaning that it was a little bit sometimes hard to pass. Uhm, I felt like, you know, if you rode the track,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really hard, kinda like Deegan, you know, started out. Uhm, I, I, I felt like you could make some passes. Had definitely had to set them up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but with the way, with that, with the great start that he had, the position he was in, and then a red flag, and, and I know it was said on the broadcast,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of times red flags are within the first 10 minutes. Let's call it when the pack is more bunched up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But with, uh, I think it was like 30 seconds before, basically halfway, Red Flag was pulled. Uhm, Ricky, what do you think? I mean, that's, that's, that's, as you, as you know, that's a hard thing to re-rack, get back, clean your goggles, you know, get the heart rate down, and then you spike it again for, for 15 minutes. Tough situation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They would have pulled, they would have pulled the checkered at 20 if that would, if we would have been 5 minutes further along.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, cause I was, I was questioning that. I was like, okay, we're 50, we're basically 15 minutes in. I was expecting a single file re-rack, you know, like they do in Supercross. They get the, they get the, you know, Thule out there and they let them all go. So they're not all bunched up. I was expecting to see that. So when they re-racked, I was like, wow, this is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being that it was 15 minutes in, like you said, we had a complete flop of, of, of,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, your gap might be closer or far, you know, however it is, everybody's close, is re-racking up, up close together and it's just basically single file start. So I was expecting that. So I was a little caught off guard to be honest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, watching the replay, he came in, he hit the side of Vial, right, and it kinda kicked the, you know, the rear tire kinda came off the ground, and it looked like, to me, it looked like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, coming in a little hot, you know, uh, not anticipating, you know, probably Vial be in there, think that maybe Vial was gonna, you know, let off or give up that position. Not everybody comes into the first turn like you like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's, he's, he's almost making his own luck in that scenario. He knew that there was a re-rack. He knew he had to get back up front. He was just leading the race. So I don't want to use the words desperation, but I'm sure he knew as soon as that gate dropped that he's like, okay, I got to make something happen here. I don't have the start that I had.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really good inside gate, as everybody knows, Bud's Creek, I mean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Famous start in 07 for me, Loriki, you gave me the inside.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People don't realize how tight that first turn is on TV. You know, like you might come, you might, you may be a fifth place guy coming into the first turn but everybody blows wide and it leaves the inside open and here you come with the whole shot, you know, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I think it was a great move, great spot where he, where he, where he picked a gate and all of, all of that, all the above except for maybe came in a little too hot, little, little aggressive.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, he did, you know, like that one thing that, you know, that, that Coop has, or Justin Cooper has is, is, you know, man, he's got the speed, he's got the consistency. Sometimes it's, it's where I think I see the fault, uhm, with, with Justin is his.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, you know, but being that he was able to, you know, ride as well as he did and you know, like he's, he's, he's a top guy. You know, I think this is, he had said this is what Ironman is going to be his last 250 pro race, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, yep, SMX, but then- Last national. Yep, last national, and then he'll move on his way up after SMX, the three SMX shootout rounds, you know, so-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, we know we've already seen Justin on a 450 a little bit in Supercross, you know, held his own. So, um, interest, it's going to be very interesting to see because I don't put him on my list of being like, okay, when this guy goes 450, he's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's going to, you know, he's going to do really, really well. I think he will. I look at him, I kind of look at it as...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's kind of got to figure out, like to me, he's a little docile for the 450 class. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As you all know, it's completely different class. Big, big, big jump. Uhm, but I'm looking forward to see what you can do with it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. And what would you do, Ricky? If you're, if you're Bobby Reagan, like what's your, would you, would you, are you going to, are you going to chance, are you going to take it and put your effort into more of a rookie or are you going to stick with the, with the veteran, you know, the veteran, you know, as for, as for Dylan?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being that a past champion, you got Eli, uhm, also in there. Not that that's been new, they've been teammates, you know, in the past, right? So uhm, I just, like you said, I think maybe a new team would be good for him too and no matter what's business and you gotta look at it, you're gonna get a better buy on, on Cooper right now than you would Dylan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, 100%. Yeah, there was like, like we talked about it, some guys that ended up in a really good position, first gate drop, red flag pulls, three rack, gate drop again, and the complete opposite scenario. And, uh, you know, I think for Ryder, he was able to really get to, he got a taste of, of those front runners at Unidilla.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uhm, you know, I got to talk to him, you know, talk to Ryder afterwards and, and uh, I said, yeah, I just got tight, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I'm like, yeah, you haven't seen that pace before, you know, you've been running, running, you know, consistently from like eighth to, you know, 11th, 12th.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, now you put yourself up on the box for the first five laps and man, it's like, it's, it's, it's like you can spread your wings and you know, some guys, you know, puts, it's definitely tough to go to a unit, to a track like Unidilla and then all of a sudden, pull the whole shot, throw yourself up into the lead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Settle in in third and then try to keep that pace going, you know. So arms, arms maybe blow up a little bit, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, so I, I feel like he's right off the cuff. He's one of those rookies that, that, you know, he's, he's right there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's, it's bizarre the difference between 5th and the guy, and everybody that's listening, it's really bizarre from 5th through 8th. If you start 5th through 8th verse starting 1st through 3rd, that 1st through 3rd pace, those 1st through 3rd laps ain't nothing like the 5th through 10th or 8th spot in the back. It's, it's,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, I think, I think the biggest hurdle for some of these guys, you know, that uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A big stress part of it is, is where do I fall? Where am I going to come in? Like I, you know, winning Loretta's fastest amateur, whatever the case may be, however your trajectory was through amateur, I think the biggest, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, thing to, to try to wrap your head around as, as a guy coming in as, as a rookie is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where am I going to fall? I think the biggest thing is it's like, if you like Juju, for example, stepping out there, having some really good rides, putting it inside the top 10 there for, you know, and, and, and just hovering right around the top 10 right outside.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Having some good motos. I think that's a big confidence builder. Okay. Where, where do I fall? And if you were able to come out at a gnarly track like Bud's Creek.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] End of the season, all these guys have lots of, you know, laps underneath their belt compared to you. And if you can come out and throw it up there, I think it's just a big pressure reliever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To be like, okay, I'm in the mix. I'm not winning, which is, that's fine. I wasn't expecting to come out and win, but I think to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So be able to understand, I'm in the mix right here, my round one, and I know that I'm only going to get better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I think that's a, it's more of a stress reliever I think for, for the, for the, for the kid, for the parents too. It's like, okay, whew, okay, we're, we're in the mix. We're in the mix. We're not way out, right? So we don't have a ton of work to do. Now we have a ton of work to win.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But where we want to be these first three, four, five or first season, we're right where we're in that happy medium spot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, he just, once again, just consistency and keeps knocking off the, the, the, the, you know, leading laps and putting himself in a good position. I mean, we're going to talk about it again and it's, it's not, you know, we won't elaborate on it too much.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, with his points being in the position he's in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I think the one thing that I do see is, is Hunter's not giving, okay, I got a 22 point lead or, you know, I got, you know, I'm just going to ride around. He's out there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, to fight for these wins. And I think that is the number one thing is it keeps him out of trouble. It keeps him from making mistakes. You know, right now we have Hunter Lawrence with 391, Justin Cooper down 22, Joe Shimoda down 48. So there's some guys that are still pretty close.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but Hunter's out there for race wins and it keeps his mind sharp and on point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, I agree. I do agree. I think very interesting with, with, like you said, I, I look at, we have the first two, right? We have, we have Charlotte, we have Chicago. We're going to be, I think kind of similar conditions, similar layout, not similar layouts, but similar conditions at a, at a NASCAR place. I think the kicker for me is going to be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What's our weather going to be like out here in Southern California when we go to LA Coliseum? Being that they're going to run the pair of style and what kind of dirt are they going to bring in? I've seen old videos of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Coliseum, it gets pretty hard packed. So my point, what I'm making is, is we're going to have on that last round with, with triple points.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We just had, uh, Hurricane Hillary blow through, they call it, you know. How was it, dude? Like. It was good. Tons, like, good amount of rain by us at the beach. Not really a ton of wind. But I know up in, like, the mountain areas, they got, you know, anywhere from three to five inches it dumped, you know, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, definitely needed it, but my point is, is I think that, uhm, it's way different track conditions for LA than the first two.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think, and if we get the hard pack, are we going to see a little more of a Vegas style at LA, which I think would be, as you know, Ricky, me and you have raced, um, you know, Vegas, you know, for the last round for the finale out there in Vegas for Supercross.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The ones that can hang it out, the ones that can, you know, ride the blue groove hard pack. Are we going to see some of that? Which I hope we do. Yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I, yeaah, I think that, I know we've been, we've been trying to make up this narrative of who's gonna beat Jett and all these things and, and uhm, you know, I personally think, to your point, what you just said, like we watched him pass through these guys, I, I think it's, it shows you how much,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I know a lot of people are like, oh, Chase is pretty close. Yes, he is close. And I think it was Chase wrote a phenomenal other than his mistakes that he made, but jet like was able to slice and dice through these guys. Like you said, they weren't, they weren't, um, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Riding around. AC rode good. Harshford rode good. Uhm, he was able to make quick work of these guys and come right through the pack, which I think shows you how smart he is on the motorcycle, how much he thinks methodically of making passes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That pass was sick right there on AP. You know, we're watching the replay right now, folks, and right there, coming through mechanics here, you have to step up. You can see the front wheel just, it was so vague on the ground, you could see it


