You and Betty and the nancy's and bills and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science

a richer, more rewarding life.

Welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gontas.

This is a podcast that explores the space where science and society collide.

We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it matters.

There is more and what we see.

In 2014, when I launched this podcast with Chris Mooney, our 39th episode featured child prodigy, mathematician, and novelist

Jordan Ellenberg. Chris Mooney interviewed him because he had just written a book called How Not to

Be Wrong, the Power of Mathematical Thinking, in which he made the case that calculations

weren't just about numbers. They were a way of thinking about

everything from politics to poetry. Now, he's just released his next book, this time applying his

out-of-the-box thinking to geometry and opening up the world of shapes, which he calls the hidden

geometry of information. It's only fitting that we have him

back on the show, seven years later, for our 351st episode, which happens to be nine times

39. Let's take a short break, and then we'll hear more from Jordan Ellenberg.

Jordan Ellenberg, welcome back to inquiring minds.

Oh, thank you for having me on.

So I'm so excited to talk to you about geometry.

In part because in your book, you describe how this is not something that you were good at to begin with.

But I felt like geometry was, I'm one of those people, you kind of describe it

like cilantro. You either love it or you hate it, but no one's neutral, right? So I love both cilantro

and geometry. And I was, you know, I hate cilantro. I've gotten used to it over the years. And actually,

...