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 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.)
- Update frequency
- every 11 days
- Average duration
- 19 minutes
- Episodes
- 286
- Years Active
- 2015 - 2025
Earth’s Core Appears To Be Leaking Up and Out of Earth’s Surface
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 previo…
00:27:56 |
Tue 02 Sep 2025
Audio Edition: The Road Map to Alien Life Passes Through the ‘Cosmic Shoreline’
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 hav…
00:17:36 |
Thu 28 Aug 2025
A New Quantum Math of Cryptography
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 comp…
00:27:14 |
Tue 26 Aug 2025
How an Outsider Optimized Sphere-Packing
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 …
00:28:59 |
Tue 19 Aug 2025
Audio Edition: Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture
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…
00:09:40 |
Thu 14 Aug 2025
‘It’s a Mess’: A Brain-Bending Trip to Quantum Theory’s 100th Birthday Party
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 …
00:29:28 |
Tue 12 Aug 2025
How Smell Guides Our Inner World
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 i…
00:22:16 |
Tue 05 Aug 2025
Audio Edition: How ‘Event Scripts’ Structure Our Personal Memories
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 ex…
00:24:58 |
Thu 31 Jul 2025
When ChatGPT Broke an Entire Field
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 fiv…
00:29:50 |
Tue 29 Jul 2025
Is Mathematics Mostly Chaos or Mostly Order?
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 tim…
00:27:50 |
Tue 22 Jul 2025
Audio Edition: After 20 Years, Math Couple Solves Major Group Theory Problem
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 …
00:17:24 |
Thu 17 Jul 2025
When Did Nature Burst Into Vivid Color?
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 sophi…
00:20:46 |
Tue 15 Jul 2025
Is Gravity Just Rising Entropy?
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 to…
00:29:16 |
Tue 08 Jul 2025
Audio Edition: How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics
Emmy Noether showed that fundamental physical laws are just a consequence of simple symmetries. A century later, her insights continue to shape physics.
The story How Noether’s Theorem Revolutioni…
00:07:48 |
Thu 03 Jul 2025
How Amateurs Solved a Major Computer Science Puzzle
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…
00:24:40 |
Tue 01 Jul 2025
The Mysterious Math of Turbulence
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, Qu…
00:26:12 |
Tue 24 Jun 2025
Audio Edition: Concept Cells Help Your Brain Abstract Information and Build Memories
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.
The story Conce…
00:19:34 |
Thu 19 Jun 2025
Birds' Migratory Mitochondria
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 Th…
00:19:31 |
Tue 17 Jun 2025
Singularities Are Hard to Kill
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.
This is the fourth episode of…
00:23:38 |
Tue 10 Jun 2025
Audio Edition: Heat Destroys All Order. Except for in This One Special Case.
Heat is supposed to ruin anything it touches. But physicists have shown that an idealized form of magnetism is heatproof.
The story Heat Destroys All Order. Except for in This One Special Case first…
00:08:41 |
Thu 05 Jun 2025
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