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was pushing and moving and catching and he was floating across that inside and just dropped it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two wheel drift, and my point is, I think if you watch some other guys, they would, yeaah, they could two wheel drift right there, but they might slam into that rut. Jet was able to two wheel drift with the amount of speed he had, and still, he was thinking once I drop in and slam that rut,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Typically the bike can, you know, unload on the inside. Well he, he came in there and he just knew that he had to touch that berm super soft so that he didn't get the unload to the inside because now you're going left over all those singles. I just think his, his riding is technically, his, his riding is, is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, so I, look, I uhm, I, I love Kenny, buddies with Kenny, uhm, I think Kenny's a phenomenal,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At my farm, um, in Florida and training partners. So, um, yeah, I mean, we have been talking about it a lot. I mean, it's been, it's been a hunter and a jet, mainly a jet, but both hunt. It's been a Lawrence Brothers show basically all year and you got to give them the credit for it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, because they're showing up every single weekend, they're, they're, they're making very smart decisions. Uhm, Kenny himself, and we can use more writers also along, uh, underneath that, but I just, Kenny's a phenomenal writer too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Has the whole package, but hasn't been able to put together. Taking nothing away from Kenny. But you gotta, you gotta call a spade when you see a spade. And these two boys right now are, are leaps and bounds.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, so it's not a, what I, what we're sitting here talking about isn't just a straight up speed thing. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's how they, it's, it's how they think when they race the motorcycle. It's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's, it's how they approach their, their, during the week, approach their weekend, the decisions they're making, the slicing and dicing that Jett just did through the pack amongst these top riders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, that's what I see. I see, that's what I see the difference. And I think that's what has to be talked about because Kenny is one of the best racers in the world. Uh, Eli is one of the best racers in the world. Exactly. Great skills. Like we're not taking nothing away from anybody else, but those guys are just in a different league right now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly, yeaah, it's just a little bit different, you know, like I said, Kenny's on his getting older, I don't want to use the words on his way out, but he's getting older, uhm, you know, he's probably got a few more years, but yeaah, it's kind of like deja vu, when Kenny was what, you know, not to take away anything, when Kenny was


