Above: One of Steven Strogatz’s figures from Rock Groups.

From the BBC’s wonderful podcast In Our Time comes an episode on Unintended Consequences in Math, in which Cambridge Prof. John Barrow observes:

A good way of thinking about mathematics is that it’s just the collection of all the possible patterns there could be. It’s a great catalog of every possible pattern. Some of those patterns are interesting, some are not, some are useful, some are not.

See also: Steven Strogatz’s incredible series that reintroduces the principles of math in a more thoughtful way for the NYTimes’s Opinionator blog. In terms of patterns, start with Rock Groups and continue with The Enemy of My Enemy.

It would be hard, especially given the current state of the world, for me to recommend a program more worth your time than Niall Ferguson’s excellent The Ascent of Money. Based on his bestselling book, I saw it in its original BBC version, but it came to PBS in January and is now available to watch in its entirety online. In six parts, Ferguson, a financial historian at Harvard Business School, traces the development of representative (or paper) money and the system of banks (from the Italian bianchi, or benches) that supported it, then bonds and bond markets, then credit and credit markets, stock and stock markets, real estate and its many crises (savings-and-loan, subprime, etc), and finally, the rise of a transnational conglomerate ecnonomy Ferguson dubs “Chimerica,” in which China plays the banker as the U.S. plays the borrower, and our fates and fortunes become ever-increasingly intertwined as a result. In each episode, Ferguson offers not only a systematic explanation of how these markets work, but also examples from remote and recent history that illustrate the role money plays in shaping history and defining our relationships to one another. Watch this tonight. When you’re finished, you might want to glimpse into the future by reading Ferguson’s retrospective history of the year 2009.

“A new Belgian carrier, Brussels Airlines, has been forced to change its logo following complaints from superstitious passengers. The 13 dots making up the stylised ‘b’ brought a flood of complaints about the ‘unlucky’ design,” BBC News reports.

A fantastic set of interviews with cultural movers and shakers, courtesy of BBC Radio. John Updike’s is definitely worth a listen.

The story of my favorite video game: the BBC does an hour-long documentary on the making (and nearly the unmaking) of Tetris (via Kottke).