Könyves Magazin

Daniel Tammet: Más színű a valószínű magyarul, mint angolul? // Futurotheca 05.

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A Könyves Magazin Futurotheca podcastjának vendége Daniel Tammet brit számzseni, akit Keszthelyi Gabriella kérdezett. Beszélgetésük során szó esett a szinesztéziáról és annak hatásairól a számokról és szavakról való gondolkodásra, Tammet új könyvéről, a Kilenc elme című…

Röviden

Műsor
Könyves Magazin
Megjelenés
2026. 02. 09.
Hossz
24 perc
Szereplők, említett nevek
Keszthelyi Gabriella, Bakó Sára, Bognár Edmond
Témák
szinesztézia, számok, szavak, irodalom
Átirat
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Ebben az epizódban

as a photo magazine. for nonfiction.

So first of all, thank you for joining us at Futurka.

We are very pleased to have you here.

And uh the title of this of our conversation is like could probable be blue because uh I have a pop science book called like what color is probably which is a pun in Hungarian.

And I also have this like signature look like this blue in my hair and I usually wear something blue.

So, so people joke about it like oh so probable must be blue.

So my question is like does your synthesia go beyond like numbers and words like does it expand to like abstract concepts?

So can you basically say like a color for probable or you can just say a color for the word probable? >> It's a good question.

Um, in my personal experience, the word would have a color depending on the language.

So, in the Hungarian, it would be a um purple color >> and in um uh English, it would be pink. >> That was afraid of I I swear I had I had a feeling that you will say pink. >> Um but uh I don't myself experience sesthesia for concepts, but I know that it does exist.

For example, the um American physicist Richard Feainman had a synthesis and wrote about his own experience and how when he wrote equations he would see them in colors in his mind as well in his head.

So I know that it does exist >> really because I heard that about like Beno Mandanda brought the fractile guy but I didn't know about Penman.

But I also read in in your book that you you you kind of like had an an aver version about like solving equations and this is one of the the reasons you didn't pursue a career in mathematics. >> That's right.

I I've always enjoyed looking at numbers because numbers have uh textures and colors for me and because they feel to me like friends, you know, they were my first friends in a way before I learned to play and interact with a lot of children.

I would close my eyes and go into my mind and play with numbers because the they were regular and they had patterns and I could explore for many hours and enjoy their company.

I have something very similar with words as well which is probably what helped me among other reasons for to to become a writer much later and to make my living uh with words.

Um but uh even though I myself have not used my autism to um pursue any kind of scientific or mathematical career, mathematics and science are certainly central to much of my writings.

Many of my books explore these questions.

The the subject of infinity for example or uh how fractions uh can be understood in different ways intuitively for example.

Um, and in my own family, I'm old enough now in my 40s to have nephews who are a nephew who is 18 and who is going to university and studying engineering and he is on the spectrum as well.

So, he is using his autism in this uh scientific field. >> See, and uh you learned to you you could count before you could read, right? >> Yes.

And you already when you saw like a number you have this uh the shapes and colors that you are describing and this was even before your first epileptic seizure right? >> Yes.

So like what is now the opinion or the uh the current state of u of of the scientific community that your your silence syndrome is it like due to the epilepsy or was inborn?

What what do we know about this right now?

I know that at the beginning scientists made the assumption that it was due to my epilepsy because of course when you have uh epileptic seizures the amount of electricity in the brain it it changes obviously the connectivity between the cells in within the brain.

But more recent research suggests that it's would be more likely something that's simply inbornne part of the experience of being autistic being born on the spectrum on the autistic spectrum.

Uh and unfortunately uh something like half of people born on the spectrum will have early life epileptic seizures as I had in any event.

Um so that's makes it much harder for scientists to really to uh distinguish you know the influence of one or the influence of the other but I certainly from my own perspective imagine that it's simply part of my mind from the time I was born >> and what about the the senesthesia what what do they say about that like is it like due to the autism or like both the autism and the syndrome. >> Synesthesia is an interesting neurological phenomenon because it it is more frequent among people who are on the spectrum and at the same time it's not in it's not specific to autism.

There are people who have uh sesthetic experiences.

So they might experience music with colors.

They might they might taste words.

