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The Quanta Podcast

Every Tuesday, editor in chief Samir Patel sits down with writers and editors to discuss our most thought-provoking stories in science and math. Audio editions of Quanta’s stories with Susan Valot will appear biweekly on Thursdays.

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A photograph of ice cubes molded into different shapes—including a sphere, a snowflake, a diamond, and a dinosaur—scattered across a blue surface.

Physicists Discover the Most Complex Forms of Ice Yet

Stylized digital artwork illustrating the concept of knowledge distillation in artificial intelligence. A big futuristic machine representing a large teacher model beams streams of binary code downward into an open laptop below, symbolizing a smaller student model receiving knowledge.

How Distillation Makes AI Models Smaller and Cheaper

An illustration shows a knight kneeling behind a shield engraved with an image of a bacterium, with which he defends against an onslaught of viruses.

The Ancient Weapons Active in Your Immune System Today

What Can We Gain by Losing Infinity?

Steam billows off a colorful hot spring.

The Cells That Breathe Two Ways

A collage with Gilles Brassard (left) and Charles Bennett.

Quantum Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award

Are Strings Still Our Best Hope for a Theory of Everything?

A fish with numbers on the side floating in a fishtank in the ocean. Other fish swim by.

New Physics-Inspired Proof Probes the Borders of Disorder

Tangles of green and blue strands, representing different types of proteins, spill out over the edges of a circular channel.

Disorder Drives One of Nature’s Most Complex Machines

In Math, Rigor Is Vital. But Are Digitized Proofs Taking It Too Far?

Illustration of a man holding a laptop while standing in the middle of a complicated optics experiment. Green laser beams fly around every which way.

AI Comes Up With Bizarre Physics Experiments. But They Work.

An illustration showing a variety of humanoid robots, including Atlas, Digit, a science fiction robot, and a toy, along with floating stairs.

Why Do Humanoid Robots Still Struggle With the Small Stuff?

How Modern and Antique Technologies Reveal a Dynamic Cosmos

A robotic arm paints on a canvas set on an easel, surrounded by paint buckets and abstract artworks in a minimal, blue-toned room. Splashes of paint scatter on the floor, blending mechanical precision with artistic expression.

Researchers Uncover Hidden Ingredients Behind AI Creativity

Bright spots of red (calcium) travel in waves across a blue substrate (brain cells).

Once Thought To Support Neurons, Astrocytes Turn Out To Be in Charge

The Ecosystem Dynamics That Can Make or Break an Invasion