Math Therapy

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Longtime listeners will remember Season 2's Jill Waddell who shared her inspiring decision to switch careers at age 40 and go back to school for power engineering - facing down her lifelong math anxiety along the way!  Vanessa caught up with her after graduation to find out how things turned out (spoiler alert - she was class valedictorian!) and hear...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) There's no other way to say this: we went to prison for Pi Day this year.  Longtime listeners will remembers Vanessa's fascinating and inspiring interview with Christopher Havens, an inmate serving a 25-year sentence for murder who has rehabilitated himself with math and founded the Prison Mathematics Project ( Season 3, Episode 10 ).  Vanessa h...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Math Therapy is (briefly) back!  We've been hard at work on a new season which I can't wait for you to hear soon, but I had to share an excerpt of one of the interviews I just did - you'll see why.  Stanford professor Jo Boaler is one of my math heroes, I referenced her all through my master's thesis, and her work in trying to make mat...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) In our final episode of the season, Vanessa chats with math professor Dr. Anthony Bonato about what it means to be queer in - let’s face it - the historically snobby and closed-minded field that is math. But as soon as you hear Anthony in today’s episode, you’ll understand there will be no silencing his advocacy for diversity & inclusion in math … or...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Did you know that the infamous math movie Mean Girls was actually inspired by Rosalind Wiseman’s non-fiction book called Queen Bees and Wannabes ? Today Vanessa talks to Rosalind about why we need to change the media and messaging that girls get about how it’s not “cool” to be good at math. How can we teach students that they can be good at more than one...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) You may be thinking “what the F*CK is a dude wall?!”, and today Vanessa talks to the incredible Katie Hafner to find out.  Katie is an author, journalist, and host of the podcast “Lost Women of Science,” whose mission is to tell the stories of female scientists who history has inconveniently forgotten. But how do we prevent this from happening in the futu...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) One of the missions of this podcast is challenging stereotypes, and on today’s episode we tackle a big one: Asians and math. Steven Tran grew up with Asian parents, and the pressures and expectations from his family, community, and society as a whole affected his perception of his own math ability. Getting caught cheating in high school could have led him...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) This one’s for all the adults out there who are like “hmmm maybe it’s not too late to learn a little math…”! On today’s episode Vanessa talks to journalist A.K. Whitney, who went back to school at 38 to learn math and chronicled it in Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, and her own podcast/website delightfully titled “The Mathochism Project”. She is basica...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Nothing shows how important teacher-student relationships can be than actually being friends with some of your students over a DECADE later, as is the case with Vanessa and Sophie Soberano. Sophie was one of Vanessa’s first tutoring students, long before The Math Guru even existed! Sophie went from daily math meltdowns in high school to becoming a math te...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Today’s guest has a dream: to dance on the moon.  With a robot.  The craziest part?  This is actually an attainable goal for Dr. Merritt Moore, better known as the “Quantum Ballerina”! Merritt has a PhD in Atomic & Laser Physics and is also a professional ballerina, and if that’s not enough for one resumé, she was recently selected for astronaut train...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Today’s guest is an actual celeb in the math-world. We’re talking A-list, we’re talking literally MILLIONS OF FANS. Grant Sanderson explains very high level math on his YouTube channel, 3Blue1Brown, in a way that is accessible for anyone to tune in and learn from! Vanessa and Grant discuss how he makes math so appealing and unintimidating, how a feeling o...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) We’re not the only ones who binge-watched Netflix’s The Circle over the pandemic, and one reason we were OBSESSED was the breakout star of the show: Terilisha, a math teacher AND musician, who stole our hearts with her IDGAF attitude! Today Vanessa chats with Terilisha about her experience on the show, how the media (and society) struggle to accept that p...