Mathematician Sarah Hart has twice been a guest on this show, first in 2021 and then again in 2023.

We've taken the very best of those two conversations and turned them into today's bonus episode.

My guest today, Sarah Hart, has taken out a mission that many might think would be impossible to make math fun and interesting to everyday people.

We like patterns.

We like structures. We like symmetry, and those things come out in whatever

forms of creative expression we invent, whether that's music or art or literature.

Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

Sarah Hart holds two academic positions.

First, she's a professor of mathematics at Birbeck 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 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.

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 or interest.

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

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