About this season
Explore mind-bending developments in basic science and math research. Quanta Magazine is an award-winning, editorially independent magazine published by the Simons Foundation.
Episodes (23)
1. What Happens if You Fall Into a Black Hole?
Aired 10 June 2015
David Kaplan explores one of the biggest mysteries in physics: the apparent contradiction between general relativity and quantum mechanics.
2. Freeman Dyson: A ‘Rebel’ Without a Ph.D.
Aired 11 June 2015
A wide-ranging interview with the legendary mathematical physicist Freeman Dyson in which he discusses his work with Richard Feynman, his attempts to build a spaceship propelled by nuclear bombs and his controversial views on climate change.
3. Artur Avila: A Brazilian Wunderkind Who Calms Chaos
Aired 12 June 2015
A video profile of the mathematician Artur Avila, whose solutions to ubiquitous problems in chaos theory have earned him Brazil’s first Fields Medal in 2014.
4. Manjul Bhargava: The Musical, Magical Number Theorist
Aired 15 June 2015
A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Manjul Bhargava, whose search for artistic truth and beauty has led to some of the most profound recent discoveries in number theory.
5. Where Did the Universe Come From?
Aired 16 June 2015
Where did the universe come from? David Kaplan explores the leading cosmological explanation with the help of a baking metaphor.
6. Yitang Zhang: An Unlikely Math Star Rises
Aired 17 June 2015
The opening scene from George Csicsery’s film "Counting From Infinity," about Yitang Zhang, a previously unknown mathematician who two years ago solved a major problem in number theory that catapulted him to mathematical stardom.
7. Martin Hairer: In Noisy Equations, One Who Heard Music
Aired 19 June 2015
A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Martin Hairer, whose epic masterpiece in stochastic analysis, experts say, “created a whole world.”
8. Maryam Mirzakhani: A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces
Aired 23 June 2015
A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Maryam Mirzakhani, whose monumental work draws deep connections between topology, geometry and dynamical systems.
9. Subhash Khot: A Grand Vision for the Impossible
Aired 24 June 2015
A video profile of the 2014 Nevanlinna Prize winner Subhash Khot, whose bold conjecture is helping mathematicians explore the precise limits of computation.
10. Alan Guth: How Many Two-Headed Cows in a Multiverse?
Aired 2 July 2015
In an infinitely branching multiverse, says MIT cosmologist Alan Guth, “there are an infinite number of one-headed cows and an infinite number of two-headed cows. What happens to the ratio?”
11. Hiranya Peiris: How to Test If We Live in a Multiverse
Aired 9 July 2015
University College London physicist Hiranya Peiris explains the seemingly impossible -- how the multiverse can be experimentally tested.
12. How Did Life Begin on Earth?
Aired 20 July 2022
In this 2-minute video, David Kaplan explores the leading theories for the origin of life on our planet.
13. Fly-Vac: Groundhog Day for Fruit Flies
Aired 21 July 2015
Benjamin de Bivort’s lab at Harvard University developed a device called the fly-vac to study individual behavior. Upon entering a chamber, the fly must choose to walk toward the light or dark end. A vacuum then sucks it back to the starting point, and it makes the choice again.
14. Why Do Flies Walk This Way?
Aired 22 July 2015
In a device in Benjamin de Bivort’s lab at Harvard University, a fly wanders through a tiny Y-shaped maze, choosing at the Y’s vertex whether to walk left or right. This array of Y-mazes allows researchers to track individual behavior in many flies simultaneously.
15. How Symmetry Shapes Nature’s Laws
Aired 17 August 2015
In this 2-minute video, David Kaplan explains how the search for hidden symmetries leads to discoveries like the Higgs boson.
16. James Bullock: The Case for Complex Dark Matter
Aired 25 August 2015
James Bullock, a physicist at the University of California, Irvine, explains why dark matter might be more complicated than astronomers have assumed.
17. Nancy Moran: An Explorer of Life’s Deepest Partnerships
Aired 18 September 2015
Nancy Moran, a biologist at the University of Texas at Austin, explains how colony collapse disorder led her to study the bacteria that live in the guts of bees.
18. Nima Arkani-Hamed's Visions of Future Physics
Aired 23 September 2015
Nima Arkani-Hamed, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study, makes his "big-picture" case for building a 100-TeV particle collider.
19. What Is a Species?
Aired 24 September 2015
David Kaplan explains why a simple definition of 'species' is hard to come by in our fifth In Theory video.
20. Gabriela González: Searching the Sky for the Wobbles of Gravity
Aired 23 October 2015
Gabriela González explains how to measure black-hole collisions using gravitational waves.
21. Joan Strassmann: The Woman Who Stared at Wasps
Aired 6 November 2015
Joan Strassmann explains the benefits of studying social amoebas.
22. Christoph Adami: The Information Theory of Life
Aired 20 November 2015
Christoph Adami explains how information theory can explain the persistence of life.
23. Richard Dawid: Why Trust a Theory?
Aired 18 December 2015
Richard Dawid discusses the fine line between science and speculation.