This is the first episode in our Origins of Life series where we will interview an interdisciplinary group of scientists working at the cutting edge of one of the most profound unanswered questions: How does matter become living nanotechnology and how did it happen here on earth?

Our first guest, Anna Wong, professor at UNSW Sydney, shares her insights into the properties of cell membranes and her experiences at Harvard under the mentorship of Nobel Laureate Jack Szostak. We discuss Origins of Life research broadly, as well as her work on the physics of lipid membranes.

Our podcast team is excited to bring you a wide-ranging conversation with MIT Professor Moungi Bawendi, 2023 Nobel laureate in Chemistry, who pioneered the controlled synthesis of semiconductor quantum dots (the source of the "Q' in QLED TVs). We cover the exciting story of his discovery, the scientific and historical context, alchemy, flaws in today's system of research funding, and more.

An unprecedented long-form discussion with Professor Mikhail Lukin, co-director of the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms and a leading figure in quantum optics and quantum information science. Fresh off an impressive result in the race for useful quantum computing, Misha discusses the origins of quantum computing, cold atom physics and his journey to his current role at Harvard. We also cover exciting details of the latest Lukin lab breakthrough in neutral atom computing and quantum error correction.

We visited Professor Eli Yablonovitch at UC Berkeley for an in-depth conversation. Eli's pioneering work underpins the technologies we use every day. Together we cover the details behind his inventions, as well as his unique career in academia, industrial research labs, and startups.

"My goal was to make something most people use every day, and I have been lucky to do that more than once."

On 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider confirmed that they had each observed a new particle in the mass region around 125 GeV. This particle is consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson, also named poetically as God’s particle. And Christoph Paus, professor of MIT, led the CMS team to this groundbreaking discovery.

Why was detecting the Higgs boson such a big deal for physicists (given Nobel Prize in Physics 2013)? How to lead one of the largest international research collaborations? What is coming next in High-Energy Physics?

Inspiring tete-a-tete with George Church, a remarkable geneticist, biotechnologists and futurist. In 1984, he developed the first direct genomic sequencing method and was involved with initiating the Human Genome Project. He is among the first people to have his whole genome sequenced and in 2005, became the first person to publicly release his genomic data and medical records for research purposes. Currently, he is a genetics professor at Harvard and MIT and leads the synthetic biology group at Harvard's Wyss Institute. He has also founded numerous start-ups such as, Nebula Genomics, a company that does whole-genome sequencing, and most recently Colossal, a startup focusing on de-extinction, starting with the mammoth.

Live conversation with Federico Capasso, the inventor of a quantum cascade laser and pioneer in optical meta-surfaces. Here you will hear Federico’s stories about his professional career path: work at Bell Labs; invention of a quantum cascade laser, now the most widely used source of infrared radiation; and advice on how to succeed in the art of science.

A fireside chat with Rainer Weiss, the Nobel prize winner for observation of gravitational waves. Back in 1916 Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, however, it took almost a century for researchers to detect them.

What are gravitational waves, where do they come from, why is it so difficult to detect them? What detecting approaches were undertaken and why LIGO project eventually succeeded? In this podcast you will find the answers to these questions and hear many other intriguing insights from Rainer Weiss, the pioneer of gravitational wave Physics.