
The Quanta Podcast
Science Podcasts
Every Tuesday, editor in chief Samir Patel sits down with writers and editors to discuss our most thought-provoking stories in science and math. Audio editions of Quanta's stories with Susan Valot will appear biweekly on Thursdays.
Location:
United States
Genres:
Science Podcasts
Description:
Every Tuesday, editor in chief Samir Patel sits down with writers and editors to discuss our most thought-provoking stories in science and math. Audio editions of Quanta's stories with Susan Valot will appear biweekly on Thursdays.
Language:
English
Episodes
Audio Edition: After 20 Years, Math Couple Solves Major Group Theory Problem
7/17/2025
Britta Späth has dedicated her career to proving a single, central conjecture. She’s finally succeeded, alongside her partner, Marc Cabanes.
Duration:00:17:23
When Did Nature Burst Into Vivid Color?
7/15/2025
Colorful messages are constantly being exchanged across the natural world, to communicate everything from sexual attraction to self defense. But which came first: these evocative signals or the sophisticated vision needed to see them? In this episode, host Samir Patel speaks with contributing writer Molly Herring about free diving, mantis shrimp, and the challenges of tracking coloration through evolutionary history. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.
Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the minds behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.
Duration:00:20:44
Is Gravity Just Rising Entropy?
7/8/2025
Where does gravity come from? In both general relativity and quantum mechanics, this question is a big problem. One controversial theory proposes that the force arises from the universe’s tendency toward disorder, or entropy. In this episode, host Samir Patel speaks with contributing writer George Musser about the long-shot idea called “entropic gravity,” which Musser covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.
Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the minds behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.
Audio coda provided by Cosmic Perspective.
Duration:00:29:13
Audio Edition: How Noether's Theorem Revolutionized Physics
7/3/2025
Emmy Noether showed that fundamental physical laws are just a consequence of simple symmetries. A century later, her insights continue to shape physics.
“The post How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine.
Duration:00:07:48
How Amateurs Solved a Major Computer Science Puzzle
7/1/2025
The Busy Beaver Challenge, an open online collaboration, started in 2022 to finally solve a major problem in theoretical computer science. Over time, the online community grew to include more than 20 contributors from around the world, most of them without traditional academic credentials. In July 2024, the group announced that they finally solved the puzzle, bringing a conclusion to over 40 years of effort.
On this week’s episode of The Quanta Podcast, computer science staff writer Ben Brubaker explains the tantalizing Busy Beaver puzzle, which he covered in depth last year, in “With Fifth Busy Beaver, Researchers Approach Computation’s Limits.”
Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the minds behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.
Duration:00:24:38
New 'Superdiffusion' Proof Probes the Mysterious Math of Turbulence
6/24/2025
Turbulence is a notoriously difficult phenomenon to study. Mathematicians are now starting to untangle it at its smallest scales.
This is the sixth episode of The Quanta Podcast. In each episode, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the minds behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.
Audio coda provided by Mount Washington Observatory
Duration:00:26:10
Audio Edition: Concept Cells Help Your Brain Abstract Information and Build Memories
6/19/2025
Individual cells in the brain light up for specific ideas. These concept neurons, once known as “Jennifer Aniston cells,” help us think, imagine and remember episodes from our lives.
Duration:00:19:33
'Turbocharged' Mitochondria Power Birds' Epic Migratory Journeys
6/17/2025
Changes in the number, shape, efficiency and interconnectedness of organelles in the cells of flight muscles provide extra energy for birds’ continent-spanning feats.
This is the fifth episode of The Quanta Podcast. In each episode, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the minds behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.
Duration:00:19:29
Singularities in Space-Time Prove Hard to Kill
6/10/2025
Black hole and Big Bang singularities break our best theory of gravity. A trilogy of theorems hints that physicists must go to the ends of space and time to find a fix.
Duration:00:23:38
Audio Edition: Heat Destroys All Order. Except for in This One Special Case.
6/5/2025
Heat is supposed to ruin anything it touches. But physicists have shown that an idealized form of magnetism is heatproof.
Duration:00:08:41
In Computers, Memory Is More Useful Than Time
6/3/2025
One computer scientist’s “stunning” proof is the first progress in 50 years on one of the most famous questions in computer science.
This is the third episode of our new weekly series The Quanta Podcast, hosted by Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel. This week’s guest is Ben Brubaker; he recently published “For Algorithms, a Little Memory Outweighs a Lot of Time.”
(If you’ve been a fan of Quanta Science Podcast, it will continue as ‘audio edition episodes’ in this same feed every other week.)
Historical Recording © Jack Copeland and Jason Long
Duration:00:19:15
Math and Beauty in the Age of AI
5/27/2025
Mathematicians have started to prepare for a profound shift in what it means to do math.
This is the second episode of our new weekly series The Quanta Podcast, hosted by Quanta magazine Editor-in-Chief Samir Patel. This week’s guest is Jordana Cepelewicz; she recently published “Mathematical Beauty, Truth and Proof in the Age of AI” for Quanta’s AI special package.
(If you’ve been a fan of Quanta Science Podcast, it will continue as ‘audio edition episodes’ in this same feed every other week.)
Duration:00:20:44
Audio Edition: Can AI Models Show Us How People Learn? Impossible Languages Point a Way.
5/22/2025
Certain grammatical rules never appear in any known language. By constructing artificial languages that have these rules, linguists can use neural networks to explore how people learn.
Duration:00:18:43
AI Is Nothing Like a Brain, and That's OK
5/20/2025
The brain’s astounding cellular diversity and networked complexity could show how to make AI better.
Duration:00:18:47
Introducing The Quanta Podcast
5/13/2025
he Quanta Podcast is your weekly dispatch from the frontiers of science and mathematics. In each episode, editor in chief Samir Patel will talk to the writers and editors behind our most popular, interesting and thought-provoking stories.
The first episode of The Quanta Podcast will be live on May 20. In this trailer episode, Patel talks to executive editor Michael Moyer about what Quanta covers, how it has changed over time and our recent special series on “Science, Promise and Peril in the Age of AI.”
Join us every Tuesday for stimulating conversations and insights about the biggest ideas in basic science and mathematics.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app, or you can stream it from Quanta.
Duration:00:12:23
Quantum Computers Cross Critical Error Threshold
5/8/2025
In a first, researchers have shown that adding more “qubits” to a quantum computer can make it more resilient. It’s an essential step on the long road to practical applications. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Clover 3” by Vibe Mountain.
Duration:00:19:08
Fish Have a Brain Microbiome. Could Humans Have One Too?
4/24/2025
The discovery that other vertebrates have healthy, microbial brains is fueling the still controversial possibility that we might have them as well.
Duration:00:15:58
Exotic New Superconductors Delight and Confound
4/10/2025
Three new species of superconductivity were spotted this year, illustrating the myriad ways electrons can join together to form a frictionless quantum soup.
Duration:00:17:22
It Might Be Possible to Detect Gravitons After All
3/27/2025
A new experimental proposal suggests detecting a particle of gravity is far easier than anyone imagined. Now physicists are debating what it would really prove.
Duration:00:20:28
The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology
2/19/2025
Invisibly to us, insects and other tiny creatures use static electricity to travel, avoid predators, collect pollen and more. New experiments explore how evolution may have influenced this phenomenon.
Duration:00:24:08