How the Brain Compresses Our Noisy World
Sep 01, 2026
If you are well rested and full, your brain tells you that a bruised overripe apple is a piece of subpar fruit to be passed over. However, if you are exhausted and hungry, an overripe apple is…
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.)
PodSkip has analyzed 9 episodes of The Quanta Podcast, averaging 1.8 ads per episode (6% of runtime).
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Audio Edition: A Cell So Minimal That It Challenges Definitions of Life
Aug 27, 2026
The newly described microbe represents a world of parasitic, intercellular biodiversity only beginning to be revealed by genome sequencing.
The article A Cell So Minimal That It Challenges…
Picking Teams With the Math of Imbalance
Aug 25, 2026
Combinatorial discrepancy theory is a branch of mathematics concerned with balance. If you’re making two teams — sports, trivia, you name it — how can you make sure that they’re perfectly balanced…
What Makes a Fluid a Fluid?
Aug 18, 2026
The Navier-Stokes equations are enormously successful at predicting how fluids flow and swirl. But they fail to account for the microscopic bits that make up matter. But now math based on symmetries…
End credits and show info
Audio Edition: New Proofs Probe Soap-Film Singularities
Aug 13, 2026
Mathematicians have broken through a long-standing barrier in the study of “minimizing surfaces,” which play an important role in both math and physics.
The article New Proofs Probe Soap-Film…
Self-promo – Joy of Why podcast, End credits/self-promo
Is AI Reasoning Right for the Wrong Reasons?
Aug 11, 2026
Reasoning comes in many technically defined forms, but the basic procedure is easily recognizable: arriving at a sound conclusion by linking together intermediate steps that logically follow from…
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Why Am I Left-Handed?
Aug 04, 2026
Why are only 10% of people left-handed? Geneticists, developmental biologists, neuroscientists, and evolutionary biologists have all sought explanations, resulting in an astronomical amount of…
End credits and show info
Audio Edition: Old ‘Ghost’ Theory of Quantum Gravity Makes a Comeback
Jul 30, 2026
Has the secret to understanding gravity been hiding in plain sight for nearly 50 years?
The article Old ‘Ghost’ Theory of Quantum Gravity Makes a Comeback first appeared on Quanta Magazine.
Cross-promo The Joy of Why, End credits
A Dark Dimension Could Link Two of the Universe’s Great Unknowns
Jul 28, 2026
Generally, dark energy and dark matter are regarded as separate entities, but recent astronomical observations have spurred scientists to look further into a less widespread idea — that the two are…
Cross-promo The Joy of Why, End credits
Is Life Just Different?
Jul 21, 2026
There’s no scientific consensus about what makes living things so different from inorganic material. Some scientists cite replication or metabolism. Others have another answer: Living organisms are…
Cross-promo The Joy of Why, End credits
Audio Edition: ‘World Models,’ an Old Idea in AI, Mount a Comeback
Jul 16, 2026
You’re carrying around in your head a model of how the world works. Will AI systems need to do the same?
The article ‘World Models,’ an Old Idea in AI, Mount a Comeback first appeared on Quanta…
Cross-promo The Joy of Why
How Many Shuffles Do You Really Need to Randomize Your Deck?
Jul 14, 2026
In 1992, mathematicians Dave Bayer and Persi Diaconis proved that seven riffle shuffles are enough to shuffle a deck of cards — but only if you can cut your deck with precision. Decades later, a new…
Cross-promo The Joy of Why, End credits
Will We Ever Be Able To Forecast Volcanic Eruptions Like Weather?
Jul 07, 2026
Volcano forecasting can save countless lives. But most of the time warnings are more like educated guesses. How close are we to forecasting volcano behavior the way we forecast the weather? On this…
Audio Edition: Tiny Tubes Reveal Clues to the Evolution of Complex Life
Jul 02, 2026
Scientists have identified tubulin structures in primitive Asgard archea that may have been the precursor of our own cellular skeletons.
The article Tiny Tubes Reveal Clues to the Evolution of…
Are Memories Transferable — or Edible?
Jun 30, 2026
In the 60s, an eccentric behavioral psychologist pureed a bunch of planarian worms and fed them to other ones. For years after, he claimed that the cannibal worms learned the ground-up worms’…
How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?
Jun 23, 2026
How many pieces are there in the Standard Model of particle physics? 17, 30, 37, 61, 118? Or is the true answer much larger — and not even an integer? It depends on your taste for complexity — and…
Audio Edition: What Is the Fourier Transform?
Jun 18, 2026
Amid the chaos of revolutionary France, one man’s mathematical obsession gave way to a calculation that now underpins much of mathematics and physics. The calculation, called the Fourier transform…
The 'Truth Machine' That Is Changing Math
Jun 16, 2026
The groundbreaking proof assistant Lean acts as a sort of automatic quality control. It’s gaining ground in the math world — in part because it can interact with AI to open new avenues of inquiry…
Ecotypes Make the Idea of a Species Even Fuzzier
Jun 09, 2026
How do you define a species? The question has been controversial since the days of Darwin. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with writer Marlowe Starling about how recent…
What Actually Causes Lightning?
Jun 02, 2026
Thunderstorms have captivated humanity for millennia, and yet their inner workings remain deeply mysterious. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, guest host and Quanta senior editor Hannah Waters…
Audio Edition: Astrophysicists Find No ‘Hair’ on Black Holes
May 28, 2026
According to Einstein’s theory of gravity, black holes have only a small handful of distinguishing characteristics. Quantum theory implies they may have more. Now an experimental search finds that…
The AI Revolution in Math Has Arrived
May 26, 2026
In 2026, shock at AI’s growing mathematical abilities turned into something more like wonder — and concern. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with writer Konstantin…
Ice Is Way More Complex Than It Seems
May 19, 2026
Over the past decade, computer simulations have predicted tens of thousands of possible forms of ice. Though uncommon on our planet, exotic ice may exist in off-Earth environments, from cold and…
Audio Edition: How Distillation Makes AI Models Smaller and Cheaper
May 14, 2026
Fundamental technique lets researchers use a big, expensive “teacher” model to train a “student” model for less.
The story How Distillation Makes AI Models Smaller and Cheaper first appeared on…
Our Immune Systems Are Full of Ancient Weapons
May 12, 2026
Billions of years ago, battles between bacteria and viruses wrote the rulebook for how hosts and pathogens behave. Today, our immune system follows suit. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host…
What Can We Gain by Losing Infinity?
May 05, 2026
Most mathematicians take the notion of infinity for granted — it’s deeply rooted in math’s most fundamental assumptions. But a small group of researchers hopes to banish infinity completely. On this…
Audio Edition: The Cells That Breathe Two Ways
Apr 30, 2026
In a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park, a microbe does something that life shouldn’t be able to do: It breathes oxygen and sulfur at the same time.
The story The Cells That Breathe Two Ways…
Quantum Mechanics Might Be a Secret Key to Secure Communication
Apr 28, 2026
Together, Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard figured out how to use the laws of quantum physics to keep secret messages safe from eavesdroppers. Their efforts have earned them one of the highest…
Is String Theory Still Our Best Hope?
Apr 21, 2026
Is string theory the one true “theory of everything?” Some physicists swear it’s a fundamental ingredient of nature. Others wish it would just go away. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host…
Audio Edition: New Physics-Inspired Proof Probes the Borders of Disorder
Apr 16, 2026
For decades, mathematicians have struggled to understand matrices that reflect both order and randomness, like those that model semiconductors. A new method could change that.
The story New…