They might um see numbers or words as I do in colors and textures and so on um and not necessarily be autistic at all or any way neurody divergent.

So it's not dependent on the spectrum um but it's certainly something that can be favor that can be uh more common among people on the spectrum.

There are different theories and one theory that I find interesting is the idea that sesthesia is due to extra connectivity between different parts of the brain.

So most people what we would call neurotypical people their brains um limit the amount of information that flows freely simply because uh it can create too much confusion. you know if we are not able to um modulate and have different parts of the brain concentrate on very specific tasks.

So recognizing faces for example or understanding language and within sesthesia certainly within my form of senesthesia uh one explanation would be that these parts of the brain that normally do not communicate freely do and that for that reason when I see a word or a number it's looking at a face a familiar face and I have the same emotions that neurotypical people would have when they see a friend for example a loved So uh according to estimations like there are different estimations but around like 1% of the population is autistic or let's be precise have like a autism spectrum disorder and uh around like 10% of these people have like so-called like splinter skills and if I get it right like the summon syndrome is like the exaggeration of that or the extreme version of that and that is like usually like one in the million so it's like very rare but people like still many people like somehow misuses the words and like somehow identify autistic people like brain men and I know that you are an advocate for autistic people.

So what what could you like tell like if like there's a there's a neurotypical person and how can he better understand neurody divergent people?

Well, it's the purpose of of my writing and for 20 years and the um culmination of those uh years spent dedicating myself to the craft of writing and learning the craft of writing is the uh opportunity now to bring these stories through literature to readers, as many readers as possible in different countries.

Because as much as there's been a lot of progress in recent years, a lot more awareness about autism, a lot more understanding about how diverse autism is, you know, that it affects women as well as men, that it affects people from all kinds of cultures and backgrounds, social and and economic and so on.

Um there's still a long way to go and part of the confusion is that within the media very often there are representations which are kind of like cliches still you know I remember when I was small watching Rainman with Dustin Hoffman who was a wonderful actor um but it's a very um one-dimensional representation of what an autistic person even an autistic surant is like and it's interesting that the person the real life person on whom the character was based, someone that I had the opportunity to meet, Kim Peak, uh many years ago in in in America, was not autistic at all.

In fact, he was born with a part of his brain missing which gave him um great difficulties and also great tenants as well.

But he was not actually autistic.

So it's quite ironic that the most influential uh representation of autin is based on someone who was never autistic himself.

Um another difficulty is when because media wants to um give a positive uh message about autism.

But it's very it can they can go too fast and they can cut away the nuance and the complexity that for example a book uh gives readers.

Um and so they will say you know such and such a person is an autistic genius and it's a lovely word of course it's very flattering and it's very if it brings people to uh read my work for example then that's wonderful but at the same time it it cuts both ways. people who are on the spectrum but do not feel themselves to be in any way geniuses they say well what am I then you know and should we use this word it's a very heavy word in the same way that autism has a lot of baggage and there are some people nowadays who prefer not to use it and to use a word like neurody divergent for example which is a new word which has emerged in the past few years um so these are very difficult questions I don't know there's any one way of settling them because autism is such a complex condition that the the people on the spectrum are very different.

So if you bring even 10 autistic people together, they will have 10 different opinions on everything, which is fine, you know, and it just shows how varied and complex the spectrum is and and uh it's a reflection of how uh complex uh you know, her shared humanity is.

Yeah, I'm going back to the to the senesthesia because u I am a mathematician and I am on the spectrum and I do not have synthesia.

Actually, I'm really bad at with numbers.

So, I I somehow I'm I'm fantasizing about it like if I had sesthesia, I would have enjoyed number theory much more.

So when when I like read that you recited 22,514 digits of pi 11 years ago on pi day, I was like in the same time I was like mortified and uh and very excited because as you described it that you can see a landscape like a very detailed landscape.

So my question is like how far can you see primes?

Which is like the biggest prime you can you can detect? >> Yes.

So as I described in my first book, I have a very special relationship with numbers and yes, it's something that mathematicians do not necessarily have because mathematicians are focused on the abstract and it's a different direction to writers.

So a mathematician will often start from some very um it can be a very specific detail and it might even be something that belongs to the to to the material world, something that they notice uh a pattern in water for example.

