The Weight of Understanding: Katia Moskvitch on Curiosity in the Age of AI

Jun 15, 2025

42:18

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What does it mean to understand something, not to repeat it, not to summarize it, but to feel it?

Katia Moskvitch built her life around that question. A science journalist and physicist, she has written about neutron stars, quantum computers, and the human stories behind them. But this episode isn’t about data or discovery. It’s about the weight of comprehension in an age that rewards speed over depth.

From BBC newsrooms to remote observatories in Nepal and Argentina, Katia has seen what curiosity costs and why it’s still worth paying for. She speaks about the scientists who never found dark matter but searched anyway. About the women whose names were erased from Nobel history. And about the growing pressure to turn mystery into content.

This conversation is a defense of slow understanding, of staying confused long enough for something real to emerge.

Because if we stop being confused, we stop being curious. And if we stop being curious, we stop being human.

Please enjoy the show.

And share with a curious friend.

Thanks, Mark & Jeremy

Links

Katia: https://www.quantamagazine.org/authors/katiamoskvitch/

Neutron Stars: The Quest for the Zombies of The Cosmos: https://www.amazon.com/Neutron-Stars-Understand-Zombies-Cosmos/dp/0674919351

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