Best Janna Levin Podcasts (2024)

1
Are Robots About to Level Up? 38:22

7h ago38:22

38:22

Today’s AI largely lives in computers, but acting and reacting in the real world — that’s the realm of robots. In this week’s episode, co-host Steven Strogatz talks with pioneering roboticist Daniela Rus about creativity, collaboration, and the unusual forms robots of the future might take. The post Are Robots About to Level Up? first appeared on Q…

1
How Does Math Keep Secrets? 36:56

12d ago36:56

36:56

Cryptography is the thread that connects Julius Caesar, World War II and quantum computing, and it now lies under nearly every part of modern life. In this week’s episode, computer scientist Boaz Barak and co-host Janna Levin discuss the past and future of secrecy. The post How Does Math Keep Secrets? first appeared on Quanta Magazine…

1
Will AI Ever Have Common Sense? 44:10

1M ago44:10

44:10

Common sense has been viewed as one of the hardest challenges in AI. That said, ChatGPT4 has acquired what some believe is an impressive sense of humanity. How is this possible? Listen to this week’s “The Joy of Why” with co-host Steven Strogatz. The post Will AI Ever Have Common Sense? first appeared on Quanta Magazine…

1
How Is Tiling Without Repetition Possible? 39:17

1M ago39:17

39:17

If you cover a surface with tiles, repetitive patterns always emerge — or do they? In this week’s episode, mathematician Natalie Priebe Frank and co-host Janna Levin discuss how recent breakthroughs in tiling can unlock structural secrets in the natural world. The post What Can Tiling Patterns Teach Us? first appeared on Quanta Magazine…

1
How Is Science Even Possible? 35:44

2M ago35:44

35:44

How are scientists able to crack fundamental questions about nature and life? How does math make the complex cosmos understandable? In this episode, the physicist Nigel Goldenfeld and co-host Steven Strogatz explore the deep foundations of the scientific process. The post How Is Science Even Possible? first appeared on Quanta Magazine…

1
Janna Levin on Mozart’s Unfinished Ambitions 24:36

2M ago24:36

24:36

Janna Levin is a theoretical cosmologist and professor of astronomy and physics at Barnard College in New York City, specializing in the study of black holes. A Guggenheim Fellow, she’s authored several books on the topics of space, mathematics, and the impassioned people that study them; her latest book, “Black Hole Survival Guide,” allows readers…

1
Hanna Arie-Gaifman on Bach and Survival 15:52

2M ago15:52

15:52

Hanna Arie-Gaifman served as the director of the Tisch Center for the Arts at the 92nd Street Y for over 20 years, where she produced countless multidisciplinary projects, cementing 92NY’s place as a leading literary and performance art venue in New York City. Before then, Aire-Gaifman worked around the world as an arts administrator, linguist, and…

1
Can Psychedelics Improve Mental Health? 13:03

2M ago13:03

13:03

Research suggests that psychedelic drugs can reopen critical periods of brain development to create opportunities for re-learning and psychological healing. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin speaks with Gül Dölen, a neuroscientist studying the therapeutic potential of psychedelic substances. The post Can Psychedelics Improve Mental Health? first…

1
Caroline Shaw on Mendelssohn and Possibility 11:49

3M ago11:49

11:49

Caroline Shaw is a tireless musician, active as a violinist, vocalist, producer, and composer. She’s won multiple Grammy awards and, along with Kendrick Lamar, is one of the youngest recipients of the Pulitzer Prize in Music. Throughout her career, she has continuously experimented across genres, her collaborations spanning from the likes of Nas an…

1
Nick Ferrone on Why Barber’s “Adagio” Gets a Bad Rap 24:41

3M ago24:41

24:41

By day, Nick Ferrone is a Brooklyn real estate agent, but on most Saturday nights, he can be found playing the harmonica at Sunny’s Bar in Red Hook. As the seventh of eight kids, Ferrone reaped the benefits of being exposed to records that most kids his age weren’t listening to, including the one that inspired him to start playing the harmonica: “G…

1
What Happens in the Brain to Cause Depression? 33:19

3M ago33:19

33:19

Drugs that target the neurotransmitter serotonin have long been prescribed to treat depression. Now the spotlight is turning to other aspects of brain chemistry. In this episode, the neuropharmacologist John Krystal shares findings that are overturning our understanding of depression. The post What Happens in the Brain to Cause Depression? first ap…

1
Lucy Boynton on Chopin and Getting Into Character 13:44

3M ago13:44

13:44

You might know actress Lucy Boynton from the television mini-series “The Ipcress File” and films like “Chevalier” and “Murder on the Orient Express.” She grew up with a music-loving family who always had something playing in the background. Here, Boynton shares a favorite piano piece by Chopin and reflects on the power of music to establish tone in…

