Hit a glitch in your research? Some ‘night science’ thinking could move it forward

Itai Yanai 00:08 When I hear a big idea, when I discover a big idea, it just gives me goosebumps and inspires this, this feeling of awe. And in a sense, I’ve become like an awe junkie. David Payne 00:19 This is Creativity in Science , a series brought to you by Nature Careers. Itai Yanai 00:25 ...but it was more like a different kind of mindset, like, okay, we need to snap out of this. We need to zoom out. We need to pop out. David Payne 00:34 ...a podcast about how science and creativity go hand in hand, and about how one can nurture the other. Itai Yanai 00:44 ....where we’re going to have to use abstract thinking. We’re going to use every trick we got, and that’s going to give us the way forward. David Payne 00:54 First up, we meet two researchers who urge scientists to combine what they call the grind of day science with a more Promethean night science. Itai Yanai 01:14 So I’m Israeli. I’m a professor at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, where I study gene regulation and cellular plasticity. And together with my good friend and science buddy, Martin Lercher, we study the creative side of the scientific process. Martin Lercher 01:32 I’m Martin Lercher. I’m a professor of computational cell biology at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany. Itai Yanai 01:40 In my lab we were using this terminology that François Jacob came up with, called day science and night science. …