Two Scientists Walk Into a Bar
Episodes
S7E01: The Wild World of Eyeballs
17 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
We’re kicking off season seven with an in-depth look at the wild world of ophthalmology, where scientists are pushing the boundaries of what’s pos...
Season Seven Teaser
04 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Your favorite science podcast is back! To kick off season seven of Two Scientists Walk Into a Bar, hosts Maria Wilson and Danielle Mandikian sit down ...
S6E07: Foundation Models and Agents
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In our season six finale, we dive deeper into how artificial intelligence (AI) is shaping the future of drug discovery and scientific research. With r...
S6E06: Decoding Lung Disease
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From our first breath, the air we breathe and our genes shape how our lungs function. It’s a complex interplay we began exploring in our season four...
S6E05: Cells at Work
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Cell therapy holds immense potential to transform the way we treat conditions in oncology, ophthalmology, autoimmune disorders, and a wide range of ot...
S6E04: The Power of Digital Twins
16 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Digital twins are virtual models of real-world systems that have been gaining momentum as a powerful tool in drug discovery and development. We touche...
S6E03: New Frontiers in Cancer
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Each season we discuss new, exciting breakthroughs in cancer research. With evolving technologies enhancing how we understand and target the underlyin...
S6E02: AI and the Quest for New Antibiotics
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We published our first episode on the threat of antibiotic resistance in 2016, and nearly a decade later, it remains one of the world’s most pressin...
S6E01: Digging Deeper into Obesity
09 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As we kick off season six, we’re diving deeper into one of our most popular topics from last season – our evolving understanding of obesity. In th...
Season Six Teaser
26 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Join Danielle Mandikian and Maria Wilson as they kick off season six of Two Scientists Walk Into A Bar. Hear what they’ve been up to in the past few...
S5E09: AI and The Future of Medicine
17 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Machine learning and generative AI are transforming the ways we live and work, but how do these tools fit into the landscape of drug discovery? In our...
S5E08: A Deep Dive into Drug Modalities
30 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Small molecules, antibodies, gene therapies – there are so many types of medicines scientists can consider when developing a new treatment for a dis...
S5E07: Organoids: From Dish to Discovery
25 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Did you know that scientists can grow three-dimensional, miniature versions of human organs in a dish? These tiny in vitro models, known as organoids,...
S5E06: Cancer Conversations: Early Detection and Potent Solutions
28 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
To defeat cancer, we need to understand it better. How does it grow? How do we detect it early? And most importantly, how do we treat it? In this epis...
S5E05: The Streets and Deets of Obesity
31 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What drives metabolic conditions like obesity? In this special episode, co-host and cardiovascular disease expert Maria Wilson, gRED Executive Directo...
S5E04: Engineering Therapeutic Antibodies
26 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Antibodies are proteins produced by our immune system that neutralize or help destroy abnormal cells and foreign agents, like bacteria and viruses. Ho...
S5E03: No Delivery, No Drug
29 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many health conditions require medicines that can be delivered to specific parts of the body. For instance, someone with asthma requires medication th...
S5E02: Seeing Clearly: The Past, Present and Future of Eye Treatment
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine the eyes as cameras, where the cornea acts as the lens and the retina as the film. As with a camera, if something goes wrong in the eye, it ne...
S5E01: Merging Minds and Machines: The Future of Drug Discovery
25 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Computational approaches have revolutionized how we interpret data. With the advent of genomic sequencing, scientists can derive significant conclusio...
Season Five Teaser
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Join Danielle Mandikian and Maria Wilson as they kick off season five of Two Scientists Walk Into a Bar. Hear about their recent lab adventures and en...
S4E08: Learning from Vaccines: Training our Immune System to Fight Cancer
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When we consider how a vaccine works, we typically think about vaccines that prevent infectious disease like flu or measles. But another type, known a...
S4E07: Representation Matters: Inclusivity in Clinical Trials
16 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Because disease outcomes and responses to treatment can vary across populations, clinical research must include patients who are racially, ethnically ...
S4E06: It's Personal: Inclusive Research and Precision Medicine
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Achieving the first complete sequence of a human genome via the Human Genome Project represents an incredible feat – but it’s just the tip of the ...
S4E05: Antibiotic Resistance: A Call to Arms
04 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Bacteria – and their constant ability to rapidly evolve and adapt – represent a scientific challenge that’s equal parts fascinating and disconce...
S4E04: The Where and When of Alzheimer’s Disease
22 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Understanding what happens in the brain is notoriously difficult, but scientists have made progress in the past few decades. For Alzheimer’s disease...
S4E03: Take A Deep Breath: Treating Asthma
01 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Taking a deep breath can seem like a simple process; however, for millions of people with asthma, inflammation of the airways could make it difficult ...
S4E02: Demystifying MS: The Intersection Of Immunology And Neuroscience
15 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Our understanding of what causes multiple sclerosis (MS) has transformed over the last few decades. While discoveries of the cell types involved in MS...
