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PODCAST

The Joy of Why

Steven Strogatz, Janna Levin and Quanta Magazine

“The Joy of Why” is a Quanta Magazine podcast about curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge. The mathematician and author Steven Strogatz and the cosmologist and author Janna Levin take turns interviewing leading researchers about the great scientific and mathematical questions of our time. New episodes are released every other Wednesday.Quanta Magazine is a Pulitzer Prize–winning, editorially independent online publication launched and supported by the Simons Foundation to illuminate big

science life sciences

All Episodes

52:14

What Is the Nature of Consciousness?

The Joy of Why ·

2023/05/31

Neuroscience has made progress in deciphering how our brains think and perceive our surroundings, but a central feature of cognition is still deeply mysterious: namely, that many of our perceptions and thoughts are accompanied by the subjective experience of having them. Consciousness, the name we give to that experience, can’t yet be explained — but science is at least beginning to understand it. In this episode, the consciousness researcher Anil Seth and host Steven Strogatz discuss why our

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48:49

Are There Reasons to Believe in a Multiverse?

The Joy of Why ·

2023/05/17

By definition, the universe seems like it should be the totality of everything that exists. Yet a variety of arguments emerging from cosmology, particle physics and quantum mechanics hint that there could also be unobservable universes beyond our own that follow different laws of nature. While the existence of a multiverse is speculative, for many physicists it represents a plausible explanation for some of the biggest mysteries in science. In this episode, Steven Strogatz explores the idea of a

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36:40

Is Perpetual Motion Possible at the Quantum Level?

The Joy of Why ·

2023/05/04

Perpetual motion machines are impossible, at least in our everyday world. But down at the level of quantum mechanics, the laws of thermodynamics don’t always apply in quite the same way. In 2021, after years of effort, physicists successfully demonstrated the reality of a “time crystal,” a new state of matter that is both stable and ever-changing without any input of energy. In this episode, Steven Strogatz discusses time crystals and their significance with the theoretical physicist Vedika Khemani

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46:11

How Can Some Infinities Be Bigger Than Others?

The Joy of Why ·

2023/04/19

The idea of infinity is probably about as old as numbers themselves, going back to whenever people first realized that they could keep counting forever. But even though we have a sign for infinity and can refer to the concept in casual conversation, infinity remains profoundly mysterious, even to mathematicians. In this episode, Steven Strogatz chats with his fellow mathematician Justin Moore of Cornell University about how one infinity can be bigger than another (and whether we can be sure that

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42:54

What Has the Pandemic Taught Us About Vaccines?

The Joy of Why ·

2023/04/05

Should Covid-19 vaccines be judged by how well they prevent disease or how well they prevent death? Anna Durbin, a public health expert and vaccine researcher, talks with Steven Strogatz about the science behind vaccines.

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49:40

Is There Math Beyond the Equal Sign?

The Joy of Why ·

2023/03/22

Can mathematics handle things that are essentially the same without being exactly equal? Category theorist Eugenia Cheng and host Steven Strogatz discuss the power and pleasures of abstraction.

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45:11

Can We Program Our Cells?

The Joy of Why ·

2023/03/08

Making living cells blink fluorescently like party lights may sound frivolous. But the demonstration that it’s possible could be a step toward someday programming our body’s immune cells to attack cancers more effectively and safely. That’s the promise of synthetic biology. While molecular biologists strip cells down to their component genes and molecules to see how they work, synthetic biologists tinker with cells to get them to perform new feats — and discover new secrets about how life works in

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43:54

How Will the Universe End?

The Joy of Why ·

2023/02/22

“The Joy of Why” is a podcast about curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge from Quanta Magazine. The acclaimed mathematician and author Steven Strogatz interviews leading researchers about the great scientific and mathematical questions of our time.

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2:32

The Joy of Asking About Infinity, Jellyfish and the...

The Joy of Why ·

2023/02/09

As The Joy of Why podcast returns for a second season, producer Polly Stryker and host Steven Strogatz invite listeners to join them and their brilliant new guests on another voyage of discovery.

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45:23

Why and How Do We Dream?

The Joy of Why ·

2022/08/24

Dreams are so personal, subjective and fleeting, they might seem impossible to study directly and with scientific objectivity. But in recent decades, laboratories around the world have developed sophisticated techniques for getting into the minds of people while they are dreaming. In the process, they are learning more about why we need these strange nightly experiences and how our brains generate them. In this episode, Steven Strogatz speaks with sleep researcher Antonio Zadra about how new

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42:04

What Is Quantum Field Theory and Why Is It Incomplete?