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Will you be watching the Oscars this Sunday, comparing the winners with your predictions? Well one person who definitely will be is our first guest of season 4 - Ben Zauzmer , author of Oscarmetrics ! Ben, who is also the director of baseball analytics for the New York Mets, uses stats from past and present awards to try to predict this year's winner...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) We are BACK!  We've got 10 incredible and inspiring guests lined up for the new season of Math Therapy, each with a totally different history and relationship with math. Season 4 launches March 24th and because that’s a few days before the Oscars, we’re starting with a fascinating chat with Ben Zauzmer , author of Oscarmetrics - he uses statistics to...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) When this podcast started, interviewing a convicted murderer - while he was still in prison, no less - was admittedly not on Vanessa’s “Math Therapy guest” bingo card. But then we heard how Christopher Havens discovered math in solitary confinement halfway through a 25-year sentence, and committed the rest of his life to rehabilitating himself and repayin...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) The year was 2020. A tweet went viral on the interwebs and Vanessa damn near lost her mind. Somewhere in the UK, Bex had tweeted that the best part of being an adult was “opting out” of math; online mag Bustle picked it up and next thing we know Bex was on our podcast - turns out she’s even more hilarious over Zoom than she is on Twitter! On today’s episo...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Alright teachers, this one’s for you! Today Vanessa chats with Dr. Roger Fischer, an educator from Montana who is not just a hardcore fan of the podcast but also a natural math therapist himself! Roger explains how small instances of math trauma can lead to long-term effects on students, how he incorporates mindfulness and compassion into his lesson plans...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) We all hate harmful stereotypes, but have you ever thought of breaking stereotypes … by simply fulfilling them?! Being an Indian woman who doesn’t like STEM carries many consequences, and on today’s episode, Vanessa talks to South Asian comedian Abby Govindan about how women are pressured to either resist or conform to social and cultural expectations, an...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Forget Uber Eats - get some math delivered to your doorstep! Yep, that’s a thing, and it’s all thanks to Brittany Rhodes, the founder of math-activity subscription-box company Black Girl MATHgic! Vanessa chats with Brittany about why she saw a need for representation in math education, how consistency is the key to kids building confidence in their skills...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Late last year AT&T ran a full-page ad in the New York Times depicting a mother and daughter in despair over math homework, and Vanessa was NOT impressed.  Whether we realize it or not (and we usually don’t), the media plays a massive role in shaping everything from our collective social values to our individual self-worth.  So what if brands acknowle...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Yep, you read that right: mathfluencers are the future of education and today’s guest is leading the way! Esther Brunat and The Squadratics (think Mean Girls but like, if Mean Girls somehow had even MORE math) are on a mission to market math to Gen Z, and they’re gaining mad momentum. Today Vanessa talks to Esther about how teachers can embrace new techno...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) This season's interviews were all done remotely over Zoom with our producer Sabina Wex and technical producer David Kochberg listening in, and the conversations were so much fun that we often kept chatting after the actual interviews were over! Vanessa's convo last week with astrologer Anthony Perrotta got us all especially fired up, and since s...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) If you follow Vanessa on Instagram, you may know that a) she has really gotten into astrology, and b) that is slightly controversial for an aspiring mathfluencer**.  So today Vanessa is joined by modern astro-celeb Anthony Perrotta to discuss how his background in architecture and love of math led him to exploring patterns in the movements of our universe...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) It is no exaggeration to say that this podcast (and Vanessa’s entire career in math education) would not exist if she hadn't crossed paths with superhero math teacher Ewa Kasinska in high school.  Today, Ewa spills the tea on what Vanessa was like as a 17-year-old, how she managed to turn a math-hater into a Math Guru, and what the media gets wrong a...

Send us a text! (US messaging rates apply) Season 3 of Math Therapy kicks off today with a brand new theme: math in the media! Historically, media representations of math have left a LOT to be desired, but change is in the air and we are HERE for it. Today Vanessa chats with / fangirls over Kyne Santos - a true trailblazer when it comes to showing how complex and multi-dimensional we can be if we...