A noted reporter and charming woman of accomplishment, Dr. Nasar adds details and new bits of information to the fascinating biography, "A Beautiful Mind”. Personal perspectives and insight on how she researched the story are well worth a listen. John Nash's wife, Alysha, receives another helping of credit (which she appears to be exceedingly deserving of) for providing her husband with the opportunity to salvage the third stage of his life. Others with severe mental illnesses may possess the potential for a future return to reality but few are given nonjudgmental refuge for the decades it takes to get there. A particularly poignant character in the Nash’s life story is their 40 year old son -- a man who has experienced both his father’s gifts and his demons.

In this amazing podcast, Dr. Sylvia Nasar is introduced at one of the applied mathematics curriculum in MIT.

Dr. Nasar has a doctorate in economics and became a journalist at the age of 35, working for Fortune amongst others. She had majored in literature earlier. She tells that she discovered the story of John Nash almost a decade ago and how his biography by her is a drama of the mystery of the human mind, a love story, and an exploration of the tenderness, joys, and fears of the human heart. She makes the conversation light by allowing the students to sit on the reserved seats. Nasar begins telling about how Dr. Nash invented a topological game which was later marketed as Hex by someone else, showing mathematically that the one who makes the first move always has a chance to win. She goes on to tell how in real life the outcome is not always determined by the one making the 1st move. She also tells how she literature has stories of meteoric rise and catastrophic falls, but never a story of a third act, another meteoric rise!
A must listen!

The narration and audio quality are excellent.