Changing Academic Life

Celebrating 10 Years & Season Reflections on Meaning, Identity, Care, and Leadership
This is a special episode because it’s not only marks the end of the current season, it also celebrates 10 years of the Changing Academic Life podcast, The first podcast episode went out on 3 July 2016 and it has now reached 156 episodes by late June 2026. In this episode I start off reflecting on the podcast as a service contribution towards trying to create a better academia and the reminder that small actions can have big impacts. A big thank you to my guests and listeners, and for your feedback as exemplified in a supportive email I just received from Eleanor, among others. And I ask listeners to share the podcast and consider informal discussion groups. I then go on to reflect across the 11 season episodes, highlighting themes of meaning and joyful effort, evolving identity, navigating academic “games,” bureaucracy and corporatization, better leadership grounded in trust, deep listening, and care and wellbeing. My last invitation is for you to make one small intentional change towards your better academic life and creating better cultures.
00:00 Welcome to the Podcast
00:32 Ten Year Milestone
02:21 Why Keep Going
03:58 Listener Messages Matter
05:59 Share the Podcast
06:38 Season Episodes Recap
12:30 Meaning and Joy
14:37 Identity and Agency
17:01 Bureaucracy and Leadership
19:47 Listening and Care
24:48 Intentional Next Steps
26:36 Closing Thanks
Previous CAL100 episode from Feb 2024: Celebrating 100!

Deep listening is a foundational yet undervalued skill across all our supervision, leadership, and collaboration relationships. My motivation for this episode came from some recent workshops experiences, conversations with colleagues, and posts from others that have all highlighted the importance of listening in different ways. This is a multi-voice episode, weaving together insights from past conversations with Christian van Nieuwerburgh, Oscar Trimboli, and Michael Bungay Stanier. Together we explore how we can cultivate better listening.
Good listening starts with how we show up—our wellbeing, intention, and undivided attention—and practical preparation such as reducing notifications, hydrating, and breathing. Good listening then is a way of being, staying curious longer with open “what” questions, checking what support is wanted, and resisting “advice monsters” that push premature solutions. We also discuss the relational, developmental and productivity costs of poor listening, and I close with Oscar’s five levels of listening and Michael’s exhortation to stay curious a little longer. The invitation to you is to consider how you might practice deeper curiosity and presence for better listening where you are.
00:29 Why the Focus on Listening
05:36 Listening Starts with Listening to Ourselves
13:27 When the Content isn't the Real Content - Curiosity and Questions
18:05 Christian on Optimal Matching
20:58 Michael on our Advice Monsters
26:39 Michael on the Problem with Rushing to Advice
29:59 How We Ask a Question Matters
33:44 Relationship Costs of Poor Listening
42:52 Oscar's Five Levels of Listening
44:23 Wrapping Up
The Full Podcast Episodes:
Michael Bungay Stanier on the power of curiosity and taming your advice monster
RW8 Asking good questions, empowering good people
Oscar Trimboli (Part 1) on being better listeners (CAL61)
Oscar Trimboli (Part 2) on how to listen deeply (CAL62)
Christian van Nieuwerburgh on Bringing Back the Joy (CAL142, S8E7)
Related Links:
Uni of Glasgow Outstanding Catalyst Mentors – Padlet with testimonials (Kay Guccione)
Narelle Lemon, Deep Listening: Are You Being Helped, Hugged or Heard? Jun 9 2026
The Thriving PI Summit – free online event June 29-Jul 2 2026 – organized by Ana Pineda. Free registration.

Mike Levin is a Professor of Biology at Tufts University in the US and leads the Levin Lab and pursues research across cancer, birth defects, regenerative medicine, AI, synthetic morphology, and philosophy, unified by a central aim: understanding how minds become embodied and scale across biological and synthetic systems. Mike explains his early inspirations and his practice of looking for what is “not in the textbook,” challenging dominant paradigms and treating scientific frameworks as metaphors that both reveal and hide phenomena. He describes navigating academia by separating creative exploration from pragmatic communication, strategically and slowly rolling out disruptive ideas as data accumulate, and connecting new ideas to what others value. He discusses building and managing an interdisciplinary lab, sustaining high publication output through intensive work, persisting through rejection, and advising students to envision long-term outcomes and not give up. This conversation will inspire you to also ask new questions.
00:29 Episode Introduction
04:24 Introducing Mike, the Levin Lab and the Embodied Minds Research Agenda
06:30 Early Curiosity Origins - TVs and Bugs
09:45 Fresh Eyes Method
11:48 Hidden Capacties of Algorithms
13:21 Beyond Disciplines
15:07 Navigating Academia Your Way
17:08 Curating Radical Ideas
20:21 Two Minds Strategy and Being Realistic
24:45 Understanding Communities, Building Your Own Community
26:09 Slow Curated Rollout Dial
29:32 Imposter Syndrome Reality
29:58 Data Over Opinions
32:11 Interdisciplinary Metaphors
34:44 Rethinking Scientific Categories
36:23 Hiring For Discomfort, Building a MultiDisciplinary Team
39:14 From Crazy To Obvious
41:07 Seeding Lab Communication
43:51 Partnering With Model Systems
45:06 Sharing Science
45:51 Productivity And Sacrifice
47:22 Stress And Best Job
49:19 Speaking to Young Researchers
50:55 Never Give Up
Related links:
The Levin Lab website and Starter pack: Introductory materials to the lab's academic work
Tufts Allen Discovery Center
Mike's personal Blog: Forms of life, forms of mind and Google Scholar page
Podcast Exploring the origin and nature of minds in the physical universe and YouTube channel
TED conversation about "The electrical blueprints that orchestrate life"
Advice he gives to his students