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When we thought he was going to be the next, you know, Michael Jordan, let's say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then obviously blew his arm up and things like that and, and it definitely changed probably a little bit of his trajectory of his career. But it's, yeah, Jett's in the same, same position he was in, uhm, when we said those things about, about Ken. So uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I, uh, they're, they're, look, not taking nothing away from, from Kenny. I think I just thought we should, we should talk about it because that's why we're beating this, the beating the dead dog about Hunter and Jett because, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hasn't been done for in many, many years this way. I don't think it's ever kind of been done like Jett. So he's, he's in uncharted waters, uncharted territories at this point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Came in a little bit hot and I think he mistimed when he wanted to let go of the rear brake and as he, as he went over that single on the inside, the rear tire


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was, the brake was on and it grabbed and it kinda dropped the front wheel down really quickly, is what I saw.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and then body weight kind of came forward and then just washed the front wheel out. I think in those scenarios,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As you know, I know Chase knows, I know all those guys know, as you rip down those hills, you gotta get off the brakes, you know, and maybe he just came in a little too hot and had to hold it longer. Cause as you know, if you roll the rear tire off those singles with the brake on,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It drops the front wheel. You almost watch Jet, for example, chase a lot of times when they're jumping those jumps. You want to lob it off of those insides. And I think that's, that's what he was doing. I just think he might've come down a little too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Too fast, wasn't prepared for when he kinda, how fast it was coming in there and had to maybe trail break it a little bit longer than he would have liked off the top of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, just a mistake. I mean, that's, that's been his biggest pitfall this year, right? Is, is he's got the speed like we talked before. Chase has the speed. He's just got to stop making those mistakes and, and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Part of that is, is being that I think Chase reeled him in, he was going a bit faster than Jet. So he needs, I think he, he also has got to figure out how to make that his new normal, that pace. Jet's normal pace is what we see of him every weekend. And I still think a little bit of,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Chase has got the speed, he can run the speed, but when he gets pushed into that to run that speed, you see those little mistakes. So I think those, that needs to become Chase's new normal that, that pace.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, because that's a question mark for me is, is we see chase, we see his speed, we see where he's at, he's right there, just needs to clean up those little mistakes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep, no, I 100% agree if it goes the first 5 rounds and you know, definitely the tune, the temperature is going to change. What I hope to see in the transition and in the switch is to, you know, if you could go off of a


