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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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A graphical illustration showing a number of well-known stars in the present-day universe, along with the edge of a far bigger star.

Astronomers Say They Have Spotted the Universe’s First Stars

New Chip Expands the Possibilities for AI

Illustration of butterflies with similar wing-color patterns holding bundles of DNA.

How Supergenes Fuel Evolution Despite Harmful Mutations

A bright purple splotch surrounded by concentric purple rings.

Brightest-Ever Space Explosion Reveals Possible Hints of Dark Matter

Inside the Proton, the ‘Most Complicated Thing You Could Possibly Imagine’

A video in which a metallic cube floats above a dark disk as liquid nitrogen evaporates around them

High-Temperature Superconductivity Understood at Last

A frog leaps out of the frame of the video.

Record-Breaking Robot Highlights How Animals Excel at Jumping

A human figure in a brain landscape stands at a fork in a road. One way goes to pleasant surroundings, the other to an unpleasant place.

A Good Memory or a Bad One? One Brain Molecule Decides.

Old Problem About Mathematical Curves Falls to Young Couple

Video in which a white circle appears in the center of a blue starry field and grows until whiteness engulfs the whole image.

How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything

A blueprint-like rendering of the biomechanics of a bird wing.

Geometric Analysis Reveals How Birds Mastered Flight

Sculpted, latticed structure of a grain of olive pollen.

How the ‘Diamond of the Plant World’ Helped Land Plants Evolve

Micrograph of a neuron showing aggregations of tau protein.

Protein Blobs Linked to Alzheimer’s Affect Aging in All Cells

The Brain Has a ‘Low-Power Mode’ That Blunts Our Senses

Aerial view of a complicated interchange full of flowing traffic

Researchers Achieve ‘Absurdly Fast’ Algorithm for Network Flow

Graduate Student’s Side Project Proves Prime Number Conjecture