The Quanta Podcast
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The Quanta Podcast
Exploring the distant universe, the insides of cells, the abstractions of math, the complexity of information itself, and much more, The Quanta Podcast is a tour of the frontier between the known and the unknown. In each episode, Quanta Magazine Editor-in-Chief Samir Patel speaks with the minds behi...
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336 epizód
Audio Edition: The Cells That Breathe Two Ways
In a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park, a microbe does something that life shouldn’t be able to do: It breathes oxygen and sulfur at the same ti...
Quantum Mechanics Might Be a Secret Key to Secure Communication
Together, Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard figured out how to use the laws of quantum physics to keep secret messages safe from eavesdroppers. Thei...
Is String Theory Still Our Best Hope?
Is string theory the one true “theory of everything?” Some physicists swear it’s a fundamental ingredient of nature. Others wish it would just go away...
Audio Edition: New Physics-Inspired Proof Probes the Borders of Disorder
For decades, mathematicians have struggled to understand matrices that reflect both order and randomness, like those that model semiconductors. A new...
One of Nature’s Most Complex Molecular Machines
At the center of little holes in cell nuclei is a mystery. Here, clumps of proteins wiggle disordered tails around like seaweed. They drive a molecula...
The Fundamental Tension at the Heart of Math
We tend to think of math as all about logic and rigor. But what “rigor” actually means has been shaken up quite a few times over the past few centurie...
Audio Edition: AI Comes Up With Bizarre Physics Experiments. But They Work.
Artificial intelligence software is designing novel experimental protocols that improve upon the work of human physicists, although the humans are sti...
Why Do Humanoid Robots Still Struggle With the Small Stuff?
Humanoid robots can run, crawl, and sort objects in flashy demos. So why can’t they reliably climb stairs or open doors? On this episode of The Quanta...
Uniting a Century of Digital and Analog Astronomy
To better understand our cosmos, some astronomers and astrophysicists go old school. Preserved beautifully on a hundred years of glass plate photograp...
Audio Edition: Researchers Uncover Hidden Ingredients Behind AI Creativity
Image generators are designed to mimic their training data, so where does their apparent creativity come from? A recent study suggests that it’s an in...
Astrocytes Might Be in Charge of the Brain
We tend to think of neurons as the sole engine of our thoughts, emotions, and everything in between. For decades, a group of large brain cells called...
The Infinite Heist - Part 2
In 1874, Georg Cantor published one of the most important papers in math’s 4,000-year history. Some ideas in it were stolen. On this episode of The Qu...
Audio Edition: The Ecosystem Dynamics That Can Make or Break an Invasion
By simulating ecological networks with microbes, researchers revealed properties that may make natural communities susceptible to invasion.
The Infinite Heist - Part 1
In 1874, Georg Cantor published one of the most important papers in math’s 4,000-year history. Some ideas in it were stolen. On this episode of The Qu...
Decoding the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics
Parallel universes, mysterious collapses, divided worlds. These are among the interpretations of quantum theory’s relationship with reality. It’s no w...
Audio Edition: Epic Effort to Ground Physics in Math Opens Up the Secrets of Time
By mathematically proving how individual molecules create the complex motion of fluids, three mathematicians have illuminated why time can’t flow in r...
How Animals Build a Sense of Direction
What guides a bat’s internal compass? It’s not the stars in the sky, or the Earth’s magnetic field. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir...
Mathematicians Want To Make Fluid Equations Glitch Out
In reality, water doesn’t glitch out. It can’t instantly change direction or spurt randomly into the sky. But on a purely mathematical level, such thi...
Audio Edition: Matter vs. Force: Why There Are Exactly Two Types of Particles
Every elementary particle falls into one of two categories. Collectivist bosons account for the forces that move us while individualist fermions keep...
Do AI Models Agree On How They Encode Reality?
In the allegory of Plato’s cave, prisoners see the world only through shadows. Extending this metaphor to AI, AI models are the prisoners and the shad...
Is Particle Physics Dead, Dying, or Just Hard?
Particle physics hasn't yet found the new physics needed to resolve its deepest mysteries. It’s hard to know what to think about or look for. But the...
Audio Edition: How Can AI Researchers Save Energy? By Going Backward.
Reversible programs run backward as easily as they run forward, saving energy in theory. After decades of research, they may soon power AI.
The...
Does Dad's Fitness Make Its Way Into Sperm?
We already know that what we eat, drink, and inhale can affect which parts of our DNA are expressed, and which aren’t. But recent research poses a sho...
The Shape That Can’t Pass Through Itself
Imagine you’re holding two equal-size dice. Is it possible to bore a tunnel through one die that’s big enough for the other to slide through? It is —...
Audio Edition: How Much Energy Does It Take To Think?
Studies of neural metabolism reveal our brain’s effort to keep us alive and the evolutionary constraints that sculpted our most complex organ.
T...
AI Filters Will Always Have Holes
Ask ChatGPT how to build a bomb, and it will flatly respond that it “can’t help with that.” But users have long played a cat-and-mouse game to try to...
ICYMI: Birds' Migratory Mitochondria
(This episode was first published in June 2025.)
Changes in the number, shape, efficiency and interconnectedness of organelles in the cells of f...
ICYMI: Is Gravity Just Rising Entropy?
(This episode was first published in July 2025.)
Where does gravity come from? In both general relativity and quantum mechanics, this question...
Audio Edition: The Core of Fermat’s Last Theorem Just Got Superpowered
By extending the scope of the key insight behind Fermat’s Last Theorem, four mathematicians have made great strides toward building a “grand unified t...
Taking the Temperature of Quantum Entanglement
We all know that hot coffee cools down. But quantum mechanics can enable heat to flow the “wrong” way, making hot objects hotter and cold objects cold...
A Simple Way To Measure Knots Has Come Unraveled
In math and science, knots do far more than keep shoes on feet. For more than a century, mathematicians have studied the properties of different knots...
Audio Edition: How a Problem About Pigeons Powers Complexity Theory
When pigeons outnumber pigeonholes, some birds must double up. This obvious statement — and its inverse — have deep connections to many areas of math...
What Happens When Lakes Stop Mixing
Every summer since 1983, scientists at Crater Lake National Park have gathered data about the lake’s famous clarity. This past summer, Quanta contribu...
Game Theory, Algorithms and High Prices
How do sellers decide how to price their goods? Competition should keep prices down, while collusion can rig higher prices (and break the law). On thi...
Why Are Waves So Hard to Grasp? TKTKTKTKT - audio coda
At first glance, studying the math of waves seems like it should be smooth sailing. But the equations that describe even the gentlest rolling waves ar...
Sleep Is Not All or Nothing
Salvador Dalí, Thomas Edison and Edgar Allan Poe all took inspiration from the state between sleep and waking life. On this week’s episode, host Samir...
Audio Edition: A New Proof Smooths Out the Math of Melting
A powerful mathematical technique is used to model melting ice and other phenomena. But it has long been imperiled by certain “nightmare scenarios.” A...
The Mystery of Early Universe’s Little Red Dots
Recently, astrophysicists identified something peculiar: An enormous “naked” black hole with no galaxy in sight. On this week’s episode, host Samir Pa...
A Biography of Earth Across the Age of Animals
Thanks to a delicate interplay between plate tectonics and life, Earth’s thermostat has kept animal life thriving on our planet for half a billion yea...
Audio Edition: ‘Paraparticles’ Would Be a Third Kingdom of Quantum Particle
A new proposal makes the case that paraparticles — a new category of quantum particle — could be created in exotic materials.
The story ‘Parapar...