Sep 14, 2026 · 1h 4m
Science’s biggest breakthroughs often begin with curiosity
What’s Next in Science? Nobel Prizes, Space Missions & More (EP 57)
The episode connects public investment in basic research with drug development, scientific discovery, and ambitious missions to other worlds.
- 1Curiosity-driven research can produce unexpected public and economic benefits, as Gila monster venom helped inspire GLP-1 drugs.
- 2The hosts argue that science funding should be judged through broad data rather than isolated examples or short-term returns.
- 3Upcoming missions to survey the universe, sample Mars’s moons, and study Mercury could reshape understanding of cosmic origins and planetary evolution.
Don't miss
The hosts use federally funded research on Gila monster venom to show how curiosity-driven science can eventually produce GLP-1 drugs.
The brief
Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary open with Nobel season, the Golden Goose Awards, and a broader question: how should society value research before its payoff is clear?
The Golden Goose example traces federally funded research on Gila monster venom to GLP-1 drugs, giving the hosts a concrete case for curiosity-driven science and public investment.
A tour through the archive and funding explorer shows how the podcast treats enduring ideas, from consciousness and brain interfaces to the institutions that finance American science.
The fall space agenda ranges from NASA’s wide-field Roman telescope to JAXA’s Phobos sample return and the long journey of BepiColombo to Mercury.
The episode’s central argument is practical as well as philosophical: discoveries that seem impractical today may become tomorrow’s medicines, technologies, or maps of the universe.
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