Voices of Maths: celebrate the Cambridge Festival with our podcasts

To celebrate the annual Cambridge Festival, we have selected some of our favourite podcasts featuring discussions with researchers from our home in the Faculty of Mathematics. 

The annual Cambridge Festival shares the huge range and breadth of the University's work with the public - and this year, we've brought the Cambridge Mathematics departments to you! Our podcasts are produced by Plus (plus.maths.org) for our regular Maths on the Move podcast series, featured in the Cambridge Festival of Podcasts.

Join us in listening to some favourites from the archive, featuring conversations with members of Cambridge's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) and Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics (DPMMS).

The topics range from discussing uncertainty with David Spiegelhalter, and the enduring legacy of Fermat's Last Theorem with Tom Körner and Jack Thorne, to finding out about life on the mathematical frontline during COVID-19 with Julia Gog; debating whether physicists might have found evidence of a fifth force of nature with Ben Allanach; and exploring the importance of communicating mathematics with Hannah Fry.

You can listen to the podcasts using the player below, and you can listen and subscribe to the Plus podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify and through most other podcast providers via podbean.

Professor Hannah Fry:

Mathematics for the people

Hannah Fry joined DAMTP in January 2025 as Cambridge’s first Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics. Recorded in November 2024 when the appointment was announced, she talked to the Plus Editors, Dr Marianne Freiberger and Rachel Thomas, about her own mathematical research, why she thinks mathematicians have a duty to engage the public, and a favourite mathematical moment. 

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter FRS:

The art of uncertainty

David Spiegelhalter, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at DPMMS, has been described as 'the closest thing the world of statistics has to a national treasure', and is a 2025 Cambridge Festival speaker.

In October 2024 the Plus Editors talked to David about his latest book: The Art of Uncertainty: how to navigate chance, ignorance, risk and luck. The conversation touched on a huge range of topics — from double yolked eggs and the Bay of Pigs, to why it's useful to disagree, and why uncertainty is personal.

Professor Tom Körner, Professor Jack Thorne FRS, and Professor Sir Andrew Wiles FRS (University of Oxford):

Fermat’s last theorem – 30 years on

In 1993 Andrew Wiles announced his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, which had baffled mathematicians for centuries, at the Isaac Newton Institute, next door to our home in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences.

For the proof's 30th birthday in July 2023 we talked to Wiles himself as well as Jack Thorne, Kuwait Professor of Number Theory and Algebra at DPMMS, and Tom Körner, Emeritus Professor of Fourier Analysis at DPMMS, about the electrifying moment the proof was announced, and the new world of mathematics it has opened up.

Professor Ben Allanach:

Have physicists discovered a fifth force of nature?

In the summer of 2023 mainstream news coverage claimed that scientists were on the verge of discovering a fundamental force of nature they hadn't previously known about. This would be a fifth force, in addition to gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces.

Such a discovery would be quite a revolution, so we talked to Ben Allanach, Professor of Theoretical Physics in DAMTP’s Theoretical High Energy Physics group and 2024 Cambridge Festival speaker, to find out more. Ben explained the science, gave us his personal hunch regarding the experimental results, and provided a fascinating glimpse into life at the cutting edge of physics.

Professor Ulrich Sperhake, Dr Amelia Drew and Dr Michalis Agathos:

Gravitational waves reveal cosmic hum

Back in 2023 researchers detected, for the first time,  a low frequency hum of gravitational waves. The new results were published by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, NANOGrav for short. The NANOGrav team were not alone — they coordinated with collaborations in Europe, India, Australia, and China, which released similar findings at the same time. 

In this podcast, recorded in July 2023, Michalis Agathos (now at QMUL), Amelia Drew (now at ICTP Trieste), and Professor Ulrich Sperhake from the Stephen Hawking Centre for Theoretical Cosmology discussed what these new results mean, and why they were so exciting. 

Professor Julia Gog OBE:

On the mathematical frontline

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck almost exactly five years ago Julia Gog, Professor of Mathematical Biology at DAMTP, was released from her University duties to devote her time to epidemiological modelling and advising the UK Government on pandemic policy. In this podcast, recorded in 2021, she tells us what it was like being on the mathematical front line.