What guides a bat’s internal compass? It’s not the stars in the sky, or the Earth’s magnetic field. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with staff writer Yasemin Saplakoglu about how new research into animals’ sense of direction could help explain the feeling of getting “turned around,” or even why some of us are so bad at finding our way. This topic was covered in a <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-animals-build-a-sense-of-direction-20260121/">recent story</a> for Quanta Magazine.   Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.Audio Coda from Prat, Y., Taub, M. &amp; Yovel, Y. Everyday bat vocalizations contain information about emitter, addressee, context, and behavior. Sci Rep 6, 39419 (2016). <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/srep39419">https://doi.org/10.1038/srep39419</a>

Audio Edition: Epic Effort to Ground Physics in Math Opens Up the Secrets of Time

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.)