1
Martha Lane Fox on Perseverance and Beethoven 17:52

3M ago17:52

17:52

If anyone can claim the title of Renaissance Woman, it is Martha Lane Fox. Though she gained prominence during the dot-com boom of the 1990s, her career has since led her serve as the Chancellor of Open University in the United Kingdom; to sit on the boards of companies likeChanel, WeTransfer, and Twitter; and, in 2013, she became the youngest fema…

1
Will Better Superconductors Transform the World? 28:50

3M ago28:50

28:50

Scientists are pursuing materials that can conduct electricity with perfect efficiency under ambient conditions. In this episode, the physicist Siddharth Shanker Saxena tells co-host Janna Levin about what makes this hunt so difficult and consequential. The post Will Better Superconductors Transform the World? first appeared on Quanta Magazine…

1
Steve Reich on Why Medieval Music Sounds So Fresh 25:31

4M ago25:31

25:31

Steve Reich is one of the most important composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. A leader in developing and popularizing what many describe as minimalist music — but which Reich has often preferred to describe as music that unfolds over a gradual process — his music helped reassert the value of tonality and sonority within newly composed concert …

1
Anne-Sophie Mutter on Why Bach Is Always the Answer 12:32

4M ago12:32

12:32

“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” is one of Bach’s best known works. For acclaimed violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, it has been part of her life since she was a child and has accompanied her through some of her life’s most important moments. As she puts it, “Bach is always the answer — for the joyous moments in life as much as for the moments where you do…

1
What Does Milk Do for Babies? 34:36

4M ago34:36

34:36

Human nutrition begins with milk, but the wondrous biofluid does much more than feed babies. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz speaks with molecular nutritionist Elizabeth Johnson about her research into the impact of human milk on a healthy microbiome. The post What Does Milk Do for Babies? first appeared on Quanta Magazine…

1
Víkingur Ólafsson on the Unpredictable Futurism of Rameau 16:21

4M ago16:21

16:21

All classical musicians are devoted to the art of reinterpretation — of trying to make the old feel new again. Pianist Víkingur Ólafsson actually manages to pull it off. Whether he’s performing keyboard music hundreds of years old or a piece hot off the press, one has the feeling that they’ve never heard this music before, or this music played in t…

1
Garth Greenwell on Finding Refuge in the Music of Britten and Pears 19:35

4M ago19:35

19:35

By now, Garth Greenwell is an award-winning author, poet, literary critic, and teacher of writing whose novels include “What Belongs To You” and “Cleanness.” But his first creative aspiration was as a musician: He attended the Interlochen Academy for the Arts and, later, the Eastman School of Music, focusing on vocal performance. In this episode, G…

1
Can Information Escape a Black Hole? 29:20

4M ago29:20

29:20

Black holes are inescapable traps for most of what falls into them — but there can be exceptions. The theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind speaks with co-host Janna Levin about the black hole information paradox and how it has propelled modern physics. The post Can Information Escape a Black Hole? first appeared on Quanta Magazine…

1
Jennifer Egan on Chopin's Narrative Masterclass 21:44

5M ago21:44

21:44

Jennifer Egan has spent a lifetime thinking about what makes a good story — to good effect. Her novels have received many awards and recognitions, including the Pulitzer Prize for “A Visit From the Good Squad.” Its companion book and her latest work, “The Candy House,” was named one of The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2022. They say that one o…

1
Rowan Williams on Bach and the Daily Discipline of Silence 13:05

4M ago13:05

13:05

Rowan Williams is a British theologian and poet. From 2003-2012, he served as the Archbishop of Canterbury — a role that placed him, along with the British monarch, at the head of the Anglican Church. As one of today’s most influential religious leaders, Williams has often been the subject of both praise and controversy for his outspoken views, inc…

1
How Is Flocking Like Computing? 39:38

5M ago39:38

39:38

Birds flock. Locusts swarm. Fish school. Within assemblies of organisms that seem as though they could get chaotic, order somehow emerges. The collective behaviors of animals differ in their details from one species to another, but they largely adhere to principles of collective motion that physicists have worked out over centuries. Now, using tech…

1
Dexter Filkins on Tension, Tenderness, and Ravel 21:03

5M ago21:03

21:03

Dexter Filkins is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, former Iraq War correspondent for the New York Times, and author of the bestselling book, “The Forever War.” He’s currently a staff writer for The New Yorker. In this episode, Filkins recalls how Ravel’s music gave him respite during his “nightmare years” covering the war in Iraq. He explains h…

