Everything You Want To Know About Quantum Mechanics - Maria Violaris - #22

The Dark History of Gene Editing - Matthew Cobb - #23

Matthew Cobb is a professor emeritus of zoology at the University of Manchester and one of Britain's most prominent science communicators and historians of biology. He holds a PhD in psychology and genetics from the University of Sheffield and spent his research career studying olfaction, insect behaviour, and the effects of genes on behaviour. He has written eight books, including a major biography of Francis Crick that won the Hatchards First Biography Prize, and has made numerous programmes for BBC Radio 4 including the first BBC broadcast ever dedicated to CRISPR. His book on genetic engineering is published in the US as As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age and in the UK as The Genetic Age. Expect to learn how CRISPR was discovered not as a gene editing tool but as an immune system in bacteria defending themselves against viruses, why it took only six years from that foundational discovery for scientists to realise the technology could be reprogrammed, how eugenics persisted in respectable scientific circles decades after the Holocaust and why even Francis Crick held deeply misguided views about class and genetics well into the 1970s, what the EU's blanket ban on GMOs actually means when CRISPR-edited crops are indistinguishable from conventionally bred ones, why China has a raging internal debate about GM rice despite its authoritarian image, what the scissor metaphor gets badly wrong about how CRISPR actually behaves inside primate embryos, what really happened when He Jiankui edited two human embryos and brought them to term in 2018, why somatic editing to cure sickle cell disease is ethically uncontroversial while germline editing of embryos is fundamentally different in kind, why embryo screening via IVF already solves the problem germline editing is supposed to fix for the vast majority of cases, why genetic screening companies selling designer baby services are largely selling a fantasy rooted in a misunderstanding of how complex traits work, and why Matthew considers the fusion of AI with gene synthesis to create bioweapons the most alarming frontier of this entire technology. Matthew Cobb online: Bluesky: @matthewcobb.bsky.social [http://matthewcobb.bsky.social] Substack: matthewcobb2 (Science and History) Books: As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age and Crick: A Mind in Motion (available wherever books are sold)

Everything You Want To Know About Quantum Mechanics - Maria Violaris - #22

Maria Violaris is a quantum physicist and science communicator based in Oxford, UK, and a researcher at Oxford Quantum Circuits, an Oxford University spin-out. She holds a PhD in the foundations of quantum information from the University of Oxford, where her research examined the quantum arrow of time, measurement paradoxes, and locality in entanglement. Alongside her doctorate she built outreach programmes with IBM Quantum and Riverlane, founded Oxford University Quantum Information Society, and wrote for Physics World. She hosts the Quantum Foundations Podcast on her YouTube channel, The Quantum Channel, where she interviews active researchers on the deepest open questions in the field. Expect to learn how quantum mechanics is defined as our most precisely tested theory of matter, why Einstein objected to quantum randomness and what he meant by spooky action at a distance, how the double slit experiment reveals wave-particle duality in single photons, why introducing any detector destroys the interference pattern through entanglement rather than a mysterious act of observation, what the simulation hypothesis has to do with why particles exist in superposition until measured, how decoherence explains why quantum superpositions collapse so rapidly in warm everyday environments, why building a quantum computer requires fighting the universe's constant tendency to measure and collapse quantum states, what use cases quantum computers are most likely to deliver first including drug discovery and materials science, why Copenhagen's failure to define an observer makes it an incomplete interpretation, how Schrodinger's cat shows that every element of the experiment including the hammer the poison and the cat equally counts as a measurement device, and how a reversibility test on a quantum computer could in principle distinguish the many worlds interpretation from objective collapse theories. Maria Violaris online: YouTube: Dr Maria Violaris (youtube.com/@maria_violaris [http://youtube.com/@maria_violaris]) Podcast: Quantum Foundations Podcast (mariaviolaris.podbean.com [http://mariaviolaris.podbean.com]) X: @maria__violaris Instagram: @maria.violaris LinkedIn: Maria Violaris Website: mariaviolaris.com [http://mariaviolaris.com]

How To Stop Being a People Pleaser - Frederik Herre - #21

Frederik Herre is a German men's coach and facilitator based in Bali, Indonesia, formerly Berlin, who specialises in helping men overcome people-pleasing and nice-guy patterns. After spending his twenties isolated, conflict-avoidant, and single for nine years, he discovered the concept of people pleasing through a friend's observation and began a two-year personal transformation. He now runs men's circles under the name Men's Embodiment Group, coaches clients one-on-one, and delivered a live talk titled Boys Deserve Love 2 on the psychology of masculine self-worth. This episode is the first in-person recording of Julius Moorman's podcast, taped in Bali. Expect to learn what a people pleaser actually is and why the behaviour is driven by hidden manipulation rather than genuine kindness, how Fred spent nine years single because he was too afraid to communicate romantic interest, why nice-guy patterns show up equally in work and entrepreneurial life through overgiving and an inability to charge fairly, what the three-step framework of awareness, in-the-moment recognition, and evidence-building looks like in practice, how the thought-emotion-action-outcome model can be reverse-engineered to change behaviour, why identity shifts rather than willpower are the engine of lasting change, what baby steps Fred took to break his own dating paralysis, how to avoid overcorrecting from people pleaser to the opposite extreme, why men's circles are the foundational support structure for this kind of growth, what the Industrial Revolution did to male socialisation and how that explains the epidemic of nice guys, how push versus pull motivation determines whether change lasts, and where Frederik stands in his own journey two years after hitting rock bottom in Berlin.

