Jonathan Peelle

Episode 51: How much of our selves do we share professionally?

May 19th, 2025  |  47 mins 49 secs

Julia and Jonathan tackle questions around authenticity and navigating all the different relationships we have in our professional lives. What do we choose to share with whom? And how? Being honest is valuable but it’s also nice to avoid oversharing. The “right” choice will be different for everyone, but as people who value authenticity your hosts try to find ways to be honest in a variety of situations. PS Sometimes Professors have hard times, too!

Episode 50: Mentoring students at different career stages

November 26th, 2024  |  55 mins 32 secs

Inspired by a listener question, Jonathan and Julia talk about mentoring, with specific attention to how it might look different for trainees of different stages (for example, undergraduate vs. graduate students). Important considerations include generalizable "don't call them soft" skills related to time management, organization, and so on. Some strategies include formal onboarding for new lab members, individual development plans, and “professional development” portions of lab meetings. Julia learned the importance of knowing the why of something in the context of sweeping the floor.

Episode 49: Goodhart's Law

October 5th, 2024  |  43 mins 52 secs

It's really tempting to count things like credit hours, publications, or grants. Julia and Jonathan talk about some of the disadvantages of counting, including missing out on "hard-to-count" activities that may be important to us, and how to push the needle in our own thinking or evaluations to fight against easy answers. How do we consider the important aspects of helping students in our offices, deep thinking, or playing with Legos?

Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers

Episode 48: New, again

August 7th, 2023  |  43 mins 17 secs

Back after a year (!) away, Julia and Jonathan cover what’s been going on for the last year, and new things they are doing. Perhaps depressingly, they agree that being older or more advanced in one’s career doesn’t prevent the need for some degree of “starting over” when new challenges present themselves. Plus, Julia shares a strong book recommendation!

Episode 47: Hobbies!

June 20th, 2022  |  54 mins 28 secs

Jonathan has a career announcement and Julia is excited about graduation. Jonathan’s world didn’t fall apart when he checked his email less. And the main topic: what makes a good hobby? Do Jonathan or Julia have any hobbies?

Episode 46: Not overextending ourselves (and helping trainees to do the same)

April 26th, 2022  |  46 mins 43 secs

Julia and Jonathan revisit the issue of how we manage our time and our commitments so that we can keep some sense of sanity, instead of feeling like butter being scraped over too much bread. In brief, when there’s too much stuff in the closet, you need to lean harder into your pile of no’s, because you probably only have about 4000 weeks to work with. How do we decide whether the juice is worth the squeeze (as it were)? Maybe we should start giving awards for thinking long and hard about a topic.

Episode 45: To open or not to open (email, or books during an exam)

December 14th, 2021  |  45 mins 57 secs

After some long-overdue Halloween follow-up and Jonathan horrifying Julia with his new strategy for (not) dealing with email, your hosts tackle the topic of exam questions, and in particular, how to handle the prospect of open-book exams in classes where we would still like students to study. Should exams be timed? Multiple-choice? How do we incentivize students to spend time outside of class and support our learning goals while also being appropriately flexible? There are no easy answers but Julia and Jonathan offer some ideas.

Episode 44: Collaborations

October 26th, 2021  |  54 mins 29 secs

For many of us, collaborating with other researchers is one of our favorites part of an academic career. In this episode Julia and Jonathan talk about different kinds of collaborations and what to think about when you’re starting a collaboration. And, some potential downsides of collaborations and how hopefully avoid the worst of these.

Episode 43: Self-promotion but let's call it something else

October 19th, 2021  |  51 mins 38 secs

Like all of life academia is social. Julia and Jonathan talk about different strategies for telling our colleagues about our work, including “advertising” our papers, talks, and the importance of having a website (you don’t have one? Get one!). These things are important at any career stage and you can start doing them wherever you’re at.

Episode 42: The "new normal"

September 14th, 2021  |  44 mins 51 secs

There's a lot about the last year and a half we are happy to get rid of, but are there any things we'd like to keep? Julia and Jonathan talk about the advantages of online meetings and talks, flexibility in classes, and (if we're lucky) discovering we can say "no" to things and it's OK.

Episode 41: How to make fewer research mistakes

August 31st, 2021  |  47 mins 15 secs

After an unplanned summer hiatus Julia and Jonathan are back to talk about errors in research, and specifically how we can make fewer of them. Julia talks about her Error Tight project for implementing some culture changes, including standardization, how to cultivate a sense of shared responsibility in a research lab. Research mistakes reflect a failure of systems rather than a failure of people—so let’s improve our systems!

Episode 40: Teaching nitty gritty

June 1st, 2021  |  50 mins 49 secs

Wrapping up our mini-series on teaching, Julia and Jonathan talk about readings, grading, and how to fairly offer flexibility to students in our classes. In-class activities, quizzes, how many grades to drop, how to handle late assignments, how to get feedback from students, and more.

Episode 39: The syllabus, and why it must be read

April 27th, 2021  |  41 mins 50 secs

After “big picture teaching” last episode, Julia and Jonathan dive into the weeds a bit, spending a lot of time on the syllabus. Is it a contract? A way to communicate “hidden curriculum”? A fun way to connect with your students? In short, yes, and also, it depends. Also, maybe it’s unrealistic to expect students to carefully read all 20 pages of our syllabus without offering incentives (can you blame them?)?

Episode 38: Big picture teaching

March 23rd, 2021  |  44 mins 27 secs

OK, your turn to teach a course for the first time (or the Nth time). Now what? Julia and Jonathan share thoughts and experiences (and mistakes) from teaching lecture courses. For example, how do you decide what to cover (hint: you don’t have to teach all of the topics in the textbook)? How do we model excitement for learning? What hidden curriculum will you include? Also, Oregon Trail.

Episode 37: Pandemic fine

February 16th, 2021  |  46 mins 38 secs

Julia recaps the first-ever Midwinter Ball and sets the bar high for future MWBers, as a prelude for talking about how life these days can be hard even if we are “fine”. Having a hard time is normal, and when it’s Kobayashi Maru time, there might not be a perfect solution. Take a minute to be extra kind to others this week and keep hanging in there!

Episode 36: Hashtag scicomm

January 27th, 2021  |  1 hr 21 mins

Julia and Jonathan share comments they made as part of a talk on science communication. Turns out, we scientists are ALL involved in science communication, whether we realize it or not (or whether or not we like it). Know your audience. Communication is a learnable skill. And many more tidbits on what is our longest podcast to date (!). Special consideration given to our experiences with Twitter and podcasts.