Dr. Aaron Winkler

NRTGE | No Reason to Get Excited

Science EN ↓ 8 episodes

No Reason to Get Excited is a curiosity-driven podcast built around one simple idea: smart people talking about interesting things. Hosted by Dr. Aaron Winkler, the show features thoughtful, unscripted conversations with researchers, clinicians, scientists, and creators exploring the ideas that shape how the world works. It’s a space for real conversations, where people can think out loud, follow ideas wherever they go, and occasionally stumble into something genuinely fascinating. If you enjoy learning, asking better questions, and hearing how people actually think, you’ll feel at home here.

Author

Dr. Aaron Winkler

Episodes

Periodic Table as a Playground: Quantum Materials, Molecular Intercalation, and the Chemistry of Crystals That Change Color | Lilia Xie 23.06.2026 1:25:02

Send us Fan Mail What if the technologies of the future are built from materials we haven't even made yet? In this episode of No Reason to Get Excited (NRTGE), Dr. Aaron Winkler sits down with Lilia Xie, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and the Princeton Materials Institute at Princeton University, to explore the world of quantum materials, where the arrangement of atoms, the energy of electr...

Between Bonds and Forces: Building Monolayers, Twisting Bilayers, and Watching Lattices Move at Trillionths of a Second | Fang Liu 09.06.2026 1:07:10

Send us Fan Mail What if the most powerful materials of the future are only one atom thick? In this episode of No Reason to Get Excited (NRTGE), Dr. Aaron Winkler sits down with Fang Liu, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University, to explore the cutting-edge world of two-dimensional materials, where single-atom-thick semiconductors stack, twist, and transform in ways that could redef...

Living Drug Factories: Bioelectronics, Wireless Power, and the Implantable Future of Medicine | Siddharth Krishnan 02.06.2026 57:30

Send us Fan Mail What if curing a chronic disease looked less like a daily pill and more like a tiny, wireless implant of living cells that quietly produces your medicine on demand? In this episode of No Reason to Get Excited (NRTGE), Dr. Aaron Winkler sits down with Siddharth Krishnan, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, to explore the rapidly evolving frontier o...

Building Brains on Chips: Carbon Nanotubes, Lipid Nanoparticles, and Engineering the Frontier of Neurodegeneration | Rebecca Pinals 26.05.2026 1:12:12

Send us Fan Mail What if the most powerful tools for understanding the human brain are the very tiny particles we're learning to build, atom by atom? In this episode of No Reason to Get Excited (NRTGE), Dr. Aaron Winkler sits down with Rebecca Pinals, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University and Institute Scholar at Sarafan ChEM-H, to explore the frontier where nanot...

Life at the Edge of Equilibrium: Non-Equilibrium Physics, Machine Learning, and the Molecular Machinery of Life | Grant Rotskoff 19.05.2026 1:09:52

Send us Fan Mail What if the secret to understanding life lies in the mathematics of systems that can never sit still? In this episode of No Reason to Get Excited (NRTGE), Dr. Aaron Winkler sits down with Grant Rotskoff, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University, to explore the breathtaking frontier where statistical physics, computation, and biology collide. From the unsolved myster...

The Price of Power: Campaign Finance, Press Coverage, and the Polarization of American Politics | Andrew Myers 15.05.2026 1:52:52

Send us Fan Mail What happens when you apply machine learning and rigorous data analysis to the "Wild West" of American campaign finance? In this episode of No Reason to Get Excited (NRTGE), Dr. Aaron Winkler sits down with Andrew Myers, a PhD candidate at Stanford University and incoming Assistant Professor at MIT, to pull back the curtain on how money, media, and institutional rules sh...

The Chemistry of Creativity, Light, and High-Energy Molecules | Noah Burns 12.05.2026 58:03

Send us Fan Mail What does it actually mean to create a molecule that has never existed before? In this episode of No Reason to Get Excited (NRTGE) , Dr. Aaron Winkler sits down with Stanford organic chemist Noah Burns for a wide-ranging conversation about chemistry, creativity, photochemistry, molecular design, and the strange beauty hidden inside organic reactions. What begins as a discussion ab...

Can We Actually Detect Gravitational Waves with Atoms? | Peter Graham 12.05.2026 1:30:20

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a psychiatrist sits down with a Stanford physics professor to talk about gravitational waves, dark matter, quantum mechanics, and atoms existing in two places at once? In this episode of No Reason to Get Excited (NRTGE) , Dr. Aaron Winkler talks with Stanford Physicist Peter Graham about the strange and fascinating world of modern physics. What starts as a conver...