About this podcast
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
The newest 20 of 90 episodes
- 89 | Woods Hole Night Science! · 43 minWhat if an intensive science course wasn't primarily about learning techniques or producing results, but about learning how to think like a scientist? To explore that question…
- 88 | How AI dreams up new science – with Jure Leskovec · 36 minWhat happens when AI starts doing science? We talk with Stanford computer scientist Jure Leskovec about AI agents that find patterns in large datasets, come up with hypotheses…
- 87 | On the joys of being a young scientist · 38 minWhat can early-career scientists teach us about creativity? For this special episode, we talked to PhD students and postdocs about their creative processes. They told us about…
- 86 | From punchlines to discovery – Sarah Adelman · 49 minWhat can comedy teach us about scientific discovery? With stand-up comedian and former research scientist Sarah Adelman, we discuss the surprising parallels between jokes and…
- 85 | How laziness invites discovery – Robert Root-Bernstein · 39 minProfessor Robert Root-Bernstein has not only made many scientific discoveries, but has also written extensively about the creative process, including in Sparks of Genius (with…
- 84 | Every scientist is an artist – Lois Hetland · 41 minProfessor Lois Hetland, the former chair of art education at the Massachusetts College of Art, joins us to ask: what do artists and scientists truly share? We explore the…
- 83 | How science is secretly driven by analogy – Melanie Mitchell · 33 minMelanie Mitchell is a professor at the Santa Fe Institute and a leading thinker on artificial intelligence, analogy, and abstraction. She reflects on how analogy quietly drives…
- 82 | On being alone together – Amy Shyer & Alan Rodrigues · 37 minAmy Shyer & Alan Rodrigues co-direct the Laboratory of Morphogenesis at Rockefeller University. They are also married. Together, we reflect on what it means to think creatively…
- 81 | How to find your way by getting lost – Marina Dubova · 45 minIt’s surprising that for centuries, scientists have left the study of how to do science largely to non-scientists. Not anymore – thanks to the young field of cognitive…
- 80 | Why greatness cannot be planned with Kenneth Stanley · 32 minKen Stanley is a highly regarded researcher in machine learning and artificial intelligence. After leaving his professorship at the University of Central Florida, he cofounded…
- 79 | Maria Leptin and creativity in grant writing · 31 minMaria Leptin is the President of the ERC, the European Research Council, and Professor of genetics at the University of Cologne. In this episode, Maria describes her own path as…
- 78 | Stephen Nachmanovitch on free play and chivalry · 39 minStephen 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…
- 77 | Akiko Iwasaki and the art of creativity maintenance · 40 minAkiko 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…
- 76 | Can Google’s Co-scientist project give scientists superpowers? · 40 minTo 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…
- 75 | Eve Marder and how Recipe Science ruins creativity · 34 minProfessor 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…
- 74 | Martin Schwartz and the importance of stupidity in science · 29 minMartin 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…
- 73 | Ethan Mollick and a million Einsteins in a server · 38 minWith 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…
- 72 | David Baker and the lab's communal brain · 25 minDavid 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…
- 71 | Victor Ambros and the unique ways we perceive wonder · 35 minVictor 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…
- 70 | Meghan O’Rourke on being the artist and their caretaker · 45 minMeghan 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…
