Well, friends, this is our last episode for the summer, which is fine because everywhere EXCEPT Stanford is back to school right about now. If that’s you, maybe you can give this a listen to get your mind sharp before you ease back into things. We’re here talking about the computations that go on inside your eyeball to give you clear, reliable color vision!

In Converging, student host Anthony Agbay talks with Dr. Levi Gadye, whose expertise is in the stem cells that live in your nose. They discuss the retina, the ethics of animal research, genes, tumors, and more! For show and tell, Levi brings a study he encountered as a wee first-year graduate student. This is an impressionable and hopeful time for a scientist, and so we think it makes for a nice end to the summer, yes?

We’ll be back in the fall with more new episodes. If you’re a Stanford student and want to host an episode or a local scientist with a communicative streak, please get in touch!

Details & links:

Recorded: June 8, 2017

Released: August 25, 2017

Student Host: Anthony Agbay, a second-year student at Stanford University (soon to be third)

Guest: Dr. Levi Gadye, science writer and neuroscientist who studies stem cells and their fate in the olfactory epithelium (the membrane at the back of the nose that detects odors)

Show & tell: Functional connectivity in the retina at the resolution of photoreceptors (paywalled) by Greg Field, Jeffrey Gauthier, Alexander Sher, Martin Greschner, Timothy Machado, Lauren Jepson, Jonathon Shlens, Deborah Gunning, Keith Mathieson, Wladyslaw Dabrowski, Liam Paninski, Alan Litke, & E. J. Chichilnisky

Thanks to: Stanford Storytelling Project for much guidance (Will Rogers, Jonah Willihnganz, Jake Warga, Jenny March), Thinking Matters for all kinds of support (Tiffany Lieuw, Parna Sengupta, Ellen Woods), the Generation Anthropocene podcast for advice (Michael Osborne and Leslie Chang), and Amy Orsborn and Jen Sloan for feedback on early versions of this episode

Shout-outs: The Chichilnisky lab. Another project by co-author Alan Litke. Here are some details on how the retina processes light, with visual aids! More on tumor heterogeneity.

Soundcloud image: National Eye Institute

Theme music: Transmogrify, by Podington Bear