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podcasts

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

How Will We Know We’re Not Alone?

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illustration depicting cell death

How Is Cell Death Essential to Life?

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A bird surrounded by speech bubbles

What Can Birdsong Teach Us About Human Language?

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How Is AI Changing the Science of Prediction?

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Finches lined up and surrounded by DNA

Why Is It So Hard to Define a Species?

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An IV bag full of math

How Can Math Help Beat Cancer?

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A cave on another planet with a view of an alien solar system

What Can Cave Life Tell Us About Alien Ecosystems?

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Shapes forming an atom

Can Thermodynamics Go Quantum?

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Do We Need a New Theory of Gravity?

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Are Robots About to Level Up?

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How Does Math Keep Secrets?

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Will AI Ever Have Common Sense?

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What Can Tiling Patterns Teach Us?

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How Is Science Even Possible?

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Can Psychedelics Improve Mental Health?

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What Happens in the Brain to Cause Depression?

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Will Better Superconductors Transform the World?

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What Does Milk Do for Babies?

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Can Information Escape a Black Hole?

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How Is Flocking Like Computing?

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What Is Quantum Teleportation?

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What Is the Nature of Time?

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How Did Altruism Evolve?

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What Makes for ‘Good’ Mathematics?

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Why Locusts Swarm, Humans Do Good and Time Marches On

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Does Nothingness Exist?

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Can Math and Physics Save an Arrhythmic Heart?

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What Can Jellyfish Teach Us About Fluid Dynamics?

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What Causes Giant Rogue Waves?

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A representation of a human head examining its experiences.

What Is the Nature of Consciousness?

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Are There Reasons to Believe in a Multiverse?

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Is Perpetual Motion Possible at the Quantum Level?

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How Can Some Infinities Be Bigger Than Others?

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What Has the Pandemic Taught Us About Vaccines?

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Is There Math Beyond the Equal Sign?

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Can We Program Our Cells?

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golden planets look like they're moving through a twisting current

How Will the Universe End?

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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.

Why and How Do We Dream?

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Representations of fields becoming neutrons, doughnuts, pretzels, soccer balls and other objects.

What Is Quantum Field Theory and Why Is It Incomplete?

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Why Do We Get Old, and Can Aging Be Reversed?

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How Do Mathematicians Know Their Proofs Are Correct?

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Computers doing mathematics.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Why Is Inflammation a Dangerous Necessity?

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Untangling Why Knots Are Important

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Why Do We Die Without Sleep?

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Deep Curiosity Inspires The Joy of Why Podcast

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