114: Steve Fleming: Lab culture, learning as a PI, and the allure of cognitive neuroscience

Steve Fleming is a professor in psychology at University College London. I invited Steve to talk about his work on meta-cognition, but we ended up spending the entire episode talking about lab culture, starting a lab, applying for funding, Steve's background in music, and what drew him to do cognitive neuroscience. There's even a tiny discussion about consciousness research at the end.

BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.

Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon

Timestamps

0:00:00: Steve ran his lab in London from Croatia for a few years 

0:23:57: Lessons as a PI: students and postdocs are adults and will figure it out

0:28:45: Learning more skills as a postdoc vs. starting a lab

0:41:13: Contacting departments to apply for grants

0:52:19: Steve's background in music

1:07:13: What drew Steve to cognitive science? A brief discussion of the future of consciousness research

1:27:23: A book or paper more people should read

1:33:02: Something Steve wishes he'd learnt sooner

1:38:16: Advice for PhD students/postdocs

Podcast links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-pod
• BlueSky: https://geni.us/pod-bsky

Steve's links

• Website: https://geni.us/sfleming-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/fleming-scholar
• BlueSky: https://geni.us/fleming-bsky

Ben's links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/bjks-scholar
• BlueSky: https://geni.us/bjks-bsky

References and links

FIL at UCL: https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/

ERC Starting Grant: https://erc.europa.eu/apply-grant/starting-grant

Wellcome Trust Early-Career Award (without strict time restrictions): https://wellcome.org/research-funding/schemes/wellcome-early-career-awards

Example paper by Josh Mcdermott on music: McDermott, Schultz, Undurraga & Godoy (2016). Indifference to dissonance in native Amazonians reveals cultural variation in music perception. Nature.

Carter (2002). Consciousness.

Chalmers (1995). Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of consciousness studies.

Dehaene, Al Roumi, Lakretz, Planton & Sablé-Meyer (2022). Symbols and mental programs: a hypothesis about human singularity. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

Isaacson (2021). The code breaker.

Marr (1982). Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information.

Pinker (1997). How the mind works.

Tononi (2004). An information integration theory of consciousness. BMC neuroscience.

Chapters

• 0:00 Steve ran his lab in London from Croatia for a few years
• 23:57 Lessons as a PI: students and postdocs are adults and will figure it out
• 28:45 Learning more skills as a postdoc vs. starting a lab
• 41:13 Contacting departments to apply for grants
• 52:19 Steve's background in music
• 1:07:13 What drew Steve to cognitive science? A brief discussion of the future of consciousness research
• 1:27:23 A book or paper more people should read
• 1:33:02 Something Steve wishes he'd learnt sooner
• 1:38:16 Advice for PhD students/postdocs

Transcript

[This is an automated transcript that contains many errors]

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: [00:00:00] Anyway, so, I thought actually we'd start in in a slightly unusual place for me, which is your current situation in a way that, from what I understand, when we last talked you at least for a couple of years, I dunno whether it's still the case, but you ran your lab in London from Croatia.

Steve Fleming: I did.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: and I thought that was very interesting and yeah, I was just curious maybe how did that start? Why, Why Croatia?

Steve Fleming: Yeah, so the backstory to this is that my partner, my wife is a diplomat, so she works for the UK Foreign Office and she was appointed to deputy Ambassador to Croatia for the uk. So she was working in the embassy in Zagreb. We always knew that, you know, our future careers would be a juggle of location partly due to academia being very global and different opportunities cropping up in different parts of the [00:01:00] world, but also her career.

By its very nature, if you're a diplomat, you are expected to be taking postings abroad. And we actually met when I was a postdoc at NYU in New York, and she was posted as the UK's human rights representative to the un. And so we had a couple of years after we got together there of being in New York together, which was wonderful.

And then we arranged it so that when I took my faculty job at UCL, she came back and did a London based job for a few years. So her re her posting, so her Croatia was the next forum posting. And at that point we then had a small family. We had our son who's now five at the time he was 18 months.

And so we moved out there. And while we were out there, our daughter was born, so she's now three. She lived the first. Couple of years of her life in Croatia. So we're now back in London, so her posting was four years. But yeah, so during [00:02:00] that time I had to try and juggle keeping the lab going at UCL while my family was living in a different country.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So just to clarify, you were at what stage exactly now you, so you'd already accepted you already professor at UCL or you had your own group with, presumably with PhD students and postdocs and that kind of stuff, or kind of what stage were you when you.

Steve Fleming: Yeah, so I have my lab, I start my lab at UCL in 2015. I was on a welcome fellowship and I had a couple of postdocs working with me. I had two or three PhD students working with me. So the group was small, but it was growing. And when the original plan, when my partner took that position was that. We were gonna keep our flight in London and I was gonna split my time between being onsite at UCL and being at our family home out there.[00:03:00]

And we were expecting that I would have to do a decent chunk of each month on site. But as weird luck for us, devastation for the planet occurred in the form of the pandemic. We moved out there pretty much at the start of Covid. And so obviously then everyone was online and I was able to work remotely from Zagreb online.

And I came in a few times to you know, check in on a couple of experiments that we had managed to restart during the pandemic. But pretty much I was working remotely then. And then obviously when the pandemic lifted. UCL, like the universities were trying to get people back on site and I was then doing quite a lot of commuting.

And I would try and come into London for extended periods of time and then maybe do a few days working remotely at home, especially if there were faculty meetings or other types of meetings that were on Zoom anyway then I was able to do those [00:04:00] remotely. So it was a juggle for that second that second period.

And I think that since Covid really, people have got a bit more used to hybrid working, but still our situation was very unusual and I wouldn't recommend it in terms of running a lab. But I would I think it's a hard thing to do when you have two people. Who are trying to pursue their careers in different spaces, and that, that requires moving around.

You know, that, that's not easy. And it's the same in academia, right? If people are an academic couple, the classic two body problem means that often it's not possible to get a job in the same city together. So I think, you know, we were somewhat unusual in the sense my partner's job was not an academic job, but we were not unusual in the sense that there's plenty of people who have this two body problem and it's hard to be in the same location at the same time.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So you basically managed to maintain the [00:05:00] downsides of academia without actually being in academia. Smart thinking

Steve Fleming: Yeah. Essentially. Yes. But we are now back in London you know, the way that the diplomatic lifestyle works is often you know, they'll do periods back in their home base as it were. So you do a job back in government in London and before you then. Take another foreign posting.

So for us, that experience of having that posting as a family was a learning curve. 'cause it's made us realize what's possible, what's not possible. It's made us and really, as I said, we were lucky in that the, this wave of hybrid working came in just as we were taking that posting.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I guess it really is a such a coincidence that yeah, basically nothing changed in the beginning, but so is so presumably then at some point, your wife will, I. Have another posting somewhere else then again, or what's the.

Steve Fleming: Yeah. And that, that's in it is possible I think [00:06:00] at the moment now we're back in London. We've got two small kids. They're both, well, my son's in school, primary school. My daughter's in nursery, but we'll go to primary school soon. We're. Keen on giving them a bit more stability here for a while. And so, but we, yeah, so it's probably not something that's gonna happen in over, you know, the next few months or years.

It's probably more a few more years down the road. But yes, that is something that we're thinking is on the cards. The good thing about the, you know, being a UK diplomat now as opposed to say 30 years ago, is that now you get a bit more choice and a bit more control over when and where you go in the world.

It used to be that you just got sent places and your spouse and your family had to go with you. Now there's a bit more recognition that's not always conducive to to family life especially.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I guess, yeah, presumably then it also limits who even wants to do [00:07:00] it

Steve Fleming: Yes. Yeah, exactly. And also the old model used to be that the diplomats were primarily male. Their wives didn't work. They followed them around the world. They looked after the kids. They, whereas, you know, now if you've got a both partners pursuing their own careers, then it's very hard to be suddenly just upping sticks and being sent somewhere.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. So I have lots of questions that I should probably then ask your wife rather than you about being a diplomat. But.

Steve Fleming: Well, if you can find anything out from her about where she's planning to go next and when I, you know, do let me know.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Yeah. But now I don't have any insights. I'm sorry, but I'll, I'll do my best. Um, 

Steve Fleming: but

I guess one thing to say about, you know, the lab side is that, my lab tells me that it was okay, in the sense that they did, were they were able to meet with me one-on-one. Some of those meetings were on Zoom. But, it was possible to keep projects moving, but there [00:08:00] was definitely a loss of cohesion in terms of, there's just something about all being in the same room and having those weekly lab meetings where everyone's in the same room and sharing a physical space that really changes the dynamic.

And I think that's something that for us, maybe last a bit longer because of our, my personal circumstances with where my family was. But everyone experienced that during Covid. Every lab experienced that. And I think that in the kind of science we do, cognitive science where. A lot of the data analysis can be done anywhere.

The, even some of the data collection can be done anywhere. If you're collecting behavioral data over the web, for instance, then you can pursue your science. You can keep it going in the sense that you can analyze the data, you write the papers and so on. But I think the ideas just suffer the cohesion on terms of okay, everyone's pulling in a, in a common direction and you [00:09:00] know, how to cross-fertilize different lines of work that really suffers.

