Just over a year ago, I wrote a post, “Echoes in an empty room“, about how wonderful it was to hear someone who listens to Travels in a Mathematical World describe the podcast in their own words. It can be a strange and isolated experience recording podcasts and it is always encouraging to hear from someone who has listened and liked what I’ve done, but even more so when they articulate their own perceptions about what I have made (and when they differ from my own).

Now, Samuel Hansen and I are recording the Math/Maths Podcast. This differs from the “empty room” of my previous post because I am speaking to someone down the pipes of the Internet and we have an enjoyable time recording episodes (much more so, for me, than the stilted experience of recording intros to Travels in a Mathematical World), which reduces the need for such encouragement. Having said that, it is still pleasing to hear from people who are listening and liking, and we occasionally do hear from people in this way through Twitter, email or, for me, a couple of times in person. We don’t have access to download stats but, even if we did, we know that just because someone is downloading doesn’t mean they are listening, and knowing they are listening doesn’t mean we know what they think about it.

We have been asked to write a description of the podcast for the Pulse-Project blog. We could easily write something, but we thought this was a good opportunity to encourage some listener feedback. Everyone’s perceptions are different and it would be interesting to hear what you think of the podcast and what you get out of listening to it. It would be brilliant if you could write a description of the podcast and send it to us. We’ll aggregate what we receive and write up a description of the podcast for the blog. We’ve already had one heart-warming comment from dansai, which reads:

I don’t know much about Math…But I know I like this. Misters Hansen and Rowlett discuss interesting topics and in a way a dummy like me can understand. Listen, people, this thing is informative AND entertaining, so subscribe already!

This is fantastic to hear! I like to think the podcast will be accessible, of interest and entertaining to a general intelligent audience and not just to those versed in mathematics, but it’s great to hear this is also the view of someone who listens. This can be a theme we draw out in our blog post.

If you subscribed through the iTunes Store, it would be especially great if you could leave your comment as an iTunes review (because this has other positive benefits). If you use another service, you could review it there (though you’ll need to tell us where to look) or you can email your description directly to samuel@acmescience.com or leave it as a comment on this blog post.

No excuses! ;)