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The Quanta Podcast

Every Tuesday, editor in chief Samir Patel sits down with writers and editors to discuss our most thought-provoking stories in science and math. Audio editions of Quanta’s stories with Susan Valot will appear biweekly on Thursdays.

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Concept Cells Help Your Brain Abstract Information and Build Memories

An illustration of a key, decorated with a mitochondrion, stuck into the back of a wind-up bird.

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‘Turbocharged’ Mitochondria Power Birds’ Epic Migratory Journeys

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Singularities in Space-Time Prove Hard to Kill

a snowflake surrounded by fire

Heat Destroys All Order. Except for in This One Special Case.

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For Algorithms, a Little Memory Outweighs a Lot of Time

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Mathematical Beauty, Truth and Proof in the Age of AI

Can AI Models Show Us How People Learn? Impossible Languages Point a Way.

An illustration shows a human brain. Colorful flowers and plants burst from the left side, while wires and computing notes innervate the right side.

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AI Is Nothing Like a Brain, and That’s OK

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Introducing The Quanta Podcast

Quantum Computers Cross Critical Error Threshold

Fish swimming with outlined brains and microbes within them

Fish Have a Brain Microbiome. Could Humans Have One Too?

Exotic New Superconductors Delight and Confound

An illustration of concentric rings of a radiating wave in space, with chopsticks that appear poised to pluck a particle out of the wave.

It Might Be Possible To Detect Gravitons After All

An illustration shows zero lit by spotlight; it flickers in a cave that looks like a brain.

How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero

An illustration shows a bee, decorated with positive charges, approaching a field of flowers that wear negative charges. An electric field emerges between them.

The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology

A translucent comb jelly collected from the deep sea.

The Cellular Secret to Resisting the Pressure of the Deep Sea