Bitcoin is a digital currency that isn't regulated by any kind of central authority. The structure which allows this decentralisation is called blockchain. But how, and how well, does it work?
Mathematicians like to think that their field transcends politics, but as this brief history of the International Congress of Mathematicians shows, international mathematics has always been coloured by world events.
A quick introduction to transcendental numbers, a famous problem which relates to them, and how the person who solved it became a victim of political tensions.