Human 6: Adam Spencer
Author, comedian, maths geek
In his own words, Adam Spencer is Australia’s best known but nowhere near best mathematician, is recently engaged and is happy beyond belief. He is a father, author, radio presenter, comedian, TED-talker, and self-confessed numbers nerd. Adam has had a diverse career in television including sport reporting for The Back Page and ABC News, current affairs wraps for The Drum, and is a member of the Sleek Geeks science comedy team with Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki. He is the University of Sydney’s first ever ambassador for Mathematics and Science, and is involved with many charitable causes including Redkite and The Fred Hollows Foundation.
Adam is a human mammal. Here are his thoughts:
What brings you the most joy in life?
Deep connection and interaction with my daughters and fiancée.
What do you see as your greatest achievement?
Hopefully yet to come. In July every year I’m always pretty happy that I established Dry July, the national month off alcohol to raise money for adult cancer services. What started as a cute little talkback segment on my ABC Sydney breakfast radio show has raised over $70m and now attracts around 40,000 DJs every year.
What are you most grateful for?
Too many things to count so, perhaps above all, the perspective to realise how fucking lucky I’ve been in so many ways.
What is something most people don’t know about you?
I’m prone to bouts of shyness.
Who or what has had the biggest influence on your life?
Probably mathematics. It was my ticket to a university education thanks to a big HSC mark, a passion to study, and a defining characteristic of my on air and now corporate persona.
What do you regret?
Again, too many to count. I wish I’d realised much earlier at uni that I loved maths and hadn’t just coasted through on really good marks. I genuinely don’t know if I could have completed a PhD in Pure Mathematics if I’d given it my best shot. I regret not putting myself in a position to know.
I also wish I’d known a lot more about training and fitness when I used to run most nights as part of the track team in high school. For the amount of time I put in I could have been much better. Again, I would have liked to know my actual limits.
What advice would you give your younger self?
You’ll eventually have to answer to yourself for your choices and your path - are you confident you will be proud of yourself for what you’ve done?
When did you last change your mind?
About half way through my original answer to the last question.
If you could have a conversation with anyone, living or dead, who would you choose and why?
I’d love to chat to Pierre de Fermat and ask: “mate, when you said you had a proof for what we now know as Fermat’s Last Theorem, but didn’t have enough room to write it down… did you really think you had a proof, or were you prendre la pisse?”
What is the role of luck in our lives?
When you factor in where you are born, the genes you inherit and the like, luck is the single most underrecognised factor in the vast bulk of contented and successful people’s lives, in my humble opinion.
Do you have a favourite quote? What is it? Why do you like it?
“The sum of the squares of the sides of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse”… it’s never let me down so far.
What would you do with your life if you had unlimited financial resources?
Make sure my kids only inherited a very small fraction of them.
If you could have the definitive answer to a single question, what would you ask?
What’s the closest we can get to a grand unified theory of everything - the concept in physics that there are a series of equations that govern the universe, unifying gravity and the other fundamental forces in both the quantum and big world.
It’s an open question to whether one even exists, so by asking my single question this way, if it turns out there isn’t one, I at least get a Nobel prize for getting us as close as we can!
What concept/fact/idea should every human on the planet understand?
Everyone should be able to multiply two 2-digit numbers together in their head.
Do human beings have free will?
Much smarter and more qualified people than I disagree deeply on this subject. I’ll wait for them to sort it out.
Do you believe in God?
Absolutely, categorically, 110%, beyond any doubt… there is no God.
Could we be living in a simulated universe?
Conceivable, but to my outsider’s eye, at the very unlikely end of the spectrum when it comes to understanding what’s going on here.
Will the continual development of technology have a net positive or negative influence on humanity?
Overwhelmingly net positive if you remove the military from the equation. With them involved, the scales tend to even up a bit.
What is the single greatest achievement of humanity?
The single thing that you could write on an A4 sheet, summarising centuries of enquiry, that could communicate a giant swathe of human knowledge to, say, an alien civilisation, yet the vast bulk of us have seen it and vaguely understand what it’s about… the periodic table of chemical elements.
What do you see as the biggest existential threat to humanity?
Humanity.
What does it mean to live a good life?
See my answer to ‘advice to younger self’.
What is a good death?
Pain free, having already made peace with yourself and your enemies, surrounded by those whom you love - quite possibly whacked up to the eyeballs on psilocybin - watching the Sydney Swans Captain of the day (who hopefully hasn’t been born yet) hoisting the AFL Premiership Cup.
Thanks for your time, Adam!
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