Life Lesson Podcast

Simon Mundie's format asks guests what they have actually learned, rather than what they research, and Dr Panda's answer keeps circling back to time. That a body run on a consistent daily schedule outperforms the same body run at random hours, and that almost nobody organises their life as though this were true.

The conversation moves between the science and the life. On the science, a career that began with noticing seasonal and daily rhythms in the plants and animals of rural Odisha, ran through an agriculture degree and a PhD at Scripps, and produced findings on light sensing in the eye and on the clock that follows feeding rather than light. On the lessons, what it takes to pursue a question nobody else considers important, and why the most useful health advice he can give costs nothing at all.

Suited to listeners who want the person behind the research as much as the research, closer in spirit to the Salk episode than to the protocol focused interviews.