Vanessa Vakharia  0:01  
Hi, I'm Vanessa Vakharia, aka The Math Guru. And you're listening to Math Therapy, a podcast that helps guests work through their math traumas one problem at a time. The theme for Season three is math in the media, and I'll be exploring that with guests ranging from the president of a giant marketing firm to a drag queen who has gone viral on TikTok ... because of math!  I'll also be diving deep into the dramatic ways that math education can totally change the course of our lives, discussing the role that math played in the rehabilitation of a convicted inmate, and revisiting my own journey in math with my actual high school math teacher, whose unconventional approach in the classroom totally helped me redefine who I was, and what I was capable of.

Vanessa Vakharia  0:43  
Here's a sample of some of the amazing people you're going to meet on this season. 

Kyne Santos  0:47  
You have people who aren't necessarily "science people" watching documentaries about science, you have people who are unnecessarily "art people" that go to the museum to look at paintings on the wall - so why can't we have that same relationship with math?

Ewa Kasinkska  1:01  
So if you have passionate teachers who enjoy interacting with students, who want to help them - that really provides a very nurturing environment.

Esther Brunat  1:11  
I'm not afraid to fail, I can try something and I can mess it up. And I will tell my students that, I'll be like "Guys, hey, like, I messed up" - we should be modeling that.  A lot of adults take that fear of failure into their adulthood with them.

Bex Bambi  1:27  
My paper said, like C slash D question mark, and then they just put a C and just like, never spoke about it again - they were like, this girl's not passing this again. So like ... (laughing)

Abby Govindan  1:36  
Even the way we speak about math should change. All you have to do to be a math person is decide your math person.

Christopher Havens  1:43  
I was standing there in my cell looking at the concrete. And I was like, you know, I have 25 years, I can totally become a wizard. So I decided to start studying mathematics for the rest of my time. And I made this goal of publishing math while I was in prison. And it happened within a few years.

Roger Fischer  1:59  
I've been doing this 16 years, I've never had a student asked me a question about math that was dumb, on the contrary.

Candace Borland  2:04  
So much of what we see out in the media informs culture and especially in young people, and so how can you authentically make the most of that opportunity to change culture?

Brittany Rhodes  2:13  
I love books, I love to read, and I love mathematics. And guess what: they can all coexist! They're not mutually exclusive.

Anthony Perotta  2:21  
You may not think you're a math person, but it's all about a shift in perspective.

Vanessa Vakharia  2:26  
Season Three starts April 8th, so make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, and follow me @themathguru on Instagram or Twitter. Whether you think you're a math person or not, you're about to find out that math people don't actually exist - but the scars that math class left on many of us definitely do. Oh, and don't worry, no calculators or actual math were involved in the making of this podcast.