A little bit about word equations

The problem of word equations is a rather storied one, including frustrated connections to Hilbert's Tenth problem.  Word equations relate expressions consisting of concatenations of variables and constant symbols.  An example is a X = X a, where X is a variable and a is a constant.  A solution maps variables to strings of constant symbols making the two sides identical.  In this episode, I discuss the problem a little, and what I learned so far about how it is solved.