It took lots of work with Jacqueline Smith, one of the producers of the BBC program, The Forum, but after weeks of talking and e-mailing, we finally nailed down a tentative script of what I would say on the show. It was all quite ambitious - in addition to explaining an idea I've been mulling: how "basis functions" crop up in several artistic fields (watch for a YouTube show on this very soon), I was also going to expound on my mathematical research on the finite element method. Well, the show was quite lively and fun, with two other guests - Ruth Padel (the great grand-daughter of Charles Darwin) and Andrea Sabbadini, chair of the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival. You can listen to all our comments here - they sort of united to form a whole greater than the individual contributions. (I come on after Ruth.)

As part of the show, I also got sixty seconds to describe an idea that would improve the world, which you can read here (together with some complimentary and not-so-complimentary feedback). My idea: teach kids to question everything!