In America, they call it a public intellectual.

I'm not using that because of ridiculous.

The other one they do in America is they invite you to conferences

and they're like, we just really wanted you as a thought leader.

A thought leader.

We're reaching out to you as a thought leader.

What does that mean?

Hi, I'm Brady Harron.

Today's guest on the Numberphile podcast is the public intellectual and thought leader Hannah Fry.

Hannah's a mathematician at University College London or UCL and will be talking about her work shortly.

But in recent years, Hannah's also become something of a celebrity.

She's written books, fronted BBC TV shows, she makes radio programs and podcasts,

and occasionally when time permits even pops up in the odd number file video.

So as you can guess, there's a lot I wanted to ask her about.

Let's start close to the beginning. What were you like as a little girl? Like would I have known,

oh, she's going to end up being a mathematician?

Hmm. Not early on. No, I don't think so. Not like as a kid. When I was about 11, I think that's when it started to change, really. And I pinpoint it to one particular event, which is my Irish mother has a slightly skewed idea of what constitutes a fun summer holiday.

So one summer she bought me a math textbook and insisted that I go through a single page in this textbook every day before I was allowed to have any fun, which you can imagine my delight

as an 11-year-old.

Like to give you education, like to be wholesome or thinking that little Hadder would find this fun?

I'm not sure, really.

She's just like really, really into education.

...