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Play-by-play, go off of Dunge, right? Suzuki, Switch, KTM, completely new platform, like literally a brand new bike for Supercross, and Dunge was able to make it work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, I know the bikes are completely different now. It's been years since that, that was done. And since I was racing and Dunge did that, that type of thing. But I do think that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being that he's gonna be in his own truck, uhm, he's not gonna have, you know, the, not the shadow, but not the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, you know, being under the truck with Jet, being under the truck with, with Hunter and things like that. It'll be his, it'll be his show. Uhm, but to your point, those first, really, those first five rounds are so critical. He needs to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Be, make sure that he is up there with inside the top three and showing those potential, maybe even just, and I'm talking.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Confidence builders, okay, you know, I can do it. The bike's good. This is what it is. Maybe it didn't pan out in the main event, but like we're showing that fire. I think then you can start molding, sculpting and building that around. But if it, if it comes out, you know, like to what your point and not, not, not where they all want to be, the temperature of that water is going to be damn cold.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, you gotta hope for all of that, but man, I was just like, you brought up, made a point about Jett and Jett's, you know, he's a ways out, but with the way the points are stacked up and they stack, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dude, what a, what a storybook ending for, for Jett if he could, if he could clinch that SMX Championship also. I mean, what, was he about 156 out?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That would be, that would be bizarre. That'd be cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What we, what we need to put some emphasis on is, is looking at the payout. So we know the top guys inside the top 10 are fighting, they're making decent money, the top guys are making great money inside the, you know, like, so we know, we, we know where those guys fall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is the first time that these guys from 10th to 22nd, I mean 22nd is 25,000. You know, 21st, 26th. It goes on the way up. That's some decent, that's some dough right there, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think to your point, what's gonna happen is just anything outside the top 10, they're gonna ha- it's gonna be a dog fight. Yeah. For everybody. So if you do-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, if you do drop it, if you're Chaser, if you're Jet, or if you're, you know, Barsha, any one of these guys that drop it,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Don't think you're coming through the pack like you would at round 8 of supercross, like you would here. I think these guys are going to have a, have a whole other agenda on them for, because they're enticed by it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, think about it, like you said, Ape Fights was a hundred grand, like that, that doesn't happen, you know, we don't see that in our sport. So this is, this is what's very unique about these playoffs and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Consistency and starts are going to be huge because I can tell you these, that, that, you know, those guys are going to be, it's going to be, um, a very hard fought race if you got to come through the pack. Cause all those guys, they, they smell blood in the water boys. They're coming.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I think, uhm, I really, I haven't wrote Iron Man's track.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is a good racetrack. Yeah, it looks good. It's got, it's, what I see from it, it looks like it's pretty technical, it gets ruddy, it's got some really, uhm, you get some really hard base slippery stuff that it gets exposed, but it also has some really tacky areas.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So uhm, it's got that fix, big, it's got some fast sections, big jumps.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so I'm looking forward to it. It tends to rain there in the past, right? Like I've seen, I don't know, 50-50 chance. Like it seems like every year it's like, oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, could rain. So, I haven't looked at the weather, don't know about that, but uhm, I'm just looking forward to it, you know, uhm, I think it's gonna be a good finale round, you know, good last round, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that's right. We're heading over to, uh, I fly out at 345 to, uh, London Heathrow and I'll be there for seven days. So Ricky, you're going to have to find you as a cohost for Monday. And, uh, but no, I'm going over for the vet MXON. So it's, it's, uh, the vet motocross of nations at Fox Hills.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, Doc Wabs and Dave King are putting on, they put on an amazing event. I actually raced it last year, uhm, for Team USA. We got


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We got another win on there, so undefeated so far, you know, on MXON, so thank you very much. Who's on your team, dude? Uhm, so last year, last year we had myself, Brownie, and Osborne. This year, uhm, it's Tyler Bowers, Brownie, and Osborne.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had to, I had to be that guy and leave him hanging. I haven't rode. As you know, Ricky, when you...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm still fast enough to... There it is. There it is, yeaah. There it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I'm still fast enough to get myself out there and I will put myself in trouble. So I figured this year for myself, swinging a leg over the, over the motorcycle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and not having any preparation, and what I mean by any preparation, like literally off the couch. Uhm, I figured it wasn't a very smart idea, so I opted out of the racing, but I'm going over for, for a great time. Autographs, go see, everybody's so friendly over there at, at, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Brad Anderson. There's some heavy hitters. Right. Uhm, that, you know, that are still racing like British GPs or current, you know, smaller things, not MXGP or, you know, racing here in the States, but nevertheless, those guys can, can, uh, they can rail.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So can, do I have to call you Mr. President? Well you can if you want. Do people call you Mr. President? Uh, sometimes jokingly. What honorific is used when you're like at meetings and that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do you ever bang the gavel then? Have you ever had to like bang it or call something to order or? Uhm, basically not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm Brady Harren, and this is the Numberphile Podcast. Today, our guest is Ken Ribbett. He's a math professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In the world of mathematics, Ken's probably best known for his work on Fermat's Last Theorem. But hang on, I hear you ask, didn't Andrew Wiles prove Fermat's Last Theorem?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, yes, but this proof was a huge jigsaw puzzle with earlier contributions and one of the penultimate puzzle pieces...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was put in place by Ken. Today he's gonna tell us about it and what it was like to be in the actual room when Wiles' proof was finally revealed. But first, in case you can't tell, I am a little bit fascinated by Ken's current role leading the American Mathematical Society, the AMS.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What is the role of the president? You've already referred to presiding over meetings of the council and the behind the scenes thing. What else do you have to do? Do you have to go and cut ribbons and?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, let's talk a bit about your background and let's go back in time a bit because there's so many things I want to ask you. One of the first things I want to ask you is about your surname.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was the Ellis Island Corleone moment for your family where the name changes in just a few seconds.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Were your parents mathematical, academic type people?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And was that the path you wanted? Like if I was to talk to the teenage Ken Ribert, would he have said, oh, I want to be a mathematician one day?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh well I'll be watching your microphone technique with care then. You have to excuse my ignorance about the US college system then. You had been accepted and turned up at Brown to start your university career, and it still


