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PODCAST

Night Science

Itai Yanai & Martin Lercher

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.

science natural sciences

All Episodes

38:53

78 | Stephen Nachmanovitch on free play and chivalry

Night Science ·

2025/11/10

Stephen Nachmanovitch is a musician celebrated for his free improvisations, and an educator whose books Free Play and The Art of Is have become classics on the creative process. With his training as an ecologist and his PhD in the history of consciousness, Stephen brings a unique philosophical view on art, science, and life to the podcast. In our discussion, Stephen reflects on how creativity is not a thing but a living process: the art of IS. He draws connections between artistic and scienti...

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40:04

77 | Akiko Iwasaki and the art of creativity maintenance

Night Science ·

2025/09/22

Akiko Iwasaki, a Yale professor and Howard Hughes Investigator, was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2024. Together, we reflect on how diverse backgrounds enrich research, allowing people to discover different things in the same data. Akiko explains how leading large collaborations requires managing expectations, not micromanaging the research. She compares her work of studying complex conditions to solving multilayered puzzles: each new piece of evidence must be pl...

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40:13

76 | Can Google’s Co-scientist project give...

Night Science ·

2025/09/08

To answer this question, we speak with Dr. Alan Karthikesalingam and Vivek Natarajan from Google DeepMind about their groundbreaking AI co-scientist project. Beyond their work at Google, Alan is an honorary lecturer in vascular surgery at Imperial College London, and Vivek teaches at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Together, we discuss how their system has evolved to mirror parts of human hypothesis generation while also diverging in fascinating ways. We talk about its internal “...

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33:35

75 | Eve Marder and how Recipe Science ruins creativity

Night Science ·

2025/05/26

Professor Eve Marder is a pioneering neuroscientist at Brandeis University. Drawing on decades of work with a small neural circuit in lobsters, she describes how discovery often emerges from intuition, puzzlement, and the courage to follow unexpected observations. Eve highlights the central role of personal tolerance for ambiguity in shaping a scientist’s questions and methods. She discusses the fine line between idiosyncrasies and general principles, and how deep familiarity with the literat...

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29:19

74 | Martin Schwartz and the importance of stupidity...

Night Science ·

2025/04/21

Martin Schwartz, a professor at Yale, is known for his work on integrins and his influential essay “The importance of stupidity in scientific research”. He emphasizes that while learning science makes you feel smart, true scientific discovery often involves feeling stupid, because it means venturing into the unknown. We discuss how the ego can obstruct creativity, and how resilience, self-discovery, and the cultivation of "passionate indifference" – being deeply engaged but unattached to outc...

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38:02

73 | Ethan Mollick and a million Einsteins in a server

Night Science ·

2025/04/07

With Ethan Mollick, professor at Wharton and author of the bestselling “Co-Intelligence”, we explore how generative AI tools like ChatGPT can enhance scientific creativity. Ethan emphasizes that AI excels at idea generation through sheer volume and recombination, outperforming most humans in many creativity tasks – though it does have odd obsessions with VR and crypto. However, AI is most effective when integrated into a collaborative human–machine workflow rather than used as a replacement. ...

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24:53

72 | David Baker and the lab's communal brain

Night Science ·

2025/03/24

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 engineers his lab’s "communal brain", where all individuals function like neurons, densely interconnected to maximize idea generation. We explore the role of AI in science, discussing whether AI can be truly creative. Finally, we discuss the current funding crisis in science, which disproportionately a...

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35:11

71 | Victor Ambros and the unique ways we perceive...

Night Science ·

2025/03/10

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 science – the dynamic, collaborative process where researchers build on each other’s ideas using a "yes, and…" approach. We discuss the constant need to reframe and refine scientific questions, and the challenge of helping young researchers build the confidence to question established ideas. Vict...

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45:15

70 | Meghan O’Rourke on being the artist and their...