And then they will take this higher and higher up the ladder of abstraction until it's something that doesn't belong to the material world at all.

And this is what mathematics makes mathematics so powerful. this ability to uh abstract from a very specific material experience.

Whereas writers uh come from the opposite direction in a way that we will have perhaps uh an emotion uh an intuition.

So something very abstract and from that point we will come down to earth and want to make it as concrete and as specific and as uh material as possible in order to communicate it clearly to our readers.

And um so I regret in the same way that you regret not enjoying number three.

I would have loved to have this ability to move up the ladder of abstraction and uh see what great mathematicians can see.

And one of the mathematicians who is in my this book can tell me a very important mathematician a fields medalist Cedric Villani in France um was able to to you know to to share with me in just this very small way but even this very small way was enough to open my eyes and to the beauty of mathematics and but it's something that I've always tried to uh communicate and that has infused my writing.

So when I was reciting pi, it was both a tribute to all of those years spent playing with numbers and exploring the patterns and at the same time it was something that was artistic and poetic and that I was able to communicate to uh the people who came.

Some of them were mathematicians but a lot of them were members of the public.

In terms of prime numbers, um, I enjoy playing with, particularly as a child.

I mean, I don't have the time nowadays to play with numbers in the same way, but I enjoy playing with numbers a lot.

And so, I would tend to notice that certain numbers were lonely in a way that other numbers were not.

Other numbers were very closely related to other numbers.

And this made me realize that even before I I think I had the concept of prime, what is a prime?

A number that you can only divide by itself and one.

Before I had the concept, I already had the intuition that there were numbers that stood apart and that did not um contribute to the formation of other numbers.

And I went as far as 10 10,000 I think which was the the highest point.

And then gradually after um beginning the process of becoming a writer, spending more and more time with my writing and lecturing and traveling, um my um symptoms became less important and I spent less time uh I guess uh focused on numbers and more time focused on I guess things that are more neurotypical in some ways but not not spec not um exclusive to neurotypical people, so social relationships and so on.

And so nowadays I I I focus much more on my writing and much more my social life than on the the person that I was talking about in my first book because that book was written 20 years ago and was focused on the time of my life when I was a child.

So you're going back even longer.

So even 40 years ago now and so I've made a huge amount of um progress I guess which is due a lot of it to the love and support that I've had for many years from my family and friends and and more recently from my readers as well who have encouraged me in my writing.

Um but yes numbers and prime numbers they remain something that are that are special to me and will always be special to me.

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Gyakori kérdések erről az epizódról: „Daniel Tammet: Más színű a valószínű magyarul, mint angolul? // Futurotheca 05.”

Miről szól ez az epizód: „Daniel Tammet: Más színű a valószínű magyarul, mint angolul? // Futurotheca 05.”?

A Könyves Magazin Futurotheca podcastjának vendége Daniel Tammet brit számzseni, akit Keszthelyi Gabriella kérdezett. Beszélgetésük során szó esett a szinesztéziáról és annak hatásairól a számokról és szavakról való gondolkodásra, Tammet új könyvéről, a Kilenc elme című… Az epizód a Könyves Magazin című magyar podcast egyik adása, megjelenés: 2026. 02. 09..

Kik szerepelnek vagy kiket említenek ebben az epizódban: „Daniel Tammet: Más színű a valószínű magyarul, mint angolul? // Futurotheca 05.”?

Az epizódban a következő nevek szerepelnek vagy hangzanak el: Keszthelyi Gabriella, Bakó Sára, Bognár Edmond.

Milyen témákat érint ez az epizód: „Daniel Tammet: Más színű a valószínű magyarul, mint angolul? // Futurotheca 05.”?

Fő témái: szinesztézia, számok, szavak, irodalom.

Mikor jelent meg és milyen hosszú ez az epizód: „Daniel Tammet: Más színű a valószínű magyarul, mint angolul? // Futurotheca 05.”?

Megjelenés: 2026. 02. 09.. Hossz: 24 perc. Az epizód a Podiverzumon hallgatható meg: https://podiverzum.hu/podcast/konyves-magazin/daniel-tammet-mas-szinu-a-valoszinu-magyarul-mint-angolul-futurotheca-05

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