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Ken, if I was America's most gifted mathematics student at high school and Berkeley wanted me for this reason and offered me a place, I could then say, oh, thanks for my place at Berkeley, but I'm not really interested in mathematics. I happen to be good at it, but I want to be an actor. And I could just do theatre and never even study a jot of mathematics. Absolutely.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is new information to me. You did follow this mathematical path and then you decided pretty early on, oh, I want to be like this, this role model professor. And you did that eventually, did you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So was it an aptitude or was it peer pressure?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're going to come to Fermat's Last Theorem shortly, in which you played obviously a huge role. But at this point, when you're just starting out in this field and you're like, you know, you're one of the new kids on the block, what was the holy grail problem of your topic? What was the thing that you would be lying in bed thinking, gosh, if I could be the person to solve that, that would be amazing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Were these kind of like Riemann hypothesis type things where there was already mathematics built on assumptions and you needed to prove it for that to hold or was it more just like something in the distance, like a finish line?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perhaps at this point, we should deal with what Fermat's Last Theorem actually is. Now, there are a few Numberphile videos about it. You can go and check them out. I'll put links down in the show notes. But let's give it a go in audio form.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now imagine in your head a pretty simple equation and quite a famous one. A squared plus B squared equals C squared. I'm sure you're familiar with this one, you probably remember it from Pythagoras at school and the right angle triangles. And the question is,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What three positive integers, so whole numbers, can you put in the place of a, b, and c so that the equation works? a squared plus b squared equals c squared.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, well, in this case, there are lots of possible answers. In fact, there are an infinite number of answers. For example, 3, 4 and 5. 3 squared plus 4 squared equals 5 squared. You could use 5, 12 and 13. You could use 9, 40 and 41.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You could use 33, 56 and 65. There are all sorts of ways to crack this nut. These are called Pythagorean triples.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But let's up the ante a little bit. Let's not square those numbers. Let's cube them. Raise them to a power of three. So now we have A cubed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are there three positive integers we can put in there that will make this equation work? You can give it a go if you want, but don't spend too long on it. What about if we raise it to the fourth power?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A to the 4 plus B to the 4 equals C to the 4, or any number, any n, A to the nth power plus B to the nth power equals C to the nth power. Are there numbers we can put in that place, positive integers, that will make this equation work?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now back in 1637, a famous guy called Pierre de Fermat


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He wrote in the margin of a book, he just hand scribbled, I've got a proof that you can't do it with anything except of course the squares. But he said, I haven't got room here in the margin to write the proof. I think he, you know, I'll come back to it at a later date.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He never did, he never wrote the proof, no one ever saw it, and this became known as Fermat's Last Theorem. Was there a proof that there are no positive integers that you could put in the places of A, B and C with all these higher powers that would work? Was this impossible?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For hundreds of years, no one knew. They'd never found any, but there was no, like, rigorous proof. Now that finally changed when an Englishman named Andrew Wiles gave a famous lecture and revealed a proof. And suffice to say,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You wouldn't be writing this proof in the margin of a book. It was really, really complicated. Really advanced, cutting edge, new mathematics.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So there's Fermat's Last Theorem. I hope you have some idea of what it is in your head. We're going to get back to it in a minute, but let's get back to our discussion with Ken and find out where he's at in the years leading up to this big moment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What was it about Berkley? Cause can I know you're Berkley through and through? Like you're, you're such a Berkley guy to me. But like, I guess then you were a real East coast guy. So what was it about Berkley that appealed to you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's jump forward then to Fermat's Last Theorem. What did you do? How did you suddenly find yourself in this spotlight? This is before Wiles, before the group.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this was like a little screw or just a little piece of the puzzle, but it was really, really important to hold it all together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Were you thinking about it Ken, because it was like an itch in your brain and a curiosity, or were you thinking greatness awaits if this can be solved?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What do you say to Barry about that now? Do you kick him and say, why didn't you tell me a year earlier? Well, I don't think we've discussed this subject recently. So when you published this proof and it had all been set in stone, this sort of bridge or pathway to proving Fermat's Last Theorem had been opened but not yet passed through.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was that a big deal? Like, were you a celebrity for a week? Was this, oh this is amazing? Or because the last piece, because the step onto Fermat hadn't been made yet, was it still just an obscure mathematical paper in the scheme of things? Or was this like making waves?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You and others have helped open this door and shown this path. Does this create like a mad scramble? Is there now a race? Is there a frenzy now for Mars available? And are you in this race?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A bit like the Riemann hypothesis, everyone believes it's true, but no one seems to be able to prove it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did people start trying though? Did it create this new buzz, this new field of endeavor?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So part of the mythology of Andrew Wiles now is that he was obsessed with Fermat's Last Theorem from boyhood. Did you know this? Would he always, every time you met him, would he talk to you about, oh, how do you think we can solve Fermat's Last Theorem? Or was this, did he keep this secret? Or like, did you know that this was one of the people in the world who


