MIT's Bob Weinberg is perhaps the world's most prominent cancer researcher. In this episode, Bob emphasizes that true innovation often comes from blending ideas from different fields – a synthesis that transcends the boundaries of one's primary area of research. We discuss the vital role of human interaction, with many scientific breakthroughs coming from informal collaborations between researchers, celebrating the collective "lab brain" as a powerful driver of creativity and discovery. And given that modern experimental methods could facilitate an essentially infinite variety of alternative projects, Bob recommends that we continually question the relevance of what we have chosen to work on.

This episode was supported by Research Theory (researchtheory.org). For more information about Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .