Podcasts about Quanta Magazine

Every elementary particle falls into one of two categories. Collectivist bosons account for the forces that move us while individualist fermions keep our atoms from collapsing. The story Matter vs. Force: Why There Are Exactly Two Types of Particles first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

In the allegory of Plato's cave, prisoners see the world only through shadows. Extending this metaphor to AI, AI models are the prisoners and the shadows are streams of data. Are all models converging on a singular representation of reality? On this week's episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with staff writer Ben Brubaker about how, despite being trained on entirely different data types, different models can somehow develop similar internal representations. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio coda: The Cave: A Parable Told By Orson Welles, Produced by Counterpoint Films, directed by Sam Weiss, and illustrated by Dick Oden. https://www.acmi.net.au/works/65888–the-cave-a-parable-told-by-orson-welles/

Particle physics hasn’t yet found the new physics needed to resolve its deepest mysteries. It's hard to know what to think about or look for. But the most devoted particle physicists are thinking and looking all the same. On this episode, host Samir Patel and columnist Natalie Wolchover discuss the first of our new series of curiosity-driven essays, Qualia, where Natalie asks particle physicists whether the field is facing a profound crisis. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio Coda provided by UCL High Energy Physics.

This week, we're sharing an interview with Will Gillis, author of the recently published book Did The Science Wars Take Place: The Political and Ethical Stakes of Radical Realism, published via C4SS where Gillis holds the position as The Voltairine de Cleyre Chair in Centrifugal Studies and technical coordinator. For the hour we talk about the so-called Science Wars of the 1990's, debates involving scientific approaches and shared understandings of a a measurable physical reality, post-modernism, the roles leftists and anarchists played in the debates and how cults and authoritarians employ anti-realist explanations of the world to limit their subjects' moves toward liberation. You can read more of William's writings at https://humaniterations.net and https://c4ss.org A few links to further scientific education: Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/ Theoretical Minimum Lectures by Leonard Susskind: https://theoreticalminimum.com/ Milo Rossi youtube on archeology; https://www.youtube.com/@miniminuteman773 Stefan Milo youtube on archeology: www.youtube.com/@StefanMilo Angela Collier youtube on physics: https://www.youtube.com/@acollierastro self-training in physics video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw97Tj5zxvA&pp=ygUcYW5nZWxhIGNvbGxpZXIgc2VsZi10cmFpbmluZw%3D%3D Sean Carrol's Mindscape podcast covers a lot of topics, linked from his website: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/ . ... . .. Featured track: beatbuster by The Willows Whisper

Reversible programs run backward as easily as they run forward, saving energy in theory. After decades of research, they may soon power AI. The story How Can AI Researchers Save Energy? By Going Backward first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

We already know that what we eat, drink, and inhale can affect which parts of our DNA are expressed, and which aren't. But recent research poses a shocking idea: A dad's habits may be encoded in molecules and transmitted to his future kids. On this episode, host Samir Patel and biology editor Hannah Waters dig into the new epigenetic mouse studies exploring whether sperm cells carry more than just genetic information. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio coda in this episode: Motivation and reward in learning – Produced by the Institute of Human Relations at Yale University, Published by Penn State University, Psychological Cinema Register [1948].

Studies of neural metabolism reveal our brain's effort to keep us alive and the evolutionary constraints that sculpted our most complex organ. The story How Much Energy Does It Take To Think? first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

What better time to contemplate the conundrum that is zero than the start of a new year? Zero is a fairly new concept in human history and even more recent as a number. It wasn't until around the 7th century that zero was used as a number. That's when it showed up in the records of Indian mathematicians. Since then, zero has, at times, been met with some fear — at one point the city of Florence, Italy banned the number.Today, scientists seek to understand how much humans truly comprehend zero — and why it seems to be different from other numbers. That's how we ended up talking to science writer Yasemin Saplakoglu in this encore episode about the neuroscience of this number that means nothing.Read more of Yasemin's reporting on zero for Quanta Magazine. Plus, check out our episode on why big numbers break our brains.Interested in more math episodes? Let us know what kind of stories you want to hear from us in 2026 by emailing shortwave@npr.org!Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Ich habe in den vergangenen Jahren ja immer wieder mit Biologen über verschiedene Themen gesprochen, und eine sehr spannende Frage, die hier und da aufgetaucht ist lautet: was ist eigentlich die Definition von Leben? Oder anders ausgedrückt: wie können wir Leben von Nicht-Leben unterscheiden? Aber gleich vorweg gesagt: diese biologische Frage ist faszinierend und leitet die Episode ein, ist per se nicht das Thema dieser Folge, sondern nur eines von mehreren Beispielen; wie etwa der Frage, was Wissenschaft von Nicht-Wissenschaft unterscheidet, was ist Intelligenz, was ist Energie und nicht zuletzt — was ist Pornographie? Aber diese Beispiele dienen einer viel fundamentaleren Frage: wie kann ein wesentliches Gebäude gebaut werden, wenn das Fundament aus Sand besteht? Und kann dieses Gebäude überhaupt nützlich sein? Zusammenfassend die Zitate dieser Episode: NASA-Definition von Leben “Life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.” Lee Cronin's Definition: »Life is the universe developing a memory.« Richard Feynman schreibt: »It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount. It is not that way. However, there are formulas for calculating some numerical quan-tity, and when we add it all together it gives ... always the same number. It is an abstract thing in that it does not tell us the mechanism or the reasons for the various formulas. « Karl Popper: »the belief in the importance of the meanings of words, especially definitions, was almost universal. The attitude which I later came to call “essentialism”« »the principle of never arguing about words and their meanings, because such arguments are specious and insignificant.« »This, I still think, is the surest path to intellectual perdition: the abandonment of real problems for the sake of verbal problems.« Dwight D. Eisenhower: »Plans are worthless but planning is everything« Generalfeldmarschall Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke: »Kein Plan überlebt die erste Feindberührung« Referenzen Andere Episoden Episode 137: Alles Leben ist Problemlösen Episode 132: Fragen an die künstliche Intelligenz — eine konstruktive Irritation Episode 129: Rules, A Conversation with Prof. Lorraine Daston Episode 123: Die Natur kennt feine Grade, Ein Gespräch mit Prof. Frank Zachos Episode 121: Künstliche Unintelligenz Episode 106: Wissenschaft als Ersatzreligion? Ein Gespräch mit  Manfred Glauninger Episode 91: Die Heidi-Klum-Universität, ein Gespräch mit Prof. Ehrmann und Prof. Sommer Episode 85: Naturalismus — was weiß Wissenschaft? Episode 83: Robert Merton — Was ist Wissenschaft? Episode 80: Wissen, Expertise und Prognose, eine Reflexion Episode 75: Gott und die Welt, ein Gespräch mit Werner Gruber und Erich Eder Episode 68: Modelle und Realität, ein Gespräch mit Dr. Andreas Windisch Episode 55: Strukturen der Welt Episode 49: Wo denke ich? Reflexionen über den »undichten« Geist Episode 48: Evolution, ein Gespräch mit Erich Eder Episode 14: (Pseudo)wissenschaft? Welcher Aussage können wir trauen? Teil 2 Episode 13: (Pseudo)wissenschaft? Welcher Aussage können wir trauen? Teil 1 Episode 6: Messen, was messbar ist? Episode 2: Was wissen wir? Fachliche Referenzen Hexenmeister oder Zauberlehrling? Die Wissensgesellschaft in der Krise NASA Astrobiology, About Life Detection Erwin Schrödinger, Was ist Leben, Piper (1989) Lee Cronin: Origin of Life, Aliens, Complexity, and Consciousness | Lex Fridman Podcast #269 Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex, Quanta Magazine & Supplements Richard Feynman Lectures »I know it when I see it«, Potter Stewart Karl Popper, Unended Quest, Routledge Classics (2002) Helmuth von Moltke, Zitat      

By extending the scope of the key insight behind Fermat's Last Theorem, four mathematicians have made great strides toward building a “grand unified theory” of math. The story The Core of Fermat's Last Theorem Just Got Superpowered first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

We all know that hot coffee cools down. But quantum mechanics can enable heat to flow the “wrong” way, making hot objects hotter and cold objects colder. Now physicists think this might have an ingenious use. On this week's episode, host Samir Patel speaks with writer Philip Ball about how a new “quantum demon” may allow information to be processed in ways that classical physics does not permit. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio coda by Forma, courtesy of Kranky.

When pigeons outnumber pigeonholes, some birds must double up. This obvious statement — and its inverse — have deep connections to many areas of math and computer science. The story How a Problem About Pigeons Powers Complexity Theory first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

How do sellers decide how to price their goods? Competition should keep prices down, while collusion can rig higher prices (and break the law). On this week's episode, host Samir Patel speaks with staff writer Ben Brubaker about how computer scientists are using game theory to see how algorithms might result in high prices without shady backroom deals. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Tom 7’s YouTube channel Audio coda from FDR Presidential Library & Museum.

At first glance, studying the math of waves seems like it should be smooth sailing. But the equations that describe even the gentlest rolling waves are a mathematical nightmare to solve. On this week's episode, host Samir Patel speaks with math staff writer Joseph Howlett why waves are so elusive, even in a simplified world of equations. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio coda is “The Merry Golden Tree” by Shovel Dance Collective.

Salvador Dalí, Thomas Edison and Edgar Allan Poe all took inspiration from the state between sleep and waking life. On this week's episode, host Samir Patel speaks with biology staff writer Yasemin Saplakoglu about how brain systems dictate the strange transitions into and out of sleep. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio coda: Copyright in The Mike Wallace Interview with Salvador Dalí is owned by the University of Michigan Board of Regents and managed by Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. The Harry Ransom Center (HRC) at the University of Texas, Austin University Libraries, is the owner of the physical kinescope.

A powerful mathematical technique is used to model melting ice and other phenomena. But it has long been imperiled by certain “nightmare scenarios.” A new proof has removed that obstacle. The story A New Proof Smooths Out the Math of Melting first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

Recently, astrophysicists identified something peculiar: An enormous “naked” black hole with no galaxy in sight. On this week's episode, host Samir Patel speaks with physics staff writer Charlie Wood about how the strange little red dot is upending our assumptions of the first billion years of cosmic history. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio coda courtesy of Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab.

Thanks to a delicate interplay between plate tectonics and life, Earth's thermostat has kept animal life thriving on our planet for half a billion years. On this week's episode, host Samir Patel speaks with contributing writer Peter Brannen about our planetary highs and lows, and the precarious goldilocks zone our animal-filled finds itself in now. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio coda courtesy of Martin Rietze’s YouTube channel.

A new proposal makes the case that paraparticles — a new category of quantum particle — could be created in exotic materials. The story ‘Paraparticles' Would Be a Third Kingdom of Quantum Particle first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

Imagine a set of simple building blocks that can self-assemble into any shape you want. The possibilities for such a technology could be boundless. Inspired by nature, “complexity engineering” seeks to design such blocks, building on a classic computer simulation. On this week's episode, host Samir Patel speaks with contributing writer George Musser about recent developments in so-called cellular automata. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio coda courtesy of the Simons Foundation.

Around 6,000 years ago, the Sahara was a lush grassland. Then, as if a switch flipped, it began to dry out, becoming the desert that we know today. Tipping points are moments in Earth's history where gradual change suddenly becomes rapid and forms a new equilibrium. They're one of the most alarming threats of our planet's near future — and one of the most uncertain. When will a tipping point occur? Mathematicians are attempting to turn vague, apocalyptic visions into something that we can actually prepare for and deal with. On this week's episode, host Samir Patel speaks with contributing writer Gregory Barber about what tipping points can — and cannot — tell us about the future of our planet. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio coda courtesy of Gresham College.