And so I've been making an active I've been actively trying since I personally was more on site in London. I've been actually trying to encourage other people as well to be around more physically. And I think we are noticing the difference now. I think it's good that we're all more keen to be back on site.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I was gonna ask, I mean, especially I guess as then two different parts, or I guess maybe three. One was during Covid, one was then kind of after the pandemic started down and now it's back when it's the normal. I was just curious, how do you then try and especially if you're not on site, how, I'm just curious, how do you try and instill this kind of sense of.

Of community direction, maybe when you weren't there. And then, I mean, is it now or just, you know, trying to get people to be in the same room and that's kind of it? Or is there I'm also curious like whether there are like yeah, just other kind of nuances maybe to it that you've kind of realized during that whole process.

Steve Fleming: Yeah, it's a good question. I think there's [00:10:00] lots of different ways of going about building lab culture and they don't always, they don't all have to rely on physical proximity. I. I think there are a lot of groups now that are doing this more distributed model where people are part of a wider research group, but they're in different locations around the world and they meet on Zoom and so on.

I think what we did during the pandemic, which I thought was important, was that I was very conscious that I needed to be communicating at much higher rate out to the lab than I or otherwise would. So I would often start each week by writing a message to the whole group and say you know, this is what's going on.

And just those kind of communications that come from the PI I think are helpful 'cause they realize people start to feel part of something. Similarly, we have a a lab slack where everyone is often posting about papers that they've read or papers that they've got coming out themselves, or I. [00:11:00] Talks that are going on and posting Zoom links to those.

So there's just a bit of chatter there that I think is helpful that people feel part of something. And then obviously, you know, during the pandemic, like a lot of other groups we were trialing things like having a Zoom drink on a Friday or that kind of thing. You know, it, it does, it is important to try and do those things.

And then I think we've also got the challenges. Our lab that were even within UCL, were geographically distributed. So I have my academic appointment in psychology, but we do a lot of our science at the Functional imaging lab in Queens Square. And we've also got a footprint at the Max Plank Center for computational psychiatry.

And so different people in the lab are sat at different locations. And we also have different meetings that we need to go to, which might be, say a five or 10 minute walk away. So there's a, those same principles apply I think, even when we're now [00:12:00] more in onsite mode. So I think that what I've tried to do since, you know, people have been coming into the lab more is instill two, we have two days a week where I expect everyone to be on site unless they're away, and that coincides with our lab meeting.

It coincides with the departmental seminar that we go to. So there's kind of like a sense in which you will see people when you come in those days, and then people have some freedom outside of that to decide how much they come in. But I, you know, this is not a easy problem to solve. When I've been in faculty meetings, people have often.

And concerns that the buildings feel empty. You know, not, I'm not, it is not any single building, it's just the buildings in general feel a bit empty compared to what they felt like pre pandemic. And there's a bit of difference in opinion, I think, among the senior leadership [00:13:00] about, you know, is this just a new way of working now and we need to somehow all be hot desking and downsizing the buildings, the foot, or is it gradually coming back?

And I, yeah, I'm not sure, I think hybrid working's not gonna go away, but I also detect a sense in which people are like, let's predominantly be on site now.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I guess management at UCA also wouldn't mind not having the quite as much office space

Steve Fleming: Well, so that's another thing, right? It's hugely expensive and, but I'm, you know, I firmly believe that it's. The value is worth it as long as you get people to fill it. If you get people to fill it, then the added value of being all together in physical proximity, you just can't, you just can't replicate that.

I think that's one of the big lessons actually, that I've learned over the past few years is that um, when I, when I moved to [00:14:00] the psychology department for my academic position essentially to get a tenured position, I perhaps naively thought that would be fine. 'cause I can split my lab and, you know, we can be a bit geographically distributed and as long as we all have lab meetings and as long as we can continue doing our science and our brain imaging and so on, it's gonna be fine.

And in one sense it has been fine in that we have done all that, but there is a sense in which I hadn't quite appreciated. Also, COVID showed me this, I hadn't quite appreciated the importance of being all together in one physical space. And it doesn't necessarily mean having desk nests to each other.

It just means in the same building, using the same coffee machine. I just heard on the radio the day, I think yesterday there was a leaked zoom call where Jamie Diamond, the CEO of of one of the big banks, big investment banks was ranting about how everyone on Zoom these days is just checking their email and he hates it and he wants everyone back on [00:15:00] site and all this kind of thing.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I get it though. I mean. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, during the pandemic, I never really liked the whole I, I never went, as soon as like conferences for example, went to Zoom, I was like, I'm not gonna sit in another Zoom meeting. I dunno. So I just basically didn't do college. I mean, which I guess maybe wasn't the most helpful thing in the you know, middle stage of my PhD.

But

Steve Fleming: no, I mean, I struggle with it because like I benefit hugely. I. Personally, obviously with the, I mean unusually so given my wife's career, but also just day to day, like I benefit from being able to take the odd day where I, because of picking up the kids or whatever, I just haven't got the time to get into the office and back and so on.

And, you know, benefit by being able to switch a meeting online like that just wasn't the norm Pre covid. It just wa you know, it would be weird, I think to say, can we switch this onto Zoom? [00:16:00] So, so I think I struggled with it in the a lot and I think this is where a lot of the more senior leadership struggle with it as well, that they personally quite like the opportunity to work from home partly 'cause they have the big, nice homes.

Whereas um, you know, the students and the postdocs, they maybe are sitting in a shared, a flat share one room. It's, it is not as fun and they want to be on site. So, and they've seen leadership want to get 'em on site. So there's all this there's a lot of swirling motivations for how to restart lab culture.

And I don't know how it's going to settle down, but it's clearly still in evolution. Even though the pandemic was over two years ago. It is still in evolution.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Was the one, one question I have is a, for, especially from the, I guess from the perspective of your students and postdocs. So one thing that I noticed or that I guess because of the particular situation I was in, I was exposed to two very different [00:17:00] situations. The one was kind of, so our lab moved during the pandemic because my supervisor accepted a, he was a postdoc with funding first, and then he became professor, like beginning of the pandemic basically.

And one thing I really noticed is that, so when we were first in Hamburg that that institute was founded by Christian Buchel, who kind of, I think. I think modeled it after kind of the fill model, right? Where he did a postdoc, something like that, can't remember. But where basically you have lots of labs and you share one space and everyone's kind of mixed all over the place.

And yeah, you just constantly kind of see different people from different labs and it's all within cognitive neuroscience. But and, but that's kind of unusual in Germany actually. 'cause in Germany I think you have much more this kind of system where in general it's a different academic system from the UK because in Germany you kind of, you know, you, they're changing it, but traditionally you kind of just have professor on nothing.

There's there's not this you know, lecturer, senior lecturer reader kind of progression you can do. And it's basically if you're a professor, you have often like separate space in a [00:18:00] university that's kind of yours for you and your staff. And so for example, then when we went to Heidelberg then where my supervisor accepted the position, suddenly we had this I mean, also it was like a new lab, right? So we were only like three people, or four, and we had this like half of a corridor to ourselves at the, you know, it's like separate from anything else. And, you know, that had a, I think during the pandemic that wa I mean, in a way was very helpful because we basically all had our separate offices because we were also still small in the beginning.

So it meant, even though you're not supposed to go to the office, I was like, what? I'm on my own in my office. You know, who am I gonna infect get infected by? But so that was nice, but at the same time it was obviously very empty. And lonely is maybe a strong word, but you get what I mean. Whereas for example, if it had been like in Hamburg or also like the Phil where it's much more mixed I think things would've been quite differently.

So I'm just curious kind of from is all of, are all of your students kind of in these like [00:19:00] mixed environments and. And presumably my question was also that probably helped them in some regard, especially, you know, because they had more contacted people from outside the lab in kind of a natural environment.

Steve Fleming: Yeah, I mean, I think it is interesting to think about these different models of the physical space. And you're right that somewhere like the FIL has thrived on being the students and the postdocs are intermixed. And you sit next to people from different groups. And that I think is a nice model.

The more traditional model, as you say, is that I. For instance, at the ICN, the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience as far, which is just next door to the fill as far as I understand it, I did my masters there ages ago. They had a more traditional structure where each office were, was dedicated for a particular PI in the sense that their students and postdocs would then sit in those rooms.

So my current lab is a kind of [00:20:00] mix of that. We have a couple of rooms in, in psychology where it's a bit more like the ICM model, where it is mainly our group, maybe one or two people from other groups. But then I also have a couple of people sitting at the Max Plan Center or the Phil, where, as you say, it's a bit more intermixed.

I think that the, both of those models still have the challenge that the. That people are often working from home. You know, people are not always coming in and the space feels a bit um, sparse.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And I think to me, there's also a big difference between whether a space is supposed to be empty or not. So what I love is getting in the lab, like in the building early when, you know no one's supposed to be there in quotation mark. Right. And that's always really nice because it's quiet, it's calm. No one's there, no one's going to, you know, interrupt me with anything. then I also had like, uh, here I had a little bit where I think it was just like summer holidays, so like lots of people just [00:21:00] weren't there. And then it was probably a conference at the same time. So if it's the middle of the day and no one's on the corridor, that feels really weird. So I guess there's the expectation of whether people should be there or not, also.

Plays a big factor and I think goes into the sense of the buildings are empty. 

Steve Fleming: Yeah. And yeah, I mean, I was just recently, well, a few months ago I was in Berlin and at the MPI for human development, and they were showing me their new building where they're building their new scanners. And in that new building they have they've set it up so that it's hot desking and they have a set of rooms where the rooms are color coded and you

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: desking is when you share

Steve Fleming: when you shared, yeah, when they're, when you don't have a fixed desk.