The Joy of Why ·

2022/08/10

Quantum field theory may be the most successful scientific theory of all time, predicting experimental results with stunning accuracy and advancing the study of higher dimensional mathematics. Yet, there’s also reason to believe that it is missing something. Steven Strogatz speaks with David Tong, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cambridge, to explore the open questions of this enigmatic theory.“The Joy of Why” is a podcast from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication

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38:25

Why Do We Get Old, and Can Aging Be Reversed?

The Joy of Why ·

2022/07/27

Everybody gets older, but not everyone ages in the same way. For many people, late life includes a deterioration of health brought on by age-related disease. But that’s not true for everyone, and around the world, women typically live longer than men. Why is that? In this episode, Steven Strogatz speaks with Judith Campisi and Dena Dubal, two biomedical researchers who study the causes and outcomes of aging to understand how it works — and what scientists know about postponing or even reversing the

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28:26

How Do Mathematicians Know Their Proofs Are Correct?

The Joy of Why ·

2022/07/13

How can anyone say something with certainty about infinity? What can we really know about the mysterious prime numbers without knowing all of them? Just as scientists need data to assess their hypotheses, mathematicians need evidence to prove or disprove conjectures. But what counts as evidence in the intangible realm of number theory? In this episode, Steven Strogatz speaks with Melanie Matchett Wood, a professor of mathematics at Harvard University, to learn how probability and randomness can help

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32:50

Can Computers Be Mathematicians?

The Joy of Why ·

2022/06/29

How do you teach mathematics to an artificial intelligence? AI has already bested humans at various problem-solving tasks, including games like chess and Go. But before any task can be tackled by a machine, it must be reinterpreted as directions in language that computers can understand. For the last few years, researchers and amateurs all over the world have worked together to translate the essential axioms of mathematics into a programming language called Lean. Armed with this knowledge,

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41:58

What Is Life?

The Joy of Why ·

2022/06/15

Scientists don’t really agree on a definition for life. We may recognize life instinctively most of the time, but any time we try to nail it down with set criteria, some stubborn counterexample spoils the effort. Still, can we really search for life on other worlds, or understand the earliest stages of life on this planet, if we don’t know what to look for? On this episode, Steven Strogatz speaks with Robert Hazen, a mineralogist, astrobiologist and senior staff scientist at the Carnegie

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39:23

How Could Life Evolve From Cyanide?

The Joy of Why ·

2022/06/01

How did life begin on Earth? It’s one of the greatest and most ancient mysteries in all of science — and the clues to solving it are all around us. Biologists have sometimes imagined evolutionary history as a recorded “tape of life” that might turn out differently if it were replayed again and again. In this episode, Steven Strogatz speaks with two researchers inspecting different parts of the tape. First, hear from the Nobel Prize-winning biologist Jack Szostak, who explores how a boiling pool

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49:44

Will the James Webb Space Telescope Reveal Another...

The Joy of Why ·

2022/05/18

The space telescope is one of the most ambitious scientific projects ever undertaken. Marcia Rieke and Nikole Lewis, two of the scientists leading JWST investigations, talk to Steven Strogatz about how it may transform our understanding of the universe. The post Will the James Webb Space Telescope Reveal Another Earth? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

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42:04

Where Do Space, Time and Gravity Come From?

The Joy of Why ·

2022/05/04

Einstein’s description of curved space-time doesn’t easily mesh with a universe made up of quantum wavefunctions. Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll discusses the quest for quantum gravity with host Steven Strogatz. The post Where Do Space, Time and Gravity Come From? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

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40:13

Why Is Inflammation a Dangerous Necessity?

The Joy of Why ·

2022/04/20

The immune system protects us from a full spectrum of pathogens, but without balance, it can end up hurting us over time, too. The immunologist Shruti Naik explains how our defenses can turn on us. The post Why Is Inflammation a Dangerous Necessity? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

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44:15

Untangling Why Knots Are Important

The Joy of Why ·

2022/04/06

Steven Strogatz explores the mysteries of knots with the mathematicians Colin Adams and Lisa Piccirillo. The post Untangling Why Knots Are Important first appeared on Quanta Magazine

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