Art of Academia

Lengthening telomeres with a simple supplement sounds almost too good to be true. Yet, two recent papers suggest that supplying cells with thymidine, a basic DNA building block, is enough to do just that. Join us as we explore the unexpected discovery, why it's a big deal for telomere biology, and the big question that remains: how does it actually work? (00:00) Intro (07:20) Why do we even ne...

We discuss the news feature from Nature covering the most cited papers of the 21st Century (00:00) Intro (grant writing, going to AACR) (11:45) Most cited papers of the 21st century (overview) (15:20) 2ddct method (17:45) Thematic analysis in psychology (23:15) The DSM-5 (25:15) Random Forests Classifier  (27:40) Attention is all you need (31:45) Sequences and Consequences (34:30) Publish houses o...

We discuss a paper on scientific diffusion—a metric for how widely an idea is spread—and how it can tell you if you are in a bubble. (00:00) Intro: Komal's trip to Langkawi (04:30) Setting goals for the new year (14:00) Million dollar weekend (22:10) Diffusion paper (24:20) Knowledge lab (25:10) What is diffusion (of research papers) (26:45) Two case studies of low and high diffusion papers (3...

Checkout r/spillthetae a place to share your insights, hacks, and fuck-ups with other researchers. (00:00) Intro (11:45) Why we started a subreddit (15:30) Spill the TAE (17:00) DMSO freezes at 20*C (19:30) Curios case of the missing mutation (22:20) how miniprep kits separate plasmids from genomic DNA (27:45) which research ideas to follow up on (34:15) don't read papers in PDF format (40:00)...

We discuss this Nature blog post analyzing the characteristics of previous nobel prize winners. (00:00) Intro (18:20) Alfred Nobel and the story behind the prize (22:20) How to win a noble prize (38:00) should you aim to win the prize? (43:45) the utility of ambitious goals (45:45) specific goals vs general direction

(00:00) Intro and catch up (16:30) Feedback loops in biology research are slow (32:40) How to shorten feedback loops in research: cloning tricks and bacteria as a model system (59:10) Outro: Thoughts on Gene Machine Links: Slow feedback loops rule every (living) thing around me Why haven't biologists cured cancer?

We break down the article " Problem choice and decision trees in science and engineering " by Michael A. Fischbach (00:00) Intro (08:15) How to choose a research question (09:45) Spend more time choosing a problem (15:50) Intuition pumps and avoiding common problems (23:30) Don't avoid risk; befriend it (32:45) Pick the right optimization function (36:45) Fix one parameter; let others float (41:20...

We talk about how your expectations from life take an immense amount of effort to manifest and how to manage them (00:00) Intro - Life updates (15:00) Nix on effort (20:30) Oliver Burkemann on expectations (23:00) Starting a discord study group (31:30) AI-assisted literature reviews (35:30) Outro - Movie recommendations

We discuss vgr's blog post The Resourceful Life

We talk about the nature of rest, what it means to rest well, and meditation as one form of rest. (00:00) Intro - Mt. Aijen and being inspired by the pod (16:00) On the nature of rest (25:00) The dose maketh the joy (28:10) What it means to be rested (28:40) Meditation as rest (38:10) Fuel sources for productivity

We dive into an essay titled " Soul-Making Productivity: A Process Manifesto " by River Kenna (00:00) Intro (10:00) River Kenna (12:00) Soul-making productivity (13:00) Two ways of working: Brute force vs waiting for inspiration (18:00) Good and bad fuel sources for work (22:20) Wholeness (25:30) Desire infrastructure (29:00) Why are you doing it (31:30) Stray notes (35:30) Trust the tim...

We discuss the book "Letters to a Young Scientist" written by the American biologist and naturalist Edward O. Wilson (00:00) Intro (12:00) Edward O. Wilson and Letters to a Young Scientist (15:00) Passion before training (18:30) March away from the sound of guns (25:00) Cultivate expertise (32:00) Don't be afraid of math and computers (37:00) Pursuit of knowledge for its own sake (40...

Listen as we share our thoughts on memes we have collected for you (Not your typical depressed PhD memes) (00:00) Intro (13:20) Meme 1 - Feeling burnout without working too hard (23:00) Meme 2 - It's so over / We're so back (25:00) Meme3 - Make it happier (40:50) Meme4 - Shiny new project flow chart (46:00) Meme4 - Pros and cons of doing things (46:40) Meme 5 - Simple explanations (50:20)...

