The Vidak Rajovic Podcast

Vidak Rajovic
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An excuse to annoy the world's experts with silly questions. Long conversations with mathematicians, computer architects, linguists, statisticians, tax-law professors and other experts about how their fields work, what they don’t know, and life, death and meaning. Hosted by Vidak Rajovic. Watch the full video episodes: youtube.com/@VidakRajovic

Episodes

  1. Sep 12

    Tax Law Professor: Is Tax Theft? | Peter Hongler #006

    Peter Hongler is professor of tax law at the University of St. Gallen, and his answer to "is taxation theft?" is: yes, it's coercion. Justified coercion. Is tax inevitable the way language is? Why is there no optimal tax system? Why do Swiss cantons compete on tax and nobody copies the model? Who really pays? Why will the US need a VAT, and why will the global minimum tax probably implode? Plus AI in the legal profession (70% of legal writing already machine-written) and a very funny attempt to dodge the question of death. Video with chapters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIvsubZu_kk Chapters:0:00 In this episode1:58 Who is Peter Hongler?2:52 Is there an optimal tax system?4:50 New tax challenges: digital and demographic11:22 Why Swiss cantons compete on tax16:56 Fiscal transfers: why others don't copy Switzerland19:59 Income tax, VAT, social security: the taxonomy25:16 Who really pays: income vs wealth29:12 Why cutting spending is so hard30:22 Tax competition and tax havens35:34 Levelling the field: the global minimum tax39:58 Why the US walked away from the minimum tax43:17 What would Peter do instead?46:47 Why tax? Peter's path into the field51:04 Framing, elephants and happy families54:19 What's the point of anything?1:00:12 Camus, the absurd and dodging the death question1:03:44 From academia to an AI-native finance startup1:10:22 AI already writes 70% of legal work1:13:07 Legal reasoning and the 95%-benchmarked judge1:17:21 Advice to 20-year-old Peter1:21:16 Should you still study law in the AI age?1:24:11 Superhumans: who benefits from AI?1:25:17 AI grading exams and university policy1:28:37 Volkswagen and the global minimum tax1:32:21 Thugs vs government: taxes as justified coercion1:38:03 Sign-off

  2. Jul 20

    Embedded Systems Researcher: How The Most Complex Machine on Earth (ASML) Is Designed | Andy Pimentel #005

    Andy Pimentel is a computer science professor at the University of Amsterdam, and he designs computers using evolution. The number of ways to build a chip is larger than the number of atoms in the universe, so his field borrows genetic algorithms from nature to search that space. How that actually works, why chips are going 3D, ASML's "most complex machines on Earth", whether aliens would build the same computers we do, and, near the end, passion, mortality and meeting your 20-year-old self. Video with chapters: https://youtu.be/tSAJWSWnpXQ Chapters:0:00 Intro: In this episode1:48 Who is Andy Pimentel?2:58 Meeting his first computer, the Commodore 6410:21 Building a working computer out of wires14:36 From underachiever to obsessed overachiever20:25 Why computer chips are going 3D27:21 Chiplets and the parts you can't swap31:53 A design space bigger than the galaxy38:19 Borrowing evolution to design better hardware44:48 Chasing a workload that changes every day50:05 Would aliens build the same computers?56:53 How deep should a programmer really understand?1:01:48 Are we scaring students away from coding?1:06:21 How AI is quietly breaking peer review1:13:06 A field moving too fast to follow1:20:47 The moment generative AI blew his mind1:25:16 One idea hidden inside a thousand others1:34:22 Why the Dutch excel, and finding your passion1:43:35 Useful useless knowledge and the funding trap1:50:36 Building the most complex machines on Earth1:59:06 Facing mortality and meeting 20-year-old Andy

