Best Martin Lercher Podcasts (2025)

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77 | Akiko Iwasaki and the art of creativity maintenance 40:33

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2d ago40:33

40:33

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 micr…

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76 | Can Google’s Co-scientist project give scientists superpowers? 40:13

16d ago40:13

40:13

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…

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75 | Eve Marder and how Recipe Science ruins creativity 33:35

4M ago33:35

33:35

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 scie…

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74 | Martin Schwartz and the importance of stupidity in science 29:19

5M ago29:19

29:19

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 obst…

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73 | Ethan Mollick and a million Einsteins in a server 38:02

6M ago38:02

38:02

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 obsession…

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72 | David Baker and the lab's communal brain 24:53

6M ago24:53

24:53

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 o…

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71 | Victor Ambros and the unique ways we perceive wonder 35:11

7M ago35:11

35:11

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 …

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70 | Meghan O’Rourke on being the artist and their caretaker 45:15

7M ago45:15

45:15

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 Scien…

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69 | Keith Yamamoto and the freedom to fail 40:40

8M ago40:40

40:40

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 s…

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68 | Peter Godfrey-Smith and middle class science 33:43

9M ago33:43

33:43

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 “L…

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67 | A hypothesis is a liability 39:51

9M ago39:51

39:51

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 …

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66 | Michael Fischbach and the scientific decision tree 50:52

10M ago50:52

50:52

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 attach…

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65 | James Kaufman and the art of creativity maintenance 30:35

11M ago30:35

30:35

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 creativit…

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64 | Robert Weinberg and the perils of being a Fachidiot 42:31

12M ago42:31

42:31

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 comi…

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63 | Manu Prakash and how the discovery changes you 44:49

1y ago44:49

44:49

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 s…

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62 | Dianne Newman and the visceral and intentional sides of science 40:09

1y ago40:09

40:09

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 scient…

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61 | Tina Seelig on what to do with a really bad idea 29:31

1y ago29:31

29:31

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…

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60 | Venki Ramakrishnan and the secrets of doing science over tea 33:53

1y ago33:53

33:53

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 …

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59 | Jennifer Oyler-Yaniv and the point of creative frustration 36:04

1+ y ago36:04

36:04

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 tempte…

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58 | Guy Yanai on Pentimenti 24:01

1+ y ago24:01

24:01

Guy Yanai is a painter whose work is displayed in many public and private collections across the US, Europe, and Asia, including, for example, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. His distinctive painting style blends modernist, abstract tendencies together with references to everyday life and popular culture. Coincidentally, Guy is also Itai’s brother. Tog…

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57 | George Church and shooting for the stars 36:18

1+ y ago36:18

36:18

George Church, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, leads a large research group at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. A pioneer in the fields of personalized genomics and synthetic biology, he has co-founded over 50 biotech companies. In 2017, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the …

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56 | Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz lights a candle for science 39:47

1+ y ago39:47

39:47

Prof. Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz directs research labs at both CalTech in the US and the University of Cambridge in England. Magdalena is one of the world’s leading developmental biologists, who has been recognized by the 2023 Ogawa-Yamanaka Stem Cell Prize and Science magazin's People's Vote for Scientific Breakthrough of the Year in 2016. In this e…

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55 | Isaac Newton and a new kind of science 26:33

1+ y ago26:33

26:33

Night Science – coming up with novel ways to interpret the physical world – is as old as philosophy. In contrast, Day Science – empirical evidence as the sole argument for truth – was invented only in the 1700s, championed by the groundbreaking work of Isaac Newton. In the April 1st, 2024, episode of the Day Science Podcast, Sir Isaac looks back on…

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54 | Bo Xia and a tale of tails 31:35

1+ y ago31:35

31:35

Bo Xia is a Junior Fellow at Harvard and a Principal Investigator at the Broad Institute. During his PhD with Itai, he suffered a painful tailbone injury that led to an obsession with this vestigial organ and its origins in human evolution. In this out-of-the-ordinary episode, we talk about this specific science project: how did Bo, with Itai’s hel…

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53 | Todd Golub and bottom-up creativity 35:57

1+ y ago35:57

35:57

Prof. Todd Golub, the Director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has made important contributions to cancer research. In this episode, he argues that creativity is the greatest hallmark of a successful scientist, and he tells us about his artist-in-residence program at the Broad. As its director, he aims to hire researchers who look like t…

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52 | Sean B. Carroll – he told some good stories 39:03

