Night Science
Where do ideas come from? In each episode, scientists Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher explore science's creative side with a leading colleague. New episodes come out every second Monday.
Episodes
65 episodes
64 | Robert Weinberg and the perils of being a Fachidiot
MIT's Bob Weinberg is perhaps the world's most prominent cancer researcher. In this episode, Bob emphasizes that true innovation often comes from blending ideas from different fields – a synthesis that transcends the boundaries of...
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42:31
63 | Manu Prakash and how the discovery changes you
Manu Prakash is a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, asking biological questions with insights from physics. His most widely known contribution is the FoldScope, a $1-microscope made from paper and a lens – 2 mill...
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44:49
62 | Dianne Newman and the visceral and intentional sides of science
Dianne Newman – a molecular microbiologist at CalTech – is a professor both in Biology and Geology. In this episode, she encourages young scientists to pursue questions to which they have a visceral connection, rather than following popular tre...
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Season 5
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Episode 3
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40:09
61 | Tina Seelig on what to do with a really bad idea
Tina Seelig is Executive Director of the Knight-Hennessy-Scholars at Stanford University. She is widely known for teaching creativity courses and workshops with an entrepreneurial focus. In this episode, Tina emphasizes the import...
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Season 1
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Episode 61
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29:31
60 | Venki Ramakrishnan and the secrets of doing science over tea
Venki Ramakrishnan shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for uncovering the structure of the ribosome. He runs a lab at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. In this episode, Venki emphasizes the import...
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Season 1
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Episode 60
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33:53
59 | Jennifer Oyler-Yaniv and the point of creative frustration
Jennifer Oyler-Yaniv is a professor working on the immune system at Harvard’s Medical School. In this episode, we discuss with her how she teaches creativity in her course for PhD students. We explore the emotional roller coast...
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Season 1
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Episode 59
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36:04
58 | Guy Yanai on Pentimenti
Guy Yanai is a painter whose work is displayed in many public and private collections across the US, Europe, and Asia, including, for example, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. His distinctive painting style blends modernist, abstract tendenci...
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Season 1
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Episode 58
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24:01
57 | George Church and shooting for the stars
George Church, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, leads a large research group at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. A pioneer in the fields of personalized genomics and synthetic biology, he h...
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Season 1
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Episode 57
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36:18
56 | Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz lights a candle for science
Prof. Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz directs research labs at both CalTech in the US and the University of Cambridge in England. Magdalena is one of the world’s leading developmental biologists, who has been recognized by the 2023 Ogawa-Yamana...
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Season 1
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Episode 56
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39:47
55 | Isaac Newton and a new kind of science
Night Science – coming up with novel ways to interpret the physical world – is as old as philosophy. In contrast, Day Science – empirical evidence as the sole argument for truth – was invented only in the 1700s, championed by the ...
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Season 1
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Episode 55
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26:33
54 | Bo Xia and a tale of tails
Bo Xia is a Junior Fellow at Harvard and a Principal Investigator at the Broad Institute. During his PhD with Itai, he suffered a painful tailbone injury that led to an obsession with this vestigial organ and its origins in...
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Season 1
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Episode 54
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31:35
53 | Todd Golub and bottom-up creativity
Prof. Todd Golub, the Director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has made important contributions to cancer research. In this episode, he argues that creativity is the greatest hallmark of a successful scientist, and he t...
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Season 1
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Episode 53
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35:57
52 | Sean B. Carroll – he told some good stories
Sean Carroll is a world-renowned scientist, author, educator, and an Oscar-nominated film producer. Sean sees storytelling as the key to all he does. Similar to how musicians get inspiration by listening to other peo...
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Season 1
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Episode 52
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39:03
51 | Nigel Goldenfeld and the jazz of impossible problems
Nigel Goldenfeld is the Chancellor's Distinguished Professor in Physics at the University of California at San Diego. In this episode, he talks with us about how research is an art form, and how he tries to help graduate students ...
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Season 1
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Episode 51
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39:13
50 | It takes two to think
Despite the variety of creative approaches practiced by different scientists, one tried-and-true though often overlooked — trick for generating new ideas stands out. It may sound trivial, yet it is as reliable as it is simple: talk to someone. ...
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Season 1
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Episode 50
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23:31
49 | Rich White on living on the edge cases
Rich White studies cancer as a professor at Oxford University. Rich is not only a brilliant physician-scientist but also a great friend of Itai Yanai, one of the two Night Science hosts. In this episode, Rich talks about how often...
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Season 1
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Episode 49
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43:56
48 | Carolyn Bertozzi and a long game called science
Carolyn Bertozzi is a Professor at Stanford University. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In this episode we talk about how the process of science is unstructured, so you don’t know when and where the n...
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Season 1
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Episode 48
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40:47
47 | Stephen Quake and the Creative Network
Stephen Quake is a Stanford University professor and the Head of Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). Among his many inventions are DNA sequencing methods for non-invasive prenatal testing. In this episode, Steve tells...
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Season 1
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Episode 47
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35:09
46 | John Mattick and doing what your mother taught you
John Mattick is Professor of RNA Biology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. For decades, he has been on a mission to show that the large portions of the human genome that many scientists consider useless...
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Season 1
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Episode 46
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30:59
45 | Peter Ratcliffe on being the Master of Daydreams
Peter J. Ratcliffe shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on oxygen sensing in animal cells. He directs research institutes in London and Oxford. In this episode, he reveals the interplay between dis...
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Season 1
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Episode 45
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35:17
44 | Christina Curtis and keeping the faith in the process
Christina Curtis is a Professor of Medicine and the Director of Artificial Intelligence and Cancer Genomics at Stanford University’s Cancer Institute. Among her many achievements is the conception of the “Big Bang Theory” of tumor bio...
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Season 1
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Episode 44
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42:07
43 | Daniel Dennett’s intuition pumps
Daniel Dennett, Professor at Tufts University, may be the most important living philosopher, tackling the biggest questions around: what is consciousness, do we have free will, how does evolutionary adaptation occur? In this episo...
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Season 1
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Episode 43
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41:04
42 | Howard Stone on how to tilt your head for discovery
Howard Stone is a Professor of Engineering at Princeton. His research explores how fluid dynamics can help to understand diverse systems, from bacterial biofilms to the earth’s interior. In this episode, Howard explains how ...
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Season 1
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Episode 42
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39:56
41 | Prisca Liberali and the junkies of discovery
Prisca Liberali is a senior group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Switzerland. In this episode, Prisca tells us how her creative thinking thrives on recursive thinking – going deeper and deepe...
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Season 1
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Episode 41
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32:35
40 | Tom Mullaney & Chris Rea on giving thanks to bias
Tom Mullaney is a Professor of History at Stanford University and the Kluge Chair in Technology and Society at the Library of Congress, and Chris Rea is a Professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. In 2022, ...
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Season 1
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Episode 40
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43:24