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 (20)
1. Marcus Feldman: In Search of Actions That Alter Evolution
Aired 5 January 2017
Marcus Feldman explains how he models the effects of a cultural preference — in this case, a preference for sons over daughters in China.
2. Francis Su: Math and the Good Life
Aired 3 February 2017
Francis Su explains how mathematics can help a person to live well.
3. Francis Su: Math Is for Everybody
Aired 4 February 2017
Francis Su discusses how the community of mathematicians tends to exclude certain people.
4. Sylvia Serfaty: In Mathematics, ‘You Cannot Be Lied To’
Aired 21 February 2017
Sylvia Serfaty explains why you don’t have to be a genius to become a mathematician.
5. Sharon Glotzer: ‘Digital Alchemist’ Seeks Rules of Emergence
Aired 8 March 2017
Sharon Glotzer explains how emergence, entropy and order can all fit together.
6. John Novembre: A Map of Human History, Hidden in DNA
Aired 20 April 2017
John Novembre explains how he uses genomic data to map human history.
7. Tim Maudlin: A Defense of the Reality of Time
Aired 19 May 2017
A Defense of the Reality of Time
8. Journey to the Birth of the Solar System 360 VR
Aired 25 May 2017
Join David Kaplan on a virtual-reality tour showing how the sun, the Earth and the other planets came to be.
9. Purvesh Khatri: More Data — the Dirtier the Better
Aired 7 June 2017
Khatri learned that by working with 'messy' clinical data sets, he could find genes that the human body expresses in response to diverse forms of a disease.
10. Jessica Flack: How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation
Aired 10 July 2017
Jessica Flack describes the special challenges of applying collective computation to the understanding of complex biological systems.
11. Jay Pasachoff: Eclipse Hunter Reveals the Science That Can Only Be Done in the Dark
Aired 10 August 2017
Jay Pasachoff explains what scientists can learn during a total solar eclipse.
12. How Andrea Ghez Found a Supermassive Black Hole
Aired 21 August 2017
The UCLA astrophysicist explains how tracking the movement of stars revealed the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
13. Svitlana Mayboroda: Taming Rogue Waves
Aired 22 August 2017
Svitlana Mayboroda describes how the landscape function helps solve the mystery of wave localization.
14. Neil Johnson: A Physicist Who Models ISIS and the Alt-Right
Aired 23 August 2017
Neil Johnson on the physics of collective human behavior.
15. Nigel Goldenfeld: Seeing Emergent Physics Behind Evolution
Aired 31 August 2017
Nigel Goldenfeld explains how condensed matter physics provides insights into the collective state of early life on Earth.
16. Rebecca Goldin: Why Math Is the Best Way to Make Sense of the World
Aired 11 September 2017
Rebecca Goldin explains why quantitative literacy is so important.
17. Michael Assis: Atomic Origami
Aired 31 October 2017
Michael Assis demonstrates how defects can be used to tune the properties of Miura-ori origami.
18. Federico Ardila: A Mathematician Who Dances to the Joys and Sorrows of Discovery
Aired 20 November 2017
A Mathematician Who Dances to the Joys and Sorrows of Discovery
19. Minhyong Kim: Connecting Number Theory to Physics
Aired 1 December 2017
Minhyong Kim wanted to make sure he had concrete results in number theory before he admitted that his ideas were inspired by physics.
20. Corina Tarnita: First Understand Nature’s Rules
Aired 20 December 2017
Corina Tarnita argues that to fully appreciate nature, you must first understand its rules.