The Quanta Podcast

Weekly conversations on fundamental research in science and mathematics AI summary

Quanta Magazine Visit website › Science · EN · 377 episodes · latest 2026-11-10

Rank 3526

0 upvotes, 0 downvotes

Embed a widget with this podcast’s standing on your website

What it is about

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.)

Publisher’s own description, taken unchanged from the podcast feed.
Quanta Magazine

Listen

Available at these services — the RSS feed works in any podcast app.

Apple Podcasts

Latest episodes

Do AI Models Know What They're Thinking About?

2026-11-10 · 33 min

After over a century of studying introspection in humans and animals, researchers are beginning to explore the phenomenon in unlikely new subjects: large language models. These systems, which are based on mathematical…
Audio Edition: Amid Life’s Chaos, a Meticulous Mathematician Finds Stability

2026-11-05 · 29 min

Before he won a Fields Medal for his pioneering work balancing randomness and order, Yu Deng had to achieve equilibrium in his own life. The article Amid Life’s Chaos, a Meticulous Mathematician Finds Stability first…
The Math of Democracy Never Quite Works Out

2026-11-03

The French mathematician Nicolas de Condorcet was a passionate believer in democracy, but he also discovered a frustrating paradox within it: A majority can sometimes vote itself into a logical loop. Mathematicians have…
Malaria Parasite Caught in the Act of Breaking and Entering

2026-10-27 · 25 min

To invade red blood cells, malaria parasites create a temporary molecular portal that lets them slip into the cell — and then the door disappears behind it, gone in 60 seconds. Researchers have finally detailed the…
Audio Edition: The Quietest Mathematician Has Always Been Worth Listening To

2026-10-22 · 25 min

John Pardon sees connections between different areas of math that others don’t. For that vision, he’s now been awarded a Fields Medal. The article The Quietest Mathematician Has Always Been Worth Listening To first…
'Ghostly' Galaxies and the Mystery of Dark Matter

2026-10-20 · 26 min

In 2018, using the Keck Observatory in Hawaiʻi, astronomers discovered the first known dark matter-deficient galaxy, DF2. It’s about the same size as the Milky Way, but way dimmer, with 200 times fewer stars. Since…
How Math Brings Together Classical Chaos, Quantum Mechanics, and Fractals

2026-10-13 · 29 min

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. In 2023, graduate student Alex Cohen stunned the math world…
Audio Edition: Sometimes Being First Means Seeing the End Before Anyone Else

2026-10-08 · 25 min

Determination and effort propelled Jacob Tsimerman to the top of the math world. But now that he’s won a Fields Medal, he worries that the field is in jeopardy. The article Sometimes Being First Means Seeing the End…
Sea Monkeys, Jupiter, and the Mystery of Turbulence

2026-10-06 · 28 min

Turbulence is all around us: bumping our planes, roiling our rivers, swirling milk into our coffee. These systems quickly become extremely chaotic and complex. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel…
‘Jumping Genes’ Are More Than Parasitic DNA

2026-09-29 · 27 min

You might imagine that the DNA in your cells has a simple history. But that’s not the entire story. Nearly half of your genome is a wild drama, thanks to a genetic material called transposons that can clip itself out of…

Episode details from the publisher’s feed. Playback happens at the publisher.

Publisher details

Oldest episode in feed: 07/2015 · over 11 years
Typical length: 21 min
Format: Episodic Newest first, episodes stand alone

The Quanta Podcast in the rankings

The best Science podcasts The best English-language podcasts All rankings ›

For podcasters

Is this podcast yours? Verify it — afterwards you can correct details, get the widget for your website, and we let you know when your podcast is nominated or wins.

Without an account you can use an email address on your show’s own domain — we create the account along the way. The other methods need a login.