And they had this system where, I think it was mainly for visiting students at the moment. I think if you are a permanent student there, you do get your own desk, but the, they'd set it up so that you could essentially come in and scribble on a blackboard when you [00:22:00] plan to be at a particular desk.

And they found it was quite, you know, well, because then you could almost see. Which of those color coded rooms would be fun, you know, that week and you could put your name down for a room that would actually have people you like in it and people you know, you want to sit with and so on. So I thought that was an interesting model.

The downside of hot desking though is that it's the uncertainty surrounding, you know, where you're gonna be on any given day. And, you know, I remember as a postdoc having a fantastic experience because we had a room of eight desks. We were from different labs. So there was, this was at NYU New York University.

There was Nathaniel DO'S lab, there was Liz Phelps's lab and then there was La D'S lab around the corner. And on that corridor there was a couple of postdoc offices where it was just postdocs from, drawn from those different groups. And I made friends for life in those offices, and we had [00:23:00] a kind of support network for those of us, most of us who went into, carried on in academia and became PIs in various locations.

We still are in touch and it's a great network to have. And so I think if there was the Hot Desk model where we didn't really know where we were gonna be on any given week, then those networks would not have been formed.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: To kind of maybe finish off this the section of how labs change, I guess in, in recent years apart. I mean, so you, I'm curious like what the positives are, like some of the things that you took from that's really handy when you already mentioned, for example, you know, especially for people if they have kids or whatever, the flexibility that kind of stuff allows is obviously fantastic.

Um. Yeah. I'm just curious just anything else that I don't know maybe isn't super obvious. Uh, I don't have any specific ideas. I'm just curious whether yeah, I guess in a way, like you, I mean, you don't have like completely unique situations, always have been other people who have had this kind of like, remote running a lab kind of thing.

But I'm just curious like whether from that, [00:24:00] you know, it gives you a slightly unusual perspective on running a lab, whether that kind of told you something that maybe most people wouldn't see in that way, just because, you know, they're too close to it to basically.

Steve Fleming: Yeah, I mean, I think one thing it did make me realize is that

the culture of a group can survive it being a bit more distributed. I think what was hard was for new people coming in during that time, it probably, and you know. I do, each year I do a kind of 360 feedback thing where I send out an anonymous survey to the people in my lab and get them to tell me all the reasons why they hate me.

But like, you know, so, so far people have been generally quite positive about that phase. They didn't feel it was too disruptive. So [00:25:00] I think that it made me realize that you can do things like go on sabbaticals maybe take the opportunity for you as the PI to travel and get experience in a different group.

Pre covid, I went as a visiting researcher to Marse University, which is. Where I did a lot of writing for my book and, you know, those kind of trips, I think back then felt like a very big deal because you're like, oh, how's, how am I gonna keep the lab going? If I do something like that. But now it feels much more doable.

So I think that's the main lesson I took away from it. You know, the lab culture people, and I remember UTA saying this to me years ago when I was anxious about being away. I think, yeah, that was it. It was when I was planning to take a period of paternity leave after the birth of my son. Not for very long, just a month.

But I was nervous about not being able to meet regularly with the [00:26:00] students and whether they were and, and I remember her saying to me like, they're adults, they'll be fine. They know, you know, just let 'em get on with it. And she was absolutely right. Of course. Like people, I think as a. As a pi, especially when you're just starting out, you feel like you need to be checking in on people all the time.

And actually sometimes it's good to give people a bit of space and allow them to feel ownership of a project and to take it forward on their own. And that's, I think, something that I've got better at over the years. 

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I in way is this weird? It seems to me there's two opposites are kind of true at the same time in the way that like, obviously a PI can have a huge and positive, I mean, or negative, but that can have a huge influence on individual projects and the way the group runs, all this kinda stuff. But at the same time also, yeah, they figured out.

Steve Fleming: exactly. Yeah. No, I think, and I think, yeah, it is, the influence is needed at those critical junctures where the, you know, maybe a project is stuck for whatever [00:27:00] reason, or the ideas need pushing in a new direction, or there's connections to be made to. Other literature or other ways of thinking about an analysis or a problem.

Those are the, you know, those are the crucial input. But unless someone is genuinely struggling and needs kind of, you just sit down with them on a daily basis and try and that sometimes happens, right? So it sometimes happens where someone doesn't feel like they have the background necessary or the to figure something out on.

And so then pitching in at the coalface is necessary. And that does happen now and again, but otherwise, people often just need ti. You know, I think one thing you realize, you forget as a PI, is that things take a long time to do, like analysis, take ages, writing papers takes a while. And so, whereas it is easy to say, well, I haven't heard from this person from.

Three or four days, so I should follow up and see whether they've done X or Y is Z. And obviously it's, they're in the mi they're in the midst of [00:28:00] it. So I think that getting that balance right in terms of pushing and asking for how things are going, and then just giving people space to take ownership of project taking forward that's hard to strike.

And yeah, that's and, but also it's sometimes easy to be too hands off as well. There's the one thing I did do, I intentionally forced myself to not take on new PhD students when I was working more remotely because I knew that those early phases are when, you know you need that more day-to-day guidance.

And so yeah there's, I think for postdocs, just often letting them get on with it is the right way to go about things.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I have a question about something you kind of just mentioned in passing, which was the kind of, I think you mentioned something like, you know, as a PI how you can, if you want to go to, let's say a different lab and learn some new techniques or something like that.

I was just generally [00:29:00] curious about that because from my perspective this kind of like. Two things that I think would be interesting for me to do in terms of career plan for the next couple of years. And it seemed to me like there was always a bit of a conflict between them. So I so basic, the basic situation is, you know, that I should I say, I think like in my PhD, so I mean, I basically in the first year my postdoc narrated and so my PhD, I think I did a couple of things related to like social decision making and a vaguely kind of influences from economics, but not like super detailed or anything.

And I think I kind of found like a thing I want to do. And so, like for the next whatever years, and to me it seemed like there were like kind of two things that would be cool for me to learn while doing that. One would be the kind of neuroeconomics side which is what I'm doing right now. And my plan initially was to, you know, spend four years or something doing a postdoc in that area.

And then I also wanted to learn more for the reinforcement learning side. For another three years or something like that where I can, you know, really focus on those two things and get really good at them. [00:30:00] But one thing that I've noticed now is that when you look at all the ground funding schemes, they usually say until X years after PhD.

Right. And so I took about half a year off between my PhD and my postdoc. And so basically my the question I'm getting to is basically if I want to still to learn these two things, it seems to me that if I also want to apply for grants, then usually up to like five years or something. That seems to be roughly when a lot of these starting grants kind of things have their deadline.

So it seems to me a little bit that, you know, let's say in the lucky case that GA gave one of them I would not be able to do a second postdoc at least not both with that duration to learn this other thing. So I was just curious kind of what your, I. Input on that would be because, I mean, is the suggestion then well keep doing both, but be faster

Steve Fleming: Well, no, actually my, no, it's a tricky problem, and you're absolutely right that I think the taking, paying attention [00:31:00] to the clock post PhD is important. Because strategically, if you want to go for something like an ERC starting grant, then you're looking at, I think it's less than seven years post PhD.

Maybe there are other domestic grants that have similar clocks. My personal view on that in terms of the funding way to run funding schemes is I think it's a mistake for funders to tie it too closely to time post PhD. I think it makes more sense to tie it to experience or you know, your seniority within, within, say a university system or whatever structure you are within that's supporting your career.

So, for instance, Wellcome the UK charity which funds a lot of neuroscience in the UK and around the world has recently removed this clock. In terms of the grants still have. Career stages attached to them. So they have what's called an early career award [00:32:00] and a career development award. But the guidance there is more about, you know, are you currently running a lab and you want to establish yourselves, yourself internationally, or are you just starting out building your lab?

You know, what's the level in terms of what support you need? So that then frees up training to perhaps take longer or shorter, depending on what you need to, what skills you need to build up. But in a world where there are clocks attached to starting grants, then yeah, you absolutely need to strategize around that.

My, my suggestion in terms of building up skills in two areas is if you can, as you say, try and get a, during your postdoc, if you can get some kind of visit to a lab where. They specialize in that skill and your PI is happy to let you do that, then that's one way of getting an intensive deep dive into those methods.

Another thing to do is to [00:33:00] go ahead with applying for those starting grants. Get your lab up and running. You will feel like you will still feel like a postdoc in those early phases of starting the lab anyway, because and you will be your own best postdoc. That's I think, an important thing to realize that when you start a lab, even if you take on one or two people, it would be a mistake, I think to switch into senior PI mode, where you just expect everyone to kind of progress the papers and the analysis.

And you wait, you sit back and let the. The big publications roll in, that's not gonna happen. You need to be acting like your own best postdoc in the group. You know, you are still gonna be the one analyzing the data, writing the papers and so on. And so that can also be a time when you say to yourself, you know, for the kind of work I wanna do in my lab, I need to carve out some time where I take time to go away [00:34:00] and learn new techniques.

And that can either be physically visiting another lab or it can be things like just carving out time to read and follow online courses or whatever it is you know, that's useful to plug those knowledge gaps.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I guess a specific example I have in mind right now, which maybe adds a little bit of color to my question is that, for example, the so in Germany there's this scheme called the Emmy Noether thing, which is. A bit smaller than an ESC Sergeant grant, but it's that kind of thing.

