For decades, the best drug therapies for treating depression, like SSRIs, have been based on the idea that depressed brains don’t have enough of the neurotransmitter serotonin. Yet for almost as long, it’s been clear that simplistic theory is wrong. Recent research into the true causes of depression is finding clues in other neurotransmitters and the realization that the brain is much more adaptable than scientists once imagined. Treatments for depression are being reinvented by drugs like ketamine that can help regrow synapses, which can in turn restore the right brain chemistry and improve whole body health.

In this episode, John Krystal, a neuropharmacologist at the Yale School of Medicine, shares the new findings in mental health research that are revolutionizing psychiatric medication.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app, or you can stream it from Quanta.

If superconductors — materials that conduct electricity without any resistance — worked at temperatures and pressures close to what we would consider normal, they would be world-changing. They could dramatically amplify power grids, levitate high-speed trains and enable more affordable medical technologies. For more than a century, physicists have tinkered with different compounds and environmental conditions in pursuit of this elusive property, but while success has sometimes been claimed, the reports were always debunked or withdrawn. What makes this challenge so tricky?

In this episode, Siddharth Shanker Saxena, a condensed-matter physicist at the University of Cambridge, gives co-host Janna Levin the details about why high-temperature superconductors remain so stubbornly out of reach..

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app, or you can stream it from Quanta.

Milk is more than just a food for babies. Breast milk has evolved to deliver thousands of diverse molecules including growth factors, hormones and antibodies, as well as microbes.

Elizabeth Johnson, a molecular nutritionist at Cornell University, studies the effects of infants’ diet on the gut microbiome. These studies could hold clues to hard questions in public health for children and adults alike. In this episode of “The Joy of Why” podcast, co-host Steven Strogatz interviews Johnson about the microbial components that make breast milk one of the most wondrous biofluids found in nature.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app, or you can stream it from Quanta.