Meet The Hosts of Season Four
13 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Two Scientists Walk Into A Bar is back for a fourth season with new hosts, Maria Wilson and Danielle Mandikian! Get to know the new hosts and preview ...
S4E0: Studying the Symphony of Cells
26 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Cells are the basic unit of life, with a remarkable ability to sense their environment, process information and adapt accordingly. With 37.2 trillion ...
S3E06: From Fly Genetics to Human Aging: Insights into Regenerative Medicine
24 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The biological mysteries of age-related diseases have intrigued scientists for decades. In recent years, our expansive knowledge of genetics, thanks t...
S3E05: Beyond Biomarkers: Calling All Data Scientists
13 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Season 1, we talked about using biomarkers and big data to match patients with the best treatment for their disease. In this episode, Jane sits dow...
S3E04: A Look Into the Eye
09 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Our eyes are our windows to the world, but what happens when those windows start to fade or disappear? To understand how the eye works, scientists are...
S3E03: Cancer: When Cells Go Rogue
12 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It’s easy to think of cancer as an invader to the body. But in reality, it’s simply the result of a few proofreading errors in DNA replication tha...
S3E02: Fire in the Gut: IBD Explained
06 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Last episode, Jane and colleagues unraveled the intricacies of the human microbiome. This week, Jane chats with Mary Keir, Senior Scientist, Biomarker...
S3E01: Unraveling the Microbiome
04 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Our bodies are full of bacteria - pounds of them actually. We’re kicking off Season 3 with a closer look at the human microbiome and what happens wh...
Season Three Teaser
02 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Two Scientists Walk Into a Bar is back for a third season with host Jane Grogan chatting with scientists who are leading the charge to understand comp...
S2E08: Why You Should Study Immunology
11 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
So far this season we’ve talked about the immune system a lot – how immune cells communicate, traffic along connective tissue, and invasive tumors...
S2E07: The Therapeutic Window
19 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Pharmacology is the study of how a medicine works in the body, which is a critical step in understanding what medicines people should be given, and at...
S2E06: The Polarizing World of Neurons
26 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Neurons, the cells that make up our brain, are some of the most unique cells in our bodies. The complex nature of how they communicate leads to everyt...
S2E05: Why Cells Die
31 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The lifecycle of a cell mirrors our own lives – cells live and die as we do. It would be easy to think of cell death, or apoptosis, as a negative ac...
S2E04: Viruses, Bacteria and How to Beat Them
03 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Despite the best efforts of the human immune system, viruses and bacteria are constantly evolving to find new ways to breach our bodies’ natural def...
S2E03: What’s in a Pill?
16 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Chemistry is all around us – from the air we breathe, to the food we eat, to the medicine we take when we’re sick. And for the researchers working...
S2E02: Proteins: Seeing is Believing
25 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The world of proteins is a minuscule and elegant ballet. Recent advances in imaging techniques have given us unprecedented views into this microscopic...
S2E01: Connective Tissue: The Hidden Metropolis
27 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
If your body was a city, then connective tissue would be the infrastructure tying everything together. It’s a hidden universe that helps many types ...
Season Two Teaser
12 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Jane Grogan and her producer Wellington Bowler are back for a second season of Two Scientists Walk Into a Bar. After a summer hiatus, Jane is eager to...
S1E08: Designing Early Stage Clinical Trials
27 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Designing a clinical trial is fascinatingly complex. There are dozens of variables that could influence the ability of any given trial to be successfu...
S1E07: Biomarkers and Big Data
27 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Each person’s cancer is unique, so trying to match the right treatment to the right person is one of cancer biology’s biggest remaining challenges...
S1E06: Continuing the Fight Against Breast Cancer
11 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Some types of breast cancer can become “addicted” to estrogen signaling, so treatments that target the estrogen receptor were once thought to be a...
S1E05: The Search for Super Antibiotics
14 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Bacteria are remarkably fast shape-shifters. As soon as we develop new antibiotics against them, they mutate, leading to drug-resistant strains the wo...
S1E04: The Degenerating Brain
30 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In 1848 an explosion launched an iron rod through Phineas Gage’s brain. He miraculously survived, but wasn’t the same person, giving scientists th...
S1E03: How Your Cells Talk to Each Other (Hint: Not by Cell Phones)
16 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Communication is the key to good relationships. That’s true not only for people, but for our cells as well. If cellular communication goes wrong, yo...
S1E02: Ouch! Our Bodies and Pain
02 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Pain is actually good for us. Until it’s not. Discovering how to fight chronic pain, while leaving acute pain intact, is no easy venture. Join Morga...
S1E01: Cancer and Your Immune System
20 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A revolution in cancer care is happening right now. In our debut episode, Jane Grogan sits down with Ira Mellman, one of the world’s foremost expert...
Podcast Introduction
06 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The only thing Jane Grogan loves more than doing science is talking about it. In addition to being an accomplished scientist leading research on infla...