Roughly, let's say, you know, you get funding for five years roughly, and a couple of PhD, that kind of thing. And that's what my supervisor actually had. And so that's through which I was employed. And so for example, that one I think has until four years after PhD, the deadline. Right. Which is insanely short, I think to apply for it.

Right. And I guess, you know, I've seen, I guess firsthand like how much work it is starting a lab, you know, and doing all these things. And I guess the concern [00:35:00] I have more is that I would, you know, in starting a lab and supervising people and doing these things, there would just be no time. Like realistically there would just be no time to actually learn these things.

So that's, I mean, is it then a kind of, I mean. You're looking slightly critical at that point. Do you think it's, you can still do it it's or.

Steve Fleming: I, yes, I think you absolutely can. I think that one thing that I wish I had known early on, both in postdoc, but also perhaps early on in starting the lab is that there's, you don't need to rush the phases of your career. Um. There's clearly pressure to publish, there's clearly pressure to build your cv, and it is it would be disingenuous of me to say, don't worry about that, because you absolutely need to worry about that.

If you are going to get these prestigious early [00:36:00] grants that will help you start your lab, you need to have as good a CV as you possibly can get. And that means focusing on getting papers over the line and making sure those papers are, you know, comprehensive and showcase your abilities and your scientific interest to the best of your ability to, to in, in the best possible light.

'cause that's what's gonna get you, the grants. It doesn't necessarily have to be numbers, but it has to be quality. And it has to show productivity in the sense that you don't want to let. Three or four projects you've got going in parallel, just kind of, fester and never really reach fruition because that's gonna, you know, that's, those are the projects that if you can just get them over the line and get through that final mile, that's gonna make the difference between you and the next candidate.

So, absolutely need to focus on those things. But once you have focused on those things, the, there is a temptation I think, to think I need to build [00:37:00] quickly. I need to hire more people. I need to build lots of collaborations. I need to get lots of projects going in parallel and, you know, that I think is where you can afford, especially if you've already got that initial starting grant.

So maybe now we're talking about you know, your question was, is there time when you start a lab to be learning new skills? You get a kind of reprieve. For a little while, right? So after you get one of these grants, it's quite a long time. It's five years or you know, the welcome ones now are up to eight years and so on.

So you can afford, for those first 12 months, you want to think carefully about how you are best going to make that first phase of your LABA success. And one piece of advice I was given that I thought was really useful is to think, [00:38:00] imagine yourself giving a talk in five years time, say a departmental seminar or a keynote or whatever it is, and you have the opportunity in that future talk to review the past five years of your work and set it in broader context and so on.

What's that gonna look like? And if you can envision that, if you can imagine that. Then you can work backwards. And it might be that you've got all the skills you need to to build that vision. And you just need to recruit the people. And not away you go. But it might be that what you really wanna do is kind of move into this interface area, which is adjacent to another field that you feel like you need to get more experience with or more skills in.

Okay, well then the right strategy there is to maybe take the first six months of your shiny fellowship and just let it pay your own salary and use that as almost like a, an additional bit of postdoc that you can the beauty of, I guess what I'm saying is the beauty of academia is you have freedom [00:39:00] to do what you wanna do, right?

Within reason to, to advance the cause of your science. And you need to be strategic about that. So you know, you absolutely need to be strategic about cv. But I think there's also room to be strategic about the skills and the exposure to different disciplines.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I mean, isn't there, this isn't there, this joke about, they say the great thing about academia is that you can choose which 14 hours of the day to work something like that.

Steve Fleming: I hadn't heard that particular

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: that's the, Of that, but

that's the kind of freedom, right? You're free as long as the output is.

Steve Fleming: Yeah. I dunno. You know, like I I definitely worked quite long hours at the start when I started my lab up, but I also think there's this, almost this kind of martyr myth that we propagate in academia where. I've heard people give, [00:40:00] you know, when people these growing up in science interviews where you, I guess this is kind of what we're doing now, but like, um, you know, where people talk about the early phase of their careers and there's this sense in which like, unless you are absolutely killing yourself and you're working, you know, you're not sleeping and so on, that somehow you are, you're not succeeding in that early phase.

And I think that's a myth. I think it is. You need to be strategic and that often means once you, I, so I remember working long hours because I realized I had a couple of papers that were still from my postdoc, like my actual postdoc where I needed to get them over the line because I was about to start writing these fellowship applications.

And that was a phase where I just had to be like the first in, in the morning and work until nine 10 at night. And I was doing that for a period of three or four months, and I [00:41:00] got those papers over the line, but then the rest of the time I was being a bit more it is a marathon, not a sprint. You know, you've got to pace yourself and be strategic about what you focus your time on.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Whilst we were kind of talking about some ground application stuff, had this one question I thought I was gonna ask at the end, but I thought I might as well ask it now, which is if you know, from what I understand when you apply for, I. Let's just take an ESC Sergeant Grant as an example. Let's say you're applying for that.

So I don't know the technical de exactly the details of the application and it's also gonna differ depending on scheme. But from what I understand you know, you have to usually have confirmation from the host institution that they will host you if you get the award and that kinda stuff. And obviously you also want to find the right institution to do that kind of thing at.

Right. Very kind of simple question is how do you go about doing that? Because I mean, in a way it's seems to be fairly obvious. You know, you maybe no institutions where there are people who are doing stuff that's related to what you're doing, who you could [00:42:00] imagine yourself collaborating with or something like that.

Right. And then depending on what methods you want to use, maybe that further restricts. Who has access to those? But. I guess the thing is that, you know, at least in my case, I don't have a huge amount of connections to people in these different places yet.

So I guess the question is basically how do you start doing that? I mean, do you just contact someone who does research related to yours at the university to get a first feel for what to do? Do you go straight to head of department? What's the kind of how do you basically do that?

Steve Fleming: Yeah, I mean, it will differ depending on the country, depending on the way universities in that system work. But in, I can speak obviously from primary, from experience of the uk. So if we were say. You know, you are looking to put in an ERC starting grant at a UK institution.

Then first of all, you'd want to think carefully as you [00:43:00] say about where's the best host institution for you, the methods you want to use for the kind of departmental colleagues you would have. You'd also want to think carefully about where would attract the best students. So you know, if people will obviously be attracted to work with you on a particular topic, that's a draw, but that's not the only draw.

They're also gonna want to be drawn to the wider institution. And so if you are Oxford, Cambridge, then you can attract internationally on the basis of your name if you are another. University in the uk. I mean, UCL does very well because we're internationally renowned and we you know, are a large London University that is is, you know, has a hu huge research power.

So students want to come here and do that. But, you know, that won't be the case at every institution. So you need to think carefully about how that plays out. And there might be smaller universities where there's a [00:44:00] particular lab or department which is internationally renowned and that's, you know, that will be enough to get good students and postdocs to come and work with you.

So those are the factors that probably go into the choice. But, you know, the way that then those mechanics unfold, it's very helpful to have a personal contact in the department that you are trying to join. So one way of doing that and in, in a way. It's probably an alarm bell. If you don't Right.

It is probably, you are probably gonna wanna put in a grant like that at a place where you already have collaborators or colleagues working in a similar field. So those would be the first people you'd probably reach out to and have an informal chat with. It's always good to try and get yourself invited to give a talk.

I was actually just chatting about this with colleagues in the pub a couple of weeks ago where we were debating about the ethic the etiquette of inviting yourself to places to give talks. And [00:45:00] I was of the opinion that I, you know, this is a win-win for both sides. This is not something to be ashamed of.

If you are coming to town or you have a reason for wanting other people to get to know your work, then don't hesitate to get in touch and say, I'm coming through. And, is there a potential to arrange a seminar or, because often people are who organize those kind of seminar series are looking for people to give talk s and you know, they're gonna be interested in, in, in hearing from people who are coming through town.

So I think strategically, if you are interested in an institution, the best thing to do is to just try and spend time with the people there, either informally or in a more formal context, like going to give a seminar and then on the back of that, yes, absolutely you'd want to try and have a conversation with the people who are making the decisions about what grants can be supported.

And those people are usually the [00:46:00] head of department possibly an institution like UCL, you'd be talking also with the person above the head of department. So that would be either the head of division or the dean. Because they need to, and that needs to happen well, well in advance of the deadline because, you know, those conversations, that indication of potential support for applicants for those kind of grants needs to be squared away early.

And then, yeah, I mean my experience with those kind of applications is that often institutions are quite keen to support it because really they're outsourcing the decisions on who are stellar candidates to the funder. Right? So if you get selective for any else starting grant, yeah, that's great. Then they've already done the hard work for the university because they've selected the best candidates.

So often I think you are pushing at an open door when you are putting in those fellowships. I think what can be harder is obviously starting conversations [00:47:00] about university funded positions, faculty positions, and so on. Because those are insure to supply and they require a much more commitment on the part of the university in advance of getting the grants.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. So I have to get good at inviting myself. That's gonna, that's gonna be my next

Steve Fleming: I mean, you know,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: No, but I mean, genuinely, right? Like, Because it's I guess for me also the, I guess it's a luxury problem in that sense is that I don't, I'm fairly open to being anywhere Europe in that sense, right? And, but that also obviously means there's, you know, let's say I wanna apply in the uk let's say for one of the welcome or any other things, right?