We talk about what life as a PhD student is like (00:00) Intro (02:30) Medicine vs science (09:20) How did we choose our labs (13:00) Alliosn's PhD topic (chemo + DDR inhibitor for lymphoma) (14:00) Favorite thing about a PhD (Pursuing your curiosity) (16:45) Working for a clinician-scientist (translational vs basic science) (19:30) Reading papers (25:45) Notion to organize your research (37:3...

We talk about our experience of making a podcast and what we have learned from it (00:00) Intro - Interviews and APIs (06:00) 10th episode milestone (07:00) How we got started (09:30) Podcasting is fun and rewarding (14:00) Don't turn something into a "project" too early (16:00) Coming up with new ideas for the pod and freestyling (21:00) Make what you want, not what others want to s...

We talk about how we decided to study abroad, our experiences, and why you should too. (00:00) Intro - Call of Cthulhu and building your own website from scratch (06:30) Studying abroad (07:45) How Madan decided to apply for masters (11:55) How Komal decided to apply for masters and then PhD (16:30) Madan's experience of studying in Singapore (19:30) Komal's experience of studying in cambr...

A scene is a group of people with overlapping interests creating cool stuff together. We go over examples of very successful scenes, what makes a good scene, scenes in science, and our attempts to participate in happening scenes. (00:00) Intro - Journalling (07:00) - Cooking (08:00) - What are Scenes (09:50) - Historical scenes - The Inklings and Oppenheimer (14:20) - Mordern scenes - Silicon Vall...

Andy is a self-taught bioinformatician who uses Mutational signatures to understand cancer genomes. We talk about how he got into bioinformatics, what mutational signatures as a field is like, making pretty presentations, aging research, and more. (00:00) Intro (02:30) Andy's Background (03:50) Fascination with computer science (05:45) Programming is ADHD friendly (08:00) The wet lab grind (09...

We talk about the nature of ambition, how unlikely one is to succeed, and why one should try anyway (00:00) Intro - Getting into mediation (02:00) Going on a meditation retreat (05:45) Training to be a monk is no joke (08:15) Ambition and expertise (09:25) Ambitious careers do not maximize well-being (11:40) Everyone loves an ambitious story (12:30) Ambitious stories misrepresent the truth (14:00)...

Anya's love for math has steered her career to theoretical physics, drug discovery, bioinformatics, machine learning, and more. We talk about her journey and what she is currently up to. (00:00) Intro - Who is Anya Korsakova (03:15) Training as a theoretical physicist (05:00) Shifting to life science (06:55) Transition to bioinformatics and machine learning (08:55) Self-learning bioinformatics...

Our day-to-day urges are often at odds with the grand plans we have for ourselves. What can we do about it? (00:00) Intro - Life updates (04:10) Plans and urges: definitions (06:55) Plans and urges rarely intersect (08:00) But the intersection is immensely gratifying (09:30) Our personal plans and urges (16:05) How to align plans and urges (23:30) Progress is hard to see, don't be discouraged...

We compare wet lab and dry lab and discuss how we navigate both as "hybrid" scientists (00:00) Intro & Life updates (05:00) Quarto Notebooks and presentations (08:30) Wet-lab vs Dry-lab (09:00) Why is it called "wet" or "dry" lab? (11:00) How we became "Hybrid" scientists (14:00) Different classes of bioinformatics (16:20) Bioinfo is ADHD friendly (18:10...

Rants and recommendations on habits, or, as Madan likes to call them, rituals. Timestamps (00:00) Intro (01:50) Struggling to exercise daily (04:15) Andrew huberman (05:10) Morning walks (06:25) Meditation (10:40) Coffee and productivity (12:30) Coffee as a reinforcer (15:20) Experimenting with life (19:15) Gattaca (23:30) Alpha go

Science and art seem like fundamentally different philosophies but they occasionally intersect Timestamps (00:15) Life updates (03:00) Rick Rubin (07:10) Is science creative? (08:30) Truth vs resonance (10:00) Publishing "failed" work (13:10) Following vs breaking rules (14:45) Originality vs remixing (18:00) Seeking inspiration and insanity (19:00) Feeling creative and finding flow with...

We discuss "Breaking Smart", a book that outlines the core principles of software engineering, and attempt to export them to the world of academia (00:00) Intro (00:10) Who is Venkatesh Rao (01:00) What is Breaking smart (02:30) Software is eating the world (03:00) Software gives you high leverage (03:50) A new approach to problem solving (06:00) Agility and iteration (08:00) Top-down vs...