I’m the first to admit it: I didn’t love maths at school. I mean, it was OK. I was one of the lucky ones who found it pretty straightforward, and yes, there were times when I got a bit of a kick from figuring out algebraic equations – but I didn’t love it. 

Now, Susan Okereke, one of my dearest friends from university – we met at Edinburgh’s student radio station Fresh Air and named our ‘drivetime’ show Double Decker solely so we could blag boxes of free chocolate bars from Cadburys (and yes, it worked) – is a maths teacher. I’ve been witness on many occasions to Susan telling people what she ‘does’ for a living and the general reaction being one of horror, or something along the lines of ‘I hated maths at school!’ or ‘I never saw the point of it’. 

And so Maths Appeal was born. Susan loves maths and loves sharing her passion for the subject with people. It’s her mission to make maths accessible to everyone, and to show people that the subject isn’t scary or daunting – and that it is, in fact, everywhere. 

We decided a maths podcast would be a more entertaining listen if we had two presenters who were teachers, who could chat about their approaches to maths topics and share ideas and observations. Our top (actually, our only) choice was University Challenge contestant, writer, television presenter, teacher and fellow maths fan Bobby Seagull, and luckily when I sent him a message on LinkedIn, he agreed to meet up! He and Susan hit it off from the start, not least because they’re both obsessed with drinking hot water (strange but true) and we’ve since bonded over our love of Dogtanian after I suggested we call ourselves the Three Mathsketeers….

Maths Appeal is a completely independent project, and it’s been really refreshing creating a podcast from scratch, with no restrictions. We’ve kept the format of each episode pretty simple: Bobby and Susan discuss a maths topic, such as place value, percentages or multiplicative reasoning, and they tackle each one by chatting about key aspects of the particular subject, how they go about teaching it at school, and the difficulties that students tend to face when trying to get to grips with it. 

You may know that Bobby loves puzzles, so he sets one related to the topic, and we were really keen to ensure that the podcast explains the method(s) of calculating the answer, so Bobby and Susan discuss that after an interview with a special guest, which gives listeners a bit of time to work out the solution.

The guests in this first series are maths champions from the worlds of education, broadcasting, entertainment and tech. TV presenter Johnny Ball, writer and broadcaster Alex Bellos, co-founder of F equals Danielle Newnham, Chief Executive of National Numeracy Mike Ellicock, podcaster and How 2 presenter Gareth Jones (AKA Gaz Top), comedian Ken Cheng, writer Simon Singh and CEO of Stemettes Anne-Marie Imafidon are some of the amazing guests who have been so generous to give up their time to speak to us, and it’s been such a pleasure to discover more about their maths stories. 

So, whether you’re a paid-up member of the maths fan club or if the very notion of numeracy puts you in a cold sweat, please do give Maths Appeal a listen on iTunes, Spotify or Soundcloud and let us know what you think!