Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode jumps from ancient engineering to modern AI and markets. We start with the newly uncovered Pompeii worksite that finally shows how Romans mixed their concrete — and why it “self-heals.” Then we pivot into a Princeton neuroscience idea that the brain builds complex thought like LEGO bricks (compositional neural subspaces). From there, we break down DeepSeek’s “manifold-constrained hyperconnections” as a stability mechanism for scaling deep nets. And we close with econophysics: a Physical Review Letters result arguing the square-root law of market impact is strictly universal across stocks and time.

Summary

• Roman concrete’s missing step — Pompeii evidence for “hot mixing,” lime clasts, and why cracks can heal themselves for millennia.
• Cognitive LEGOs — a compositionality framework where brains reuse shared neural subspaces to assemble new tasks.
• DeepSeek’s scaling trick — constraining hyperconnections to a stable manifold to avoid vanishing/exploding signals.
• The universal market law — PRL evidence that price impact follows a square-root rule across stocks, traders, and decades.
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Show Notes

• ⁠Roman Concrete (Pompeii worksite) — Nature Communications (2025)⁠
• ⁠Hot Mixing & Lime Clasts — Science Advances (2023)⁠
• ⁠Compositional Neural Subspaces (“Cognitive LEGOs”) — Nature (2025)⁠
• ⁠mHC: Manifold-Constrained Hyper-Connections — arXiv⁠
• ⁠Square-Root Law of Market Impact (Universality) — Physical Review Letters⁠
• ⁠Artemis II Countdown Demonstration Test — NASA

Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this Season Finale closes out Season 1 with a deep dive into the physics behind fusion’s biggest bottleneck: fast magnetic reconnection. We unpack why classic models predicted reconnection should be slow, why nature (and tokamaks) disagree, and how modern “plasmoid” reconnection helps explain solar flares, plasma instabilities, and the real engineering challenges fusion reactors face. Then we run a full Season 1 recap — our favorite episodes, biggest scientific moments, and the corrections and lessons we’re taking into Season 2.

Summary

• Fusion’s biggest problem — magnetic reconnection, why the Sweet–Parker model breaks down at scale, and how plasmoid instability enables fast reconnection.
• From the Sun to tokamaks — how reconnection drives solar flares, space weather, and plasma confinement limits in fusion devices.
• Season 1 leaderboard — our top episodes and the breakthroughs that stuck: astronomy, biology, AI, quantum, and the history of science.
• Corrections + what’s next — what we fixed, what we learned, and how Season 2 evolves the format.

Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this single-story deep dive tells the full story of how humanity uncovered the structure of DNA — and the human tensions that shaped it. From Mendel’s pea-plant mathematics to Rosalind Franklin’s groundbreaking x-ray crystallography, from Cavendish–King’s College rivalries to the famous Photo 51, this episode follows the scientific and ethical arc behind one of the most important discoveries in modern biology.

Summary

• Before DNA — Mendel’s inheritance laws, Miescher’s nuclein, Levene’s early models, and why scientists initially believed proteins carried heredity.
• The turning point — Griffith’s transformation experiment and the Avery–MacLeod–McCarty proof that DNA is the genetic material.
• The physics connection — Schrödinger’s What Is Life? and the idea of an “aperiodic crystal” inspiring Watson, Crick, and a generation of physicists to enter biology.
• Two labs, one race — Cavendish vs. King’s College, Wilkins vs. Franklin, and the clash of personalities, methods, and interpretations.
• Photo 51 — Franklin and Gosling’s pivotal diffraction image revealing the helical structure of DNA.
• The model — base pairing, antiparallel strands, and why the double helix immediately explained replication.
• Recognition & legacy — the 1953 Nature papers, the 1962 Nobel Prize, Franklin’s omission, and Watson’s later controversies reshaping his legacy.

