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PODCAST

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

science life sciences

All Episodes

15:15

Audio Edition: A New, Chemical View of Ecosystems

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/09/25

Rare and powerful compounds, known as keystone molecules, can build a web of invisible interactions among species.The story A New, Chemical View of Ecosystems first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

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24:08

AI's Dark Side Is Only a Nudge Away

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/09/23

In order to trust machines with important jobs, we need a high level of confidence that they share our values and goals. Recent work shows that this “alignment” can be brittle, superficial, even unstable. In one study, a few training adjustments led a popular chatbot to recommend murder. On this episode, contributing writer Stephen Ornes tells host Samir Patel about what this research reveals.Audio coda from The National Archives and Records Administration.

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24:57

How We Came To Know Earth

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/09/16

For most of us, the word “climate” immediately generates thoughts of melting ice, rising seas, wildfires and gathering storms. However, in the course of working to understand this pressing challenge, scientists have revealed so much more: A fundamental understanding of how Earth’s climate works. Quanta recently published a nine-story series that investigates this basic science. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, senior editor Hannah Waters joins editor in chief Samir Patel to discuss

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11:03

Audio Edition: ‘Once in a Century’ Proof Settles...

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/09/11

The deceptively simple Kakeya conjecture has bedeviled mathematicians for 50 years. A new proof of the conjecture in three dimensions illuminates a whole crop of related problems.The story ‘Once in a Century’ Proof Settles Math’s Kakeya Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

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21:05

How a 17-Year-Old Solved a Major Math Mystery

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/09/09

In the field of harmonic analysis, there’s a constellation of questions about how the energy of a wave concentrates.Earlier this year, a 17-year-old high school student named Hannah Cairo solved a 40-year-old mystery about how some of these waves behave, surprising and exciting mathematicians. Cairo has not yet obtained a high school or undergraduate degree, but she recently began a doctoral program at the University of Maryland to continue her already impressive career studying

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27:56

Earth’s Core Appears To Be Leaking Up and Out of...

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/09/02

In science textbooks, Earth looks like a round layer cake. There's a hard line between the liquid metal core and the putty-like rock mantle. But maybe that boundary is a little fuzzier than we previously thought. Strange, continent sized blobs rest on the dividing line. These blobs are leaching material from the Earth’s core, extending arms out into the mantle, and sending core material up and out through magmatic plumes. No one's completely sure how it’s happening. On this week’s episode,

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17:36

Audio Edition: The Road Map to Alien Life Passes...

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/08/28

Astronomers are ready to search for the fingerprints of life in faraway planetary atmospheres. But first, they need to know where to look — and that means figuring out which planets are likely to have atmospheres in the first place.The story How Undergraduate The Road Map to Alien Life Passes Through the ‘Cosmic Shoreline’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

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27:14

A New Quantum Math of Cryptography

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/08/26

We’re living in the golden age of cryptography. Since the 1970s, we've had more confidence in encryption than ever before. But there's a difference between confidence and absolute certainty. And computer scientists care a lot about that difference.The search is always on for better, more secure secrets. But is it possible for digital security to be truly, provably unbreakable? Maybe, with a little help from math and physics. On this week’s episode, host Samir Patel talks with 𝘘𝘶𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢

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28:59

How an Outsider Optimized Sphere-Packing

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/08/19

How many oranges can you fit in a box? Mathematicians are obsessed with perfecting their answer to this question in not just our familiar three-dimensional world, but in higher and higher dimensions beyond it. For several decades, they've made only minimal progress toward finding an optimal solution. Then, this past April, an outsider to the field named Boaz Klartag posted a proof that bested these previous records by a significant margin.In this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir

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09:40

Audio Edition: Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old...

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/08/14

A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible.The story How Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

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29:28

‘It’s a Mess’: A Brain-Bending Trip to Quantum...

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/08/12

As far as we know, quantum mechanics is a universal theory that explains matter and light more or less perfectly. It shows us why atoms don't collapse and why electrons don't spiral into the nucleus of the atom. It explains why glass is clear, why grass is green, why the sky is blue. But no one fully understands how the math of quantum mechanics connects with the reality we live in. One could spend a lifetime getting into the weeds and still have unanswered questions. In honor of quantum

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22:16

How Smell Guides Our Inner World

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/08/05

When some people smell the molecule benzyl acetate, they identify a distinctly banana-y scent. But when others sniff the same compound, they get hints of nail polish remover. How can this be? Smell is a tricky sensory process to pin down. Our perception of scents is wide-ranging and often depends on lived experience. But researchers are building a deeper understanding of the processes underlying our noses’ elusive machinery. In this episode, host Samir Patel and 𝘘𝘶𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢 biology staff

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24:58

Audio Edition: How ‘Event Scripts’ Structure Our...

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/07/31

By screening films in a brain scanner, neuroscientists discovered a rich library of neural scripts — from a trip through an airport to a marriage proposal — that form scaffolds for memories of our experiences.The story How ‘Event Scripts’ Structure Our Personal Memories first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

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29:50

When ChatGPT Broke an Entire Field

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/07/29

The study of natural language processing, or NLP, dates back to the 1940s. It gave Stephen Hawking a voice, Siri a brain and social media companies another way to target us with ads. In less than five years, large language models broke NLP and made it anew.In 2019, Quanta reported on a then-groundbreaking NLP system called BERT without once using the phrase “large language model.” A mere five and a half years later, LLMs are everywhere, igniting discovery, disruption and debate in whatever

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27:50

Is Mathematics Mostly Chaos or Mostly Order?

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/07/22

As weird as it sounds, infinity comes in many shapes and sizes. And attempting to quantify it is sort of like a dog chasing its own tail. Or like infinities chasing infinities infinite numbers of times. But some mathematicians are obsessed with the quest.In this episode, host Samir Patel and 𝘘𝘶𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢 math editor Jordana Cepelewicz probe the bizarre edges of the mathematical universe, a realm *almost* impossible to put into words. This topic was covered by Greg Barber in a recent story

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17:24

Audio Edition: After 20 Years, Math Couple Solves...

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/07/17

Britta Späth has dedicated her career to proving a single, central conjecture. She’s finally succeeded, alongside her partner, Marc Cabanes.The story After 20 Years, Math Couple Solves Major Group Theory Problem first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

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20:46

When Did Nature Burst Into Vivid Color?

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/07/15

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

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29:16

Is Gravity Just Rising Entropy?

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/07/08

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

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07:48

Audio Edition: How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized...

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/07/03

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.

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24:40

How Amateurs Solved a Major Computer Science Puzzle

The Quanta Podcast ·

2025/07/01

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

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