It's been difficult to find important questions that quantum computers can answer faster than classical machines, but a new algorithm appears to do it for some critical optimization tasks. The story Quantum Speedup Found for Huge Class of Hard Problems first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

I denne RumNyt skal vi blandt andet høre om dannelsen af Merkur, om det sorte hul M87 der er vendt på en tallerken, og om udfordringerne med at give hjertemassage i rummet. I vores hovedhistorie sætter vi fokus på Artemis 2-missionen, der jo for nylig kom i kalenderen med en planlagt opsendelse mellem februar og april 2026. Den ubemandede Artemis 1 var jo afsted i 2022, og nu kommer turen til den første bemandede mission med SLS-raket og Orion-rumfartøjet, hvor man skal teste en masse kritiske systemer, inden Artemis 3 så ifølge planerne skal landsætte astronauter på Månen. Vi har også flere podcast-anbefalinger fra lytterne – tak for dem! Lyt med i denne omgang RumNyt

This week we present two classic stories from people who had hypotheses. Part 1: Teaching sixth grade science becomes much more difficult when Xochitl Garcia's students start hypothesizing that fire is alive. Part 2: When journalist John Rennie is assigned to cover an entomological society event where insects are served as food, he sees an opportunity to face his fear of bugs. Xochitl Garcia is the K-12 education program manager at Science Friday, where she focuses on supporting the inspiring efforts of educators (of all types) to engage students in science, engineering, math, and the arts. She is a former NYC school teacher, who specializes in sifting through random piles of junk that she insists are "treasures," to figure out cool ways for learners to explore scientific phenomena. You can find her making a mess in the name of science education at the Science Friday office, her house, with other educators...you get the picture. Update: Xochitl welcomed her baby (not fire) into the world on 1/1/2020. John has worked as a science editor, writer and lecturer for almost 40 years. Most recently, he was a deputy editor at Quanta Magazine. During his time as editor in chief at Scientific American, between 1994 and 2009, the magazine received two National Magazine Awards. He co-created and hosted the 2013 series Hacking the Planet on The Weather Channel. Since 2009, he has been on the faculty of the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program in New York University's graduate journalism school. You can learn follow him on Bluesky @johnrennie.sky.social or check his website, www.johnrennie.net. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rare and powerful compounds, known as keystone molecules, can build a web of invisible interactions among species. The story A New, Chemical View of Ecosystems first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

The deceptively simple Kakeya conjecture has bedeviled mathematicians for 50 years. A new proof of the conjecture in three dimensions illuminates a whole crop of related problems. The story ‘Once in a Century' Proof Settles Math's Kakeya Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

In science textbooks, Earth looks like a round layer cake. There’s a hard line between the liquid metal core and the putty-like rock mantle. But maybe that boundary is a little fuzzier than we previously thought. Strange, continent sized blobs rest on the dividing line. These blobs are leaching material from the Earth's core, extending arms out into the mantle, and sending core material up and out through magmatic plumes. No one’s completely sure how it's happening. On this week's episode, host Samir Patel and writer Robin George Andrews dig into the ancient isotopic signatures that are helping us better understand the material bubbling up from the depths of our planet. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio coda courtesy of wildlife photographers Gudmann & Gyda

Astronomers are ready to search for the fingerprints of life in faraway planetary atmospheres. But first, they need to know where to look — and that means figuring out which planets are likely to have atmospheres in the first place. The story How Undergraduate The Road Map to Alien Life Passes Through the ‘Cosmic Shoreline' first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

We're living in the golden age of cryptography. Since the 1970s, we’ve had more confidence in encryption than ever before. But there’s a difference between confidence and absolute certainty. And computer scientists care a lot about that difference. The search is always on for better, more secure secrets. But is it possible for digital security to be truly, provably unbreakable? Maybe, with a little help from math and physics. On this week's episode, host Samir Patel talks with ???????????????????????? computer science staff writer Ben Brubaker about a developing frontier of digital security: quantum cryptography. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio Coda from the Bletchley Park Trust.

How many oranges can you fit in a box? Mathematicians are obsessed with perfecting their answer to this question in not just our familiar three-dimensional world, but in higher and higher dimensions beyond it. For several decades, they’ve made only minimal progress toward finding an optimal solution. Then, this past April, an outsider to the field named Boaz Klartag posted a proof that bested these previous records by a significant margin. In this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel and Quanta math staff writer Joseph Howlett discuss how Klartag resuscitated an old technique that experts had abandoned decades earlier to optimize sphere packing in any arbitrarily high dimension. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio coda created by Daniel Simion

A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible. The story How Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