What I Learned From 20 Podcasts - Julius Moorman - #20

Julius Moorman is a Dutch journalist, documentary creator, and podcast host based in Amsterdam, currently living in Bali, Indonesia. He trained as a tax lawyer at Leiden University and began his career as an international tax advisor at Deloitte before pivoting to journalism, writing for major Dutch outlets including Quote magazine and NOS. He subsequently launched the YouTube channel nowweknow, producing documentary-style explainers on science, technology, and society. This episode marks the twentieth milestone of his podcast, and Julius hosts it solo, reflecting on everything he has learned since quitting corporate law, stumbling through YouTube, and committing fully to long-form conversation. Expect to learn why Julius walked away from a stable legal career despite having no plan, how a COVID lockdown forced him to confront his dissatisfaction with law and led him to writing, what made a single 300-word Dutch-language article go viral and land him a journalism internship, why he spent years grinding at documentary video only to conclude it was not the right format for him, how the invisible production work behind a podcast episode far outweighs the recorded conversation itself, what Julius overestimated about getting guests to say yes to a new show, why he would refuse to have his dream guest on tomorrow even if he could arrange it, how he thinks about podcasting as an infinite game tied to becoming a better communicator, what the Henry Shevlin and Anders Sandberg episodes taught him about AI consciousness and transhumanism, and why he believes consistency rooted in genuine enjoyment always beats raw motivation. Julius Moorman online: YouTube: @juliusmoorman. Instagram: @juliusmoorman TikTok: @juliusmoorman Website: juliusmoorman.com [http://juliusmoorman.com]

7 Fascinating Facts About DNA - Sander Wuyts - #19

Sander Wuyts is a bioscience engineer and CEO of ImmuneWatch, a Belgian biotech startup using machine learning to decode the immune system's DNA for pharma and cancer drug development. He holds a PhD in computational microbiology from the University of Antwerp and Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he studied the bacteria in fermented foods using DNA sequencing before completing a postdoc at EMBL Heidelberg on the human microbiome. After his academic career he co-founded ImmuneWatch, which helps pharma and biotech companies understand what the immune system is attacking, whether a cancer cell, a virus, or a bacterium, by reading the DNA of immune cells. In 2018, while still a PhD student, he made international headlines by becoming the first person in the world to crack the Davos DNA Bitcoin Challenge, a three-year-old public puzzle set by EMBL-EBI scientist Nick Goldman at the 2015 World Economic Forum, claiming a Bitcoin worth around 9,500 euros in the process. Expect to learn how DNA stores biological information using just four nucleotide building blocks, what Gregor Mendel's pea plant experiments revealed about inheritance centuries before DNA was discovered, how the central dogma of molecular biology connects DNA to RNA to proteins, why we still do not fully understand what every part of the human genome encodes, how CRISPR-Cas changed the way scientists edit and study genes, how DNA forensics works and why the falling cost of sequencing transformed criminal investigations, what ancestry testing companies actually measure when they compare your DNA to other populations, why editing tomatoes and editing humans raise very different ethical questions, how Nick Goldman encoded a Bitcoin inside a physical DNA sample and what it took to decode it, why DNA is a theoretically compelling but practically challenging medium for long-term digital data storage, how ImmuneWatch uses DNA readouts and machine learning to reveal what the immune system is targeting in real time, and what DNA origami and aptamers could one day make possible for targeted drug delivery. Sander Wuyts online: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sander-wuyts [http://linkedin.com/in/sander-wuyts] Website: sanderwuyts.com [http://sanderwuyts.com] ImmuneWatch: immunewatch.com [http://immunewatch.com] 0:00 How Sander got interested in DNA 1:00 Gregor Mendel and the origin of genetics 3:30 From chromosomes to the double helix 5:56 DNA as the basis of all life 6:23 The central dogma: DNA, RNA, and proteins 8:05 How four bases store all biological information 11:42 The Human Genome Project 12:34 CRISPR and gene editing tools 15:52 DNA evidence at crime scenes 19:23 Ancestry testing and consumer DNA services 25:47 How much do we actually understand the genome 28:53 Synthetic biology and engineering organisms 30:00 Ethics of human genetic editing and GMOs 35:10 DNA as a digital data storage medium 35:44 The Davos Bitcoin Challenge explained 40:00 How Sander decoded the Bitcoin 43:03 Winning the Bitcoin and what he did with it 47:22 Current state and future of DNA storage 55:17 ImmuneWatch and reading the immune system 59:09 How ImmuneWatch helps pharma and cancer trials 1:01:23 DNA origami, aptamers, and future applications