Tonight while doing dishes and listening to podcasts, I came across two great things that I would like to share. The first is an episode of a podcast itself: the second of hour of On Point from WBUR, March 31, 2020. (Technically, it was a radio broadcast over the air yesterday, but I listened to it on demand today in podcast player.) The guest was author Rebecca Solnit. Every word I’ve ever heard come out of her mouth or read come out of her pen has been profound. I didn’t even get through the entire episode before I decided I had to share it.
The podcast i was listening to before On Point came on was from the New Books Network*, and the author being interviewed mentioned the YouTube channel of a mathematician friend of his named Grant Sanderson. Sanderson calls his YouTube channel 3Blue1Brown. He elegantly explains and animates mathematical ideas in short, easily digestible videos. When he mentioned this YouTube channel, I put down my headphones and watched a few videos. If you’re like me and you feel like you could use a little more math in your day, then these videos might be for you. If I were going to do something irresponsible, I might stay up all night watching them. If you’re stuck at home, you might entertain yourself and learn something from watching these very interesting videos.
*The New Books Network is itself worth sharing. From what I’ve listened to, it is a series of interviews by academics of other academics about their most recent work. The range of topics covers the gamut. These are pretty cheaply produced interviews: it sounds like they are conducted over Skype and minimally edited, so they don’t have the nice broadcast sheen of interviews you might hear on, say, NPR. And you can subscribe by the subjects that interest you. I’ve heard some interesting stuff, but I’m sometimes distracted by the relatively low quality of the audio.
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