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Learn more at Stripe.com. Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

I'm your host, Julia Galef, and I'm here with today's guest, Ed Boyden.

Ed is a neuroscientist at MIT,

who has pioneered two technologies that have been and slash are about to be really transformative

for what we're able to do in neuroscience. Optogenetics, which was called, quote, arguably the most

important technical advanced in neuroscience in the past 40 years, and then more recently

expansion microscopy.

Ed has won a bunch of awards, including the prestigious Brain Prize.

Perhaps my favorite award that he's won was mentioned in an article about him that I happened to read.

It was a certificate in his office for, quote, Mr. Most Likely to Be Late, because he is teaching students how to build a microscope.

Ed, welcome to the show. That's great to be here, Joy, Mr. Most Likely to Be Late because he is teaching students how to build a microscope. Ed, welcome to the show.

That's great to be here, Joy.

So I have a lot that I want to cover with you.

First, I want to talk about why optogenetics and expansion microscopy are so revolutionary.

And then I want to jump meta, which will not be a surprise to any of my listeners, and talk a little bit about what's your process from making major innovations like that? Like, what heuristics are you following for scientific research and just for thinking in general that are so effective as to produce two major breakthroughs in basically a decade. You're only in your 30s.

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