Show Notes

• Mendel (1866) — Pea Plant Genetics
• Griffith (1928) — Transformation
• Avery–MacLeod–McCarty (1944)
• Schrödinger — What Is Life?
• Franklin’s Photo 51
• Watson & Crick (1953)

Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode spans astrophysics, forensic chemistry, and neuroimmunology. We begin with a deep dive into 3I/ATLAS, only the third confirmed interstellar object to ever pass through our solar system — larger and stranger than ‘Oumuamua and Borisov, with new imagery released as NASA reopened operations. Then we break down a true-crime forensic breakthrough from Maynooth University that reveals how to recover fingerprints from fired bullet casings — a technique that could radically accelerate criminal investigations. And we close with a Max Planck Institute discovery identifying a regulatory microglial state in the brain that may finally clarify why Alzheimer’s develops — and how immune dysfunction, not just plaques, drives the disease.

Summary

• The third interstellar visitor — 3I/ATLAS joins ‘Oumuamua and Borisov as only the third object ever observed entering the solar system from interstellar space, with new NASA imagery revealing structure, trajectory, and compositional clues.

• A forensic chemistry breakthrough — researchers at Maynooth University develop a technique to retrieve latent fingerprints from fired shell casings, combining heat-stable organic residues with spectroscopic imaging.

• A new model of Alzheimer’s — Max Planck Institute scientists uncover a microglial “regulatory” state (a T-reg–like analogue) activated through CD28-dependent pathways, reshaping how the field thinks about plaques, neuroinflammation, and therapeutic targets.

Show Notes

• 3I/ATLAS — Interstellar Object Updates (NASA / JPL)
• Forensic Chemistry: Fingerprints on Fired Casings (Maynooth University)
• Alzheimer’s Microglia Study — Max Planck Institute / Univ. of Cologne

Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode dives into three breakthroughs stretching across aerospace engineering, astrobiology, and quantum computing. We start with a Nature Communications paper from Stevens Institute that experimentally validates a 60-year-old hypothesis underpinning hypersonic flight modeling. Then we head 3,000 meters below the Pacific to explore a newly discovered cold, ultra-alkaline biosphere near the Mariana forearc — a finding that reshapes the search for extraterrestrial life. And we close with Princeton’s millisecond-coherent transmon qubit, a materials science triumph pushing the quantum hardware frontier toward real-world quantum advantage.

Summary

• Hypersonics without supercomputers — Stevens Institute validates the Morkovin hypothesis up to Mach ~6 using krypton-tagging velocimetry, confirming that “simple” turbulence models still work in hypersonic regimes and opening the door to viable, inexpensive hypersonic aircraft design.
• Life where it shouldn’t exist — University of Bremen researchers uncover evidence of a chemosynthetic biosphere in the cold, pH-12.6 serpentinizing fluids of the Mariana forearc, offering the clearest Earth analog yet for Enceladus- and Europa-like conditions.
• A millisecond qubit breakthrough — Princeton’s tantalum-on-high-resistance-silicon transmon hits 1.7 ms coherence, 15× the industry norm — drop-in compatible with Google/IBM architectures and a major step toward practical quantum computing.

Show Notes

• Hypersonics — Nature Communications (Stevens Institute)
• Deep Sea Life — Nature Communications Earth & Environment (Univ. of Bremen)
• Princeton Millisecond Qubit — Nature (Transmon Hardware)

Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this super-episode spans four wildly different frontiers: bioengineers hijacking bacterial evolution to mass-produce octopus camouflage pigment; orcas developing cultural hunting strategies against great white sharks; the bizarre chemistry behind civet-processed luxury coffee; and a UCLA breakthrough that pushes telescope resolution beyond the classical diffraction limit.

Summary

• UCSD’s biosynthesis breakthrough — how researchers engineered a growth-coupled, plug-and-play metabolic pathway to mass-produce xanthomatin, the cephalopod pigment behind octopus camouflage.
• Orca vs. shark culture wars — first-ever documentation of coordinated predation on juvenile great whites in Mexican waters, plus how whales transmit learned behavior socially.
• The paradox of civet coffee — wild civet gut chemistry, medium-chain esters, and how microbial fermentation creates the world’s most expensive “biologically processed” coffee.
• UCLA’s telescope hack — a mode-sorting instrument that extracts phase information from starlight, enabling sub-diffraction-limited imaging and revealing asymmetric hydrogen disks around distant stars.
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Show Notes

• UCSD — Nature Biotechnology (xanthomatin biosynthesis)
• Orca Predation Study — Frontiers in Marine Science
• Civet Coffee Chemistry — Nature Scientific Reports
• UCLA Sub-Diffraction Telescope Method — ApJ Letters

AI, Eyes, and the Sky — From Synthetic Genomes to Restored Vision and Cosmic Mysteries

Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode of From First Principles explores three cutting-edge breakthroughs connecting medicine, technology, and astronomy.

