Mavericks of Science

This Harvard Physicist is called next “Einstein”

In 2009, a sixteen-year-old girl flew solo in a single-engine plane she had built herself from 15,000 rivets and an engine she assembled outside her bedroom. Today, that same spirit of "audacious innocence" is directed toward the very foundations of reality. Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, a first-generation Cuban-American theorist, is now leading a global effort to answer one of the most demanding questions in science: Is our three-dimensional universe actually a hologram? In this episode of Mavericks of Science, we trace the journey of a "maker" who mastered the physical world before turning to the deep, mathematical laws that allow it to exist.

Fred Ramsdell: Winner of Nobel in Medicine 2025

In the late 1990s, inside a lab in Washington, a small tragedy unfolded daily in a strain of "scurfy" mice whose immune systems were waging a relentless, fatal campaign against their own bodies. While most scientists viewed this as a simple system failure, Fred Ramsdell and Mary Brunkow recognized it as a vital clue to a biological paradox. In this episode of Mavericks of Science, we follow the genetic detective story that led to the discovery of the immune system’s "peacekeepers". From the dawn of the biotech revolution to the 2025 Nobel Prize, this is the story of the master switch that keeps our internal army from turning into a group of insurgents.

Meet World's Smartest Physicist Alive

In the quiet woods of Princeton, New Jersey, there is a sanctuary where the ordinary rules of the world seem suspended. Here, at the Institute for Advanced Study, a tall man with hazy eyes walks the same stone paths once trodden by Albert Einstein. His name is Edward Witten, and among the assembly of geniuses, he stands apart—a thinker often called a "high priest" of theoretical physics and the "Darth Vader of Physics" for his formidable intellectual power. Witten is the only physicist ever to be awarded the Fields Medal, mathematics’ highest honor. His influence is so vast that his intuition alone has steered the direction of entire fields for decades, with his scholarly impact ranking him among the most referenced scientists in history.

John Martinis: Winner of Nobel 2025 in Physics

On an October morning in 2025, the telephone rang in the Santa Barbara home of John Clarke. On the line was the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with news that would stun the physics world: Clarke, along with his former students Michel Devoret and John Martinis, had won the Nobel Prize in Physics. While the world now races to build massive quantum computers, this prize honored a "quiet" breakthrough from 1985—a moment when Clarke’s team proved that a human-made circuit could follow the same spooky rules as a single atom. In this episode of Mavericks of Science, we look at the mentor and steady hand behind the quantum revolution—the man who taught a generation of physicists how to listen to the silent signals of the subatomic world.

He won the Nobel at just 33, then left Physics

This is the story of a man whose career seems to cleave in two. On one side is the Nobel-winning prodigy who revealed the "Josephson effect," a cornerstone of quantum reality. On the other hand is the Cambridge emeritus professor who defends telepathy, cold fusion, and "water memory". In this episode of Mavericks of Science, we explore whether Brian Josephson is a cautionary tale of a brilliant mind lost to the fringe or a pioneer trying to map the unseen borders of consciousness.