Episode notes
What does it actually take to build a quantum computer that can scale to millions of qubits? Learn more about Qolab here: https://qolab.ai/ In this episode, we speak with John Martinis, recipient of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics. Martinis is a pioneer in superconducting quantum computing and led the team of engineers at Google Quantum AI during the development of their Sycamore chip, which was the first to demonstrate “Quantum Supremacy,” the outperformance of a quantum computer compared to a classical supercomputer. John is now the co-founder of Qolab, a company developing new approaches…
Chapters
Tap a chapter to play from there.
Podcast
632nm
Misha Shalaginov, Michael Dubrovsky, Xinghui Yin · Tech & Science · English
Technical interviews with the greatest scientists in the world.
More from 632nm All episodes →
-
E63 · 6 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 41 min
AI, Cancer Vaccines, and the Future of Personalized Medicine | Sid Sijbrandij on GitLab + Biotech
Can AI help design personalized cancer vaccines? Visit Future of Cancer Care Today: https://sijbrandijfoundation.org/fcct In this episode, we speak with Sid Sijbrandij, founder of GitLab who went "Founder Mode" against his own cancer. Sid discusses personalized cancer vaccines, tumor sequencing, immunotherapy, and the challenge of making cutting-edge cancer treatments accessible to patients outside traditional clinical trials. We explore how personalized mRNA cancer vaccines work, from sequencing a tumor and identifying mutations that distinguish cancer cells from healthy cells to selecting…
-
E61 · 8 Sep 2026 · 2 hr 41 min
Diffraction Limit, Microscopy, and Cell Biology | Eric Betzig on Super-Resolution Microscopy
What does a cell actually look like when you can see its molecules in action? In this episode, we speak with Nobel Prize-winning scientist Eric Betzig, whose pioneering work in super-resolution microscopy transformed our ability to see inside living cells. Betzig recounts his decades-long effort to overcome the diffraction limit of light microscopy, from his early work in near-field microscopy to the development of PALM and his eventual focus on watching biological processes unfold in living cells. We explore why the familiar picture of the cell in biology textbooks may be fundamentally…
-
E60 · 18 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 52 min
The Hybrid Architecture Behind Quantum Computing | Yonatan Cohen Quantum Machines CTO
Why is controlling a quantum hardware becoming one of the biggest challenges in scaling quantum computers? In this episode, we speak with Yonatan Cohen, co-founder and CTO of Quantum Machines, a company developing advanced control systems for quantum computers. Cohen explains how quantum control sits at the interface between quantum hardware and classical computing, and why this hybrid architecture will become increasingly important as quantum processors scale. We explore how quantum computers are controlled using precise microwave signals and pulse sequences, the limitations of conventional…
-
E59 · 4 Aug 2026 · 2 hr 9 min
How DNA Sequencing Was Discovered By Accident | Walter Gilbert on Biogen, Industry, and Art
How did we go from knowing almost nothing about genes to sequencing the entire human genome? In this episode, we speak with Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist Walter Gilbert, whose discoveries helped lay the foundation for modern genomics. Gilbert recounts his remarkable journey from theoretical physics into biology, where he helped discover messenger RNA, uncovered the molecular mechanisms of gene regulation, invented one of the first practical methods for sequencing DNA, and later co-founded Biogen, one of the world's first biotechnology companies. We explore the race to understand…
-
E58 · 21 Jul 2026 · 3 hr 26 min
How Bacteria Evolved Rotary Motors | Michael Manson
How do bacteria power one of the most sophisticated molecular machines in nature? In this episode, we speak with Dr. Michael Manson, one of the pioneers of bacterial motility research, whose nearly 50-year career has helped uncover how the bacterial flagellar motor works. From the first experiments proving that bacterial flagella rotate to the latest breakthroughs in cryo-EM and single-molecule biology, Manson tells the story of how scientists finally solved the mechanism behind a real working biological motor. We explore how bacteria move through chemotaxis using a biased random walk, why…
-
E57 · 30 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 23 min
The Atomic Physics Behind Neutral Atom Computers | Mark Saffman
Why are so many companies betting on neutral atoms to build the first useful quantum computers? In this episode, we speak with Mark Saffman, professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and one of the pioneers of neutral atom quantum computing. Over the past two decades, Saffman has helped transform Rydberg atoms from a theoretical idea into one of the leading architectures for scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computing. We explore the physics of optical tweezers and Rydberg blockade, how neutral atoms perform quantum logic and create entanglement, and why this platform offers unique…
Take it with you
The Melo app keeps playing with the screen off, works in the car and on your watch, wakes you to your station, and browses the whole catalogue offline. Free, no ads, no account.
