72 | David Baker and the lab's communal brain
David Baker, who was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for designing novel proteins with AI, is a professor at the University of Washington. In this episode, he explains how he socially engine...
24 Mar 202524min
71 | Victor Ambros and the unique ways we perceive wonder
Victor Ambros, newly awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of microRNA, is a developmental biologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In this episode, we explore improvisational ...
10 Mar 202535min
70 | Meghan O’Rourke on being the artist and their caretaker
Meghan O'Rourke, acclaimed author of The Invisible Kingdom, poet, and Yale professor, joins us to explore the parallels between creative writing and scientific discovery. She describes how deep immers...
17 Feb 202545min
69 | Keith Yamamoto and the freedom to fail
Keith Yamamoto, professor and science policy leader at UCSF, discusses with us how modern science became trapped in a system that discourages creative risk-taking. Keith contrasts academia's fear of f...
27 Jan 202540min
68 | Peter Godfrey-Smith and middle class science
Peter Godfrey-Smith, a Professor of the Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney, explores with us the differences between creativity in science and philosophy. While philosophers speculate u...
14 Jan 202533min
67 | A hypothesis is a liability
In this episode, Itai and Martin delve into the interplay between hypothesis-driven and exploratory research, drawing on insights from past guests of the Night Science Podcast. They discuss how being ...
16 Des 202439min
66 | Michael Fischbach and the scientific decision tree
In this episode, Stanford professor Michael Fischbach discusses insights from his course on how to choose meaningful research problems. Highlights include: - Invest time in problem selection: Spend m...
25 Nov 202450min
65 | James Kaufman and the art of creativity maintenance
James Kaufman, Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut, discusses the psychological underpinnings of creative thinking with Itai & Martin. Together, we delve into the comp...
4 Nov 202430min
