An introduction to the new Quanta Magazine podcast The Joy of Why, in which noted mathematician and author Steven Strogatz talks with experts about some of the greatest scientific questions of all time.

Behaviors are sometimes described as being "hardwired," but the work of the celebrated neuroscientist Eve Marder of Brandeis University has explored a crucial difference between neural circuits and engineered ones: Neurons need to be resilient in the face of their own ongoing biomolecular...

The quantum physicist Charlie Marcus - a principal researcher at Microsoft Quantum Research and a professor at the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen - is engaged in one of the most ambitious quests in modern technology: the creation of a true quantum computer. In this episode,...