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What would it sound like if the scientists producing some of the latest research also produced podcasts about their work? Listen to Caltech Letters Podcasts to find out! In all our shows, you'll hear Caltech researchers blending science and storytelling to bring you the latest findings in their fields as well as a window into how science works, breaks, and moves forward. We believe communicating our research honestly reveals how scientists view their own work, and helps us all understand how ...
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In Chapter 4 of "Not My Thesis," Jane Panangaden explains the abstract world of pure math and the delights of exploring it, as well as her work advocating for tenants' rights in Pasadena. While dividing her time between writing proofs and legislation, Jane grapples with how we apply our skills, technical or otherwise, to bring a different world int…
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In Chapter 3 of Not My Thesis, Mia de los Reyes discusses the galaxies lurking in the empty parts of space, the constraint of light, and how she’s helped expand the membership of the scientific community. Astronomy, Mia reminds us, may not always be useful. But it is certainly cool.You can find more information about galaxies eating each other here…
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How does evolution give rise to new features of living things? Mistakes drive the vast diversity of life on earth through mutations (random errors in the information carrying molecules of a cell). A core question of evolutionary biology is how hard it is to make useful, new biological components via these random mutations and natural selection. Joi…
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Biosphere 6: Aggression and Fear
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In the current pandemic, many normally harmless activities like grocery shopping are suddenly frightening. But is fear a necessary, or even good, function of our nervous system? Where does it originate from in the brain? Can we directly control emotions like fear, and what consequences would that have for the human experience? Tomás Aquino, a fello…
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As the world grapples with an ongoing pandemic and billions face financial uncertainty to a higher degree than ever before, it’s easy to feel like the rug’s been pulled out from under us. But as we face our own fragility, we can also remember that life itself emerged in an early Earth that was unstable and inhospitable, and it thrived. Lev, Julian,…
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Scientific impact can take many forms. Sometimes a highly-cited paper influences the most people, sometimes it’s a nifty website, and sometimes it can be just a few words of kindness.In Chapter 2 of Not My Thesis, Shyam Saladi talks about everything from meticulous models of biological molecules to an automated service which literally changes the w…
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Biosphere 4: Assimilation
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In this episode, we talk about Assimilation, both in the case of a very clever sea creature and in the case of academia--that mysterious college and university setting where so many scientists strive to do their science. For this topic, we are joined by a special guest, Sarah MacAnulty (@SarahMackAttack), who does very important work in promoting s…
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It’s easy to think of socially rich cultures as a uniquely human phenomenon. However, even animals with much smaller brains exhibit culture all their own! We discuss what this looks like in macaques (monkeys) (https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/1997/12/10/monkey-culture/7d0918a9-22da-4e06-92b7-e9546789fe69/) and birds (http://europepmc.org/back…
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Answering an unanswered research question is a struggle. You do not know what the solution is, what it might look like, or if it even exists. In Chapter 1 of Not My Thesis, Tal Einav talks about his particular version of this struggle, when building mathematical models to predict the unpredictable behavior of antibodies binding viruses or of enzyme…
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Not My Thesis is a podcast that explores the unpublished parts of the scientific process. We interview graduate students at Caltech about what their thesis is, but also what their thesis is not. We want to understand not just what they do, but how they do it, why they do it, and how the other parts of their life all feed into their passion for scie…
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Biosphere 2: Poetic Justice
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When their crops are plagued by caterpillars, farmers often turn to wasps for help. These wasps are hardened parasites: they lay their eggs inside the caterpillars, and once these eggs hatch the baby wasps eat the caterpillar from inside out. But the wasps themselves are parasitized by organisms that manipulate their host's reproduction! Is this Na…
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Biosphere 1: New Beginnings
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To celebrate the launch of Biosphere, we invite you to join our conversation about some new beginnings in the microbial world and in our scientific paths. We often think that the birth of live young is a special characteristic of some animals. Mammals do it, some sharks do it, and it would totally make sense if no single-celled microorganisms did i…
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Biosphere is a podcast that captures the curiosity, bewilderment, elation, and occasional frustration that we, Caltech Biology PhD students, experience as scientists. In every episode of Biosphere, we have unscripted discussions about the living world and our part in it. If you've ever wondered how things like poetic justice, fitting in, and instab…
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