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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Ecotypes Make the Idea of a Species Even Fuzzier
How do you define a species? The question has been controversial since the days of Darwin. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel spe...
What Actually Causes Lightning?
Thunderstorms have captivated humanity for millennia, and yet their inner workings remain deeply mysterious. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, gu...
Audio Edition: Astrophysicists Find No ‘Hair’ on Black Holes
According to Einstein’s theory of gravity, black holes have only a small handful of distinguishing characteristics. Quantum theory implies they may ha...
The AI Revolution in Math Has Arrived
In 2026, shock at AI’s growing mathematical abilities turned into something more like wonder — and concern. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, hos...
Ice Is Way More Complex Than It Seems
Over the past decade, computer simulations have predicted tens of thousands of possible forms of ice. Though uncommon on our planet, exotic ice may ex...
Audio Edition: How Distillation Makes AI Models Smaller and Cheaper
Fundamental technique lets researchers use a big, expensive “teacher” model to train a “student” model for less.
The story How Distillation Make...
Our Immune Systems Are Full of Ancient Weapons
Billions of years ago, battles between bacteria and viruses wrote the rulebook for how hosts and pathogens behave. Today, our immune system follows su...
What Can We Gain by Losing Infinity?
Most mathematicians take the notion of infinity for granted — it’s deeply rooted in math’s most fundamental assumptions. But a small group of research...
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...