1+ y ago39:03

39:03

Sean Carroll is a world-renowned scientist, author, educator, and an Oscar-nominated film producer. Sean sees storytelling as the key to all he does. Similar to how musicians get inspiration by listening to other people’s music, Sean attributes his own creativity to his insatiable habit of reading about other people’s science – that’s how he “ferti…

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51 | Nigel Goldenfeld and the jazz of impossible problems 39:13

1+ y ago39:13

39:13

Nigel Goldenfeld is the Chancellor's Distinguished Professor in Physics at the University of California at San Diego. In this episode, he talks with us about how research is an art form, and how he tries to help graduate students make the transition from being a “classical musician”, where the goal is to faithfully reproduce every note supplied by …

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50 | It takes two to think 23:31

1+ y ago23:31

23:31

Despite the variety of creative approaches practiced by different scientists, one tried-and-true though often overlooked — trick for generating new ideas stands out. It may sound trivial, yet it is as reliable as it is simple: talk to someone. By talking with other people, we not only pool the information or ideas that each of us individually lacks…

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49 | Rich White on living on the edge cases 43:56

1+ y ago43:56

43:56

Rich White studies cancer as a professor at Oxford University. Rich is not only a brilliant physician-scientist but also a great friend of Itai Yanai, one of the two Night Science hosts. In this episode, Rich talks about how often the process that led to a particular result can be more interesting than the result itself – something that is true not…

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48 | Carolyn Bertozzi and a long game called science 40:47

2y ago40:47

40:47

Carolyn Bertozzi is a Professor at Stanford University. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In this episode we talk about how the process of science is unstructured, so you don’t know when and where the next idea is going to come – sometimes even at the supermarket checkout line. For Carolyn, science is a long game, where one per…

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47 | Stephen Quake and the Creative Network 35:09

2y ago35:09

35:09

Stephen Quake is a Stanford University professor and the Head of Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). Among his many inventions are DNA sequencing methods for non-invasive prenatal testing. In this episode, Steve tells us about his tricks for the creative scientific process, including the surprising usefulness of jetlag, the role of gen…

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46 | John Mattick and doing what your mother taught you 30:59

2y ago30:59

30:59

John Mattick is Professor of RNA Biology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. For decades, he has been on a mission to show that the large portions of the human genome that many scientists consider useless "junk" instead have important regulatory functions. In this episode, he tells us that his creative process involves always…

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45 | Peter Ratcliffe on being the Master of Daydreams 35:17

2y ago35:17

35:17

Peter J. Ratcliffe shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on oxygen sensing in animal cells. He directs research institutes in London and Oxford. In this episode, he reveals the interplay between dissociation – daydreaming – and interaction with colleagues as a major source of his scientific creativity. He emphasizes tha…

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44 | Christina Curtis and keeping the faith in the process 42:07

2y ago42:07

42:07

Christina Curtis is a Professor of Medicine and the Director of Artificial Intelligence and Cancer Genomics at Stanford University’s Cancer Institute. Among her many achievements is the conception of the “Big Bang Theory” of tumor biology. In this episode, she tells us how not being biased by assumptions of what we know has been very helpful in her…

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43 | Daniel Dennett’s intuition pumps 41:04

2y ago41:04

41:04

Daniel Dennett, Professor at Tufts University, may be the most important living philosopher, tackling the biggest questions around: what is consciousness, do we have free will, how does evolutionary adaptation occur? In this episode, Dan tells us about some of his ‘intuition pumps’ - tools that are as indispensable for thinking as hammers and saws …

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42 | Howard Stone on how to tilt your head for discovery 39:56

2y ago39:56

39:56

Howard Stone is a Professor of Engineering at Princeton. His research explores how fluid dynamics can help to understand diverse systems, from bacterial biofilms to the earth’s interior. In this episode, Howard explains how a lot of important, low-hanging fruit are at the interface between disciplines. Howard is most creative when he debates phenom…

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41 | Prisca Liberali and the junkies of discovery 32:35

2y ago32:35

32:35

Prisca Liberali is a senior group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Switzerland. In this episode, Prisca tells us how her creative thinking thrives on recursive thinking – going deeper and deeper into a problem from different angles. Prisca also deliberately uses carefully chosen conferences to discuss and to dev…

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40 | Tom Mullaney & Chris Rea on giving thanks to bias 43:24

2y ago43:24

43:24

Tom Mullaney is a Professor of History at Stanford University and the Kluge Chair in Technology and Society at the Library of Congress, and Chris Rea is a Professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. In 2022, Tom and Chris published the book ‘Where Research Begins: Choosing a Research Project That Matters to You (and the World)…

