Astrocytes Might Be in Charge of the Brain
The Quanta Podcast
Quanta Magazine
4.7 • 638 Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We tend to think of neurons as the sole engine of our thoughts, emotions, and everything in between. For decades, a group of large brain cells called astrocytes have been thought of as mere packing peanuts for the brain. But new research suggests otherwise. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with writer Ingrid Wickelgren about these big cells’ big responsibilities, which include controlling brain states like hopelessness, sleep, and hunger. This topic was covered in a recent story 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 by NASA.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're used to hearing my voice on the world, bringing you interviews from around the globe. |
| 0:07.2 | And you hear me reporting environment and climate news. I'm Carolyn Beeler. |
| 0:12.1 | And I'm Marco Werman. We're now with you hosting the world together. More global journalism with a fresh new sound. |
| 0:18.3 | Listen to the world on your local public radio station and wherever you find your podcasts. |
| 0:33.5 | Let's build up a picture of a brain. |
| 0:36.7 | We start at the widest angle. |
| 0:38.3 | It's the space that's inside your skull. |
| 0:40.3 | It's filled with fluid. |
| 0:42.3 | And inside of it is this grayish pink mass, about the size of two fists put together. |
| 0:48.3 | Squishy gelatinous covered in wrinkles. |
| 0:51.3 | Now let's zoom in. |
| 0:53.3 | That mass contains something like 80 billion |
| 0:57.0 | neurons with what's by now to a lot of people a pretty familiar shape. There's cell body. It's got |
| 1:03.2 | little squiggly dendrites around it. And at one end is an axon, which is like a long tail. And |
| 1:08.2 | it displays out at the end. And all these little tips on the neurons connect to each other. There's something like a long tail, and it splays out at the end. And all these little tips on the neurons |
| 1:11.6 | connect to each other. There's something like a hundred trillion connections in the brain. |
| 1:16.6 | That's literally about half the story, because there are just as many other cells called |
| 1:22.8 | glial cells in the brain, and they come in a few different types. This system has long been considered the brain's support network, insulating, keeping things |
| 1:32.6 | clean, feeding neurons. |
| 1:34.8 | But new work is showing pretty convincingly that there's much more going on with some of |
| 1:39.8 | these glial cells, and it's possible we've been thinking all wrong about how the brain works. |
| 1:51.2 | Welcome to the Quanta podcast where we explore the frontiers of fundamental science and math. |
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