“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.
Quanta Magazine is a Pulitzer Prize–winning, editorially independent online publication launched and supported by the Simons Foundation to illuminate big ideas in science and math through public service journalism. Quanta’s reporters and editors focus on developments in mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical computer science and the basic life sciences, emphasizing timely, accurate, in-depth and well-crafted articles for its broad discerning audience. In 2023, Steven Strogatz received a National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications partly for his work on “The Joy of Why.”
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Position in the Life Sciences chart (US), last 90 days.
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days in the top 3 since Nov 2024
Latest episodes
Showing 20 · updated from the feed
Live from ICM 2026: What Is Math For in the Age of AI?
#13 trending · Life Sciences
Mathematicians are witnessing a profound shift in their field. AI systems are now producing proofs, spotting connections between distant fields, and, in a few cases, solv
Sep 3 53 min
Are We Thinking Correctly about AI Intelligence?
When an LLM answers a question, is it reasoning like humans, or just producing text that looks like reasoning? The distinction isn’t just philosophical, this determines w
Aug 20 52 min
How Does Touch Lead To Pain Or Pleasure?
Pain and pleasure seem like simple facts of life, but they are far from it. Neuroscientists still cannot say why physical pain differs from psychological pain, for instan
Aug 6 55 min
How Fast Is the Universe Really Expanding?
One of the biggest mysteries in cosmology seems to keep getting bigger. Astronomers have known since the 1930s that the universe is expanding, but in the 1990s, the disco
Jul 23 1 h 04 min
Will We Ever Find Alien Civilizations?
Does intelligent life exist elsewhere in the universe? The question has captivated us for centuries, but despite decades of searching it remains frustratingly unanswered.
Jul 9 53 min
What Is the Positive Grassmannian and Why Does It Show Up Everywhere?
What links certain mathematical models of traffic flow, shallow-water waves, and quantum particle scattering? The surprising answer lies in a corner of the algebraic comb
Jun 25 51 min
What’s the Future of Gene Editing?
One of the most surprising and remarkable discoveries in recent scientific history has been CRISPR. Short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, C
Jun 11 51 min
More Conversations, Complex Questions, and Bold Ideas in Season Five of ‘The Joy of Why’
What is the future of gene editing with CRISPR? Has AI changed mathematics forever? Will we find other civilizations in the universe? What if we’ve been wrong about dark
Jun 4 1 min
Do Beautiful Birds Have an Evolutionary Advantage?
Birds are not merely descendants of dinosaurs — they are dinosaurs. For Yale evolutionary biologist and ornithologist Richard Prum, birds have been a lifelong passion and
Aug 21 2025 46 min
How Can Math Protect Our Data?
Every time data travels — from smartphones to the cloud, or across the vacuum of space — it relies on a silent but vigilant guardian in the form of error-correcting codes
Aug 7 2025 39 min
Why Did The Universe Begin?
Most cosmologists agree that our universe had a beginning. But the finer details about the Big Bang remain a mystery. A history of everything would explain all, or so the
Jul 24 2025 52 min
How Can Regional Models Advance Climate Science?
Climate models have changed the way we view the world. While effective, these models are imperfect, and scientists are constantly looking at ways to improve their accurac
Jul 10 2025 45 min
How Does Graph Theory Shape Our World?
Born in the 18th century when Leonhard Euler solved the puzzle of the seven bridges of Königsberg, graph theory has become a foundational tool in mathematics. It studies
Jun 26 2025 34 min
Does Form Really Shape Function?
What links a Möbius strip, brain folds and termite mounds? The answer is Harvard University’s L. Mahadevan, whose career has been devoted to using mathematics and physics
Jun 12 2025 47 min
Will We Ever Prove String Theory?
For decades, string theory has been hailed as the leading candidate for the theory of everything in our universe. Yet despite its mathematical elegance, the theory still
May 29 2025 48 min
How Did Geometry Create Modern Physics?
Geometry is one of the oldest disciplines in human history, yet the worlds it can describe extend far beyond its original use. What began thousands of years ago as a way
May 15 2025 46 min
Will AI Ever Understand Language Like Humans?
Large language models (LLMs) are becoming increasingly more impressive at creating human-like text and answering questions, but whether they can understand the meaning of
May 1 2025 41 min
Can Quantum Gravity Be Created in the Lab?
Quantum gravity is one of the biggest unresolved and challenging problems in physics, as it seeks to reconcile quantum mechanics, which governs the microscopic world, and
Apr 17 2025 42 min
What Is the True Promise of Quantum Computing?
Quantum computing promises unprecedented speed, but in practice, it’s proven remarkably difficult to find important questions that quantum machines can solve faster than
Apr 3 2025 38 min
How Did Multicellular Life Evolve?
At first, life on Earth was simple. Cells existed, functioned and reproduced as free-living individuals. But then, something remarkable happened. Some cells joined forces
Mar 20 2025 46 min
Chart positions
Where The Joy of Why ranks today in each Apple Podcasts chart (US, Sep 9, 2026).
A curated, balanced selection of Apple Podcasts reviews.
I love the variety of the guests, and Janna and Steven are great interviewers. In a podcasting world filled with fluffy 90 minute episodes, these folks keep it tight and interesting. I never find myself skipping or even speeding up the playback rate. Highly recommend!
Drew Hoover · Dec 2025
This podcast has its moments, but it can hard to listen to, especially regarding the dynamics of the hosts.
Steve Strogatz will often interrupt the "why" questions of their guests of physics by unironically stating, "I don't think we're supposed to ask that question as scientists," or bemoan, "Where's the science in this?" anytime a "why question is brought up." Jana Levin will often try to talk him off the scientism ledge by gently suggesting that he may be missing the bigger picture.
Furthermore, he often condescends his co-host's loftier questions. It is clear that while Jana Levin is a theoretical physicist and philosopher of physics, her co-host has boxed himself into the identity of a mathematician who refuses to keep an open mind, even on a podcast ironically titled "The Joy of Why."
For these reasons, I prefer Lex Fridman's podcast, where "why" questions and deep conversations are not only allowed but encouraged.
Slater137 · Aug 2025
The Joy of Why and its siblings Quanta magazine and podcast are a huge and wonderful contribution to public discourse by the Simons foundation. Such thoughtful presentation with just enough detail to exercise a significant number of neurons is getting so rare these days that it feels like we’re heading for a bit of a dark age. Thankfully there are islands like The Joy of Why that we can still cling to !
Kyoung21b · Jul 2025
This is my favorite podcast. If you haven’t listened to it, give it a try. You don’t need to listen to any of the episodes in order. Just pick one with a title that sounds interesting.
What makes the show stand out is not only the great speakers that they bring on, but the very thoughtful questions that the hosts ask. Both hosts are real experts, not only in their respective fields, but also in their ability to ask questions that guide the discussion gradually from high-level concepts all the way down to the latest results in the field. There’s something for anyone at every educational level in each episode.
So happy the new season is starting up. Love the new format where both hosts discuss at the beginning, middle, and of the episode.
bryan-sci-guy · Mar 2025
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