I guess today Sarah Hart has taken on a mission that many might think would be impossible

to make math fun and interesting to everyday people.

Welcome to People I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

Sarah Hart holds two academic positions.

First, she's a professor of mathematics at Burbek College at the University of London,

a pretty standard academic appointment, but her second appointment is more unusual.

She's the professor of geometry at Gresham College, a position established in the 16th century

that to this day upholds its original mission to provide free lectures to the public.

I stumbled onto one of her lectures online and I had to watch them all.

I can't wait to talk with her today because I've been on a crusade to make math education

more engaging and she's someone who's actually figured out how.

So I'd love to talk about your efforts to popularize mathematics,

which is how I became aware of you and you've given this series of wildly popular

public lectures that people can easily find online.

And the ones that first caught my attention were on the relationship between math and music.

And as little as I know about math, I know far less about music.

My mother forced me to take piano lessons when I was young,

and I had neither talent nor interest.

But I do think if my piano teacher would have explained music the way you do,

I think I might have loved it.

Oh, thank you.

Well, maybe you weren't ready at that age.

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