The Quanta Podcast

After over a century of studying introspection in humans and animals, researchers are beginning to explore the phenomenon in unlikely new subjects: large language models. These systems, which are based on mathematical structures called neural networks, excel at cognitive tasks that until recently seemed exclusive to humans. Can they introspect as well?
On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with staff writer Ben Brubaker about “injecting” thoughts into LLM neural networks — and what researchers are doing to map out AI’s capacity for introspection.
This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.  
Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor-in-chief Samir Patel and Senior Editor Hannah Waters speak with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

Before he won a Fields Medal for his pioneering work balancing randomness and order, Yu Deng had to achieve equilibrium in his own life.

The article Amid Life’s Chaos, a Meticulous Mathematician Finds Stability first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

The French mathematician Nicolas de Condorcet was a passionate believer in democracy, but he also discovered a frustrating paradox within it: A majority can sometimes vote itself into a logical loop. Mathematicians have now found that this “logical loop” maps onto a strange topological shape: the Klein bottle, a surface with no distinct inside or outside. 
On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with writer Alex Stone about this new connection between this centuries-old voting paradox and the Klein bottle — and how it illustrates just how difficult it is to translate a group of individual preferences into a single choice. 
This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.  
Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor-in-chief Samir Patel and Senior Editor Hannah Waters speak with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

To invade red blood cells, malaria parasites create a temporary molecular portal that lets them slip into the cell — and then the door disappears behind it, gone in 60 seconds. Researchers have finally detailed the proteins that let it break in without tripping the alarms.
On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with writer Joanna Thompson about these new images of Plasmodium’s moment of invasion — and what this breakthrough could mean for the next generation of malaria treatments and drug discovery for other parasitic diseases. 
This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.  
Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor-in-chief Samir Patel and Senior Editor Hannah Waters speak with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

John Pardon sees connections between different areas of math that others don’t. For that vision, he’s now been awarded a Fields Medal.

The article The Quietest Mathematician Has Always Been Worth Listening To first appeared on Quanta Magazine.