I'm Alan Alder and this is Clear In Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

It's a spooky thought that here's this thing which is this little weight hanging off

of a string and it secretly seems to know this thing that I have just been learning about

why an X in algebra class and it gave me this feeling that there's a hidden world, that

there's this secret world of math underneath the world we can see.

Honestly, it felt like a quasi-religious experience to tell you the truth.

About 25 years ago, I read an article in Scientific American that fascinated me.

It was about how pendulums, although they might have started out at different times, could

fall into synchrony and how many other things in nature can fall into synchrony, like a

tree full of fireflies which is an amazing sight or sails in the human heart which is

not a good thing.

Stephen Strogatz was one of the authors of the piece and I thought he had a view of an

unseen world because he possessed the ability to see it through the window of math.

I had no understanding of math at all but I wanted to see what he saw.

The article said he was teaching at MIT so I picked up the phone and they called him.

I asked if I could come see him and ask him a few questions about his work.

Good thing he was generous and said yes, Stephen I have been friends ever since and when

we get together, he tries heroically to help me get the gist of how some weird and wonderful

thing in math works.

I don't always get it but I'm always fascinated by Steve and I think you will be too.

Steve is an award-winning teacher and he lets you start out where you are which for

me is usually no place.

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