I mean, I basically, I feel like I should. There's obviously a couple of places that are obvious candidates, right. I think for the stuff I would do, Oxford News Year would be pretty obvious candidates for that kinda stuff. And, but obviously I'd need to get to know the people there to really figure, because like sometimes on the surface things can look a certain way where they're actually different or they for whatever reason don't wanna have another person with this kind [00:48:00] of thing working for them or whatever, right?

There can be lots of

Steve Fleming: Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So it just seems to me that like fair, almost fair like within each country you have to look at several institutions and get to know them to see kind of what really works, which of course becomes quite time consuming at some point. But I guess that's just what it is then, or.

Steve Fleming: Yeah, it is. I mean, the other thing to say is that the night, I mean, the nice thing about fellowships that are tied to you as a person, rather than project grants that are tied to an institution, for instance, is that you can move them. So it is important for the competitiveness of your fellowship that you try and get as much of this worked out in advance.

But there are also conversations to be had after you get the offer. So say you are successful in getting e an ERC starting grant, then for those first few weeks or months after you get [00:49:00] that letter from the ERC, you're in a very strong position negotiating wise. 'cause you can take that to any institution within Europe and say, can you host me for this fellowship?

And often that's a way of also leveraging additional commitments from the universities. So I'm not advising you to like be duplicitous with any potential host institution, but I guess what I am saying is if I, especially given what we were talking about earlier with the clock, if you feel like there isn't time to necessarily fully figure out where's the best place to host a grant.

Then you can apply, say, within your current institution or within a one that you know well. And then if you are lucky enough to get the grant, you can think about is that the best place to host it or is potentially another institution an even better fit. So, you know, there's a lot of, in the US there's a lot of [00:50:00]gameplay that happens.

People just, you know, try and get offers elsewhere just to get a slightly nicer office and so on. I think my, my, my reading at least informally on the situation in Europe is that people are a little bit less gameplaying in that sense. But maybe I'm being naive. Maybe it all happens behind the scenes and I never see it, but um, well, maybe, yeah.

I mean, I think the, but there is a sense in which I. Regardless of whether you're going into it to play the game or not, it's definitely the case that you are in a very strong position as a candidate for potential for joining a different institution. When you have those those starting grant those starting grants in your pocket, and those the strength of your candidacy for those new institutions is the strongest in the early phases.

'cause the, for the university, you are attractive for the length of time remaining on that fellowship because [00:51:00] that's the, that's picking up your salary. You are essentially cost free to them.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Obviously it makes a difference if you say, Hey, I've got half a year of my salary left,

Steve Fleming: No, exactly.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I've got five years for three people, whatever. Yeah 

Steve Fleming: yeah, yeah,

yeah. So it's worth being aware of that. And I. You know, using it to the best of to, you know, making use of it if you need to move somewhere.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Just identify the places I might want to go and just

Steve Fleming: Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: just meet people and see what happens. 

Steve Fleming: I,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: okay. Um, shall we just continue talking about the career stuff? Because it feels like if we start talking about metacognition now, it's gonna be a slightly random, 20 minute part of it or something.

Um, 

Steve Fleming: Sure, yeah. If your listeners are happy to listen to me, just waffle on about careers, then Yeah, sure.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it's not exactly what I planned, but I mean, yeah. I just wanted to check in with you because yeah, I guess I invited you initially to think about metacognition and now it's turning into career talks

Steve Fleming: No, that's fine. That's fine by me. As long as that, as long as that's something you think people will find [00:52:00] useful, then let's carry on.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Hope, I mean, I'll find it useful. So, and I, I'm the best prox I have, right? Because I dunno who's listening.

Steve Fleming: you go. Yeah. Yeah,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Anyway, um, yeah, I actually wanted to make a, a slight change in that sense or a bit of a biographical jump in your case. Uh, You mentioned earlier also something that you mentioned. What is it?

Like you don't have to rush career steps, something like that. And so something I didn't, know about you, although I guess I dunno that much about you. It's not like I've been stalking you. Uh, But you mentioned on the podcast with Sam Harris that you wanted to become a musician before you went to university. but then, you know, he's actually interested in abstract concepts rather than these random questions like me. So you never, you know, ask more specifics about it. But I am going to. So, um, what is the yeah, maybe just, if you don't mind, take me back to [00:53:00] that place and time. So what were you trying to, like when you were in high school?

So I guess you weren't trying to become a scientist or whatever, or what was the situation?

Steve Fleming: Yeah, I mean, I was interested in sciences and for my, so in the UK system. You take exams at 16, so they're called GCSEs. And then you take another set of exams when you are 18, which are called A Levels. And that's, you know, those are the exams on which you go to university on the back, on the back of so for my A Levels, I chose all sciences and music, and so I was clearly interested and back then good at science subjects and found them a natural fit.

But my passion was really doing on the music side. And I was building up a pretty, self-taught, really background in music production, [00:54:00] music technology. I had a home studio. I spent an inordinate amount of time in the music department at my school. Basically became like the guy who everyone went to, to try and record their latest Oasis covers band, of which we had several in the school.

And I really thought that's what I wanted to do for both further study and career. I saw myself as a producer or a compo, you know, electronic music composer of, so of sorts. I was interested in film music. I thought that would be a very interesting career. I did internships in companies in Manchester where I grew up that you know, did music production for film and TV and so on.

So I was interested in the, and in a way, looking back, it, it had a lot of. Engineering and technology aspects to it crossed the boundaries into science. Like a lot of the you know, like we were talking about just beforehand, about audio for podcasts, like the science of sound is very [00:55:00] rich and interesting and has a lot of bearing on people's appreciation of music and so on.

So I was very interested in that area. And so I when all of my friends at school were applying for more traditional university subjects, I went to quite an academic school. There was an expectation that you would go on to pursue a degree at level education in, there was a strong emphasis on medicine, on law, on the more traditional profession.

So I had a lot of friends going into those subjects and I didn't apply to university. I was. One of the very few people in my year group who didn't, and I took a year off to try and continue this this passion for music production. And I, my longer term plan was to go to an Institute of Performing Arts as a famous one in Liverpool in the north of England, where I was gonna continue learning the skills for this career.[00:56:00]

And it was really halfway through that year that I had a real kinda crisis of confidence when it came to that route. So I knew I enjoyed it and I knew I was like, had a kind of mindset that enjoyed a deep dive into that world. Like the technology the, just the kind of, I, you know, I enjoyed learning things on my own and applying them, but I also had this nagging doubt that I wasn't.

Really that good at it. I mean, I was good enough. I was, you know, I was doing stuff that my friends and family and so on found cool and interesting. But like, when I compare myself to kind of like on a more career level, national level, like people who are actually putting out tracks and producing things that I found that, that wowed me.

I was like I don't think I can do that. Actually I don't think I'm really there. So I, it was a gradual realization for me that this was [00:57:00] gonna become more of a hobby than a career. And around the same time I started reading popular science books on the mind on cognitive science. I mean, I was reading other things obviously, but it was suddenly this exposure.

To psychological science that I didn't really, I hadn't encountered before and I certainly hadn't encountered it in my A-level sciences. And this grabbed me and I thought, you know, if I am gonna go to university and do a more traditional subject, that's what I want to do. And so it was on that year off that I applied to psychology and neuroscience programs.

And the one at Oxford was one that just felt like a perfect fit to my, at the time, very, uh, shallow and introductory exposure to cognitive science. But it felt exciting. And so I applied to that, got in, and the rest is history in a sense. So yeah, so that's really the kind of like transition, which was relatively abrupt actually.

And one thing I regret somewhat is that [00:58:00] I went through that transition a bit, like the thing we were talking about earlier about not rushing things. I just suddenly thought, right, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna go and study psychology, and this is now the new me. And I sold all my music gear partly to go traveling, but I'm like, that was a mistake 'cause I actually would love to now pick it up more again.

And anyway, so I think I made too an too abrupt a transition, but it was the right one. It wa you know, that was the right, that was the right move.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: You know, you can just buy the equipment again now.

Steve Fleming: Yeah. Yeah. Try, well try telling that to my wife. But yeah,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. I don't know what you had, but some music instruments aren't like super

Steve Fleming: turn turns out kids are expensive. So, you know, maybe when they're a bit older, then I'll have my like, you know, second my swan song of um, yeah, music production again. Oh.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: okay. Um, Yeah, no, [00:59:00] that was really fascinating because as, I mean, as probably people who listen to a couple of my episodes know I want to be a musician for most of my teenage years, and so whenever I see people with a music background, I kind of jump on it and ask questions about it. And, but it's rare that in your case, I mean, there was some differences, but there were a lot of parallels.

I mean, for me it was more like I did. Classical music. That was the main thing. And then the way for me, the problem was that like I started my best instrument and my favorite instrument piano at 14. So I'd done trumpet and double bass before and continued doing it, but like, unfortunately, the thing that I actually was by far the best at or came most natural to me that I enjoyed the most was the thing that I started so late

Steve Fleming: I see. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, actually funny enough since then, there is, there's one guy I know of who's made a professional career as a pianist who started that late, but his surname is wda, which is the German word for Wda.

So, I'm not sure that counts, but No. So basically, you know, I didn't know anyone who basically any professional pianist started, [01:00:00] I think Ling Moore when she was eight. I think she was the latest I'd ever heard of at that point. So I was like,

Steve Fleming: But you still play?

