Mathematicians are working to fully explain unusual behaviors uncovered using artificial intelligence.

How did cells evolve a process to end their own lives? Recent research suggests that apoptosis, a form of programmed cell death, first arose billions of years ago in bacteria with a primitive sociality.

By eliminating a hidden inefficiency, computer scientists have come up with a new way to multiply large matrices that’s faster than ever.

Altering a protein in the neurons that coordinate a rattlesnake’s movement made a slow slither neuron more like a speedy rattle neuron, showing one way evolution can generate new ways of moving.

Researchers have shown that a problem about the energy of a quantum system is easy for quantum computers but hard for classical ones.

The recipient of the 2024 Crafoord Prize in Mathematics discusses math as art, math as language, and math as abstract thought.

Teleporting people through space is still science fiction. But quantum teleportation is dramatically different and entirely real. In this episode, Janna Levin interviews the theoretical physicist John Preskill about teleporting bits and the promise of quantum…

Long-anticipated experiments that use light to mimic gravity are revealing the distribution of energies, forces and pressures inside a subatomic particle for the first time.

Electroconvulsive therapy is highly effective in treating major depressive disorder, but no one knows why it works. New research suggests it may restore balance between excitation and inhibition in the brain.

Recent controversies bode ill for the effort to detect life on other planets by analyzing the gases in their atmospheres.

The French mathematician spent decades developing a set of tools now widely used for taming random processes.

Large language models do better at solving problems when they show their work. Researchers are beginning to understand why.

Recursion builds bridges between ideas from across different math classes and illustrates the power of creative mathematical thinking.

In the search for the most scalable hardware to use for quantum computers, qubits made of individual atoms are having a breakout moment.

Mathematicians are using topological abstractions to find places where it’s hard to vote.

Russell Impagliazzo studies hard problems, the limits of cryptography, the nature of randomness and more.

Birds flock. Locusts swarm. Fish school. From chaotic assemblies of life, order somehow emerges. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz interviews the evolutionary ecologist Iain Couzin about how and why collective behaviors arise.

Our brain waves can align when we work and play closely together. The phenomenon, known as interbrain synchrony, suggests that collaboration is biological.

Mathematicians have illuminated what sets of points can look like if the distances between them are all whole numbers.

After a decade out of the spotlight, the brain cells once alleged to explain empathy, autism and theory of mind are being refined and redefined.

A generation of physicists has referred to the dark energy that permeates the universe as “the cosmological constant.” Now the largest map of the cosmos to date hints that this mysterious energy has been changing over billions of years.