Night Science

What 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 discoveries . Sarah shares her path from public health research to comedy, and we explore how the willingness to bomb on stage , searching for punchlines, and creating a playful “writer’s room” atmosphere have close analogie...

Professor 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 Michele Root-Bernstein) and in his latest book, The Arts of Eminent Scientists . Bob found that successful scientists do not treat their “lazy” creative pursuits, such as painting, music, or writing, as distractions from sc...

Professor 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 striking parallels between artistic practice and scientific discovery – between Night Science, the messy and playful mental state where ideas are formed, and her “ Studio Habits of Mind ”, such as observing closely, envisioning...

Melanie 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 creativity and scientific discovery even in the most rigorous fields . Analogies often emerge during moments of mental rest and don’t need to be accurate to nudge you into new avenues of thinking. We discuss how many core...

Amy 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 in biology. Amy and Alan discuss the importance of challenging established frameworks , cultivating a “ feeling for the organism ,” and balancing conceptual imagination with close attention to observable phenomena. They...

It’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 epistemology. In this episode, we discuss the exciting – and surprising – science of doing science with Marina Dubova , a postdoc at the Santa Fe Institute and soon a professor at UC Berkeley. Marina found, for example, that to get...

Ken Stanley is a highly regarded researcher in machine learning and artificial intelligence. After leaving his professorship at the University of Central Florida, he cofounded Geometric Intelligence (now Uber AI Labs), and he is now Senior Vice President of Open-Endedness at LilaSciences. In this episode, Ken explains why ambitious objectives often backfire : the real stepping stones to breakthrou...

Maria 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 one driven by observation and curiosity rather than long-term planning, and discusses why small, intellectually vibrant institutes often outperform large labs. We discuss how funding agencies can better support bold ideas...

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 n...

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 o...

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 h...

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...

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-disc...

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 effect...

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...

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 quest...

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 a...

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...

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...

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 exam...

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,...

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 dynam...

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 be...

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 journe...

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 emphasi...