Dr Raffael Himmelsbach and I discuss his unorthodox path from a political science PhD at the University of Lausanne into science policy and research-adjacent leadership roles across multiple countries, including work with the Center for Digital Life Norway and co-directing a Vienna Ludwig Boltzmann Research Group on wound healing. He describes moving away from a publication-driven track toward designing programs, coordinating networks, and working with people, and reflects on the discomfort and courage required in ambiguous roles where goals and success criteria can be unclear. Drawing on large-scale, multi-institution collaborations, he discusses stakeholder management, the risks of equating success with spending and visible activity, and the importance of creating safety and “attractiveness” for collaboration. He shares practical tools such as participatory lab manuals, structured check-ins, and “parking lot” rituals, and reflects on leadership beyond positional authority, the tension between expert and leader identities, and the value of coaching and self-leadership as he now transitions to leadership coaching and organisation development consulting.
00:29 Introducing Raffael
03:38 From Political Science to Science Policy and Responsibility
10:03 Finding his Happy Place in a Research Adjacent Role
17:53 Becoming more Professional, Accepting Being Uncomfortable
22:03 Coordinating Multidisciplinary Multisite Projects
28:14 Key Learning About Courage
32:10 Knowing your Stakeholders, Defining Success Beyond Activity
35:18 Bootstrapping Collaboration Through Safety and Attractiveness
41:23 Lab Manual As Social Contract
44:14 Participation and Shared Responsibility
46:28 Leadership Without Command Control
50:50 Rituals That Make People Seen
53:39 Leader Identity vs Expert Identity
59:01 Drawing on Experience to Help Others
01:01:27 Third Space Roles and Future Academia
Related Links:
Raffael Himmesbach Consulting and LinkedIn profile
Raffael's report on The Centre for Digital Life Norway at Nine Years: Insights from the Legacy Workshop
Ludwig Boltzmann Research Group Senescence and Healing of Wounds
Raffael Himmelsbach, We need to talk about leadership transitions in science, LinkedIn blog post Jan 2026.
Richard Van Noorden, Some hard numbers on science’s leadership problems, Nature 557, 294-296 (2018) doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05143-8

Connecting to Christian van Nieuwerburgh’s idea of “joyful effort” and discussions at the University of Graz Research Culture Campus Fest about supportive, inclusive research cultures and prioritizing meaningful work over productivity, this episode revisits an episode from January 2025 on research identity, meaningful work, and funding. I explore the tensions between our autonomy to pursue intrinsically motivating, value-driven research and systemic constraints such as funding calls, promotion criteria, shifting national priorities, and restrictive deliverables that can conflict with participatory principles. Using examples from Katta Spiel on focusing on what you want to do not what is strategic, Mark Reed’s impact principle about purpose, and Stuart Reeves on low-cost research styles, I talk about our choices to play or not play the funding “game,” including reframing proposals, and the risks of taking on less-meaningful projects. I close with reflective questions (summarized in nine steps by Rachel Ratz-Lubashevsky) to identify what “lights you up” and guide decisions.
00:34 Motivating the Relevance of Revisiting this Episode
04:56 Rachel's Summary of the 9 Simple Steps to What Lights You Up
08:28 Introduction and Reflection on Academic Freedom
09:56 Replay from Katta Spiel Part 1
10:40 Mark Reed's principle for engagement and impact
13:23 The Tension Between Personal Values, Identity and Systemic Expectations
15:07 The Reality of Funding Proposals and Strategic Game
16:40 The Impact of Funding Conditions on Research
18:27 The Dilemma of Playing the Funding Game
21:07 Choices for How to Play the Game
27:52 Choosing Not to Play the Game
29:42 Reframing Research Identity and Conclusion
Related Links:
Uni Graz Research Culture Campus Fest report and LinkedIn post about it
Rachel Ratz-Lubashevsky’s LinkedIn post summarising the 9 steps
CAL Podcast episodes I mention:
Christian van Nieuwerburgh, Johanna Stadlbauer, Katta Spiel part 1, Mark Reed and Stuart Reeves part 1