“I know you’re trying to skirt around it,” says Benjamín Labatut when I put to him that his books concern people of unworldly intelligence working on problems that are maximally deep, “but the best way to sum it up is: ‘Why am I interested in mad scientists?’” Fair play. There’s no getting away from it: that’s exactly what his richly satisfying, deeply researched books are about.'

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/13/people-say-my-book-gave-them-a-panic-attack-when-we-cease-to-understand-the-world-author-benjamin-labatut