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, it depends how you define it. So, I usually say I don't play the piano or I don't practice.

So I am, if there's a piano around, I'll, I mean, if I'm not like the kind of person who would just like jump on any piano that's in public, but if I am, if I have a, at my parents' place, there's a piano. If I have an electric piano that I sometimes bring with me I'll play occasionally. And during my PhD, I actually had half a year in which I took lessons again.

But so yeah, I mean, I can, I'm good enough that I can play a lot of stuff fairly well and it's fun. And in a weird way, it's almost more fun now than it was when I was, you know, doing it seriously because now it's like, I don't expect it to be perfect, whereas back then it was just like, I think I can be very self-critical.

Um, And yeah, the weird thing is though, that like at some point when I was like 16, I realized I'm not gonna like as talented as you are. Like I. [01:01:00] You started very recently, right? This is gonna be very difficult if you want to Actually, I didn't wanna be a teacher, right? So like, if you actually want like, it's, it's basically impossible, right?

And so then I had this half a year where I was like, maybe I'm gonna be a recording producer kind of thing. And but then I think I realized I would make a terrible producer because I would be the one guy who was trying to be the musician. And so I just like, constantly interfere with the people trying to do the music.

Um, So I decided not to do it, but 

Steve Fleming: I mean, one, one thing I've found elegant in terms of potential for combining interest in neuroscience and music is to do a more systematic pursuit of the cognitive science of music.

I mean, there's people who have made careers out of this, right? And there are a number of different angles on this question. I mean, I'm thinking of people like Jo McDermott who have been, you know, developing computational models of the way the brain apprehends music and [01:02:00] why we find particular aspects of music.

I. To be you know, what are the universals in human culture that, that underpin the appreciation of music? I think those questions are fascinating. I mean, it's is now, you know, my, my lab and my interest and my career have gone in a particular direction in terms of metacognition and thinking about consciousness and so on.

So in a sense, for me, like my working life is now and my background is now dominated by that. But if I have my time again, you know, one potential way of combining the interest I had as a teenager with my interest in cognitive science would be to go down a route that's more a systematic combination of music, technology, and neuroscience.

'cause I think there's clearly lots of very there's lots of fascinating questions at that intersection.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Is that something you actually ever thought about doing or, I mean, because like for me it was actually, I had a very brief moment in my undergraduate where I. Actually there was a project involved in doing music, and I asked whether I could [01:03:00] get involved and they said no, because I mean, it was a bit more polite.

It was basically like, no, we've we have nothing that you could do basically on this. And then I ended up doing other things. And, you know, and really enough, I've never really, I've never actually read a book on the psychology and neuroscience of music. I somehow have even though, I mean for me all like artistic and scientific things are basically the same process in a way.

So I never really differentiate between any of this stuff, but somehow in terms of interest, they're completely, for some reason, no interest really in figuring out why people like music or how the brain does it. So for me, that was never really an interest, but I was just curious. Like it's, it's not nothing you ever considered seriously either or.

Steve Fleming: no, I mean, I think partly it's because at the time that I was. Exposed to some of that literature, it never really grabbed me in the way that you know, modern the kind of computational cognitive neuroscience that we're exposed to now does. I think back then [01:04:00] the work, I mean, this is me trying to reconstruct my memories of encountering that literature from years ago, but the, it really fell into either work on more classical audition, auditory perception and so on, or somewhat vague and broader neuroaesthetics, like, why do people like this melody rather than this melody?

And that, that never really grabbed me. But what people are doing now, I think is super cool in the sense that like they're taking inspiration from the way the brain builds up internal models of abstract structures and the way that you can. Put those pieces together in a, at a more cognitive level. So you build up a structure.

You, you understand like the structure of of melodies, of chords, of progressions, of you know, all of those things are, they have their roots in particular musical [01:05:00] traditions, but presumably the reason why a lot of human cultures have appreciate music in in, in related ways is because we all have the biology for a deep appreciation of these more abstract structures, right?

And that they have emotional salience for us. And so I think that cross personalization between almost like the computational neuroscience of cognition broadly construed and. Music as a domain in which that's expressed is very I find that fascinating. I mean, people like stand hen have been writing recently about how the human mind is set up to do this to be particularly rich.

And it's in the way that it processes sequences in a hierarchical recursive fashion. Now, language is one, you know, canonical example of how rich that can be. You know, the notion that we can speak in [01:06:00] phrases and sentences that have recursive structures and they are nested inside, like broader narratives and stories and so on.

But music is clearly another a type of domain that has those principles embodied in it.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Do you have any, I usually put references in the description for stuff we talked about. Do you, just curious, do you have anything for the kind of computational neuroscience of music, the recent stuff you talked about?

Steve Fleming: I can try and take a, I mean, this is yeah, yeah,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: it's the top of your head. It's not like super

Steve Fleming: I mean, the am amazing thing is that this podcast has now gone down the re of probably the thing I know the least. Right. So, uh, it's out of all

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: that's the goal. Probe you in your weakest point where information you provide is

Steve Fleming: is the most unreliable. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I can, you know, I feel on secure ground with the sequences as

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Okay. It's fine.

Steve Fleming: The, no the, the, the hand papers are. I can send you a couple of links to those. And I mean, I would recommend checking out Josh Madman's work. He's at [01:07:00] MIT and he runs a.

Auditory and musical cognition lab that is very much grounded in the latest competition. Neuroscience.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Um, what kind of stuff, like when you were reading about psych neuro Sense, that kinda stuff, what was it like that fascinates you? Was there anything, anything particular there? Or was it just like a the general idea of just studying the mind experimentally or.

Steve Fleming: Yeah. There was two things really. One is the

general approach being taken in cognitive science. So rather than. The notion of doing experiments by, which I also found fascinating. It was more the idea that you could build abstract computational models of how the mind was working at the level of the software rather than [01:08:00] thinking necessarily about neurons and synapses and so on.

Now at the time I didn't know that these were, you know, that this was the field of computational cognitive science, but you know, now I see the, that what I was fascinated back then by was this notion of a more algorithmic level of analysis to use Mars three levels, like rather than down at the implementation level at this level where we can understand how the mind is working in terms of the.

Computations. It's performing over representations. And I found that idea that you can almost think of the mind as a piece of machinery as absolutely fascinating, and it's one that I hadn't been exposed to before. And really the book that got that interest sparked off was Stephen Pinker's, how The Mind Works, which was an amazing aspiration of how you can apply those, that [01:09:00] kind of insight.

The notion that the brain is an algorithmic artifacts that to, to all these different domains, including I think music. I think the music was in there as well, but language decision making, cognition things that we think make the human mind special. Like how does it actually work under the hood?

And this notion that, you can think of it in mechanistic terms was really eye-opening for me. And so that was one thing. And the other thing was this exposure to philosophy of mine, to consciousness to reading things like Daniel Deni and Rita Carter, who was a wrote these popular science books.

She had some, she had a book just titled Consciousness. And that really was a kind of review of all the classic debates in philosophy of mind and how it might interface with modern neuroscience. So the, you know, exploring all aspects of the mind body problem and inverted spectra and the zombie problem from Chalmers and all this, all these kind of classic thought [01:10:00] experiments, but view through the lens of modern neuroscience.

And I thought this was amazing. You know. Might it be possible to now use the new technologies that were just coming on stream? When I was reading all this in the early two thousands, things like fmri, things like you know, the ability to do you know, proper cognitive neuroscience that allowed us to start testing some of these models.

And I found it fascinating that you could maybe use some of these technologies to then make progress on classical problems in philosophy in mind. I mean, now I think that is the, that's not, you know, that is um, not gonna be the case. To put it bluntly, I think those problems are conceptual problems.

I don't think they my feeling on those, those classic questions now the nature of consciousness and the mind body the, the metaphysics aspect, aspects of those questions, the metaphysical [01:11:00] aspects of those questions is that modern neuroscience will give us answers to those questions, but not because we'll discover something like, here's the neural correlate consciousness.

It's gonna put pressure on our conceptual understanding of things like the mind consciousness. It's gonna put pressure on our concepts. I think AI is doing the same thing. AI is putting pressure on our concepts of what it means to have a mind.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So what do you mean by putting pressure on?

Steve Fleming: I mean that the mystery of those conceptual divisions between say mind and brain, are going to get weakened by the fact that we now have. A deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms. So a, an analogy here is useful, right? So, if you take the concepts of life, of something being living, [01:12:00] and you look back at history and how philosophers have considered life and what it means to, to be a living organism, then there's various ways in which that concept has been understood.

You can go back to kind of the animism of the ancient Greeks. Then you go all the way through to people thinking life is is equal to having a soul in more religious traditions than you. Then you go through the enlightenment period where now there's considered something like it's, it may no longer be a soul in kind of religious terms.

But there's still some life force that needs to be explained. And then you had people thinking in terms of vitalism, you know, there was this ellan vital that was this special thing that made something living rather than non-living. And then obviously we're, now we look back and think those were efforts to [01:13:00] understand the concepts that perhaps is now looser than we than people realize back then.

There isn't a bright line between what makes something suddenly live and not live. We can think of it in much more mechanistic terms. We can think of it in terms of evolution and the, you know, replication of DNA and we have a much more, um, you know, granular, mechanistic understanding of that.