1
Marin Alsop on Beethoven and Humanity’s Infinite Potential 25:34

5M ago25:34

25:34

As one of the leading conductors of our time, Marin Alsop has collected a lot of “firsts”: She’s the first woman to head a major orchestra in the United States, South America, Austria and the United Kingdom. Throughout her career, she has also tirelessly advocated for equitable music education and for professional opportunities for other female con…

1
What Is Quantum Teleportation? 29:57

5M ago29:57

29:57

Quantum teleportation isn’t just science fiction; it’s entirely real and happening in laboratories today. But teleporting quantum particles and information is a far cry from beaming people through space. In some ways, it’s even more astonishing. John Preskill, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, is one of the leading …

1
Nathalie Joachim on the Connection Between Brahms and Haiti 20:44

5M ago20:44

20:44

Nathalie Joachim is a Grammy-nominated flutist, vocalist and composer. She is the co-founder of the acclaimed flute-meets-electronica duo Flutronix, as well as the composer of the evening-length work “Fanm d’Ayiti,” which explores her heritage and, more broadly, women’s voices in Haiti. Her recently-released album “Ki moun ou ye” (“Which person are…

1
Elizabeth Day on Jacqueline du Pré’s Elgar and Navigating Loss 11:07

5M ago11:07

11:07

Elizabeth Day is an author, broadcaster, and host of the podcast “How to Fail,” where she interviews guests about what they have learned from failure. In this episode, Day reflects on a performance that has guided her through different stages of her life: Jacqueline Du Pré’s rendition of Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor. From the disappointment of…

1
What Is the Nature of Time? 30:39

6M ago30:39

30:39

Time seems linear to us: We remember the past, experience the present and predict the future, moving consecutively from one moment to the next. But why is it that way, and could time ultimately be a kind of illusion? In this episode, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek speaks with host Steven Strogatz about the many “arrows” of time and…

1
Damien Sneed on Dreams, Family and Franz Liszt 25:23

6M ago25:23

25:23

Damien Sneed is an award-winning musician, conductor, composer and arts educator who works across classical, jazz, R&B and other genres. When he was five years old, Sneed’s parents told him he was adopted. He walks us through the story of how, through a series of dreams and coincidences, he eventually reunited with his biological family and learned…

1
Deborah Frances-White on Chance Encounters and Mozart 12:25

6M ago12:25

12:25

Deborah Frances-White is a comedian, writer, and host of “The Guilty Feminist” podcast, where she explores the balancing act between feminist idealism and human imperfection. In this episode, White reflects on her upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness and shares a story about the first time she saw a performance of Mozart’s opera “Così fan tutte.” On t…

1
How Did Altruism Evolve? 34:18

6M ago34:18

34:18

We often talk about evolution in terms of competition, as the survival of the fittest. But if it is, then where did the widespread (and widely admired) impulse to help others even at great cost to ourselves come from? In this episode, Stephanie Preston, a professor of psychology and head of the Ecological Neuroscience Lab at the University of Michi…

1
Tom Hiddleston on Arvo Pärt and the Infinite 19:54

6M ago19:54

19:54

Tom Hiddleston is an actor beloved around the world for his roles in film, television, and the stage, most notably for his portrayal of the Norse god Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Before all that, he was a student at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, balancing both high hopes and uncertainty for his future. For the debut episode of the …

1
The Open Ears Project Returns! 1:51

6M ago1:51

1:51

The Open Ears Project returns for a new season on February 12! From tales of memorable moments in nature and fleeting encounters with strangers – to recollections of music that helped in difficult times – The Open Ears Project features people sharing a personal story about the classical track that means the most to them, and why. This season’s gues…

1
What Makes for 'Good' Math? 35:42

7M ago35:42

35:42

We tend to think of mathematics as purely logical, but the teaching of math, its usefulness and its workings are packed with nuance. So what is “good” mathematics? In 2007, the mathematician Terence Tao wrote an essay for the “Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society” that sought to answer this question. Today, as the recipient of a Fields Med…

1
Why Locusts Swarm, Humans Do Good and Time Marches On 2:10

7M ago2:10

2:10

“The Joy of Why” is a Quanta Magazine podcast about curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge. The mathematician and author Steven Strogatz and the astrophysicist 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 Thursday.…

1
Does Nothingness Exist? 44:59

1y ago44:59

44:59

Aristotle argued almost 2,400 years ago that a perfect vacuum could never exist. Today, the concept of nothingness figures at least implicitly into almost every theory of modern physics. In this episode closing out season 2 of “The Joy of Why,” the theoretical physicist Isabel Garcia Garcia of New York University and the Institute for Advanced Stud…