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So anyway, he does go up in the attic. Well, eventually he does crack this nut. How did you find out about this? You were kind of almost part of this too, not part of the work, but you were very much joining on the spot when this all finally emerged into the light, weren't you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But this wasn't like the title of his talk. It was cloaked in some secrecy, was it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it becomes clear that day three might be the big moment and you cottoned onto this, didn't you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You took a camera for which I am forever grateful because I think you got the photo.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And straight afterwards there was like all this buzz and attention and you kind of ended up having to be a bit of a spokesman, didn't you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The other famous part of the story, of course, is that the wild's proof was then found to have a flaw. What was that like for you? Did that hang you out?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You talked about when you were working on Epsilon, you were giving lectures and you were writing letters, you wrote letters to Barry Mazze. It was this open book, wasn't it? You were sharing everyone how you were progressing and asking for help. I was. Andrew Iles famously sort of didn't do that. He kept it very secret and then he revealed everything at once in like a big grand reveal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'd keep it secret if I was close, I think, but then again, I'm not a mathematician. So you played a great role in this amazing thing, probably one of the greatest thing that's happened in mathematics in the last, I don't know, 100 years or so, certainly. Where do you go from there? What do you do next? Even you, who like, you know, was a side player in it, it's still like a big deal. It must be one of your crowning achievements.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do you think you can't contribute in those other ways anymore? This is great cliche or this thing that's said about particularly mathematics that, you know, your prime is leading up to about 40 and after that you haven't quite got it like you used to have it. Do you buy that? Do you believe that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let me talk to you about photography and photos. Cause you seem to love photos. I do love photos. And you're always taking them. We've taken pictures even today. There was like a fan here in the room that captured your eye and you wanted to take a photo of it. What is it about you and photography and photos? It's just like a hobby.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyone who's been on your website, in addition to all the mathematical content on there, there's all sorts of other little bits of trivia and interesting things. And one of the sections I can't stop looking at is the haircut section. Tell me about that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The other thing, I mean, I follow you on Facebook and the other thing I find interesting is you have these really regular lunch meetings, explain what they are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you normally put like a post on Facebook, don't you? And you basically say, this week I'm going to be here at this time, come along if you want. And then this handful of students will come and you'll just hang out over a meal. That's right. What do they normally want? Is there a pattern to what happens in the conversation or?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So if you go, like on your Facebook, almost every week there'll be this, it's almost like the exact same picture, but with a different cast of characters each time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You do seem to enjoy teaching more than a lot of other academics I know. Sometimes academics seem to treat it like it's their chore, it's the pound of flesh they have to pay to be allowed to be researchers, but you seem to really delight in it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] June, you're taking on almost like a deputy or a vice presidency type role when you're the immediate past or.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then you got any plans we should know about? Any, you're not secretly working in an attic on another proof are you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thanks for listening. This episode was recorded in our small office overlooking the San Francisco Bay at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, which is in Berkeley, California.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm sorry you couldn't enjoy the view with us. The episode was also sponsored by a company in Berkeley called Maya Sound. They're an audio engineering and manufacturing company. They're not here to advertise or sell anything, they're just supporting the show. But they're always doing interesting things and love sharing their research going on in the labs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So if you want to check them out, go to myersound.com, there's a link down in the show notes. And we'll be back again soon with another episode here on our Numberphile podcast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I love horror movies. I know this is pretty random, but yeah, these are the two things I really enjoy. Uh, you wouldn't think I was an athlete.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you had met me, you would have been like, future mathematician, but I don't know about the football.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I got in shape, I lost a lot of weight, I started exercising, I started looking at what all the other kids were doing, and I thought, wow, I should really try this whole conformity thing out. And so I just started playing sports, I started doing things that other kids were doing because...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, you know, I didn't really get any sort of guiding hand, I would say, from teachers. My teachers, especially in the sciences, they very much let me be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was just someone they wouldn't have to worry about. I would say my mother. I'm not sure guiding hand is the right word. More like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, by the time, let's say, I was done with my first year at university.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was fully in love with mathematics and at this point I only care about like learning more math.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would say neither. I mean, it's not something I ever hid. It's not something, I mean, I was ever since sort of like college, I've always been proud of my mathematics, but at the same time, you know, I'm just one of the guys. So it's not something I'm championing, but it's also not something that I'm hiding.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I knew I was going to have to put one on the back burner, for sure. I mean in college I managed to do both and, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And football definitely took away time that I could have spent learning more math and sort of doing new things when it became time for me to play in the NFL.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For instance, standardized testing of intelligence that's perhaps used in the NFL when you're entering. It turns out that the smartest, I believe the two smartest positions


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's the quarterbacks and it's the interior offensive linemen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It makes sense because as an offensive lineman, although your description of our sort of functions is correct, one thing that offensive linemen have to do is we have to make a lot of cerebral decisions. We have to do a lot of decision making in the same way that a quarterback has to make a lot of decisions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So deciding how we're going to block a play. Deciding like what our play is going to look like, how we're going to scheme it out, who blocks who, and what sort of blocking scheme we should use. And this is highly dependent on once we get to the line, what we see in front of us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, there's a lot of fast paced decision making that sort of falls on us because it's really hard for the coaches to tell you exactly what to do in like every situation. You have to make a lot of decisions on your own and you have to be adept at recognizing what the defense is doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is the one thing everyone says to me when they watch, you know, people on TV and then they see them in person. Everyone's bigger than when you see them on TV. And on TV, I think you don't quite realize like how loud and how hard the hits are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or let's say wrestling or other sports, but this is definitely something that I think football has been trying to address recently. I mean, the NFL has been trying to do a lot of rule changes to deal with this and also look into sort of better technology for helmets, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wish I could. It was a complete coincidence. It was the number I was given when I first got to uni.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, if you sort of gave me other choices, like if it was Super Bowl champion versus lesser things, then you know, there are many instances where I choose Super Bowl champion, but uh, yeah, you throw out fields medal. I mean, you know, come on, you're hitting me with something heavy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I hope that, you know, there will be reasons for this. Perhaps not football.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People who have a great access to education and high quality teachers and great resources.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Versus people who were born into a household in some community where perhaps...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He or she doesn't have the same resources, doesn't have the same quality of teachers and also,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being born are being born white and in good households is that there's a lot of smart, intelligent minds being born into the United States that are being lost for some reason or another and I


