Site • RSS • Apple PodcastsDescription (podcaster-provided):
“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 questions of our time. New episodes are released every other Wednesday.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Research interviews on mathematics, physics and life sciences • cosmology: Big Bang, black holes, time, gravity, multiverse, string theory • AI, language, prediction, robotics • evolution, biodiversity, neuroscience, health • information, codes, cryptography, quantum techThis podcast features in-depth conversations with leading researchers about foundational questions in mathematics, physics, computer science and the life sciences, with an emphasis on how scientists build, test and revise explanations of complex phenomena. Guided by interviews that foreground curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge, it moves fluidly between abstract theory and real-world implications, often using a single problem—such as the structure of space-time, the nature of information, or the dynamics of living systems—as a lens on broader scientific thinking.
Across the episodes, major themes in fundamental physics recur, including the origins and evolution of the universe, the meaning of time, the behavior of black holes and the status of competing ideas about gravity and cosmology. The show also spends substantial time on the interplay between mathematics and physical reality, exploring how geometry, graph theory, infinity, tiling and other mathematical frameworks shape modern scientific understanding.
Another prominent thread is information in many forms: error correction and cryptography that underpin digital security, questions about what quantum mechanics allows for computation and communication, and how thermodynamics is being reinterpreted in quantum settings. Artificial intelligence appears as both a tool and an object of study, with attention to what modern models can predict, how they handle language, and why common-sense reasoning remains difficult.
The life-science episodes focus on evolution, development and physiology, ranging from sexual selection and the emergence of multicellularity to the challenge of defining species and the role of collective behavior in animals. The podcast also examines biology and medicine through quantitative and mechanistic lenses, such as modeling cancer treatment strategies, understanding cellular death pathways, and investigating the biology of milk and the microbiome. Some discussions connect Earth-based biology to astrobiology, asking what signs of life might look like on distant worlds and what extremophiles can teach us about possible alien ecosystems.
