New Books in Mathematics
Interviews with Mathematicians about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/mathematics
Episodes
A revelatory exploration of how a “theory of everything” depends upon our understanding of the human mind.The whole goal of physics is to explain what we observe. For centuries, physicists believed that observations yielded faithful representations of what is out there. But when they began to study the subatomic realm, they found that observation often interferes with what is being observed—that the act of seeing changes what we se...
Mark as Played
Everything we do today is recorded as data that’s sold to the highest bidder. Plugging our personal data into impersonal algorithms has made government agencies more efficient and tech companies more profitable. But all this comes at a price. It’s easy to feel like an insignificant number in a world of number crunchers who care more about their bottom line than your humanity. It’s time to flip the equation, turning math into an emp...
Mark as Played
July 30, 2025 • 67 mins
Machine learning systems are making life-altering decisions for us: approving mortgage loans, determining whether a tumor is cancerous, or deciding if someone gets bail. They now influence developments and discoveries in chemistry, biology, and physics—the study of genomes, extrasolar planets, even the intricacies of quantum systems. And all this before large language models such as ChatGPT came on the scene.We are living through a...
Mark as Played
A celebration of the seemingly simple idea that allowed us to imagine the world in new dimensions--sparking both controversy and discovery.
The stars of this book, vectors and tensors, are unlikely celebrities. If you ever took a physics course, the word "vector" might remind you of the mathematics needed to determine forces on an amusement park ride, a turbine, or a projectile. You might also remember that a vector is a quantity ...
Mark as Played
Most of us know something about the grand theories of physics that transformed our views of the universe at the start of the twentieth century: quantum mechanics and general relativity. But we are much less familiar with the brilliant theories that make up the backbone of the digital revolution. In Beautiful Math: The Surprisingly Simple Ideas behind the Digital Revolution in How We Live, Work, and Communicate (MIT Press, 2024) Ch...
Mark as Played
April 17, 2025 • 39 mins
Back in 2021, John and Elizabeth sat down with Brandeis string theorist Albion Lawrence to discuss cooperation versus solitary study across disciplines. They sink their teeth into the question, “Why do scientists seem to do collaboration and teamwork better than other kinds of scholars and academics?”
The conversation ranges from the merits of collective biography to the influence of place and geographic location in scientific coll...
Mark as Played
Models of the Mind: How Physics, Engineering and Mathematics Have Shaped Our Understanding of the Brain (Bloomsbury, 2021) provides a multifaceted and approachable introduction to theoretical neuroscience. It discusses some major topics of the field, including both the milestones from their history and the currently open questions.
It's accessible for a general audience, not expecting any previous knowledge of neuroscience or maths...
Mark as Played
What are numbers, and where do they come from? Based on her groundbreaking study of material devices used for counting in the Ancient Near East, Karenleigh Overmann proposes a novel answer to these timeless questions.
Tune in as we talk with Karenleigh Overmann about her book, The Material Origin of Numbers: Insights from the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (Gorgias Press, 2024).
Karenleigh Overmann earned a doctorate in archa...
Mark as Played
Data has become a defining issue of current times. Our everyday lives are shaped by the data that is produced about us (and by us) through digital technologies. In Critical Data Literacies: Rethinking Data and Everyday Life (MIT Press, 2023), Luci Pangrazio and Neil Selwyn introduce readers to the central concepts, ideas, and arguments required to make sense of life in the data age. Bringing together cutting-edge thinking and discu...
Mark as Played
September 9, 2024 • 52 mins
Across the humanities and social sciences, scholars increasingly use quantitative methods to study textual data. Considered together, this research represents an extraordinary event in the long history of textuality. More or less all at once, the corpus has emerged as a major genre of cultural and scientific knowledge. In Literary Mathematics: Quantitative Theory for Textual Studies (Stanford UP, 2022), Michael Gavin grapples with ...
Mark as Played
September 8, 2024 • 52 mins
Today I talked to Al Posamentier about his books (co-authored with Christian Speitzer) The Mathematics of Everyday Life (Prometheus Books, 2018). We all are told – practically from the moment we enter school – that mathematics is important because it permeates practically all aspects of our lives. But, for the most part, we don’t really notice it except for those moments, such as when we balance a checkbook, that we know we’re do...
Mark as Played
September 2, 2024 • 50 mins
Our universe might appear chaotic, but deep down it's simply a myriad of rules working independently to create patterns of action, force, and consequence. In Ten Patterns That Explain the Universe (MIT Press, 2021), Brian Clegg explores the phenomena that make up the very fabric of our world by examining ten essential sequenced systems. From diagrams that show the deep relationships between space and time to the quantum behaviors t...
Mark as Played
July 8, 2024 • 78 mins
There is no shortage of books on the growing impact of data collection and analysis on our societies, our cultures, and our everyday lives. David Hand's new book Dark Data: Why What You Don't Know Matters (Princeton University Press, 2020) is unique in this genre for its focus on those data that aren't collected or don't get analyzed. More than an introduction to missingness and how to account for it, this book proposes that the wh...
Mark as Played
A probing examination of the dynamic history of predictive methods and values in science and engineering that helps us better understand today's cultures of prediction.
The ability to make reliable predictions based on robust and replicable methods is a defining feature of the scientific endeavor, allowing engineers to determine whether a building will stand up or where a cannonball will strike. Cultures of Prediction: How Engineer...
Mark as Played
How does a delivery driver distribute hundreds of packages in a single working day? Why does remote Alaska have such a large airport? Where should we look for elusive serial killers? The answers lie in the crucial connection between maps and maths.
In Mapmatics: How We Navigate the World Through Numbers (Pan Macmillan, 2024), Dr Paulina Rowinska embarks on a fascinating journey to discover the mathematical foundations of cartograph...
Mark as Played
David S. Richeson's book Tales of Impossibility: The 2000-Year Quest to Solve the Mathematical Problems of Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 2019) is the fascinating story of the 2000 year quest to solve four of the most perplexing problems of antiquity: squaring the circle, duplicating the cube, trisecting the angle, and constructing regular polygons. The eventual conclusion was that all four of these problems could not be so...
Mark as Played
Graduate students in many programs besides mathematics will need to be familiar with the methods and results of a variety of mathematical topics. Just as importantly, these students will need to develop a level of mathematical maturity—how to think in broad strokes about the subject, how to study it, and even how to communicate their work. The gap between undergraduate training and graduate requirements can also give rise to miscon...
Mark as Played
The stereotype of the solitary mathematician is widespread, but practicing users and producers of mathematics know well that our work depends heavily on our historical and contemporary fellow travelers. Yet we may not appreciate how our work also extends beyond us into our physical and societal environments.
Kevin Lambert takes what might be a first crack at this perspective in his book Symbols and Things: Material Mathematics in t...
Mark as Played
What's the best way to determine what most voters want when multiple candidates are running? What's the fairest way to allocate legislative seats to different constituencies? What's the least distorted way to draw voting districts? Not the way we do things now. Democracy is mathematical to its very foundations. Yet most of the methods in use are a historical grab bag of the shortsighted, the cynical, the innumerate, and the outrigh...
Mark as Played
September 12, 2023 • 32 mins
Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting indepen...
Mark as Played
Popular Podcasts
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.