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What you should really take away every time you hear a story like that is that without that one professor, without that one person, this story would never happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He sought me out after class and told me to come visit him in his office and he gave me a math book to read and he walked me through


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Things I could read and then he proposed that, you know, I try to do math research and he thought that I would be quite good at it and he mentored me through the entire process and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm gonna level with you. I was taking some college math classes and I think I'm not the exception. There's tons and tons of even college students who take math classes and have no clue what it is their math professors do. And have no clue what a mathematician even is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sports are extremely popular and American football is the most popular sport. And I have a responsibility to sort of use my platform to show people, first of all, what is a mathematician?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Second of all, why is math important to you as a person? Why is it important to you


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you want to go into a scientific field, why is it important to you if you want to even just be a writer?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They don't know what that something is, and you know, even less or so, but two, if you see that profession, and you don't see anyone in that profession, that let's say even looks like you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Both certainly play a part because so often in, and I shouldn't just say African American, but in sort of poor socio-economic areas, often


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When in reality, okay, this might just be my opinion, I think the greatest gift you can give someone is education. This is the most powerful tool to help someone


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which simply asks, okay, given that you have some graph and now you get to see the sub graph induced by sort of like all the vertices but one, for every single


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where A is let's say like a symmetric diagonally dominant matrix. Can you solve this in linear time?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is an important open question. In sort of unsupervised machine learning, it's much harder to sort of define very important open questions, but I also do a lot of work in quantization. And so open problem that's sort of quite related to sphere packing is something called Gershwin conjecture which comes from


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Three or four or five years ago. You know what's a hobby of mine? I very rarely play chess.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't want to be awful at it. You know what I mean? I've really toned my competitiveness down, but I can only tone it down so much. So like, yeah, with respect to chess, like I'll probably become something called a national master. It's a title of master sort of on the sort of ladder of master titles.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, that would be like just something for myself so that I can tell myself, well, John, you're not that awful at chess. So you've written a book. Yeah, I wrote a book. That's true.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Mind and Matter is a reference to Schrodinger. You know, if you look at sort of the works of Schrodinger, he wrote something called


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, they're gonna get about half math, half football. It's a memoir. It's about sort of my life. For math fans, first of all, the chapters even tell you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What is in which chapter? So if you are not an American football fan, let me tell you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What the topic of each chapter is and I'll focus on the math part because of the audience. I would say it was just my journey.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With mathematics, from being like a little kid all the way through sort of my PhD at MIT.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And while, you know, I'm not doing any serious math, I'm not teaching you calculus, I'm introducing you to a lot of mathematical ideas that I believe are quite interesting and that I personally interacted with as I grew up. And you'll see them and you'll interact with them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As the reader, okay, perhaps you already like math, in which case I want you to enjoy the book, but for a broader audience, I want readers to come away with an appreciation of math that perhaps they didn't have before, especially given sort of their experiences in school or their current experiences in school. I want them to walk away with a newfound appreciation for math that perhaps a lot of the readers got because they were coming for some football.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just, I hope that you really love the things that you do and you work really hard at them. And that's like, for someone who wants to be, you know, successful at something or successful at multiple things, that's really all the advice I can give you. There's no secret.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Brady, meanwhile, thinks that he can sort of capture me on a microphone that...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You probably think that Shakespeare is all about words. You know, the Klein bottle guy. What I'm interested in is a little section of topology called non-orientable manifolds. More specifically, I'm interested in Klein bottles.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm born in 1950. Apply your retro rockets inside your brain too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Somebody who's educated in Buffalo, New York, which is a pretty gritty steel city on the east coast of the United States and with two sisters, two brothers and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, little did she know what it meant, but eventually she did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Along the way, the two of them fired five shots into the impending baby boom, and two of my older sisters are-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Up and away my two younger brothers are out and about and the world is probably a better place for the bunch of us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Boy, I wish somebody had said, oh yeah, he's the brainy one in the neighborhood. Rather, I felt.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here's my chance going to school to figure out and learn about what's going on around me the first five, six, seven years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of education was strictly public school, elementary school, grammar school, public school number 61. And I got a blue star for good attendance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And every now and then in western New York, there are bathtub races where people put wheels on bathtub to just do Millard Fillmore races beside the point. Anyway, so I'm in seventh grade at this cool new junior high school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the new math is not like that old boring arithmetic and pre-algebra that kids are learning. No, the new math is all about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sets. Set theory and combinations. And my folks have never heard of it. I've never heard of it. I'm sitting in and my teacher, Ms. Voran, starts talking about what is a set. And what are certain rules.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just way easy and this is going on through 8th grade and Ms. Foran is teaching us bit by bit by bit. I'm having a great time because...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm learning really new novel stuff that I've never thought about. And one spring day, sitting in English class, an English teacher says,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, some Greek philosopher has pointed out that there's no rule so general, so universal, that it does not admit to at least one exception. I'm sitting there in English class and 20 minutes later find myself in Miss Foran's math class. She's talking about the commutative law. You know, A times B equals?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And she says, you're right, the commutative law has an exception. I'm thinking, oh, this is cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A matrix looks like this and draws a matrix of two by three matrix on the chalkboard. She says right now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This matrix doesn't look like it's useful, but I can make another matrix next to it, and I can multiply the two together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She points out just how you do matrix manipulation, how you do matrix multiplication, and she says not telling you this for any test at all. Telling you this because you asked a good question.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is the same as 7 times 3 by the commutative law. Matrix A times Matrix B.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Does not equal matrix B times matrix A.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where would you use a matrix? What is it? What's it for? Bless her heart. She continues. She describes places where you'd use it. You know, you could measure temperatures on different days and multiply them by something. And so I stash it in the back of my mind. Continue on. Junior high school. Get to high school. Sure enough, the end of high school. Taking a calculus class and teacher starts talking about linear algebra.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And mentions, oh, and blah, blah, blah, matrix, blah, blah. I hear this ping in the back of my mind. This neuron fires. It says, oh, I've heard of these matrices before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They don't commute, and I raise my hand and say, oh, they don't commute, do they? And my high school math teacher says, wow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This absolutely weird and wonderful concept to me. So I'm finishing up in grad school. My dissertation is, of all things,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Different directions. What direction does it preferentially scatter into? And if I can understand, suppose a lot of light gets forward scattered, I might be able to say something about how big and what shape


