Quantum Refuge
Radiolab
11/14/25
•48m
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Qasem Waleed is a 28-year-old physicist who has lived in Gaza his whole life. In 2024, he joined a chorus of Palestinians sharing videos and pictures and writing about the chaos and violence they were living through, as Israel’s military bombardment devastated their lives. But Qasem was trying to describe his reality through the lens of the most notoriously confusing and inscrutable field of science ever, quantum mechanics. We talked to him, from a cafe near the Al-Mawasi section of Gaza, to find out why. And over the course of several conversations, he told us how this reality-breaking corner of science has helped him survive. And how such unspeakable violence actually let him understand, in a visceral way, quantum mechanics’ most counter-intuitive ideas.
Special thanks to Katya Rogers, Karim Kattan, Allan Adams, Sarah Qari, Soren Wheeler, and Pat Walters
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Lulu Miller
Produced by - Jessica Yung
with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloom
Fact-checking by - Emily Krieger
and Edited by - Alex Neason
EPISODE CITATIONS:
Videos -
- A Brief History of Quantum Mechanics with Sean Carroll, The Royal Institution (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hVmeOCJjOU)
- Introduction to Superposition, with MIT’s Allan Adams (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3bPUKo5zc)
- The Quantum Wavefunction, Explained (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOI4DlWQ_1w)
Articles -
Read a selection of Qasem’s published essays about his life in Gaza and the quantum world:
- I am stuck in a box like Schrodinger’s in Gaza (https://zpr.io/ALDVi9E5bRt8)
- Israel has turned Gaza’s summer into a weapon (https://zpr.io/YS4WK4hVQC5T)
- The Physics of Death in Gaza (https://zpr.io/hxsgxicVqPAd)
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Previous Episode
The Wubi Effect
November 7, 2025
•56m
When we think of China today, we think of a technological superpower. From Huawei and 5G to TikTok and viral social media, China is stride for stride with the United States in the world of computing. However, China’s technological renaissance almost didn’t happen. And for one very basic reason: the Chinese language, with its 70,000 plus characters, couldn’t fit on a keyboard.
Today, we tell the story of Professor Wang Yongmin, a hard-headed computer programmer who solved this puzzle and laid the foundation for the China we know today.
Special thanks to Martin Howard. You can view his renowned collection of typewriters at: antiquetypewriters.com.
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Simon Adler
Produced by - Simon Adler
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Next Episode
Our Common Nature: West Virginia Coal
November 21, 2025
•53m
Today on the show, we’re bringing you an episode from Our Common Nature (https://link.podtrac.com/v7mx144d), a new podcast series where cellist Yo-Yo Ma and host Ana González travel around the United States to meet people, make music and better understand how culture binds us to nature. The series features a few familiar voices, including Ana González (host) and Alan Goffinski (producer), from our kids podcast, Terrestrials (https://link.podtrac.com/vysacqn1).
About the episode:
West Virginia is defined by its beauty and its coal, two things that can work against each other. Yo-Yo Ma felt this as soon as stepped foot in its hills.This episode explores how music and poetry help process the emotions of a community besieged with disaster and held together by pride and duty. We travel down the Coal River with third-generation coal miner Chris Saunders, who tells us how coal has saved and threatened his life. Poet Crystal Good shares her poetry, which channels her rage and love. And musician and granddaughter of West Virginia coal miners, Kathy Mattea, explains the beauty of belting out your home state in a chorus. The end of the episode finds host Ana floating down the New River with help from a group of high schoolers and Yo-Yo Ma.
Listen to the full series Our Common Nature (https://link.podtrac.com/v7mx144d).
Featuring music by Yo-Yo Ma, Dom Flemons, and Kathy Mattea and poetry by Crystal Good.
EPISODE CREDITS:
Radiolab Bits Produced - Anisa Vietze (Radiolab bits)
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Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.
Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
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