Suri Explained Infinity

I’ve just finished Manil Suri‘s second novel, The Age of Shiva, which prompted me to do some googling. I’m curious about Suri’s dual life as a novelist and a mathematician–I can’t think of any career that’d put more of a burden on both the left and right brain simultaneously. In the process, I came across the video below, in which Suri gives a presentation he coauthored on the concept of infinity. My brain started hurting about a half-hour into the lecture, but the fault isn’t with Suri, whose genial and patient discussion also touches on the way that mathematicians have a way of being depicted as madmen in popular culture.