  3. Jun 30

    Mathematical Statistician: What is Probability, Really? | Susanne Ditlevsen #004

    Susanne Ditlevsen was a touring professional actress in her 20s before pivoting completely to mathematics and statistics; she is now president of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences. Is the universe random or determined? What is probability, really? What makes a question scientific, why do ideas come when you let go, what do noisy neurons and flocking birds have in common, and how do you become a mathematician in your 30s? Video with chapters: https://youtu.be/bbc-wWng8t8 Chapters:0:00 Intro: the actress who became a mathematician3:46 Is the universe random or determined?6:36 What is probability, really?18:40 What makes a question "scientific"?29:35 Basic research & the Institute for Advanced Study39:30 Disruption vs. incremental work (the chip analogy)43:47 Science, curiosity & being a "whole person"48:17 School, structure & the value of hard work53:07 Why ideas come when you let go (the bike)58:52 From actress in Spain to mathematician1:04:16 Noisy neurons, flocking birds & emergence1:14:05 Stochastic resonance & "all models are wrong"1:23:21 Does language shape thought? (a Spanish detour)1:28:17 Math as its own language & how to teach it1:34:37 The beauty of math: proofs, axioms & √21:41:56 Math, statistics & the Platonic realm1:51:30 Becoming a mathematician in your 30s2:01:29 Existential crises & trusting her instinct2:08:05 Meaning, mortality & not fearing death2:16:36 Aging, energy & advice to her younger self

  4. May 14

    Leading Computer Architect: Why Computers Stopped Getting Faster | Per Stenström #003

    Per Stenström is one of Europe's most distinguished computer architects — a professor at Chalmers University, a pioneer of cache coherence protocols, and the founder of Zero Point Technologies, a company built on his breakthroughs in fast memory compression. But this conversation is about much more than computer architecture. We trace the bottlenecks of computing from the 1970s to today (single-instruction CPUs, RISC, caches, prefetching, von Neumann bottleneck, processing in memory), but also wander into music, mortality, the role of intuition in research, the experience of solving a problem in a dream, why developing people may be the most lasting thing a scientist does. 00:00 Cold open 03:47 Per's first encounter with a computer 05:30 From physics and math to engineering 08:42 Building his first computer 10:51 Why the basic computer architecture hasn't really changed 11:30 What made him uniquely fascinated by computers 14:13 The PhD thesis his advisor didn't want him to write 15:18 Cache coherence, explained with a whiteboard in a corridor 21:11 Getting "intellectually in love" with a problem 22:08 Why value and meaning drive his choice of research 27:09 Would Per still do this work in a perfect utopia? 28:50 Music, drums, and his other lifelong love 33:55 His father's high school organ exam gamble 36:46 The Beatles at Royal Albert Hall and getting his first drum kit 38:13 Is curiosity the default state of being human? 41:48 One lifetime, infinite knowledge — how do you cope? 45:13 Back to hardware: a history of computer bottlenecks 51:50 Breaking the CPU bottleneck — RISC at Stanford and Berkeley 56:35 The memory wall and the birth of the cache 59:40 How hardware learned to predict the future (prefetching) 1:04:01 Scaling cache coherence to hundreds of processors 1:07:27 Why computer architecture lives between academia and industry 1:09:55 From synthetic speech to memory compression 1:15:54 The bedtime fairy tale that sparked a research breakthrough 1:18:13 Founding Zero Point Technologies with his PhD student 1:19:30 How memory compression actually works in hardware 1:22:55 Becoming an entrepreneur after two decades as a professor 1:26:30 Why developing people is the most lasting value of his work 1:30:00 The Angelos story: jumping on a box 1:35:50 The lecturer as an entertainer 1:38:02 Good teachers are good researchers 1:41:30 Is the von Neumann architecture in "the book"? 1:44:30 We're at the physical limit of semiconductors 1:46:55 Quantum computing and what it can (and can't) do 1:51:00 Processing in memory as the next frontier 1:54:00 The cautionary tale of phase change memory 1:56:30 The hidden risk of betting your career on a research problem 1:58:30 Where scientific intuition comes from 2:02:35 When intuition fails: the devil is in the details 2:07:24 Per's daily process for going deep 2:08:42 The night he solved a problem in a dream 2:11:50 Cancer, mortality, and gratitude for every day 2:17:46 What 20-year-old Per would ask his older self 2:20:08 The grandmother who told him to believe in himself 2:22:30 Closing thoughts Video with chapters: Watch on YouTube

  5. Feb 19

    Pure Mathematician: There's a Perfect World Most People Will Never See | Kevin Buzzard #002

