From a reader:

"Hi Chi-Ping,

 I happened to bump into your very nice piece on Max D. on the Springer web site.  As it happens, I overlapped with Max in his later years at Caltech (then working on phycomyces as a model). I was a grad student in another Caltech lab at that time.  Max simply had an incredible mind.  He always asked the most searching questions of  seminar speakers, and it was a major part of my education to see how he reached the nub of a problem so quickly.  He also was a very nice person who, for example, invited all the students to his house when he won his Nobel.  Thank you for your article which brought back my happy memories of this amazing scientist.

 Paul"

I just received the sad news: Dr. Jia-Yun Chang passed away in March 2nd, 2026. May she rest in peace. May the story of Taq be taught to the new generation of biomedical scientists.

Thank you very much, Supriya!

Vivien, great job! This is such an interesting topic that happens at daily bases in most of the laboratories, but no scientific journalist talked about it until I found your podcast. The first French and Spanish vocabulary I learned from my friends were "merde" and "consado", respectively; obviously because they were postdocs!    

:)

Hi, Sarawati,

I am glad that this article is helpful for you! There are so many interesting and important papers out there, not necessarily in the top-tier journals. For example, Luria-Delbruck distribution was published in the journal Gene in 1943. The work, which won them Nobel Prize, is the foundation of research in the evolution of cells, but the modern impact factor of the journal was like 4.0.

Chi-Ping  

Hi, Juan,

Very nice to hear from you! We are doing well here and running lots of preclinical studies. How are you doing in Spain?

Chi-Ping