Are academics miserable? Could science help us to be happy? In this conversation about alternative research environments we explore these questions and what sort of a research environment we might want. Pavel is now creating such spaces - like a week-long mindful research retreat this summer.

In this post, I wanted to share a bit of a sense of the more fun aspects of a scientific career: namely having cool conversations and...

Is there one true way to understand a tree? Well, of course there is — talk to any scientist! A physicist will tell you that it’s a...

Just wanted to take a break to sprinkle some magic into this blog ;P Well as it happens, I have always believed in Santa. Perhaps thanks...

What makes a good scientific model? As a theoretical physicist I used to think that modeling everything at the level of atoms seems like...

In the last few posts we reasoned that “growing cars” would mean somehow creating them without a human planning out all the details of...

What is the difference between the amazing designs of biology, and those built by humans? Well, as we’ve discussed in the last couple...

Alright, so in the last post we were talking about growing cars (yes, I’m pretending this is a talk-show). I tried to argue that the...

Well that sounds like an exciting idea — imagine a car tree that grows on its own, and we need not do anything other than pick the...