Interesting radio show. Prof. Sergei Gulyaev is a Russian astrophysicist who has recently taken his eyes off the sky and turned it towards the ground. He’s currently using spectragraphic laser measurement to analyse cliff erosion here in New Zealand. For some reason, we ended up talking about language, mathematics and the nature of physics (as you do). I wish I’d been able to record the programme, but the cassette deck in the studio was malfunctioning.

I also spoke to Prof. Deryl Northcott – an accounting academic who surprised me by being lively, vibrant, humorous and not boring at all. Except for that whole adding up columns of numbers thing…