Parker Levesque, Rayhan Walia
127 episodes listed below
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Two University of Toronto students in the math and physics program discuss interesting topics in the field.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Patient guest questioning makes mathematical models, research choices and emerging technologies easier to examine without sanding away their technical edges.
Math & Physics Podcast builds its conversations around people doing technical work, then follows the machinery of that work step by step. Discussions move through adaptive optics, space-weather modeling, functional programming, machine learning and AI safety, with the hosts…
Space plasma has a Sun-to-Earth mean free path; your 'wait, what?' gets a follow-up.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A professional amateur scientist links group theory, mythological analysis, Mathematica, and the realities of small online courses.
Episode 108 presents scientific expertise as a public practice, not just a credentialed status. George Robuski, president and founder of Midwest Area Science and Technology, describes an amateur science organization built around research, with members whose backgrounds range…
A candid, study-room-style episode about physics, pressure, and the gap between solving equations and understanding them.
Parker and Ray trace the day-to-day pressure of advanced physics study, moving from dense reading into calculations about space, black holes, and equations of motion.
A mercury bath and rotating wire make Faraday's motor feel practical, physical, and easy to follow.
The Math and Physics Podcast grounds Faraday's motor in a clear physical setup: a bath of mercury, a permanent magnet, and a circular wire kept just out of contact.
A steady particle physics tour where gas laws and cathode rays open the path toward the Standard Model.
Particle physics is framed as a history of changing scale, moving from early particle ideas into thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and experiments that asked what atoms are made of.
A familiar star becomes a bridge between belief, measurement, and everyday wonder.
Episode 104 frames the Sun as both a familiar presence and a subject with deep cultural and scientific weight. It moves from ancient and indigenous ways of understanding the Sun into the later habit of measuring it, asking how people came to think about its distance, radius, and…
A dense but clear tour of space physics that shows why ideal MHD still matters.
Ray and Jose Arnal spend most of this episode in the deep end of space physics, where ideal MHD meets the uglier reality of space plasmas. The best stretches are the ones that slow down and nail the basics, especially what mean free path means and why a model that should not…
Careful machine-learning talk that keeps graph flow networks concrete.
Emmanuel Bengio comes across as a steady guide to graph flow networks, with his work at Recursion and Mila tied back to drug discovery and the academic path from the University of Montreal to McGill University.
A grounded look at why Bengio treats AI safety as the urgent problem until superhuman systems arrive.
Bengio's remarks stay close to the mechanics of AI risk, which helps the piece avoid drifting into slogans. He traces his path from early neural net and connectionist work into AI safety, then argues for treating safety as the main task until superhuman systems exist.
Odd math, made approachable.
Monthly maths puzzles for practical teachers.
Favorite theorems, no quiz attached.
Everyday objects, carefully turned toward maths.
Spinach, schoolteachers and Fields Medals: mathematics as life story
Two hosts, three problems, and the working shown.
Rajendra Gupta tells Parker and Ray that his July paper on James Webb Space Telescope observations and Lambda-CDM proposes a universe about 26.7 billion years old, against the standard 13.8 billion.
The host provides an update on the podcast's hiatus, explaining that reduced posting frequency due to schoolwork and excuses has led to only a few episodes in 2023.
The host announces the upcoming launch of a merchandise website with global shipping, a Discord server for community interaction, and potential live Q&A sessions.
The hosts discuss the challenges of communicating frontier research topics like adaptive optics and CFD to a general audience, while reflecting on their experiences as undergraduate students in these fields.
AI pioneer Dr.
Host Ray interviews Jose Arnal, a PhD candidate in space physics, about the science of space weather.
Host interviews Dr.
Max Sklar, creator of the Local Maximum podcast and a machine learning expert, joins the Math & Physics Podcast to discuss the evolution of computer science, the practical and philosophical implications of large language models like GPT, and the ethical considerations surrounding artificial intelligence.
The host asks about a favorite book, leading to a discussion on using audiobooks to fall asleep and how parenting has changed reading habits.
A phone photo is a million-dimensional vector, so string theory's 10 dimensions look small next to daily machine-learning work.
Jacob Taylor, a PhD candidate in astrophysics, discusses his work on adaptive optics at the University of Toronto, focusing on the MAPS project for the MMT Observatory.
George Hrabovsky says a first-grade 'new math' class and a chemistry book at age 12 pushed him toward physics, calculus, and the Feynman lectures.
Parker and Ray use Episode #107, “Searching in the Summer,” to compare a break-heavy summer with two different research paths at the University of Toronto, including the David A.
Math & Physics Podcast episode 106 focuses on Michael Faraday and Nikola Tesla, with Parker and Ray tying both names to electromagnetism and the history of physics.
Parker and Ray use episode 105 of the Math and Physics Podcast to trace particle physics from the Jain culture in India and Democritus to the standard model.
Math & Physics Podcast episode #104 frames the Sun as both a physical star and a cultural object, starting with Parker and Ray’s claim that it is “just another star” but still uniquely observable from Earth.