“Why do we live in a world, where we have this abstract thing called math built with symbols and language that come into our mind, and we put it in this thing called a computer, and out comes this amazing picture with infinite unpredicted detail. Did that need to happen?”

Alicia Downard did her undergrad and masters in geophysics, and works for Chevron. I met her at a party that was playing a video of a deep zoom into the Mandelbrot set fractal, and we eventually worked together to write a program to make such images.

We talk about the wonder of nature and math that is the Mandelbrot set. Alicia Downard describes how fractals came into her life and how she’d sometimes see one in her visual field, and I try to explain how, to me, the Mandelbrot set is a spiritual doorway into the mysterious heart of the universe.