We care about your data, and we'd like to use cookies to give you a smooth browsing experience. Please agree and read more about our privacy policy.
Quanta Homepage
  • Physics
  • Mathematics
  • Biology
  • Computer Science
  • Topics
  • Archive
The Joy of Asking About Infinity, Jellyfish and the End of the Universe
Comment
Read Later
Share
Facebook
Twitter
Copied!
Copy link
Email
Pocket
Reddit
Ycombinator
Flipboard
    • Comment
      Comments
    • Read Later
    The Joy of Why

    The Joy of Asking About Infinity, Jellyfish and the End of the Universe

    By Polly Stryker

    February 9, 2023

    As The Joy of Why podcast returns for a second season, producer Polly Stryker and host Steven Strogatz invite listeners to join them and their brilliant new guests on another voyage of discovery.
    Comment
    Read Later

    Peter Greenwood for Quanta Magazine

    By Polly Stryker

    Podcast Producer


    February 9, 2023


    View PDF/Print Mode
    biologycomputer sciencemathematicsphysicsThe Joy of WhyAll topics
    red and orange rocket ship surrounded by planet and text says "Hyperjumps! How many planets have you visited today?"red and orange rocket ship surrounded by planet and text says "Hyperjumps! How many planets have you visited today?"

    Introduction

    I have a confession: When I was 4, I was kicked out of ballet class for asking too many questions. I asked why a lot, like any kid. And I guess the teacher didn’t appreciate it. Luckily for me, the mathematician Steven Strogatz and the team at Quanta Magazine like to ask questions too. It’s the driving force behind our science podcast The Joy of Why, which kicks off its second season today.

    Our first season covered topics as diverse as sleep, mathematical knots, aging and quantum gravity. I came into this season excited to ask new questions and to learn something unexpected along the way. Imagine my surprise a few weeks ago when Steve and Quanta editor-in-chief Thomas Lin started talking about different sizes of infinity. That stopped me in my tracks. What a joy to have my assumptions about infinity turned upside down. And what a joy for me to ponder David Hilbert’s famous paradox about a hotel that is always booked solid, yet always has room for more guests. This was all in preparation for an episode about infinity with the set theorist Justin Moore.

    “Joy” is very much the operative word when it comes to this podcast. We laughed out loud when the mathematician Eugenia Cheng went on a tangent in her episode on category theory. To illustrate how it can apply broadly as a way of thinking beyond mathematics and physics, she mentioned how she finds herself using category theory to describe the way she interacts with people. She said she remembers the roles people play in her life, in context, better than she remembers how people look. Then she shared how several exchanges she described as “obnoxious” all contained a certain brand of obnoxiousness. Looking back at her emails, Cheng realized the exchanges were all with the same person. She hadn’t remembered the person, but she had placed their behavior in a category!

    Share this article
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Copied!
    Copy link
    Email
    Pocket
    Reddit
    Ycombinator
    Flipboard

    Newsletter

    Get Quanta Magazine delivered to your inbox

    Recent newsletters

    The scientists and mathematicians interviewed for season two of The Joy of Why include (left to right, top to bottom) Ton van den Bremer, Michael Elowitz, Vedika Khemani, Katie Mack, John Dabiri, Anil Seth, David Kaplan, Anna Durbin and Eugenia Cheng.

    Left to right, top to bottom: Courtesy of Ton van den Bremer, Michael Elowitz, Vedika Khemani, Katie Mack, John Dabiri, Anil Seth, David Kaplan, Anna Durbin and Eugenia Cheng.

    Introduction

    Here’s a second confession: My math education didn’t go well, and let’s just say I wasn’t hanging out reading Steve’s classic book Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos on a Friday night. But I’m a changed person because of our work together. Steve is kind and unassuming, and he’s a great educator, too. He’s the type of person who, instead of trying to show you how smart he is, just loves to learn for learning’s sake. It shows in the way he talks with guests. He wants everyone to get in the same rocket ship, strap on their seat belts, and ask lots of questions together.

    One voyage of discovery reminded me how much I love to watch jellyfish pulse dreamily through the water. But who knew that jellyfish propulsion can teach us about submarine design? Or that reading jellyfish vortex rings can help us detect heart failure? Exploring the world of fluid dynamics with John Dabiri of the California Institute of Technology is an eye-opening tour of just how much we can learn from nature.

    And, spoiler alert, not every episode has a happy ending. Our co-producer Susan Valot brought Steve and the theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack together to unpack the different scenarios for how the universe could end. The possibilities sound like Hollywood thrillers. There’s “heat death,” aka the Big Freeze, which involves dark matter, maximum entropy and the sun boiling the oceans off the Earth. Yikes. Then there’s the Big Rip, where the universe stretches apart faster and faster, ultimately tearing everything up. And then there’s “vacuum decay.” You’ll have to listen to the first episode of the season to hear Mack describe that one. Don’t worry, she says our universe could surprise us by expanding and contracting forever. And even if the universe does end, it won’t be for billions of years. So we have time to produce more episodes.

    In the meantime, we invite you to listen to Steve Strogatz in conversation with some of the brightest minds in science and math today as they ask the big questions and share what they know — and what they don’t. All of us at The Joy of Why hope you’ll enjoy the new season. The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcasting app, or you can stream it from Quanta. New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 23.

    By Polly Stryker

    Podcast Producer


    February 9, 2023


    View PDF/Print Mode
    biologycomputer sciencemathematicsphysicsThe Joy of WhyAll topics
    red and orange rocket ship surrounded by planet and text says "Hyperjumps! How many planets have you visited today?"red and orange rocket ship surrounded by planet and text says "Hyperjumps! How many planets have you visited today?"
    Share this article
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Copied!
    Copy link
    Email
    Pocket
    Reddit
    Ycombinator
    Flipboard

    Newsletter

    Get Quanta Magazine delivered to your inbox

    Recent newsletters
    The Quanta Newsletter

    Get highlights of the most important news delivered to your email inbox

    Recent newsletters

    Comment on this article

    Quanta Magazine moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (New York time) and can only accept comments written in English. 

    simulated image of two celestial bodies interacting

    Next article

    What Lights the Universe’s Standard Candles?
    Quanta Homepage
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Youtube
    Instagram

    • About Quanta
    • Archive
    • Contact Us
    • Terms & Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Simons Foundation
    All Rights Reserved © 2023