Kyne Santos was a student at the University of Waterloo when she began her math career – and her drag career.
"I was like Hannah Montana at the time, living a double life, you know, doing my math equations by day and doing the splits in some gay bar by night," she says.
You may know Kyne from the first season of Canada's Drag Race or from TikTok. She makes educational videos about math, science, history and drag under the username @onlinekyne.
Kyne has always had a knack for math. She competed in math contests throughout high school. But it wasn't until she began making her TikTok videos that she saw a connection between math and drag.
"That's when I started really saying, you know, math can be fun and math can be creative," she says. "And why can't math be taught by a drag queen? Why do we have to take it so seriously?"
In her new book Math in Drag, Kyne dives into these connections and explores how, much like drag, math can be mystical, creative, beautiful — and most of all, fun.
Want to hear us cover more math? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
Listen to Short Wave on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.
This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Rebecca and Rachel also checked the facts. Gilly Moon was the audio engineer.
Copyright 2024 NPR
