Episode 94: Hannah Fry
Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Kat Rulach
4.8 • 527 Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2023
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hannah Fry is a mathematician, author, and radio and television presenter. She applies maths to pretty much everything in her life. She gave a TEDTalk in 2014 on the maths of dating, and in 2022 she made a documentary called ‘Making Sense of Cancer with Hannah Fry’ about her personal experience of cervical cancer, in which she unpacked the surprising statistics behind cancer diagnosis, treatment and success. It’s a fascinating watch which I have recommended to many friends.
Hannah has two daughters and she shared a tip with me that she heard for when they are teenagers: that a parent should ‘be the sides of the swimming pool’, let them get on with swimming, and just be there when they want to come back to the side.
Hannah lives by a decision-making tool which she calls regret minimisation which is where you assess a decision you have to make based on all the evidence you have before you at that time, very logically. This way, she says, you cannot beat yourself up for that decision further down the line.
Hannah made me laugh when she described applying that decision-making tool to whether she should have children - and then admitted she is 100% geek!
Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, produced by Claire Jones and post-production by Richard Jones
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Sophia Lusbexter and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to |
| 0:09.6 | to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. |
| 0:14.4 | I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, |
| 0:20.4 | so I spin a few plates myself. |
| 0:21.6 | Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but can also be hard to find time for yourself |
| 0:26.6 | and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. |
| 0:31.6 | Welcome to spinning plates. |
| 0:34.6 | Hi, how are you? |
| 0:40.3 | I am feeling in quite a good mood today. |
| 0:42.6 | The sun is really beautiful. |
| 0:46.7 | I know I probably always start chatting to you, telling you about the weather, |
| 0:50.1 | but it does play a big part in your mood, doesn't it? |
| 0:59.5 | And also, today is my day off in the week. So this is Sunday and it's been quite a hectic week. |
| 1:07.0 | It's been a bit silly in parts. Let me tell you about it. So this week has been Eurovision week, as in the final was yesterday night for what it's worth. I wanted the finish entry to win. |
| 1:13.8 | I love that finish entry. |
| 1:15.3 | Cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, yeah. |
| 1:19.9 | Anyway, that is not what I was going to tell you about. |
| 1:22.2 | I was going to tell you about the fact that I had a couple of jobs I was doing in Liverpool, not least a very, very lovely thing of singing |
| 1:29.6 | in the Eurovision Village on Friday night, which was awesome. But the, so I'd work on Thursday, |
| 1:36.9 | Friday, Saturday, all in Liverpool. However, I'd also committed, Richard and I had committed |
| 1:42.2 | to DJing at our seven-year-old and 11-year-old's primary school |
| 1:49.0 | for a sort of end-of-sats celebration thing. |
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