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The Quanta Podcast

Quanta Magazine

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 behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Quanta specifically covers fundamental research — driven by curiosity, discovery and the overwhelming desire to know why and how. Join us every Tuesday for a stimulating conversation about the biggest ideas and the tiniest details.

(If you've been a fan of the Quanta Science Podcast, it will continue here. You'll see those episodes marked as audio edition episodes every two weeks.)

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40 episodes
weekly
Avg 25 min
English

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Thursday · 29 min
Audio Edition: Amid Life’s Chaos, a Meticulous Mathematician Finds Stability
In a parallel universe, Yu Deng didn’t become a mathematician but instead a professional Go player. Quiet, ambitious, and focused, it was the nearest of misses that set Deng on his path to the 2026 Fields Medal.
Tuesday · length unknown
The Math of Democracy Never Quite Works Out
The French mathematician Nicolas de Condorcet identified a problem with voting in the late 18th century: a logical (and topological) paradox.
October 27 · 25 min
Malaria Parasite Caught in the Act of Breaking and Entering
How does the malaria parasite enter cells without leaving a trace? New imaging technology reveals the disappearing portals that let the deadly protist in.
October 22 · 25 min
Audio Edition: The Quietest Mathematician Has Always Been Worth Listening To
Fields Medalist John Pardon is not particularly prolific. But every proof he’s published has been surprising, spectacular, and groundbreaking.
October 20 · 25 min
'Ghostly' Galaxies and the Mystery of Dark Matter
Is dark matter a physical thing? Three weird galaxies make a strong case.
October 13 · 29 min
How Math Brings Together Classical Chaos, Quantum Mechanics, and Fractals
The uncertainty principle tells us that the more you know about where a quantum particle is, the less you can know about how fast it’s moving, and vice versa. Recently, this rule got a rare upgrade.
October 8 · 24 min
Audio Edition: Sometimes Being First Means Seeing the End Before Anyone Else
Jacob Tsimerman won a Fields Medal this year in part for his proof of the André-Oort conjecture. The honor reflects a career borrowing techniques from one area of math and leveraging them in another to reveal surprising underlying structure.
October 6 · 27 min
Sea Monkeys, Jupiter, and the Mystery of Turbulence
With a simple tweak, scientists can reverse the energy flow of turbulence in a 2D system.
September 29 · 26 min
‘Jumping Genes’ Are More Than Parasitic DNA
“Jumping genes” can cut and paste themselves into new locations in the genome. But they’re more than parasites or genetic junk.
September 24 · 27 min
Audio Edition: For Hong Wang, Living Fully in the Math World Means Threading the Needle
Hong Wang, who proved the three-dimensional Kakeya set conjecture, won the Fields Medal, making her the third woman in the award’s 90-year history to receive math’s highest honor.
September 22 · 33 min
Are the Little Red Dots Actually Black Hole Suns?
Astronomers suspect that two of the mysterious objects from the early universe known as little red dots are giant stars with black holes hidden inside them.
September 15 · 29 min
Four-Color Theorem Is Still a Math Favorite
In the mid-19th century, a brain teaser about map colors quickly turned into an obsession. Today, the hunt is still on for a simpler solution to the deceptively tricky problem.
September 10 · 11 min
Audio Edition: ‘Reverse Mathematics’ Illuminates Why Hard Problems Are Hard
Computer scientists know that certain problems in their field are hard, but proving their difficulty is a hard problem unto itself. A topsy-turvy approach to mathematics has helped show why.
September 8 · 29 min
Does Computer Science Need Computers?
Is computer science about computers? If not, then what is it about?
September 1 · 31 min
How the Brain Compresses Our Noisy World
A process called categorization allows the brain to use past experiences that resemble a new situation to implement actions and behaviors.
August 27 · 16 min
Audio Edition: A Cell So Minimal That It Challenges Definitions of Life
Genome sequencing technology is introducing biologists to a world of quasi-life forms that they’ve never met before.
August 25 · 31 min
Picking Teams With the Math of Imbalance
A recent breakthrough in combinatorial discrepancy theory helps even things out.
August 18 · 36 min
What Makes a Fluid a Fluid?
A strange connection between black holes and quantum soups helped scientists to understand the elusive math behind fluid dynamics.
August 13 · 14 min
Audio Edition: New Proofs Probe Soap-Film Singularities
In 3D, area-minimizing surfaces are smooth, making them widely useful. But in higher dimensions, complicated singularities might form.
August 11 · 38 min
Is AI Reasoning Right for the Wrong Reasons?
Are we at the point where our technology is actually “reasoning,” or should that word still live within its scare quotes?

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