Now you can still have. Questions posed about what the origins of life and what gets replication off the ground and so on. But, you know, the notion of like, there being a special spark that gives something life is now been superseded by a more granular, mechanistic description of that. So I, my I wonder whether we're gonna be in for something like that when it comes to consciousness.

So, you know, rather than thinking there's something special and [01:14:00] fundamental about consciousness, because it feels like such a irreducible phenomenon, that when we start to understand the mind at a more mechanistic level, we're gonna start to realize that it's maybe not the that we need to make scientific progress on that question.

The scientific progress is gonna be on aspects of it, but it's not going to be tackling the whole. Mysterious phenomenon. Instead, we're gonna realize that whole mysterious phenomenon is just, ill post it's, it is a concept that was not the right concept to apply when we're doing the science.

And so I think that's where we're gonna end up eventually that, that some of the concepts we have for mind now, they're not gonna go away 'cause they're still gonna be useful in everyday discourse. Just like it's still useful in everyday discourse to talk to people about whether something's living or non-living, but they're gonna become less useful [01:15:00] scientifically.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Do you think, and presumably, I mean, so you have, from what I understand, it largely. I see them as like two separate research lines, the medical recognition and the consciousness aspects. I don't actually know how much they overlap for you personally. But

Steve Fleming: They over, they overlap quite a lot. Yeah. There's quite a lot of intersections.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: so, so that, that is in that kind of line where you mean like you're gonna figure out specific things about human consciousness that then allow you to maybe ask more specific or better questions about the concepts themselves

Steve Fleming: Well, so I, I don't think it's gonna be asking questions about the concepts. I think I don't actually think

so

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I.

Steve Fleming: I mean, I think a lot of this has been swirling around for some time now. Right. That, and it's only recently become quite stark, these divisions in the field of consciousness science, where you have this I think unbridgeable division between people who are thinking. [01:16:00] In more intrinsic terms. So they want an explanation of consciousness that is intrinsic to the system itself.

So there is there's some special property that you have a theory of, and the kind of you know, the most prominent of those intrinsic theories is IIT Information Integration Theory, which says that consciousness is a property of the cause effect structure of a physical substrate. And it's saying that, you know, that consciousness is not something that falls out of the functionality of the system, that it's actually.

An extra fundamental property of matter. That that when you set up a physical structure in a certain way, then it has a certain level of consciousness. Now that's a [01:17:00] very detailed intrinsic theory, and the reason it's controversial is because it's assuming that consciousness is this fundamental property, right?

So it's basically solving the mind body problem by positing consciousness as part and parcel of any physical system that's set up in the right way. A bit like other fundamental physical forces are part and parcel of the properties of matter like gravity is. Part and parcel of the way the world works The same under IIT consciousness is part and parcel of the way physical systems work.

Some physical systems might not have it because under the equations of IIT it doesn't reach a level for high enough what they call fi. But you can al in principle, you can always calculate it for a given physical system. So that's kind like a, the most prominent, what I call intrinsic theory because it's the consciousness is intrinsic to the system and that is [01:18:00] entirely at odds with the way most of neuroscience think about functionality in a system.

So most of cognitive neuroscience think that the concepts we have for the mind, like a mind perceiving or deciding or remembering or thinking are not in it, is not an intrinsic part of. This physical structure, it's something about its function. It would be odd to say, you know, I it'd be odd to say that there's some mental, there's some property in my mental state, say we could call it Property X, which has no external signs, like no bearing on the function of the way my mind works, but it's just in there because of the way my brain is organized.

It'd be odd to say that we don't have that as part of our psychological taxonomy. [01:19:00] And the reason we don't have it as part of our psychological taxonomy is because it, we can take, we can put X in or we can take X out and it has no bearing on the function of the system. And so I think that, um.

The, if you're a functionalist about consciousness, what you're looking for is a story in terms of the functions of the way the mind works and that the that's having functionalism about consciousness is much more in keeping with the way people think about other types of mental state mental state properties.

But there is very at odds with these more intrinsic theories. So, so what I think is happening is there's this divergence between these two camps where one camp is pursuing more intrinsic theories, thinking it's like a special property of particular physical systems. And the other camp is pursuing more functionalist accounts.

But there's still a nagging doubt that the funs camp really kind of. [01:20:00] Want to be intrinsicist. At the same time, they kind of want a story where once they have the functions in place, there's still some special property I'm explaining. Right? And I think that is just, you know, it is incoherent. It's incoherent.

So I think if we're gonna have a full functionalist story about consciousness, what's gonna happen is that once we have that story in place, the concept of consciousness in terms of being a special property is itself going to have to start to be diluted. So you can't have your cake and eat it.

You're either gonna have an intrinsic story where it's special and it's like a special property, or you're gonna have a functionalist story where it's just like any other part of how the mime works. But then you can't have it as a special thing anymore. It's just another way the mine works.

That was a very long answer.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I'm not entirely sure, but the [01:21:00] funny thing is also now that we've actually reached a point of scientific discussion, we're running out of

Steve Fleming: Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, Maybe then as just a kind of final little question on that is I mean okay. I find it interesting because I uh, maybe, I guess my que my point is a little bit like what your position on that is because I would've, the problem is, I dunno, the consciousness literature well enough to really have any insight into any of this. But I, it sounds like you are quite critical of the function as theory, but I somehow thought I would've put you in that category if

Steve Fleming: No I, no I am a functionalist in the sense, and the kind of empirical work we're doing in the lab is in, in very much inspired by a functionalist accounts, particularly higher order. Theories of conscious, which the attempt to explain the difference between being conscious and unconscious of a particular piece of information or particular percept in terms of higher order mechanisms.

The notion that the brain has to do some kind of recursive processing, and [01:22:00] that's what makes it conscious. So that's very much a functional account. I guess what I'm saying is the reason I'm critical of functional accounts, and this is self-criticism as well, is that there's a sense in which people aren't very satisfied with a purely functional explanation.

So this is really, this isn't about different theories, this is just, this is more about the metaphysics. This is about what does it mean to explain something like the mind body problem, right. People are the hard problem, as Charmers talks about it. So I think that even for Functionalists, they're still not very satisfied with a purely functional explanation 'cause they want to say, but you know, what we want to get at is this amazing property of kind of, um, of of [01:23:00] purely physical system having subjective experience.

And over the years I, you know, I went into doing cognitive neuroscience just mesmerized by this problem. I thought it was an ama. The, and so many people do, so many people get drawn to. This intersection of psychology and neuroscience, because really they wanna understand like, where does subjective experience come from?

How does that work? How does, how do physical process in the mind, in the brain give rise to mental properties? And I think that as time has gone on, I've started to realize that you can't, you can, if you want to ratify it that way, if you want to say it's this mystery, then you've got a choice.

You've either, you either need to go down the intrinsic route 'cause then you can really have the mystery. It's like the this special [01:24:00] property. Or you need to have a, take a long, hard look at the mystery you started with at the concepts you've started with. And that's the position I feel I'm in at the moment.

'cause I am attracted to the more functional route. But I think we're going to end up going down a route that's more like what's happened in memory research. If you look at the early 20 20th century, you had experiments like the Lashley experiment where they were trying to just cut out random bits of the mouse brain or the rat brain and see what impaired memory.

And that was relatively undifferentiated. But obviously now we're in a position where we can look back and think, well, what you needed to do to understand how the brain stores information and retrieves and so on, is to think about different memory systems, different types of storage, long-term memory, working memory, you know, all these variant, all these cognitive science variants of, of memory [01:25:00] stories and retrieval, and that makes a functional explanation much richer and much more powerful. But at the same time, you then dissolved the concept. You started with, you might still talk to your friends and family about memory as a psychological construct. But it would be odd to go to a conference full of memory researchers.

And when they say, what do you work on? You say memory. And they'd be like, well, what about part? You're like, well, what do you mean? I just work on you know, memory and that I feel like that's what we're in with consciousness science. It's like people are still in the, they're still answering the question in terms of saying, I work on consciousness.

It's okay, you can do for now. If we want to really pursue this functional story, functionalist story to its natural conclusion, we're gonna have to get more differentiated. We're gonna have to start realizing that what we're really studying is a whole bunch of component parts, and that's gonna put pressure on the concept that we started [01:26:00] with.

And the problem in consciousness science is if you do that, then it, because the inspiration for the original challenge, the original question always comes from first person experience. There are always gonna be people who say, no, you are missing it. You are missing the real thing. And that's why we need the intrinsic story.

And I just dunno how that's going to resolve. I don't really see how that's gonna resolve. And I wonder actually whether AI is gonna resolve it for us, but not in the sense of figuring it out, but like the fact that AI is gonna increasingly mimic human functionality in ways that are gonna be hard to.

To distinguish from, you know, the, an actual human mind, we're gonna start to realize that things that we thought of as reflecting something unique about human consciousness may actually reflect component parts that give the impression of a mysterious whole.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: [01:27:00] Yeah, I think, yeah, that was a I like the analogy to memory that made it really clear to me what you

Steve Fleming: Okay. Maybe, yeah, maybe that's the part to keep in.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Uh, I, we'll see. No, I mean, again, it's a bit of a problem, right? Because obviously people have very different backgrounds in terms of I mean, like for example, I never really did much philosophy of cognition, right?

It's yeah. Anyway unless there's anything else you want to add, we'll go to the recurring questions.