Night Science ·

2025/02/17

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 immersion in a project attracts unexpected insights, and she introduces Night Poetry and Day Poetry, inspired by our concepts of Night Science and Day Science—where night represents raw creation and day embodies refinement. We discuss how scientists and writers face similar challenges: questioning assu...

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40:40

69 | Keith Yamamoto and the freedom to fail

Night Science ·

2025/01/27

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 failure with Silicon Valley's acceptance of it as just another day at the office. We also talk about Keith’s introduction of a new NIH grant category specifically for paradigm-challenging ideas, where he deliberately chose generalist reviewers rather than domain experts who might reject ideas thre...

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33:43

68 | Peter Godfrey-Smith and middle class science

Night Science ·

2025/01/14

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 unconstrainedly, scientists must balance creative thinking with the need for empirical testing and within our fields’ paradigms – if you mention the “Lamarck” word at a bar full of geneticists, don’t be surprised if the piano suddenly stops and everybody looks at you in disbelief. We also talk abo...

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39:51

67 | A hypothesis is a liability

Night Science ·

2024/12/16

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 focused on a single hypothesis can prevent us from making discoveries, while emphasizing the value of open-ended exploratory analyses—often dismissed as “fishing expeditions.” The episode also examines the risks inherent to both approaches: hypothesis-driven Day Science may overlook key insights,...

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50:52

66 | Michael Fischbach and the scientific decision tree

Night Science ·

2024/11/25

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 more time upfront selecting the right research problem.- Date ideas: Before settling on an idea, explore multiple alternatives without emotional attachment.- Fixed vs. floating parameters: Early on, clearly define what aspects of your research idea are fixed and which can be flexible.- Manage risks:...

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30:35

65 | James Kaufman and the art of creativity maintenance

Night Science ·

2024/11/04

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 complex nature of creativity, exploring its roots as both a trait and a skill that can be nurtured. We examine the role of personality traits in creativity, the impact of interdisciplinary team dynamics, and how creative metacognition—the ability to recognize one’s own creative strengths and weak...

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42:31

64 | Robert Weinberg and the perils of being a Fachidiot

Night Science ·

2024/09/30

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 one's primary area of research. We discuss the vital role of human interaction, with many scientific breakthroughs coming from informal collaborations between researchers, celebrating the collective "lab brain" as a powerful driver of creativity and discovery. And g...

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44:49

63 | Manu Prakash and how the discovery changes you

Night Science ·

2024/09/09

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 million copies of this have been distributed to would-be scientists around the world. In this episode, Manu emphasizes how science is a sense of wonder and a personal journey with no set roads. To get to new and deep questions, Manu feels he needs to “embed” himself in t...

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40:09

Dianne Newman and the visceral and intentional sides...

Night Science ·

2024/08/19

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 trends. In its search for fundamental truths guided by our inner biases and preferences, Dianne likens scientific curiosity to artistic expression. She emphasizes our control over how much we dwell on the difficult aspects of our research, helping us to fi...

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29:31

Tina Seelig on what to do with a really bad idea

Night Science ·

2024/07/15

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 importance of living in the problem space longer, taking time to challenge assumptions and reframe questions before rushing to solutions. We discuss how deliberately generating bad ideas can lead to innovative solutions, as they allow for bigger conceptual leaps and often ...

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33:53

Venki Ramakrishnan and the secrets of doing science...

Night Science ·

2024/07/01

Send us a Text Message.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 importance of enjoying the scientific process itself, not just aiming for major discoveries. He describes his creativity as a result of mulling over a problem and of talking with people. Venki also highlights the need for scientists to make daily jud...

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36:04

Jennifer Oyler-Yaniv and the point of creative...

Night Science ·

2024/05/27

Send us a Text Message.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 coaster ride of research projects, typically culminating in the point of creative frustration, where we get stuck and are tempted to either give up or take an easy, sub-par way out. We discuss how the creative process and its tools are really the same ...

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79 results

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