When some people smell the molecule benzyl acetate, they identify a distinctly banana-y scent. But when others sniff the same compound, they get hints of nail polish remover. How can this be? Smell is a tricky sensory process to pin down. Our perception of scents is wide-ranging and often depends on lived experience. But researchers are building a deeper understanding of the processes underlying our noses' elusive machinery. In this episode, host Samir Patel and Quanta biology staff writer Yasemin Saplakoglu explore the invisible sense that shapes our reality, from nostalgic childhood fragrances — lavender, old books — to familiar irksome odors — skunks, garbage. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

Colorful messages are constantly being exchanged across the natural world, to communicate everything from sexual attraction to self defense. But which came first: these evocative signals or the sophisticated vision needed to see them? In this episode, host Samir Patel speaks with contributing writer Molly Herring about free diving, mantis shrimp, and the challenges of tracking coloration through evolutionary history. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the minds behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

Most pasta is made from just two ingredients—flour and water. For decades this humble food has prompted physicists around the world to try to understand its mysterious properties and answer questions like: Why does a stick of spaghetti break into three pieces and not cleanly into two? And why is cacio e pepe so hard to perfect? The answers reveal more about the building blocks of the universe than you might expect. Host Ira Flatow talks with Joseph Howlett, math writer at Quanta Magazine, and author of a recent story for the BBC about spaghetti science.And, if you frequent the wellness world on social media, you may have seen a trend popular with influencers: using adhesive tape to seal one's mouth shut while sleeping. This is intended to help the sleeper breathe through their nose all night, which people claim has a slew of benefits including improved quality of sleep, reduced sleep apnea, a more defined jawline, and a brightened complexion. But should you add mouth taping to your nighttime routine? According to Dr. Linda Lee, physician and surgeon at Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Boston, you should be evaluated by a professional first.Dr. Lee joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the right way to start nose breathing, what the scientific literature says (and doesn't say) about mouth taping, and how social media is changing the information patients seek from their physicians. Transcripts for each episode are available at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Where does gravity come from? In both general relativity and quantum mechanics, this question is a big problem. One controversial theory proposes that the force arises from the universe’s tendency toward disorder, or entropy. In this episode, host Samir Patel speaks with contributing writer George Musser about the long-shot idea called “entropic gravity,” which Musser covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the minds behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Audio coda provided by Cosmic Perspective.

Static electricity plays an invisible role in the natural world, and it may even help insects pollinate plants. To understand this hidden force, scientists have jumped through some pretty weird experimental hoops — and “walked” butterflies through literal hoops. Guests: Sam England, postdoctoral researcher at Berlin's National History Museum; Benji Jones, Vox's environmental correspondent To read more about this experiment, Benji recommends this great article from Quanta Magazine, where he first encountered Sam's work. For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠ For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠ And please email us! ⁠⁠unexplainable@vox.com⁠⁠ We read every email. Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/members⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's March 14, or Pi Day, that day of the year where we celebrate the ratio that makes a circle a circle. The Greek letter that represents it is such a part of our culture that it merits our irrational attention.Joining Host Ira Flatow to help slice into our pi's is Dr. Steven Strogatz, professor of math at Cornell University and co-host of Quanta Magazine's podcast “The Joy Of Why.” They talk about how pi was “discovered,” the ways it's figuring into recent science, and how AI is changing the field of mathematics.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Analysis of image classifiers demonstrates that it is possible to understand backprop networks at the task-relevant run-time algorithmic level. In these systems, at least, networks gain their power from deploying massive parallelism to check for the presence of a vast number of simple, shallow patterns. https://betterwithout.ai/images-surface-features This episode has a lot of links: David Chapman's earliest public mention, in February 2016, of image classifiers probably using color and texture in ways that "cheat": twitter.com/Meaningness/status/698688687341572096 Jordana Cepelewicz's “Where we see shapes, AI sees textures,” Quanta Magazine, July 1, 2019: https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-we-see-shapes-ai-sees-textures-20190701/ “Suddenly, a leopard print sofa appears”, May 2015: https://web.archive.org/web/20150622084852/http://rocknrollnerd.github.io/ml/2015/05/27/leopard-sofa.html “Understanding How Image Quality Affects Deep Neural Networks” April 2016: https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.04004   Goodfellow et al., “Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examples,” December 2014: https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.6572 “Universal adversarial perturbations,” October 2016: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.08401v1.pdf “Exploring the Landscape of Spatial Robustness,” December 2017: https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.02779 “Overinterpretation reveals image classification model pathologies,” NeurIPS 2021: https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2021/file/8217bb4e7fa0541e0f5e04fea764ab91-Paper.pdf “Approximating CNNs with Bag-of-Local-Features Models Works Surprisingly Well on ImageNet,” ICLR 2019: https://openreview.net/forum?id=SkfMWhAqYQ Baker et al.'s “Deep convolutional networks do not classify based on global object shape,” PLOS Computational Biology, 2018: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006613 François Chollet's Twitter threads about AI producing images of horses with extra legs: twitter.com/fchollet/status/1573836241875120128 and twitter.com/fchollet/status/1573843774803161090 “Zoom In: An Introduction to Circuits,” 2020: https://distill.pub/2020/circuits/zoom-in/ Geirhos et al., “ImageNet-Trained CNNs Are Biased Towards Texture; Increasing Shape Bias Improves Accuracy and Robustness,” ICLR 2019: https://openreview.net/forum?id=Bygh9j09KX Dehghani et al., “Scaling Vision Transformers to 22 Billion Parameters,” 2023: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.05442 Hasson et al., “Direct Fit to Nature: An Evolutionary Perspective on Biological and Artificial Neural Networks,” February 2020: https://www.gwern.net/docs/ai/scaling/2020-hasson.pdf