Steve Fleming: Sure. Yep.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. So first question is what's a book or paper you think more people should read? Can be old or new, famous or completely unknown? Just something that you know, give us something to read.

Steve Fleming: Sure. Yeah. I mean one of my favorite books that I've read recently is actually from a completely different field of sciences called The Codebreaker by Walter Isaacson, and it's on the origins of CRISPR and Jennifer Doudna, who was one of the discoveries of CRISPR technology for doing gene editing.

And it is somewhat related [01:28:00] to what I was just talking about because it really challenges your concepts of what it means to it be a living thing and shows how much power modern science now has to. Essentially create designer organisms and so on. But I think what's most, um, the thing about that book that is makes me wanna recommend it to others is that it's just this amazing insight into science at the cutting edge of competition.

So the we, you know, I guess in our field we feel under pressure to publish and so on, and we worry to some extent about what are the labs are doing in this particular area of molecular biology at the time, the race to be the first people who would to develop and use this gene editing technology was the most intense, I think I've ever heard about in any field of science.

[01:29:00] There was. There was some serious personal battles going on and they are fascinating to read, especially if you know a little bit about how science works in general and the journals and the editors involved. And I mean, it's fascinating and it's beautifully written.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay, cool. Yeah, and I've heard of it, but never read it. What is the I mean that's also in, in a sense, part of the, I mean, you know, some problems beside, but like part of the po of the double helix, right? Is that it also is this like competition between different labs that are try, is that just a property of genetics research or is that I dunno because I don't get that sense from like cognitive neuroscience where it's like, we're looking for this one thing and it's gonna be one answer and, you know.

Steve Fleming: yeah, it's interesting. I remember thinking along, wondering along similar lines when I was reading that book, how this would map over into, say, our field. I. Or adjacent fields. I think you're right that there's something about the field [01:30:00] of cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, that I feel like such a high dimensional space that the questions people end up focusing on tend to be more unique in terms of being attached to certain individuals or certain labs and the comp, the competitive presses are perhaps weaker.

So that's the description of the situation. Whether that's a good thing though, I'm not sure, is, I guess, good for your mental health and that you can kind of just feel like you are, you've got a niche and you can just chip away at the kind of topics you are interested in. I'm not sure it's great for science though, because what work that, what is the work we're doing now?

That is gonna be still red in a hundred years, 150 years. I think, you know, a discovery like CRISPR is clearly going to be to echo [01:31:00] down the ages and become incredibly important in terms of technology and technological applications. And that was, but that's such a well-defined problem. I mean, when, you know, when you read a book like that, you realize that there were, there was a lot of high dimensional exploration going on in the, on the basic research side.

So it might be that we're still in more explore mode and that a lot of the exploratory work that's going on in cognitive neuroscience now, may, those individual papers might not be read in a hundred years time, but perhaps we need to be in this exploratory mode so we can get to the more exploit, um, period phase of our science.

Where then. WI mean, you know, we then might be in a mode that's more similar to this intense competition. But yeah I think it's an interesting question about that. What style of science is conducive to progress?

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I mean, I guess it also requires a very high confidence that you have a very specific problem that needs to be solved [01:32:00] where like you, uh,

Steve Fleming: Yeah. No, absolutely. And I mean, I guess there are there are example and I think in whenever there's an application on the table, then that can mean that people are more focused on a narrower problem. And so, you know, in, in the fields of. Developing new drugs for, say, Alzheimer's or whatever it is that people are working on, then that I think can just create competition because the problem is defined through a medical lens or developing a Covid vaccine or, you know, there's certain problems that get defined because they have urgent application needs.

And then the you might end up hitting the solution because you're brave enough to say, no, I'm not gonna go for the narrow competition. I'm gonna go for the big exploration. Right. And then I'm gonna hit a new path towards solving that problem. But I think just the fact that those that most people will think inside the box rather than outside of it in those situations, means that you're gonna get lots of labs competing over the same thing.[01:33:00]

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Uh, Second question is, what's something you wish you'd learned sooner? This can be from your private life, your work life uh, just something where, you know, you're like, ah, that, that would've been nice if I figured that just a little bit sooner. And maybe also you know, how what you did about it, or,

Steve Fleming: Yeah, I mean, I think, um,

The, it really goes back, I think to what I was saying earlier about the not feeling like you need to rush. And it's, it is hard, it's hard to say what I would've done differently on that. Because the problem is that's more a feeling. I think the reason people sometimes feel that way is because they're ambitious and they want to advance their careers.

They want to you know, do cool science. They want to build a lab and so on. So there's the kind of like pressure and anxiety that you feel to get things moving. But. The, I think what I would've done differently is realize that, and this is [01:34:00] I always almost hesitate to say this 'cause it just feels so trite and self-helpy, but you know, it is about enjoying the journey.

It is about like realizing that even in those early phases when it seems pressured and you feel like things aren't going fast enough, those are the, that's still part of your life, your career, your, you know, each step is worth just taking a beat to step back and enjoy where you've got to and what you're currently working on and the questions you're focusing on.

So, I think it, what I would do differently is just perhaps not be. So much in a hurry to get onto the next stage mentally. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I mean, just a brief comment on that. What I. Also found is that I remember like, especially in our masters, I think it was a very stressful time because everyone was, you know, trying to apply for PhD programs and getting rejected and, you know, trying [01:35:00] again and whatever. And I don't think we ever really talked about it, but like, it felt you know, yeah.

This yeah, this like background noise of you have to get into a PhD program like now, like in the next couple of months

And the weird thing for me is then I mean, I did and then for various reasons, I quit that PhD after about half a year and then spent something like the next year or something reapplying for stuff and get, and I don't think anyone ever really asked me about I mean, obviously once people found out that I quit a PhD, right.

There was a, we had to talk about it and it was for good reasons and all this kinda stuff, right. But no one ever asked oh, you, you spent a year not like doing

Steve Fleming: What? No, exactly. So, so I

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: think anyone ever cared. Yeah.

Steve Fleming: I exactly. And I think that's the that's part of the reason for looking back and realizing that you can take some time, to step off the path, the treadmill for a little while. I mean, it is also true that you don't want like just large sways of time [01:36:00] where there are gaps in your cv and you know, you, there's a balance to be struck.

There will come a point if you've got like just this black hole of five years where someone might question it in a postdoc interview or whatever it is. But, you know, the realization that you can be comfortable stepping away for a little while is something that I learned probably a little too late to be beneficial in those in, in those early phases.

And especially when my son was born, for instance my wife took almost a year off with him and I. Was I took a month of paternity leave and then I also arranged to work remotely. This was pre covid when it was all a bit more unusual 

the, so I work, I arranged to work remotely for three months while he was still a baby and while my wife was on maternity leave. And yet I remember that [01:37:00] period as being, obviously there's, you know, it's amazing having a small baby and there's, you know, there's so many wonderful things about it.

But I remember being stressed and anxious that I was taking too much time away from the lab, from my career, from science and looking back, that was needless self-imposed. And I. Yeah it wasn't the right way of going about it. And also it wasn't fair on my wife who also has a intense career and she was taking a much longer period of time and I was the one who was being all stressy about taking that relatively short period of time away as a dad.

So, so I think that, you know, realizing that, especially in those early stages, it might feel like you have to move at a million miles an hour, but if you do, there are costs to [01:38:00] doing that. And the cost can be both mental, but they can also be in terms of relationships and so on. So I think, you know, it's worth being aware that, as you say, a little bit of a pause is not gonna harm you lot in the long run.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Final question is I guess we've kind of already done this but advice of PhD students, postdocs, people on this kind of. Period when they're, you know, they're finishing their PhD and applying for postdocs or like me kinda started one fairly recently. Yeah. Just anything you want to give people like us on.

Steve Fleming: Yeah, I mean, I think the treat it as a golden opportunity. That is a time in your life when you, time in your scientific life, when you have the skills and the in-depth knowledge of a particular field to really do cutting [01:39:00] edge work, to really take ownership of something and advance and take it forward in exciting ways.

When you don't have the pressures of say, managing other people or being in a broader structure where you are, you've got com administrative responsibilities and so on. You know, really, really um, take that opportunity and grasp it with both hands to to kind of go deep into a question. 'cause there, there won't be it will be, it'll be hard to do that other phases of your career.

It becomes possible again later on in your career when perhaps you're winding down a lab and perhaps you are thinking about being more of a solo academic in the latter phase of your career. But the, you know, that, that is really an amazing opportunity to kind of dive deep into a question.

And I think, again, it comes back to the previous answer. There's a sense in which [01:40:00] that can be a bit anxiety inducing because you feel like, is that only what I should be doing or should I be being more strategic and trying to get loads of collaborations going and be a kind of you know, try and grow too fast as a, as an academic and try and be suddenly be really broad in my scope.

And I think that, you know, don't feel like, don't try not to worry too much about that. Try to take this as an opportunity to have a really deep dive into a question. And enjoy it. I think that's, you know, it's super exciting. I would love to be, I'd love to go and do a postdoc again. That would be, that'd be fun.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Well, if I get my funding, I'll let you know. I'll get um, yeah. Anyway, so, those are all my questions. Actually not all of them. Those were the ones that, all of them are non-scientific questions about academia. So yeah. Even though I didn't ask any of the questions I said I was gonna ask, thank you very much.

Steve Fleming: No, of course it is been fun. Thanks so much.