<p><span>By watching “minimal” cells regain the fitness they lost, researchers are testing whether a genome can be too simple to evolve. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Hidden Agenda” by Kevin MacLeod.</span></p>

An Old Conjecture Falls, Making Spheres a Lot More Complicated

Exploring the distant universe, the insides of cells, the abstractions of math, the complexity of information itself, and much more, The Quanta Podcast is a tour of the frontier between the known and the unknown. In each episode, Quanta Magazine Editor-in-Chief Samir Patel speaks with the minds behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math. Quanta specifically covers fundamental research — driven by curiosity, discovery and the overwhelming desire to know why and how. Join us every Tuesday for a stimulating conversation about the biggest ideas and the tiniest details.(If you've been a fan of the Quanta Science Podcast, it will continue here. You'll see those episodes marked as audio edition episodes every two weeks.)