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are the particles in the clouds of Jupiter? You might be able to say, oh, is it a ammonia crystal? Is it a methane crystal? Can I separate the two by looking at the scattering matrix?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thank you to my 8th grade math teacher who went out on a limb and spent all of 15 minutes of class time to introduce me, this little pipsqueak in the front row, to matrix algebra. So it finished this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think to myself, you know, I need to thank her. I want to go back and say thanks to this woman. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I go back, try to look her up. Miss Foran, where are you? She's in no phone book. She's not listed any place in Buffalo. Eventually, oh 10, 15, 20 years later, a new century comes about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Matrices, they're no longer this cool new thing that shows up in physics. They're my old friends. They're friends that are helping me figure things out. I can't look at an Excel spreadsheet without thinking about matrices. And I'm thinking to myself, I owe this woman.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Deep thank you for going way beyond the call of duty. Cliff, did you find her? In 2014, I said, okay, I've actually put in some time looking for Miss Foran. I'm going to find out where she is, put my spade into the dirt, going through cowdy paper records. Finally, early 2015, it's now what?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 50 years since I took this class. 50 years since I last saw her. I find.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, I think there's a condominium in Florida.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Call the condominium manager who says, Oh yeah, that was sold. You might want to call so-and-so in Minnesota. I start calling everybody with this particular last name in Minnesota. 1314.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Phone calls later, I call up this guy and say, I'm looking for Miss Forend. The guy says, huh?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You oughta talk to my wife. 30 seconds later, this very, very familiar voice gets on the phone and says, hello? And I say, I'm looking for Miss Foran, who used to live in Buffalo and taught mathematics. And I hear over the phone, yes, this is she. I say, you don't remember me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't have any idea who I am. My name is Cliff Stull. Fifty some years ago, you taught me the new math. More than that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You taught me the commutative law. And deeper than that, you showed me what a matrix was. And she says, Oh my God.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have followed your career across the decades.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I saw you chase down this computer hacker. I read your books. I always wondered whether you were the same kid that was in my eighth grade math class. I wondered if you were the same clever, interesting kid that I taught so long ago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I never knew how to reach you. And I mail a Klein bottle to her. Because of all people, she'll appreciate a Klein bottle. Back comes the letter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It says, Dear Cliff, this letterhead, Buffalo Academy of the Sacred Heart, is where I went to high school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So at the very end, thanks again for looking me up and giving life one more interesting twist.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know of course she hasn't used that name in 52, 53 years and in this letter she says, I now have credibility with my grandkids because they can see you on YouTube. You, you did a Ted talk, you wrote these books and they're impressed with me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I learned about matrices. No, everyone in math and science and physics and chemistry and biology knows, my feeling deep inside is that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a responsibility to sort of like to extrapolate and say we have responsibilities in general to pass along our appreciation to those people who have done good things for us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That you're in seventh grade in Buffalo, New York.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At Fillmore Junior High School, over on Appenheimer Street. Okay, hypothetically further suppose that you're in a science class.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By Miss Cohen, who's teaching. And meanwhile, you have a curiosity about the sky and you say, I'm going to make a telescope. And you don't, your folks don't have any money. You don't have any money. So you have to make your own telescope, which means grinding a mirror and polishing the mirror yourself and mounting it in a tube.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I figure out how you bend pipes so that you can point it at the sky and one day I say, hey, I'm looking at the sky with this homemade telescope and I look at this object and I say,