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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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Illustration of various kinds of clocks floating against a pink background.

The New Thermodynamic Understanding of Clocks

An artist’s conception of the ways that functional capacities have been mapped to regions of the brain.

The Brain Doesn’t Think the Way You Think It Does

Animation of a gemstone flipping up and down between mirror-image states.

Eternal Change for No Energy: A Time Crystal Finally Made Real

How Many Numbers Exist? Infinity Proof Moves Math Closer to an Answer.

Electron microscopy of T4 bacteriophages.

DNA Has Four Bases. Some Viruses Swap in a Fifth.

The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve

Artistic representation of water radiolysis supporting life below ground.

Radioactivity May Fuel Life Deep Underground and Inside Other Worlds

Photo of Rafflesia arnoldii growing on vines in Indonesian forest.

DNA of Giant ‘Corpse Flower’ Parasite Surprises Biologists

A mosaic of five microscope images of igneous rocks. The rocks are dappled with blue, pink, orange and multicolor inclusions.

Scientists Pin Down When Earth’s Crust Cracked, Then Came to Life

Graphic of swirling vortex-like patterns called skyrmions.

A New Twist Reveals Superconductivity’s Secrets

Statistics Postdoc Tames Decades-Old Geometry Problem

An illustration of a doughnut-shaped elliptic curve intertwined with the Julia set.

Mathematicians Set Numbers in Motion to Unlock Their Secrets

Animation of a neuron that periodically alters its responses to stimuli when it is reset into a new state by another input.

Artificial Neural Nets Finally Yield Clues to How Brains Learn

An illustration of a human brain against “pink noise” static.

Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Hold Clues to Persistent Mysteries

Blue faults of Cerberus Fossae

Rumbles on Mars Raise Hopes of Underground Magma Flows

Illustration of mathematicians descending through a cavern whose walls are lined with polynomials.

Mathematicians Resurrect Hilbert’s 13th Problem