HeyJaredThe Joy of Why
“The Joy of Why” is a Quanta Magazine podcast about curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge. The mathematician and author Steven Strogatz and the cosmologist and author Janna Levin take turns interviewing leading researchers about the great scientific and mathematical…
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 6
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- Sep 17, 2026
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- Jul 9, 2026
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Where Does the Quantum World End and Ours Begin? (opens the original)
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Quantum mechanics may be one of the most precisely tested paradigms in science, but there’s still no universally accepted interpretation of what it tells us about reality. How do we get from the wave-like behavior of quantum systems to the solid, macroscopic world of objects and the universe at large? Jonathan Halliwell , a professor of theoretical physics at Imperial College London, has spent his career probing the foundations of quantum theory. In this episode, he tells Steven Strogatz why dec
Live from ICM 2026: What Is Math For in the Age of AI? (opens the original)
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Mathematicians are witnessing a profound shift in their field. AI systems are now producing proofs, spotting connections between distant fields, and, in a few cases, solving problems that had stumped mathematicians for decades. The pace of progress over the past several months has raised challenging questions: What can AI systems actually do? And what happens to the more human, creative aspects of the field once machines can match – or exceed – people at problem-solving? In this special live epi
Are We Thinking Correctly about AI Intelligence? (opens the original)
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When an LLM answers a question, is it reasoning like humans, or just producing text that looks like reasoning? The distinction isn’t just philosophical, this determines what we can trust AI to do, how closely we need to supervise it, and ultimately what its real-world impact will turn out to be. Melanie Mitchell at the Santa Fe Institute argues that we lack adequate methods for measuring machine cognition, and that AI is a form of “alien intelligence” that operates through non-human cognitive me
How Does Touch Lead To Pain Or Pleasure? (opens the original)
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Pain and pleasure seem like simple facts of life, but they are far from it. Neuroscientists still cannot say why physical pain differs from psychological pain, for instance, nor why a loved one’s touch soothes while a stranger’s touch repels. To explore the science behind these sensations, Janna Levin talked to Ishmail Abdus-Saboor , a neuroscientist at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute. Their conversation covers how pain serves an evolutionary purpose, how researchers measure pain and p
How Fast Is the Universe Really Expanding? (opens the original)
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One of the biggest mysteries in cosmology seems to keep getting bigger. Astronomers have known since the 1930s that the universe is expanding, but in the 1990s, the discovery that this expansion is accelerating rather than slowing down came as a huge shock to the field. Something had to be driving that acceleration, and dark energy was proposed as the cause. What began as a seismic shock in cosmology eventually led to a Nobel prize . But this story has a sequel, and it comes with another major p
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