Poetry, Pi, and Patterns: A Conversation with Elisabet Takehana and Lawrence Lesser

In this episode of Words on a Wire, host Daniel Chacón speaks with UTEP math professor Lawrence Lesser and digital humanities scholar Elisabet Takehana about the surprising connections between poetry, mathematics, and data. What starts as a discussion about a poem on the number π unfolds into a wide-ranging conversation about creativity, meaning, and the human role in interpreting both language and numbers. Together, they explore how algorithms, literature, and mathematics all reflect a deeply human impulse to find patterns—and beauty—in the world around us.