Best Ethan Siegel Podcasts (2024)

1
Michael Freedman | A Fields Medalist Panorama 2:52:45

2d ago2:52:45

2:52:45

Michael Freedman is a mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1986 for his solution of the 4-dimensional Poincare conjecture. Mike has also received numerous other awards for his scientific contributions including a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Medal of Science. In 1997, Mike joined Microsoft Research and in 2005 became the direc…

1
Starts With A Bang #107 - Binary Stars And Modified Gravity 1:52:47

7d ago1:52:47

1:52:47

On the largest of cosmic scales, the best description we have of our Universe is known as the ΛCDM model with an inflationary hot Big Bang: our consensus cosmology. It tells us that we have a Universe consistent with being made of about 5% normal matter, a little bit of radiation in the form of photons, around 0.1% neutrinos, and the rest made of t…

1
Starts With A Bang #106 - The Troublesome Hunt for Planet Nine 1:33:51

2M ago1:33:51

1:33:51

One of the most swiftly forgotten revolutions in all of science is our understanding of the Solar System out beyond Neptune. Although Pluto was discovered nearly a full century ago, it wasn't until the early 1990s that we even discovered the next object beyond Neptune that wasn't also part of the Plutonian system. And yet, in the 30 short years tha…

1
Starts With A Bang #105 - Dark Matter And Galaxies 1:38:19

3M ago1:38:19

1:38:19

Every January, I head to the American Astronomical Society's big annual meeting with an ulterior motive in mind. Beyond merely uncovering new scientific findings, gathering information for potential stories, and connecting with friends and colleagues, I also look to meet emerging junior researchers who are swiftly becoming not only experts, but lea…

1
Marcus Hutter | Universal Artificial Intelligence and Solomonoff Induction 3:01:55

3M ago3:01:55

3:01:55

Marcus Hutter is an artificial intelligence researcher who is both a Senior Researcher at Google DeepMind and an Honorary Professor in the Research School of Computer Science at Australian National University. He is responsible for the development of the theory of Universal Artificial Intelligence, for which he has written two books, one back in 20…

1
Starts With A Bang #104 - The Magnetized Galactic Center 1:42:22

4M ago1:42:22

1:42:22

Have you ever wondered what the full story with the galactic center is? Sure, we have stars, gas, and an all-important supermassive black hole, but for hundreds of light-years around the center, there's a remarkable story going on that's traced out in a variety of elements at a whole slew of different temperatures. Imprinted in that material is a r…

1
Starts With A Bang #103 - Active galaxies and the universe 1:30:52

5M ago1:30:52

1:30:52

All throughout the Universe, galaxies exist in a great variety of shapes, ages, and states. Today's galaxies come in spirals, ellipticals, irregulars, and rings, all ranging in size from behemoths hundreds or even thousands of times larger than the Milky Way to dwarf galaxies with fewer than 0.1% of the stars present here in our cosmic home. But at…

1
Starts With a Bang #102 - The missing exoplanets 1:46:33

6M ago1:46:33

1:46:33

Up until the early 1990s, we didn't know what sorts of planets lived around stars other than our Sun. Were they like our own Solar System, with inner, rocky planets close to our star and large, giant worlds farther away? It turned out that exoplanetary systems come in a great variety of configurations: with planets of all sizes, masses, and distanc…

1
Richard Borcherds | Monstrous Moonshine: From Group Theory to String Theory 2:05:15

6M ago2:05:15

2:05:15

Richard Borcherds is a mathematician and professor at University of California Berkeley known for his work on lattices, group theory, and infinite-dimensional algebras. His numerous accolades include being awarded the Fields Medal in 1998 and being elected a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and the National Academy of Sciences. Patreon (…

1
Announcements for 2024 and a Message to Viewers 1:13

7M ago1:13

1:13

Thought I'd share some exciting news about what's happening at The Cartesian Cafe in 2024 and also a personal message to viewers on how they can support the cafe. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/timothynguyenBy Timothy Nguyen