Happy New Year, Short Wavers! What better time to contemplate the conundrum that is zero than this, the reset of the year? Zero is a fairly new concept in human history and even more recent as a number. It wasn't until around the 7th century that zero was being used as a number. That's when it showed up in the records of Indian mathematicians. Since then, zero has, at times, been met with some fear — at one point, the city of Florence, Italy banned the number.Today, scientists seek to understand how much humans truly comprehend zero — and why it seems to be different from other numbers. That's how we ended up talking to science writer Yasemin Saplakoglu about the neuroscience of this number that means nothing.Read more of Yasemin's reporting on zero for Quanta Magazine. Plus, check out our episode on why big numbers break our brains.Thirst for more math episodes? Let us know what kind of stories you want to hear from us in 2025 by emailing shortwave@npr.org! Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/388-what-is-life Sam Harris speaks with Sara Imari Walker about a scientific understanding of life. They discuss the contributions of physics to this topic, Erwin Schrödinger, the inadequacy of standard definitions of life, the prospect of "artificial" life, the role of information, constructor theory, assembly theory, the space of all possible structures, a "block universe," the existence of abstract objects like numbers, the Fermi paradox, the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe, experiments that could decide how likely life is to emerge, the possibility of a Great Filter, the number of Earth-like worlds, and other topics. Sara Imari Walker is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist. She is the deputy director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. She is also a fellow of the Berggruen Institute and a member of the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. She is a recipient of the Stanley L. Miller Early-Career Award for her research on the origin of life, and her research team at ASU is internationally regarded as being among the leading labs aiming to build a fundamental theory for understanding what life is. Her research has been featured in Scientific American, Quanta Magazine, and a variety of other international outlets. Her book, Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence, is available now. Website: https://search.asu.edu/profile/1731899 Twitter: @Sara_Imari Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.

Zero, which was invented late in history, is special among numbers. New studies are uncovering how the brain creates something out of nothing. The post How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero first appeared on Quanta Magazine

What exactly is … everything? What is space-time?At one extreme, you've got the weird rules of quantum physics that deal with subatomic particles. At the other extreme, you've got the vast expanses of space, such as spinning galaxies and black holes.By mapping the cosmic microwave background, surveying the distribution of galaxies around the sky, and listening for gravitational waves, researchers are studying the cosmos for clues to the quantum. They hope that by finding patterns in some of these large-scale structures, tiny irregularities involving quantum effects in the earliest days of the universe might be revealed.Charlie Wood, a staff writer covering physics for Quanta Magazine, has written about some of these space-time mysteries in a special issue. He joins Ira to discuss the nature of space-time and how scientists are trying to decode its physics.Transcript for this segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

