What links a Möbius strip, brain folds and termite mounds? The answer is Harvard University’s L. Mahadevan, whose career has been devoted to using mathematics and physics to explore the form and function of common phenomena.

All discussed in deep details in this episode of “The Joy of Why”, a Quanta Magazine podcast about curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge. The mathematician and author Steven Strogatz and the cosmologist and author Janna Levin take turns interviewing leading researchers like L. Mahadevan about the great scientific and mathematical questions of our time.