The Infinite Heist - Part 1
The Quanta Podcast
Quanta Magazine
4.7 • 638 Ratings
🗓️ 3 March 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1874, Georg Cantor published one of the most important papers in math’s 4,000-year history. Some ideas in it were stolen. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, the first of a two-parter, host Samir Patel speaks with math editor Jordana Cepelewicz about the hard-fought journey to embed the concept of infinity into math’s foundations. The real story is a lot more complicated than the one remembered in math history. These episodes are based on a recent story; stay tuned for the conclusion next week. Explore our new special series, “The Evolving Foundations of Math,” on our website.
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.
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. |
| 0:34.7 | It's been said that science is a self-correcting process. |
| 0:38.3 | That is, if we get something wrong, new experiments and observations can correct the record. |
| 0:44.3 | Math is a little different in some ways. |
| 0:46.3 | It doesn't always have the empirical world or obvious experiments as a source of data. |
| 0:53.3 | It has structures and ideas and approaches and theories and axioms. |
| 0:58.0 | It has contemplation and taste and elaborate proofs. |
| 1:02.0 | Over the last 150 years or so, which is about the history of modern research mathematics, |
| 1:07.0 | mathematicians have gone back to the foundations of the field |
| 1:10.0 | to fix and revise them and develop new ideas to find new ways forward. |
| 1:15.0 | Math changes. It's alive. |
| 1:21.4 | Welcome to the Quanta podcast where we explore the frontiers of fundamental science and math. |
| 1:28.0 | I'm Samir Patel, editor-in-chief of Quanta magazine. |
| 1:31.5 | This summer is the International Congress of Mathematicians, which only happens every four years, |
| 1:36.8 | where they give out math's biggest prize, the Fields Medals. |
| 1:40.4 | So it seems like the right time for Quanta's new special series, |
| 1:49.3 | the evolving foundations of math, which is going to be rolling out in chapters for the next few months. |
| 1:56.0 | The first installment just dropped, and it goes back to the origin story of modern mathematics in 1873. |
| 2:05.1 | And what we found there is a story of genius and conviction and eventually lies and dissolution. |
... |
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