"Lava is almost sentient"Dr Robin George Andrews is an award-winning science journalist, who regularly writes about space and geosciences, and is a doctor of experimental volcanology. He has written for outlets including The New York Times, The Atlantic, National Geographic, Scientific American and Quanta Magazine. He has written two books, Super Volcanoes: What they reveal about Earth and the worlds beyond, and How to Kill an Asteroid, out October 1st 2024. ***LIVE SHOW OCTOBER 21st***We Can Be Weirdos is LIVE again on Monday 21st October 2024, at the Underbelly Boulevard, London. Keep listening to the podcast for the guest announcement!Head here for more info and to buy your tickets: https://underbellyboulevard.com/tickets/we-can-be-weirdos-live/

Within just a few years, artificial intelligence systems that sometimes seem to display almost human characteristics have gone from science fiction to apps on your phone. But there's another AI-influenced frontier that is developing rapidly and remains untamed: robotics. Can the technologies that have helped computers get smarter now bring similar improvements to the robots that will work alongside us? In this episode of The Joy of Why podcast, Daniela Rus, a pioneering roboticist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talks to host Steven Strogatz about the surprising inspirations from biology that may help robots rise to new levels. Subscribe to The Joy of Why from Quanta Magazine wherever you listen to podcasts! 

Half of the cells in the brain are neurons, the other half are glial cells.When scientists first discovered glia over a century ago, they thought that they simply held the neurons together. Their name derives from a Greek word that means glue.In the past decade, researchers have come to understand that glial cells do so much more: They communicate with neurons and work closely with the immune system and might be critical in how we experience pain. They even play an important role in regulating the digestive tract.Ira is joined by Yasemin Saplakoglu, a staff writer at Quanta Magazine who has reported on these lesser-known cells.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

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Logic gates and origami? Professor Inna Zakharevich joined us to talk about Turing complete origami crease patterns.  We started talking about Turing completeness which led to a Conway's Game of Life-like 2D cellular automaton called Rule 110 (Wikipedia) which can be implemented with logic gates (AND, OR, NOT). These logic gates can be implemented as creases in paper (with the direction of the crease indicating 0 or 1).  The paper describing the proof is called Flat Origami is Turing Complete (arxiv and PDF). Quanta Magazine has a summary article: How to Build an Origami Computer. Inna's page at Cornell University also has the crease patterns for the logic gates (pdf). Inna is an aficionado of the origami work by Satoshi Kamiya who creates complex and lifelike patterns.  Some other origami mentioned: Origami Stegosaurus by John Montroll YouTube Folding video (Part 1 of 3) Ilan Garibi's Pineapple Tessellation (PDF instructions) Eric Gjerde Spread Hex Origami Tessellation (This also has the equilateral triangle grid needed to fold Inna's gate logic) Peter Engel Amanda Ghassaei's Origami Simulator (Mooser's is under Examples->Origami) Some other math mentioned: Veritasium's Math's Fundamental Flaw talks about Goerthe's Incompleteness Theorem Physical Logic Game: Turing Tumble - Build Marble-Powered Computers Mathematics of Paper Folding (Wikipedia) Transcript Memfault is making software the most reliable part of the IoT with its device reliability platform that enables teams to be more proactive with remote debugging, monitoring and OTA update capabilities. Try Memfault's new sandbox demo at demo.memfault.com. Embedded.fm listeners receive 25% off their first-year contract with Memfault by booking a demo here: https://go.memfault.com/demo-request-embedded