1
Can Math and Physics Save an Arrhythmic Heart? 46:12

1y ago46:12

46:12

The heart’s electrical system keeps all its muscle cells beating in sync. A hard whack to the chest at the wrong moment, however, can set up unruly waves of abnormal electrical excitation that are potentially deadly. The resulting kind of arrhythmia may be what caused the football player Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills to collapse on the field af…

1
What Can Jellyfish Teach Us About Fluid Dynamics? 43:43

1y ago43:43

43:43

The jellyfish that move through the seas by gently pulsing their saclike bodies may not seem to hold many secrets that would interest human engineers. But simple as the creatures are, jellyfish are masterful at harnessing and controlling the flow of the water around them, sometimes with surprising efficiency. As such, they embody sophisticated solu…

1
What Causes Giant Rogue Waves? 40:15

1y ago40:15

40:15

Sailors have spun yarns for centuries about gigantic rogue waves that could suddenly come out of nowhere to capsize the ships of unwary mariners. Scientists didn’t believe them because the stories seemed at odds with everything else known about waves. Then cameras and other instruments began to capture undeniable proof of the existence of rogue wav…

1
What Is the Nature of Consciousness? 52:14

1y ago52:14

52:14

Neuroscience has made progress in deciphering how our brains think and perceive our surroundings, but a central feature of cognition is still deeply mysterious: namely, that many of our perceptions and thoughts are accompanied by the subjective experience of having them. Consciousness, the name we give to that experience, can’t yet be explained — b…

1
Are There Reasons to Believe in a Multiverse? 48:49

1+ y ago48:49

48:49

By definition, the universe seems like it should be the totality of everything that exists. Yet a variety of arguments emerging from cosmology, particle physics and quantum mechanics hint that there could also be unobservable universes beyond our own that follow different laws of nature. While the existence of a multiverse is speculative, for many …

1
Is Perpetual Motion Possible at the Quantum Level? 36:40

1+ y ago36:40

36:40

Perpetual motion machines are impossible, at least in our everyday world. But down at the level of quantum mechanics, the laws of thermodynamics don’t always apply in quite the same way. In 2021, after years of effort, physicists successfully demonstrated the reality of a “time crystal,” a new state of matter that is both stable and ever-changing w…

1
How Can Some Infinities Be Bigger Than Others? 46:11

1+ y ago46:11

46:11

The idea of infinity is probably about as old as numbers themselves, going back to whenever people first realized that they could keep counting forever. But even though we have a sign for infinity and can refer to the concept in casual conversation, infinity remains profoundly mysterious, even to mathematicians. In this episode, Steven Strogatz cha…

1
What Has the Pandemic Taught Us About Vaccines? 42:54

1+ y ago42:54

42:54

Should Covid-19 vaccines be judged by how well they prevent disease or how well they prevent death? Anna Durbin, a public health expert and vaccine researcher, talks with Steven Strogatz about the science behind vaccines.By Quanta Magazine

1
Is There Math Beyond the Equal Sign? 49:40

1+ y ago49:40

49:40

Can mathematics handle things that are essentially the same without being exactly equal? Category theorist Eugenia Cheng and host Steven Strogatz discuss the power and pleasures of abstraction.By Steven Strogatz

1
Can We Program Our Cells? 45:11

1+ y ago45:11

45:11

Making living cells blink fluorescently like party lights may sound frivolous. But the demonstration that it’s possible could be a step toward someday programming our body’s immune cells to attack cancers more effectively and safely. That’s the promise of synthetic biology. While molecular biologists strip cells down to their component genes and mo…

1
How Will the Universe End? 43:54

1+ y ago43:54

43:54

“The Joy of Why” is a podcast about curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge from Quanta Magazine. The acclaimed mathematician and author Steven Strogatz interviews leading researchers about the great scientific and mathematical questions of our time.By Steven Strogatz and Quanta Magazine

1
The Joy of Asking About Infinity, Jellyfish and the End of the Universe 2:32

1+ y ago2:32

2:32

As The Joy of Why podcast returns for a second season, producer Polly Stryker and host Steven Strogatz invite listeners to join them and their brilliant new guests on another voyage of discovery.By Steven Strogatz and Quanta Magazine

1
Why and How Do We Dream? 45:23

2y ago45:23

45:23

Dreams are so personal, subjective and fleeting, they might seem impossible to study directly and with scientific objectivity. But in recent decades, laboratories around the world have developed sophisticated techniques for getting into the minds of people while they are dreaming. In the process, they are learning more about why we need these stran…

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Janna Levin Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen

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