Stories worth telling are... worth a few dollars, surely?

I love being a mathematician for so many reasons, and one of them is because I find mathematics interesting, not just as a subject, but as a culture. People working within maths have proven themselves to be awesome, terrifying, unbelievably nerdy, creative, interesting, tedious and wonderful in equal parts.

For this reason, I'd be very interested to hear the results of Samuel Hansen's new project - he's planning to create a series of audio shows/podcasts which document stories from the world of mathematics. It's called Relatively Prime: Stories from the Mathematical Domain, and will make use of his existing skills in creating podcasts (as evidenced by his many many existing maths news and interview podcasts, some of which I listen to on a regular basis) and enthusiasm for the subject.

Samuel lives in Las Vegas, but I met him when he was over for the MathsJam conference last November, and it's impossible not to notice his obsession with maths and maths communication. Yes, that is a photo of him up there, stood next to some maths, just to prove his maths credentials. He has recently graduated from the University of Nevada, where he specialised in graph theory, the funnest of all the theories.

He's hoping to work on the series over the next year, and to help him fund this project, he's got a Kickstarter page on which you can pledge money to him. He needs to raise $8000 by 3rd August, and I'd recommend that if you can spare any money (even just $20, which is less than £20) you should pledge it. He even has cool rewards for people donating increasing amounts of money, including producer credits and your chance to do a voice over. I would really love to see this project happen, so head over and check out his video at least.

(Incidentally, if anyone was wondering why this blog post didn't contain any references to either robots or baked goods, your regular fix can be found here and here).

UPDATE: Samuel's Kickstarter has been funded! Watch this space (or more realistically, my twitter) for news of when his first show is out.