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by Itai Yanai & Martin Lercher
Where do ideas come from? In each episode, scientists Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher explore science's creative side with a leading colleague. New episodes come out every second Monday.
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The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- Apr 13, 202640 min
84 | Every scientist is an artist – Lois Hetland
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 possibilities, and exploring at the edge of the unknown. We converge on a central point: how frustra...
- Feb 16, 202633 min
83 | How science is secretly driven by analogy – Melanie Mitchell
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 scientific concepts began as metaphors, how analogies can both illuminate and mislead, and whether ...
- Feb 2, 202636 min
82 | On being alone together – Amy Shyer & Alan Rodrigues
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 are true science buddies, with their complementarity and partnership allowing them to challenge eac...
- Jan 12, 202645 min
81 | How to find your way by getting lost – Marina Dubova
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 the most powerful theories, you should not plan the collection of data with a view to falsify or v...
- Dec 29, 202531 min
80 | Why greatness cannot be planned with Kenneth Stanley
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 breakthrough discoveries rarely look like progress toward the goal, so a direct pursuit can blind us to the ...
- Dec 8, 202530 min
79 | Maria Leptin and creativity in grant writing
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, and we explore how to evaluate creativity in grant proposals and why a focus on feasibility can ...
- Nov 10, 202538 min
78 | Stephen Nachmanovitch on free play and chivalry
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 not a thing but a living process: the art of IS. He draws connections between artistic and scienti...
- Sep 22, 202540 min
77 | Akiko Iwasaki and the art of creativity maintenance
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 of studying complex conditions to solving multilayered puzzles: each new piece of evidence must be pl...
About Night Science
Where do ideas come from? In each episode, scientists Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher explore science's creative side with a leading colleague. New episodes come out every second Monday.
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