    What if the universe you live in is just a noisy approximation of something perfect? Prof. Kevin Buzzard, pure mathematician at Imperial College London, has spent his life exploring a world most people will never see: the platonic realm, where perfect circles have zero thickness and every truth is absolute. Why Bertrand Russell chose mathematics over death, what Darwin meant when he said mathematicians have "a sixth sense", why negative numbers don't technically exist but changed everything, what it feels like to stand at the edge of human knowledge, how Kevin's autism shaped his relationship with math, why he has no fear of death, and what happens when you point AI at real mathematical research. Video with chapters: https://youtu.be/3cCs0euAbm0 Chapters:00:00 - Introduction: Why Bertrand Russell contemplated suicide (and why math saved him)04:58 - The Platonic Realm: The world of perfect circles and zero thickness06:28 - The "Why" Problem: Math vs. human-invented fields13:23 - Von Neumann's Advice: You don't understand math, you just get used to it18:51 - Darwin’s "Sixth Sense": Why math feels extraterrestrial to outsiders31:40 - The Western vs. Eastern perception of mathematical "talent"47:38 - The Howl of the Boeotians: Why Gauss was afraid to publish57:54 - The Bitterness of Research: Dealing with the "Bottomless Night" of failure01:09:43 - The Aging Brain: Adapting your "game" after 5001:15:12 - The Archimedes Obsession: Drawing diagrams in your own bath oil01:31:05 - Food as Fuel: Kevin’s "Pasta and Red Sauce" Algorithm01:40:58 - Lean & AI: Digitizing mathematics to beat the "Final Boss"02:14:43 - Mortality & Meaning: Why Kevin is at peace with the end

  6. 12/12/2025

    Cognitive Linguist: Can You Erase Thoughts by Erasing Words? | Martin Hilpert #001

    Can you literally remove a person's ability to think of a concept just by deleting the word for it? George Orwell thought so when he created "Newspeak" in 1984. But does modern linguistics agree? We dive into the philosophy and science of language with Martin Hilpert: the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the surprising way Russians perceive the color blue, why humans are biologically "lazy" speakers who treat language like a compression algorithm, why children learn so much faster than adults, and why grammar isn't a set of arbitrary rules but a form of social courtesy. Video with chapters: https://youtu.be/9LabOexYSr4 Chapters:00:00 Orwell's 1984 & The Destruction of Words02:07 A Linguist’s Critique of Orwell02:50 The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Explained04:13 Do Russians See Blue Differently? (Color Perception)09:05 Does Grammar Affect Your Bank Account? (Future Tense Study)15:56 Meaning Beyond Words: Pragmatics & Implication18:08 How Words Change Meaning Over Time ("Since")21:45 Why Do Idioms Exist?25:56 Why Time is a Spatial Concept30:29 How We Actually Learn Languages (Chunking)34:35 The Idiom Principle: Why We Are "Lazy" Speakers40:21 Compression: Why We Shorten Pronouns43:40 Zipf's Law: Frequency vs. Length48:10 The "Bootylicious" Problem: Word Classes & Slang52:57 When Nouns Behave Like Adjectives57:09 Grammar is Not Arbitrary (It's Courtesy)01:02:22 Why Passive Voice Exists (Information Flow)01:10:36 Do All Children Learn Languages at the Same Speed?01:17:30 Memory is Cheap: How Kids Handle Complexity01:30:00 Programming Languages vs. Natural Languages01:35:27 Are Some Languages More "Primitive" Than Others?01:42:25 How Grammar Forces You to Think (Number Systems)01:47:10 "I Have Sleep": Spanish vs. English Concepts01:54:10 Does Grammatical Gender Change How We See Objects?01:58:22 The Universal Features Every Language Needs02:04:59 Can We Engineer a Perfect Language?02:09:50 How Language Evolves: From Villages to Cities02:14:58 Why Languages Don't Just Disintegrate02:18:07 Can We Change Society by Changing Language?02:24:47 From Musician to Linguist: Martin's Journey02:29:12 The Story of Bill Labov (Late Bloomers)02:35:36 Advice to My Younger Self02:43:47 Martin's Thoughts on Mortality

  • 6 Episodes

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An excuse to annoy the world's experts with silly questions. Long conversations with mathematicians, computer architects, linguists, statisticians, tax-law professors and other experts about how their fields work, what they don’t know, and life, death and meaning. Hosted by Vidak Rajovic. Watch the full video episodes: youtube.com/@VidakRajovic

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