A terrific night and a full house! Yōko Ogawa’s The Housekeeper and the Professor was a lovely success at the Stanford Humanities Center last week, and we’re very glad so many of you could join us, virtually and in person.

A recap of the 2003 novel: A brilliant math professor has a peculiar problem. Ever since a traumatic head injury in a car accident in 1975, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. His brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes. An astute young housekeeper is hired to care for him. Her 10-year-old son becomes intrigued by the mysteries of math and befriends him. And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. The Professor’s mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the housekeeper and her young son.

Listen to the Stanford discussion on September 16, 2025 here, watch the youtube video below. And find out why the rare date of our event 9/16/25 represents a Pythagorian triple over at National Public Radio here.

Or watch the YouTube video above..