Do AI Models Know What They're Thinking About?

After over a century of studying introspection in humans and animals, researchers are beginning to explore the phenomenon in unlikely new subjects: large language models. These systems, which are based on mathematical structures called neural networks, excel at cognitive tasks that until recently seemed exclusive to humans. Can they introspect as well?On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with staff writer Ben Brubaker about “injecting” thoughts into LLM neural networks — and what researchers are doing to map out AI’s capacity for introspection.This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.  Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor-in-chief Samir Patel and Senior Editor Hannah Waters speak with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

Before he won a Fields Medal for his pioneering work balancing randomness and order, Yu Deng had to achieve equilibrium in his own life.The article Amid Life’s Chaos, a Meticulous Mathematician Finds Stability first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

The French mathematician Nicolas de Condorcet was a passionate believer in democracy, but he also discovered a frustrating paradox within it: A majority can sometimes vote itself into a logical loop. Mathematicians have now found that this “logical loop” maps onto a strange topological shape: the Klein bottle, a surface with no distinct inside or outside. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with writer Alex Stone about this new connection between this centuries-old voting paradox and the Klein bottle — and how it illustrates just how difficult it is to translate a group of individual preferences into a single choice. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.  Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor-in-chief Samir Patel and Senior Editor Hannah Waters speak with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

To invade red blood cells, malaria parasites create a temporary molecular portal that lets them slip into the cell — and then the door disappears behind it, gone in 60 seconds. Researchers have finally detailed the proteins that let it break in without tripping the alarms.On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with writer Joanna Thompson about these new images of Plasmodium’s moment of invasion — and what this breakthrough could mean for the next generation of malaria treatments and drug discovery for other parasitic diseases. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.  Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor-in-chief Samir Patel and Senior Editor Hannah Waters speak with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

John Pardon sees connections between different areas of math that others don’t. For that vision, he’s now been awarded a Fields Medal.The article The Quietest Mathematician Has Always Been Worth Listening To first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

In 2018, using the Keck Observatory in Hawaiʻi, astronomers discovered the first known dark matter-deficient galaxy, DF2. It’s about the same size as the Milky Way, but way dimmer, with 200 times fewer stars. Since then, two more phantom galaxies (DF4 and DF9) have been spotted. All three of these strange galaxies exist along a line. Why? On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with writer Robin George Andrews about this triplet of ‘ghostly’ galaxies and what they can tell us about the mystery of dark matter. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.  Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor-in-chief Samir Patel and Senior Editor Hannah Waters speak with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

The uncertainty principle tells us that the more you know about where a quantum particle is, the less you can know about how fast it’s moving, and vice versa. In 2023, graduate student Alex Cohen stunned the math world when he posted a proof of the fractal uncertainty principle. The math, which combines chaos, quantum theory, and infinitely complex fractal structures, has been called a “foundational result.”On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with writer Shalma Wegsman on this incredible breakthrough and how this principle has revealed a new deep way that quantum particles differ from classical ones.This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.  Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor-in-chief Samir Patel and Senior Editor Hannah Waters speak with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

Determination and effort propelled Jacob Tsimerman to the top of the math world. But now that he’s won a Fields Medal, he worries that the field is in jeopardy.The article Sometimes Being First Means Seeing the End Before Anyone Else first appeared on Quanta Magazine.

Turbulence is all around us: bumping our planes, roiling our rivers, swirling milk into our coffee. These systems quickly become extremely chaotic and complex. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with contributing writer Stephen Ornes about a recent study that used sea monkeys to complicate one of turbulence’s many mysteries. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.  Each week on The Quanta Podcast, hear the people behind the award-winning publication navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.We've been nominated for a few Signal Awards, including Best Science Show, Best Host, and Best Show Artwork! Visit the links below to vote for us:https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/shows/genre/sciencehttps://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/shows/craft/best-show-artworkhttps://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/shows/craft/best-host

You might imagine that the DNA in your cells has a simple history. But that’s not the entire story. Nearly half of your genome is a wild drama, thanks to a genetic material called transposons that can clip itself out of the DNA sequence, float off, and paste itself somewhere else. While these “jumping genes” may seem pathological, they’re more than just junk. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Hannah Waters speaks with writer Jake Buehler about these unruly genetic fragments and their connections to the evolution of everything from moths to wombs.This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.  The audio coda this week is a piece of music called Transposon. It's a musical sonification of transposable elements from the human genome by composer and sound artist Sam Nester. He created it in collaboration with genomicist Stéphane Boissinot as part of a year-long artist-in-residence at the Center for Genomics and Systems Biology at NYU Abu Dhabi.Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor-in-chief Samir Patel and Senior Editor Hannah Waters speak with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.