Summary

• AI for Oncology, Minus the Privacy Risk: University of Toronto researchers develop OncoGAN—a generative model that creates realistic synthetic cancer genomes to accelerate precision oncology while protecting patient data.

• Restoring Sight: The PRIMA (PRIMAvera) trial in NEJM demonstrates how a wireless sub-retinal photovoltaic implant can restore central vision in people with advanced macular degeneration.

• Revisiting Cosmic Transients: New analyses of Palomar’s POSS-I plates re-examine the “multi-point transients” with fresh alignment statistics and an innovative Earth’s-shadow control test.

Show Notes

• University of Toronto — OncoGAN / Synthetic Cancer Genomes (Cell Genomics)

• NEJM — PRIMA (PRIMAvera) Wireless Sub-Retinal Implant Trial for Geographic Atrophy

• Palomar POSS-I Plates — Multi-Point Transient Analysis (IOP PASP Paper)

• Palomar Alignment vs Earth’s Shadow Control (Nature Scientific Reports 2025)

Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode tells the story of Nobel laureate Chen Ning Yang and how his ideas on symmetry and gauge theory transformed modern physics.

Summary

• Early Years & Mentorship: From China to Chicago — learning under Fermi and Chandrasekhar.

• Parity Violation: How Yang & Lee overturned the mirror-symmetry assumption and changed physics forever.

• Gauge Symmetry & Yang-Mills Fields: The foundation of the Standard Model of particle physics.

• Legacy & Philosophy: Why Yang saw beauty as nature’s signature and symmetry as its language.

Show Notes

• Nobel Prize in Physics 1957 — Chen Ning Yang & Tsung-Dao Lee

• Original Yang–Mills Paper (1954, Physical Review)

• Madame Wu’s Parity Violation Experiment (1957)

• Biography of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (University of Chicago)

Aloha internet — Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary return with three extraordinary research stories: portable muon beams, sodium-ion batteries, and the secret to long life.

Summary
• Lawrence Berkeley’s compact muon beam technology and its applications in archaeology, volcanology, and security.
• UC San Diego + U Chicago’s solid-state sodium battery that rivals lithium in power but not in cost.
• Tongji University’s naked mole rat DNA study uncovering a genetic pathway for longer, healthier life.

Show Notes

Portable Muon Beam
Nature News Coverage
Physical Review Accelerators and Beams Paper
Sodium Ion Batteries
Science Daily Coverage
Joule Paper (2025)
Naked Mole Rats & Longevity
BBC Coverage
Science Journal Paper

After a packed week of Nobel Prize coverage, Lester and Krishna look back on how From First Principles began and why they built it as an “ESPN for Science.” They revisit 2025’s Medicine, Physics and Chemistry winners and discuss why fundamental research and immigration policy are core to America’s scientific edge.

Quick note: this week’s episode is in vertical format because of a technical hiccup during recording — back to widescreen next week!

Summary

• Origin Story — Two Princeton friends from different continents unite around a shared love of science and storytelling.
• The Mission — Creating an “ESPN for Science” that celebrates research and the people behind it.
• Nobel Follow-ups — Medicine (Tregs and non-immune roles), Physics (macroscopic quantum tunneling and quantum supremacy), Chemistry (MOFs and industrial scaling).
• Funding + Immigration — Why public research grants and curating global talent are vital to scientific leadership.

Show Notes

• Nobel Prize Press Release (2025 Medicine)
• Nobel Prize Press Release (2025 Physics)
• Nobel Prize Press Release (2025 Chemistry)
• Nature Genetics (2001) — FOXP3 Mutation Causes Dysregulation
• Nature (1999) — MOF-5 Discovery (Omar Yaghi et al.)
• Google Quantum AI Lab — Quantum Supremacy (Nature, 2019)