Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this story spotlights an Oxford-led breakthrough: a CRISPR-engineered “superfood” for honeybees. By bioengineering yeast to produce essential sterols, lipids, and vitamins that typical feeds lack, researchers achieved dramatic improvements in colony health—reporting up to a 15× increase in viable pupae—offering a potential lifeline for pollinators and global food security.
Summary
If you want to watch the full episode 6, you can view it here:
Show Notes
Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this story explores how scientists in Korea are harnessing the overlooked property of electrons — their spin — to build ultra–low-power devices. By flipping the script and treating energy loss as a feature rather than a flaw, researchers are pushing the frontier of spintronics and opening new doors for AI, data, and computing efficiency.
Summary
If you want to watch the full episode, you can view it here: Full Episode
Show Notes
Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this story explores a groundbreaking cancer therapy from Columbia Engineering that uses bacteria to smuggle viruses directly into tumors. The result? A synergistic “buddy cop” approach where pathogens team up against cancer, showing 100% survival in early mouse studies and pointing toward a new frontier in adaptive biotherapy.
Summary
If you want to watch the full episode, you can view it here: Full Episode
Show Notes
Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this story dives into the groundbreaking discovery of a new type of supernova — a cosmic explosion so rare it occurs only ~300,000 times per year across the entire observable universe. We explore what makes this event unique, how it confirms long-standing models of stellar evolution, and why global collaboration was key to capturing it.
Summary
If you want to watch the full episode 6, you can view it here:
Show Notes
Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, Episode 6 of From First Principles covers four groundbreaking stories in science—from rare cosmic explosions to synthetic biology breakthroughs that could save our food supply. This week, we dive into a never-before-seen type of supernova, explore a surprising alliance of viruses and bacteria against cancer, unpack how scientists are turning electron spin into power, and highlight Oxford’s CRISPR-based superfood for honeybees.
Summary
Show Notes
This week we break down four big stories—no PhD required.
Reading “inner speech”: Invasive brain–computer interfaces record neurons in motor cortex and decode attempted vs. inner speech into words. Results from Stanford even generalize to simple symbols and numbers. Cool science, huge privacy questions, and a proposed “brain password” to keep users in control.
What makes us human: UC San Diego highlights human accelerated regions (HARs)—genomic control switches (promoters/enhancers) that tune when and where genes are used. We revisit classic HAR examples and a new result connecting a specific HAR to brain development.
Diamonds get an upgrade: Scientists at HPSTAR (Beijing) grow stronger lab diamonds with clear industrial upside—from cutting tools to power electronics—and potential to reduce harmful mining incentives.
International Year of Quantum (2025): A fast retrospective on 100 years of quantum mechanics and how today’s quantum tech is reshaping computing, sensing, and materials.
Hosts: Lester Nare & Dr. Krishna Choudhary
Show: From First Principles Podcast
Interstellar visitor #3 is here. We unpack 3I ATLAS (why it’s moving so fast, why we finally saw a tail, and how Hubble/JWST—and maybe even Juno—could nail down its makeup). Then we dive into the Vera Rubin Observatory, the 32-gigapixel camera that will turn the entire sky into a time-lapse movie and supercharge discovery. Next: AI just boosted CRISPR by predicting and guiding DNA repair (Pythia), making edits cleaner—especially in non-dividing neurons. And we close with a crossover of dinos + particle physics: preserved T. rex blood vessels revealed by a synchrotron. Mystery Box: the viral “Black aliens” meme.
We go from the universe’s first chemistry to tomorrow’s designer biology, swing by Mars to tune Europa Clipper’s ice radar, and finish with a fresh take on the double-slit experiment.
In this episode
The “oldest molecule” puzzle (HeH⁺), cooling the early universe, and why JWST’s findings matter
Programmable proteins: reassigning codons, recoding organisms, and real biosafety
Europa Clipper’s REASON radar test at Mars: frequencies, ice thickness & ocean clues
Double-slit, demystified: single photons, “which-path” info, and measurement reality
Chapters
00:00 Intro
• 01:26 First molecule
• 22:27 Programmable proteins
• 43:05 Europa radar
• 55:00 Double-slit
• 1:15:03 Sign-off
Lester and Dr. Krishna dive into:
• Beetlejuice & “Bracelet” – why a red super-giant may soon swallow its tiny partner
• Atomic Harlem Shake – 0.15 Å resolution images of thermal jiggles in 2-D materials
• Too Fast, Too Furious – IceCube’s constraints on proton fractions in 10²⁰ eV cosmic rays
• Interstellar Google Maps – New Horizons proves star-pattern navigation works
• Mind-Body Woo-Woo – VR coughs that literally raise your white-blood-cell count
Last week the Earth finished a full rotation one millisecond early – but that’s just the opener.
In this week’s From First Principles we dive into six mind-bending headlines with our trademark mix of hard science and light-hearted banter:
Earth’s fastest spin ever recorded – what shaved a millisecond off the day and why your chakras are still safe.
ALMA spots a “baby Earth” forming 1,300 light years away – the first direct look at rocky planets in the making.
Biggest black-hole merger on record – 15 ☉ of mass vaporized into pure gravitational waves, detected by LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA.
CRISPR reveals a vitamin-D “kill switch” for tumors – how silencing one gene in pancreatic & colon cancers triggers 4,000 downstream changes.
A star that died… then died again – the first confirmed “double-detonation” white-dwarf supernova.
DeepMind’s Aeneas AI deciphers broken Latin tablets – giving historians new text, provenance and dating in seconds.
👋 Hosts • Lester Nare – storyteller & professional curiosity machine • Dr. Krishna Choudhary – Princeton-trained physicist & cosmic tour guide
👍 Like what you hear? Hit Subscribe, ring the bell 🔔, and drop your questions for next week’s episode.