1
Starts With A Bang #101 - Quantum Computing 1:38:50

7M ago1:38:50

1:38:50

Happy new year, everyone, and with a new year comes a spectacular new podcast! We normally cover an intricate and underappreciated aspect of astrophysics on the podcast, but I had the opportunity to bring on a true expert in the field of quantum computing and just couldn't pass it up. You've likely heard a lot of noise about quantum computers and t…

1
Starts With A Bang podcast #100 - Galaxies in the JWST era 1:32:27

8M ago1:32:27

1:32:27

It's hard to believe, but it was only back just a year and a half ago, in mid-2022, that we had yet to encounter the very first science images released by JWST. In the time that's passed since, we've gotten a revolutionary glimpse of our Universe, replete with tremendous new discoveries: the farthest black hole, the most distant galaxy, the farthes…

1
Tim Maudlin | Bell’s Theorem and Beyond: Nobody Understands Quantum Mechanics 2:41:51

8M ago2:41:51

2:41:51

Tim Maudlin is a philosopher of science specializing in the foundations of physics, metaphysics, and logic. He is a professor at New York University, a member of the Foundational Questions Institute, and the founder and director of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. Patreon (bonus materials + video chat): https://www.patreon.co…

1
Starts With a Bang #99 - Varying and evolving stars 1:42:07

9M ago1:42:07

1:42:07

You might not think about it very often, but when it comes to the question of "how old is a star that we're observing," there are some very simple approximations that we make: measure its mass, radius, temperature, and luminosity (and maybe metallicity, too, for an extra layer of accuracy), and we'll tell you the age of this star, including how far…

1
Starts With A Bang #98 - The Line Between Star And Planet 1:32:22

10M ago1:32:22

1:32:22

Out there in the Universe, there's a whole lot more than simply what we find in our own Solar System. Here at home, the largest, most massive object is the Sun: a bright, hot, luminous star, while the second most massive object is Jupiter: a mere gas giant planet, exhibiting a small amount of self-compression due to the force of gravity. But elsewh…

1
Antonio Padilla | Fantastic Numbers, Naturalness, and Anthropics in Physics 2:34:13

10M ago2:34:13

2:34:13

Antonio (Tony) Padilla is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist at the University of Nottingham. He serves as the Associate Director of the Nottingham Centre of Gravity, and in 2016, Tony shared the Buchalter Cosmology Prize for his work on the cosmological constant. Tony is also a star of the Numberphile YouTube channel, where his videos have re…

1
Starts With A Bang #97 - Tiny Galaxies and Us 1:38:50

11M ago1:38:50

1:38:50

When we look at our nearby Universe, it's easy to recognize our own galaxy and the other large, massive ones that are nearby: Andromeda, the major galaxies in nearby groups like Bode's Galaxy, the group of galaxies in Leo, and the huge galaxies at the cores of the Virgo and Coma Clusters, among others. But these are not most of the galaxies in the …

1
Starts With a Bang #96 - Detecting the Cosmic Gravitational Wave Background 1:41:32

12M ago1:41:32

1:41:32

We all knew, if Einstein's General Theory of Relativity were in fact the correct theory of gravity, that it would only be a matter of time before we detected one of its unmistakable predictions: that all throughout spacetime, a symphony (or cacophony) of gravitational waves would be rippling, creating a cosmic "hum" as all of the moving, accelerati…

1
Boaz Barak | Cryptography: The Art of Mathematical Secrecy 2:33:29

1y ago2:33:29

2:33:29

Boaz Barak is a professor of computer science at Harvard University, having previously been a principal researcher at Microsoft Research and a professor at Princeton University. His research interests span many areas of theoretical computer science including cryptography, computational complexity, and the foundations of machine learning. Boaz serve…

1
Starts With A Bang #95 - Supermassive Black Holes and more 1:38:27

1y ago1:38:27

1:38:27

Sometimes, it's hard to believe we've come as far as we have, scientifically, in such a short period of time. We only began accumulating the first very strong evidence for supermassive black holes during the 1990s, and yet here we are, less than 30 years later, studying them, their effects, and their environments all across the Universe: from the p…