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39 | Bonnie Bassler and living on the edge in a nerdy kind of way 38:39

2y ago38:39

38:39

Bonnie Bassler is the Chair of the Molecular Biology Department at Princeton. In this episode, Bonnie talks about her passion for scientific inquiry, creativity, mentorship, and how the journey of discovery is about asking the right questions, distinguishing between what you can do and what you should do, and about embracing the unexpected. In our …

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38 | Yukiko Yamashita, the queen of analogies 26:49

2y ago26:49

26:49

Yukiko Yamashita is a biology professor at MIT and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Yukiko’s research is amazingly broad, perhaps because she often only realizes at the end of a project which question she was asking by what she had been doing, as she explains in this episode. She likens research to solving 5000-piece jigsaw p…

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37 | Stephen Wolfram is the Worldly Scientist 41:46

2+ y ago41:46

41:46

Can you think of another big company CEO that does basic science? Stephen Wolfram is the CEO of Wolfram Research – the company that developed Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha – but most fundamentally he has a deep commitment to figuring out the nature of reality. Stephen wrote the landmark ‘A new kind of science’ in 2002 and in his current ‘physics pr…

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36 | Laurence Hurst and the slime mold model of discovery 41:56

2+ y ago41:56

41:56

Laurence Hurst is a professor of Evolutionary Genetics and the founding Director of the Milner Centre for Evolution at The University of Bath. Martin actually learned biology from Laurence as a postdoc, and he still likes to quote Laurence’s favorite question after the departmental seminars: “Why is this interesting?” In this episode, Laurence expl…

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35 | Edith Heard and the feeling for the system 37:43

2+ y ago37:43

37:43

Edith Heard is a Professor at the Collège de France and the Director General of Europe’s “CERN for biologists”, the European Molecular Biology Lab (EMBL). In this episode, Edith explains how she gets ideas when she’s out of her comfort zone and being challenged, and how in her youth she would go to the piano whenever her brain needed time to solve …

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34 | Ewan Birney and the battle scars of discovery 40:20

2+ y ago40:20

40:20

Ewan Birney is the deputy director general of the European Molecular Biology Lab (EMBL) and co-director of the European Bioinformatics Institute. In his research, Ewan combines his training in biochemistry with computer science, which made him one of the heroes of the human genome project. In this episode, he describes that an “emotional” understan…

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33 | Paola Arlotta and science as a walk in the dark woods 51:13

2+ y ago51:13

51:13

Paola Arlotta is a developmental neurobiologist and a professor at Harvard. She studies how the most complex organ in the human body (in the world? in the universe maybe?) comes to be: the brain (!). How does it develop from just a bunch of cells? Paola is also the Chair of her Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, where she takes parti…

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32 | Marty Martin and Art Woods on science podcasting 1:01:34

2+ y ago1:01:34

1:01:34

In this special, we talk about podcasting with the two hosts of the Big Biology Podcast (https://www.bigbiology.org), Marty Martin – professor of disease ecology at the University of South Florida – and Art Woods – professor of physiological ecology at the University of Montana. We had a great time discussing our respective podcast experiences, tra…

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31 | Alfred Russel Wallace and night science by candlelight 53:04

2+ y ago53:04

53:04

What was the creative process of Alfred Russel Wallace? In this séance, we channel the legendary self-taught evolutionary biologist, founder of the field of biogeography, and co-discoverer of natural selection. Mr. Wallace (as he insists to be called) told us how he did night science by candlelight during long and lonely nights on his travels in th…

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30 | Zak Kohane and the abstraction of data 28:28

2+ y ago28:28

28:28

Isaac (Zak) Kohane is the Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School. In this episode, Zak talks with us about how medicine, at its core, is information processing. But in medical data science, one has to understand and to model the dynamics of two orthogonal systems: the patient’s physiology and the dynamics of the…

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29 | Jim Collins and the technology-free Friday 41:53

2+ y ago41:53

41:53

Jim Collins is Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT. In this episode, he talks with us about his radical switch of fields in the early 2000’s, when he essentially founded the field of synthetic biology. Jim’s creative process includes ‘storing content’ about a particular problem; committing a portion of each day to reflect on it, even if this…

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28 | Caroline Bartman and the flash(cards) of inspiration 28:18

2+ y ago28:18

28:18

Caroline Bartman is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Princeton’s Chemistry Department, and she is about to start her own lab at the University of Pennsylvania. Caroline’s research focuses on how our metabolism changes in response to cancer and to viral infections. In this episode, Caroline explains how she has developed to become a creative scientist. She …