Welcome to the Quanta Audio Edition.

In each of these bi-weekly episodes, we bring you a story direct from the Quanta website

about developments in basic science and mathematics.

I'm Susan Vallett.

You've just gotten home from an exhausting day.

All you want to do is put your feet up and zone out to whatever is on television.

Though the inactivity may feel like a well-earned rest, your brain is not just chilling.

Studies of neural metabolism reveal it's using nearly as much energy even when we think

we're doing nothing.

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Check out this feed every Tuesday for the Quanta podcast.

That's where Editor-in-Chief Samir Patel talks to our writers and editors about more of

Quanta's most popular, interesting,

and thought-provoking stories.

Binge watching your favorite TV show might seem pretty chill.

It seems like you don't have to think.

You can relax and zone out a bit.

But it turns out, recent research shows your brain is using nearly as much energy

as it does during stressful activity. Sharna Jamadar is a neuroscientist at Monash University in Australia.

She and her colleagues reviewed research from her lab and others around the world to estimate

the metabolic cost of cognition. That is,

how much energy it takes to power the human brain. Surprisingly, they concluded that effortful,

...