Satchin Panda on Where Cures Begin (Episode 025)

The Salk Institute's own podcast, and the most personal conversation in this collection. Dr Panda talks about growing up in rural and semi urban Odisha, where the seasonal and daily rhythms of the natural world were hard to miss. Why some plants flower in spring and others in winter, why certain flowers open in the morning and close by afternoon, why animals breed and birds migrate on schedule.

An undergraduate degree in agriculture sharpened those questions rather than answering them. He describes noticing that biology had studied what and how much, of nutrition, of medicine, of daily practice, while almost ignoring when, and how living systems keep track of time at all. The path from there ran through a master's degree, industry work in India, the University of Manitoba, a PhD at Scripps Research and postdoctoral training in San Diego, where he learned to build teams across biology, chemistry and engineering.

He also describes how the discoveries actually happened, including the experiment showing the liver clock follows feeding rather than light. Recommended for anyone curious about the shape of a scientific career.