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Dana Richards, editor of Martin Gardner’s Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems explains why the worm makes it, in only about 15,092,688,622,113,788,323,693,563,264,538,101,449,859,497 steps! (Give or take a few.) This incredible fact depends on the mysterious Harmonic Series, discussed a little more in our next post.

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Dana Richards, editor of The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems discusses the amazing Martin Gardner and his legacy!

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M.C. Escher expert Doris Schattschneider, author of Visions of Symmetry, sits down with us in Leeuwarden Friesland, Escher’s boyhood hometown, to discuss his life and work.

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Mathemagician Art Benjamin explains some of the tricks of his trade!

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Art Benjamin, mathemagician at Harvey Mudd, staggers, astounds and entertains!

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Faster than an exponential! More powerful than double factorials!! The Busy Beaver Function tops anything that could ever be computed– and we mean ever

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Those dumb robots can do anything! Anything at all, that any computer can do.

One of the great discoveries of the twentieth century is that mathematics can describe the limits of mathematical thought! We’ll discuss some of these ideas from time to time in coming weeks. In this segment, we consider Alan Turing’s insightful question:

Can the answer to any mathematical question be computed?

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Eric Demaine of MIT will control your minds across all time and all space!

Not surprisingly, we suppose, this trick is closely related to an important mathematical tool of the telecommunications industry:

Gray Codes are tremendously useful; a great, very readable discussion is in Chapter 2 of Martin Gardner’s Knotted Donuts and Other Mathematical Entertainments.

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Now, really, tell me, what good is a podcast if you can’t promote your beautiful new book?

We are very very pleased to announce the publication of The Symmetries of Things, a comprehensive, modern account of the mathematics of symmetry, complete with over 1000 illustrations!