Breaking Math WebsiteBreaking Math Email:  BreakingMathPodcast@gmail.comEmail us for copies of the transcript! Resources on the LEAN theorem prover and programming language can be found at the bottom of the show notes (scroll to the bottom). SummaryThis episode is inspired by a correspondence the Breaking Math Podcast had with the editors of Digital Discovery, a journal by the Royal Society of Chemistry.  In this episode the hosts review a paper about how the Lean Interactive Theorem Prover, which is usually used as a tool in creating mathemtics proofs, can be used to create rigorous and robust models in physics and chemistry.  The paper is titled Formalizing chemical physics using the Lean Theorem prover and can be found in Digital Discovery, a journal with the Royal Society of Chemistry.  Also -  we have a brand new member of the Brekaing Math Team!  This episode is the debut episode for Autumn, CEO of Cosmo Labs, occasional co-host / host of the Breaking Math Podcast, and overall contributor who has been working behind the scenes on the podcast on branding and content for the last several months. Welcome Autumn!  Autumn and Gabe discuss how the paper explores the use of interactive theorem provers to ensure the accuracy of scientific theories and make them machine-readable. The episode discusses the limitations and potential of interactive theorem provers and highlights the themes of precision and formal verification in scientific knowledge.  This episode also provide resources (listed below) for listeners intersted in learning more about working with the LEAN interactive theorem prover.  TakeawaysInteractive theorem provers can revolutionize the way scientific theories are formulated and verified, ensuring mathematical certainty and minimizing errors.Interactive theorem provers require a high level of mathematical knowledge and may not be accessible to all scientists and engineers.Formal verification using interactive theorem provers can eliminate human error and hidden assumptions, leading to more confident and reliable scientific findings.Interactive theorem provers promote clear communication and collaboration across disciplines by forcing explicit definitions and minimizing ambiguities in scientific language. Lean Theorem Provers enable scientists to construct modular and reusable proofs, accelerating the pace of knowledge acquisition.Formal verification presents challenges in terms of transforming informal proofs into a formal language and bridging the reality gap.Integration of theorem provers and machine learning has the potential to enhance creativity, verification, and usefulness of machine learning models.The limitations and variables in formal verification require rigorous validation against experimental data to ensure real-world accuracy.Lean Theorem Provers have the potential to provide unwavering trust, accelerate innovation, and increase accessibility in scientific research.AI as a scientific partner can automate the formalization of informal theories and suggest new conjectures, revolutionizing scientific exploration.The impact of Lean Theorem Provers on humanity includes a shift in scientific validity, rapid scientific breakthroughs, and democratization of science.Continuous expansion of mathematical libraries in Lean Theorem Provers contributes to the codification of human knowledge.Resources are available for learning Lean Theorem Proving, including textbooks, articles, videos, and summer programs.Resrouces / Links:  Email Professor Tyler Josephson about summer REU undergraduate opportunities at the University of Maryland Baltimore (or online!) at tjo@umbc.edu.  See below Professor Tyler Josephson's links on learnnig more about LEANThe Natural Number Game:  Start in a world without math, unlock tactics and collect theorems until you can beat a 'boss' level and prove that 2+2=4, and go further.  Free LEAN Texbook and CourseProfessor Josephson's most-recommended resource for beginners learning Lean - a free online course and textbook from Prof. Heather Macbeth at Fordham University. Quanta Magazine articles on LeanProf. Kevin Buzzard of Imperial College London's lecture on LEAN interactive theorem prover and the future of mathematics. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/breaking-math-podcast--5545277/support.

“The Joy of Why” is a Quanta Magazine podcast about curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge. The mathematician and author Steven Strogatz and the astrophysicist and author Janna Levin take turns interviewing leading researchers about the great scientific and mathematical questions of our time. New episodes are released every other Thursday.

After graduating from high school, without a clear plan for what to do next, Laura Andrews started asking herself a lot of questions. A spiral of big philosophical thoughts that led her to sit down and write to us with a question that was… oddly mathematical.  What is the most average size thing, if you take into account everything in the universe. So, along with mathematician Steven Strogatz, we decided to see if we could sit down and, in a friendly throwdown of guesstimates and quick calculations, rough out an answer.  Special thanks to all the listeners who sent in their responses to this question. Episode Credits:Reported by - Soren Wheeler and Alex NeasonProduced by - Annie McEwenwith mixing help from - Arianne WackFact-checking by - Natalie A. Middletonand Edited by  - Alex Neason Citations: BooksYou can find links to many books by Steven Strogatz here: https://www.stevenstrogatz.com/all-books MediaAnd the podcast he does for Quanta Magazine, The Joy of Why, here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/tag/the-joy-of-why/ Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.   Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.