1
Starts With A Bang #94 - Dark Energy And Cosmic Growth 1:39:14

1y ago1:39:14

1:39:14

We have a pretty good idea of both what's in our Universe and how it grew up. But it's only because we have several different, completely independent lines of evidence that point to the same consensus picture that we actually believe that our Universe is 13.8 billion years old and composed of a mix of normal matter and radiation, but is dominated b…

1
Sean Carroll | The Many Worlds Interpretation & Emergent Spacetime 2:12:40

1y ago2:12:40

2:12:40

Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist and philosopher who specializes in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and the philosophy of science. He is the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and an external professor at the Sante Fe Institute. Sean has contributed prolifically to the public understanding of science through a…

1
Starts With A Bang #93 - Mars From The Ground 1:33:29

1y ago1:33:29

1:33:29

One of the most exciting possibilities for life beyond Earth doesn't require us going very far. While Mercury and the Moon have no atmosphere and Venus is an inferno-esque hellscape, Mars offers a tantalizing possibility for a new line of life, independent of Earth, here in our Solar System. With the same raw ingredients and more than a billion yea…

1
Daniel Schroeder | Introduction to Thermal Physics 1:33:14

1+ y ago1:33:14

1:33:14

Daniel Schroeder is a particle and accelerator physicist and an editor for The American Journal of Physics. Dan received his PhD from Stanford University, where he spent most of his time at the Stanford Linear Accelerator, and he is currently a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Weber State University. Dan is also the author of…

1
Starts With A Bang #92 - Type Ia Supernovae 1:45:57

1+ y ago1:45:57

1:45:57

Back in the 1990s, observations of type Ia supernovae were the key data set that led astronomers to conclude that the Universe's expansion was accelerating, and some new form of energy, now known as dark energy, was permeating the Universe. Over the past ~25 years, those observations have gotten so good that we now have a tension within the expandi…

1
Ethan Siegel | Demystifying Dark Matter 1:49:00

1+ y ago1:49:00

1:49:00

Ethan Siegel is a theoretical astrophysicist and science communicator. He received his PhD from the University of Florida and held academic positions at the University of Arizona, University of Oregon, and Lewis & Clark College before moving on to become a full-time science writer. Ethan is the author of the book Beyond The Galaxy, which is the sto…

1
Starts With A Bang podcast #91 — Hypermassive neutron stars 1:37:12

1+ y ago1:37:12

1:37:12

When stars are born, they can come with a wide variety of masses. But there are only a few ways that stars can die, and only a few types of remnants that can be left behind: white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. Neutrons stars and black holes are most frequently created from core-collapse supernova events: the deaths of massive stars. Somew…

1
Alex Kontorovich | Circle Packings and Their Hidden Treasures 2:20:02

1+ y ago2:20:02

2:20:02

Alex Kontorovich is a Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers University and served as the Distinguished Professor for the Public Dissemination of Mathematics at the National Museum of Mathematics in 2020–2021. Alex has received numerous awards for his illustrious mathematical career, including the Levi L. Conant Prize in 2013 for mathematical expositi…

1
Starts With A Bang #90 - How Galaxies Grow Up 1:37:14

1+ y ago1:37:14

1:37:14

One of the great advances of 20th and 21st century science has been, for the first time to show us two things: how the Universe began and what the Universe looks like today. The modern frontier is all about the in-between stages: how did the Universe grow up? How did it go from particles to atoms to the first stars and galaxies to the modern Milky …

1
Starts With A Bang #89 - The active threat of the Sun 1:31:04

1+ y ago1:31:04

1:31:04

For life on Earth, there's no more important source of energy than the Sun; without it, it's doubtful that life would have arisen on Earth, and it certainly wouldn't have evolved to give rise to the wild diversity of biological organisms seen today. But the Sun is more than just a constant source of heat and light; it also emits particles, and ther…

1
Greg Yang | Large N Limits: Random Matrices & Neural Networks 3:01:27

1+ y ago3:01:27

3:01:27

Greg Yang is a mathematician and AI researcher at Microsoft Research who for the past several years has done incredibly original theoretical work in the understanding of large artificial neural networks. Greg received his bachelors in mathematics from Harvard University in 2018 and while there won the Hoopes prize for best undergraduate thesis. He …

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Ethan Siegel Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Quick Reference Guide