The Night Science Podcast

Please subscribe to the Night Science Podcast, where in each episode, two scientists – @ItaiYanai & @MartinJLercher – explore the creative side of their process with a leading colleague. Apple:podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nig… Spotify:open.spotify.com/show/6berzd2rX… Google:podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6L…

Professors: come learn how to teach creativity to PhD students and postdocs! We'd love to show you how to lead a 'Night Science' course on the creative process at our train-the-trainer event in NYC on April 24th! Get a 10% discount from now until 3/31! night-science.org/train-the-trai…

Science and math and other technical fields, which seem to be based not on analogy, but on logic, are really secretly driven by analogy, and there's been a lot of work on trying to map out how that happens. - Melanie Mitchell, on the Night Science Podcast podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nig…

🔥New episode of the Night Science Podcast comes out today! We talk about how science is secretly driven by analogy with Melanie Mitchell, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute and a leading thinker on AI, analogy and abstraction. open.spotify.com/episode/1hqUvE… @MelMitchell1 @sfiscience

What a treat to be interviewed by Dr. Oliver Bogler of the @NightScienceIns to discuss our NYC Postdoc Chapter! I chat a bit about my career and research, and give some tips and tricks for starting your own Night Science chapter! youtube.com/watch?v=4yeO1q…

It’s a lonely job, leading a research group (professor, principal investigator, group leader – whatever you call it). You talk all day with everyone, but you’re mostly alone with the doubts and risks of the biggest decisions. Does it have to be though?? podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nig…

On being alone together – Amy Shyer & Alan Rodrigues Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nig… Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/4KB35o…

🔥A new episode of the Night Science Podcast is out today! Amy Shyer & Alan Rodrigues run a lab together at the @RockefellerUniv and they're also married! They're true science buddies and the partnership allows them to challenge each other to make discoveries. @MorphoLab_AS_AR

What is a discovery? Why are discoveries so difficult to make? How does Night Science & Day Science capture the process of discovery? What are a few Night Science tools? Can we change the culture of science? Check out my talk at the DAI Science Festival! youtube.com/watch?v=e9p0H1…

Princeton friends! Come to our Night Science talk on Tuesday at 3pm to explore how humor can be harnessed to get new ideas. Joining me in this seminar is the stand-up comedian screenwriter and (former) scientist Sarah Adelman! Register here: my.princeton.edu/gradfutures/rs…

With all the excitement about AI giving us answers, we often forget that the real trick is to figure out what is the question! Thank you Tim Ferriss for recommending "What is the question" on the Night Science creative process in your newsletter! link.springer.com/article/10.118… @tferriss

NYC Postdocs! Interesting in using comedy in the creative scientific process? NYC Postdoc Night Science will have its first 2026 meeting on Feb. 11 at @NYULH_postdocs. I'll lead this with the amazing stand-up comedian Sarah Adelman! Free registration: docs.google.com/forms/d/11SztT…

Professors: we must start teaching the creative scientific process to PhD students and postdocs! Register for our April 24 train-the-trainer event in New York to learn from us how to teach it. night-science.org/train-the-trai… Register by Jan. 30th for a free Night Science Podcast T-shirt!

Interested in radical exploration in science? There's evidence that it can actually be the best strategy for discovery, and we talk about it in our new episode of the Night Science Podcast episode with Marina Dubova (@dubova_marina)! Apple podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nig…

New episode of my favorite podcast! I had a great discussion with @ItaiYanai and @MartinJLercher about (radical) exploration in science :)

Sometimes the best way to make a discovery is to allow yourself to get lost! 🔥A new episode of the Night Science Podcast came out today! Prof. (soon) Marina Dubova talked with us about making discoveries from exploratory data collection. @dubova_marina

“It should be delivered to all scientists (possibly academics) at an early stage” – feedback on the Night Science workshop. We've been teaching this workshop for >5 years now, but to reach everyone we need more trainers. Join us! night-science.org/train-the-trai… youtube.com/watch?v=mwH062…

Professors: we must start teaching creativity to PhD students and postdocs! If you're interested in learning how to teach a course about the creative scientific process at your university, join us for our train-the-trainer event in New York on April 24th! night-science.org/train-the-trai…

Doing good science is 90% finding a science buddy to constantly talk to about the project.

this discussion resonates so much with me. I feel that our system for obtaining grants for scientific research is not conducive enough for allowing open-ended exploration [subject to constraints]. it often seems Kafkaesque to me when writing a grant proposal on theoretical/modeling research. framing the problem and figuring out the approach/model/solution path (which is expected to be described in the grant proposal) *is* the research.🤷‍♂️

Because you won't get there [your goal] unless you stop caring about getting there. And so the only way to eventually solve the problem is to stop caring about the problem, which is what we meant when we said abandoning objectives – @kenneth0stanley on the Night Science Podcast