![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/JoY-S3-LaunchEssay-byPeterGreenwood-Lede-LOGO-1-1720x968.webp)
The Joy of Why
The mathematician and author Steven Strogatz and the astrophysicist and author Janna Levin interview leading researchers about the great scientific and mathematical questions of our time.
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![Planets surrounding Earth](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/JOW-324-Exoplanets_crPeter-Greenwood-Thumbnail-NO-LOGO.webp)
How Will We Know We’re Not Alone?
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![illustration depicting cell death](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/JOW323-Cell-Death_crPeter-Greenwood-Thumbnail-NO-LOGO.jpg)
How Is Cell Death Essential to Life?
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![A bird surrounded by speech bubbles](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/JOW-322-Bird-song-and-Speech_crPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail-NO-LOGO.jpg)
What Can Birdsong Teach Us About Human Language?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/JOW321_crPeterGreenwoodThumbnail-NO-LOGO-1.jpg)
How Is AI Changing the Science of Prediction?
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![Finches lined up and surrounded by DNA](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Thumbnail-NO-LOGO.webp)
Why Is It So Hard to Define a Species?
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![An IV bag full of math](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/0815_JOW-CancerAndMath-crPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
How Can Math Help Beat Cancer?
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![A cave on another planet with a view of an alien solar system](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/JOW_Extremophiles-crPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail-NO-LOGO.jpg)
What Can Cave Life Tell Us About Alien Ecosystems?
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![Shapes forming an atom](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/JoW-E17-Quantum-Thermodynamics-Peter-Greenwood-Thumbnail.jpg)
Can Thermodynamics Go Quantum?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/MassiveGravity-cr.PeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
Do We Need a New Theory of Gravity?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/0815_JOW-EP15-CollaborativeRobotics-crPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
Are Robots About to Level Up?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/0801_JOW-E14-Cryptography-crPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
How Does Math Keep Secrets?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/0718_JOW-E13-Do-LLMs-Understand-crPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
Will AI Ever Have Common Sense?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/JoY-S3E12-Tiling-crPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
What Can Tiling Patterns Teach Us?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/JoY-S3E11-SciencePossible-crPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail-1.webp)
How Is Science Even Possible?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/JoY-S3E10-Psychedelics-crPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
Can Psychedelics Improve Mental Health?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/JoY-S3E9-Depression-crPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
What Happens in the Brain to Cause Depression?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/JoY-S3E8-Superconductivity-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
Will Better Superconductors Transform the World?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/JoY-S3E7-HumanMilk-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
What Does Milk Do for Babies?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/JoY-S3E6-BlackHoleParadox-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
Can Information Escape a Black Hole?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/JoY-S3E5-Flocking-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
How Is Flocking Like Computing?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/JoY-S3E4-QuantumTeleport-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
What Is Quantum Teleportation?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/JoY-S3E3-Time-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
What Is the Nature of Time?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/JoY-S3E2-Altruism-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
How Did Altruism Evolve?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/JoY-S3E1-GoodMath-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
What Makes for ‘Good’ Mathematics?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/JoY-S3-LaunchEssay-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail-v4.webp)
Why Locusts Swarm, Humans Do Good and Time Marches On
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/JoY-S2E12-Nothingness-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail-v2.webp)
Does Nothingness Exist?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/JoY-S2E11-Arrythmia-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail-v2.jpg)
Can Math and Physics Save an Arrhythmic Heart?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/JoY-S2E10-JellyFish-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
What Can Jellyfish Teach Us About Fluid Dynamics?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/JoY-S2E9-RogueWaves-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
What Causes Giant Rogue Waves?
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![A representation of a human head examining its experiences.](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/JoY-S2E8-Consciousness-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
What Is the Nature of Consciousness?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/JoY-S2E7-Multiverse-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
Are There Reasons to Believe in a Multiverse?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/JoY-S2E6-TimeCrystals-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
Is Perpetual Motion Possible at the Quantum Level?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/JoY-S2E5-Infinity-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
How Can Some Infinities Be Bigger Than Others?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/JoY-S2E4-Vaccines-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
What Has the Pandemic Taught Us About Vaccines?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/JoY-S2P3-CategoryTheory-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
Is There Math Beyond the Equal Sign?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/JoY-S2P2-Synthetic_Biology-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
Can We Program Our Cells?
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![golden planets look like they're moving through a twisting current](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/JoY-S2P1-End_of_Everything-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
How Will the Universe End?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/JoY-OpeningEssay-byPeterGreenwood-Thumbnail.webp)
The Joy of Asking About Infinity, Jellyfish and the End of the Universe
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![The face of a sleeping person surrounded by images of the person running and flying in dreams, with other images of scientists monitoring the process.](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/JoY_Dreams_300.jpg)
Why and How Do We Dream?
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![Representations of fields becoming neutrons, doughnuts, pretzels, soccer balls and other objects.](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/JoW_QFT_V2_300.jpg)
What Is Quantum Field Theory and Why Is It Incomplete?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/JoW_Aging_900_Thumbnail.jpg)
Why Do We Get Old, and Can Aging Be Reversed?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/JoW_Evidence-in-Math_900_Thumb.jpg)
How Do Mathematicians Know Their Proofs Are Correct?
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![Computers doing mathematics.](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/JoW_LEAN_900_Thumb_Square.jpg)
Can Computers Be Mathematicians?
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![an illustration of various objects (a chair, a rocket, a cell phone, etc.) as well as biological objects such as a DNA double-helix and microbe, all against a lime green background](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/JOY_What_is_life_300.jpg)
What Is Life?
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![Illustration of icons that relate to life’s origins: a volcano, molecules, a crab, fish, DNA and more.](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/TJY_Origins_Life_900_Thumb_Square.jpg)
How Could Life Evolve From Cyanide?
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![Illustration of a woman astronomer looking at a map that shows the James Webb Space Telescope capturing images of a distant planet.](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/TJY_JWST_900_Thumb-square.jpg)
Will the James Webb Space Telescope Reveal Another Earth?
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![Illustration of planets and other objects floating above the deformable sheet of space-time.](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/TJY_Space_Time_900_thumb-square.jpg)
Where Do Space, Time and Gravity Come From?
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![Artist’s illustration representing the immune system standing guard against a world of pathogens.](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/JOY_OF_Y-E3_900_Episode-thumb.jpg)
Why Is Inflammation a Dangerous Necessity?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/JOY_OF_Y-E2_300.jpg)
Untangling Why Knots Are Important
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/JOY_OF_Y-E1_900_Episode_thumb.jpg)
Why Do We Die Without Sleep?
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![](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Joy-of-Why-intro-illustration_900.jpg)
Deep Curiosity Inspires The Joy of Why Podcast
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