Graduate research, served conversationally.
The gist
PhDrinking is a research interview show hosted by Sadie Witkowski, built around graduate students and researchers explaining their work in plain conversation. The tone is relaxed but curious, moving from strange personal facts and drink choices into sleep, sustainability, replication, psychedelics, coral health, learning, and birds.
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About PhDrinking
PhDrinking makes graduate research feel conversational without turning it into trivia. Sadie Witkowski hosts interviews with graduate students, postdocs, and researchers from a range of fields, and the show often starts far from the formal abstract. A guest may bring a fact about Erasmus Darwin’s poetry, a cat that follows on walks, Disney laundry, vultures using iron-rich soil, or a punk-band past. Then the conversation settles into the work. The recent excerpts move through sleep and memory, eco-villages and sustainable lifestyles, psychedelic and consciousness research, replication in statistics, ocean acidification and corals, learning sciences, genetics-department lab life, and ornithology-adjacent bird talk. That range is the point. PhDrinking is less a lecture series than a guided look at what researchers sound like when they are allowed to explain, hesitate, revise, and get excited. The show makes room for methods and uncertainty. Slow-wave sleep becomes waves of activity carrying information through the brain. Replication becomes a question of definitions, statistical properties, and what scientists mean when they say a finding holds up. Sustainability becomes a lived problem of communities trying to build coherent ecological habits and sometimes struggling to last. Coral science becomes chemistry, pH, skeleton-building, and the consequences of more CO2 in seawater. The drinking conceit gives the show a casual ritual, but it does not replace the research. Sadie’s role is to keep the exchange friendly, specific, and intelligible. She asks the follow-up a non-specialist might need, then lets the guest keep the texture of their field. The result is a show for people who like science with the edges left on: not overproduced, not overpolished, and not afraid of the way real academic conversations wander before they land.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants accessible research talk with the texture of real graduate-school conversation. Best for someone comfortable moving from casual anecdotes into technical ideas.
What sets it apart: PhDrinking stands out by mixing a social drinking ritual and weird-fact opener with serious research explanation across many fields. It keeps the human messiness of academic work visible instead of sanding every topic into a lecture.
In their own words
Podcast by PhDrinking
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Episodes
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Check out Sadie's newest podcasts!
Mar 14, 2023·5m - 2
Role Reversal
Hidden gemKatie Wu says a 90-minute nap with targeted memory reactivation made people worse at remembering the exact painting slice they had studied.
Apr 27, 2020·50m·4 clips - 3
Sustainable Sipping
Hidden gemPhDrinking's "Sustainable Sipping" follows Alia Morris, a third-year Environmental Sciences and Policy graduate student at Central European University, as she explains eco-villages from her Mexico fieldwork.
Mar 31, 2020·34m·2 clips - 4
Tipsy or Tripping?
Hidden gem["PhDrinking's 'Tipsy or Tripping?' pairs Sadie Witkowski with Manoj Das, a postdoc at Hopkins University's Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research.", "Das says he studies episodic memory, false memory, and drug effects across alcohol, THC, benzodiazepines, Ambien/Zolpidem, GHB, and psilocybin.", "He describes retrograde facilitation, where alcohol or Zolpidem given after study can improve later memory, while THC and GHB do not show the same pattern.", "He also lays out the DEA, FDA, and IRB hurdles for psilocybin work and walks through false-memory tasks like DRM and misinformation paradigms."]
Mar 17, 2020·56m·5 clips - 5
Statistically sloshed
Hidden gemPhDrinking host Sadie Witkowski interviews Sarah Peckosweiser, a fifth-year Northwestern statistics graduate student, and starts with a joke about Sarah using her PhD to work at Bravo.
Mar 2, 2020·40m·2 clips - 6
Cold Beers and Cool Water Make For Happy Corals (and Coral Scientists)
Hidden gemChris Wall opens pH Drinking by saying he sang in A&S, a skate rock hardcore punk band he played in during undergrad and graduate school.
Feb 11, 2020·40m·2 clips - 7
Fashion Film Framboise
Jan 28, 2020·36m - 8
Pints of Personality
Dec 18, 2019·47m - 9
Fake Brews
Dec 3, 2019·44m - 10
Drinking Fast and Slow
Nov 19, 2019·41m - 11
How we hear, with beer
Host Sadie Witkowski interviews graduate student Amrita Anand about her research in genetics and her quirky habit of aligning things.
Nov 4, 2019·40m - 12
Ales and Astrocytes
Oct 22, 2019·36m - 13
The Cancer Cocktail
Oct 8, 2019·34m - 14
Getting Tanked
Sep 24, 2019·39m - 15
Emotional Meades
Sep 10, 2019·27m - 16
Graphene Guinness
Aug 27, 2019·39m - 17
Forensic Gin-etics
Aug 13, 2019·30m - 18
Juiced Journalism
Jul 30, 2019·36m - 19
Drinking Disequilibrium
Jul 2, 2019·38m - 20
New cow on the block
Jun 17, 2019·38m - 21
Living that aqua vitae (water life)
Jun 4, 2019·43m - 22
Beer and a balanced diet
May 21, 2019·45m - 23
Clam I buy you a drink?
May 7, 2019·42m - 24
LiBEERté, Égalité, Fraternité
Apr 22, 2019·35m - 25
Black Holes and Brew-tron Stars
Apr 8, 2019·28m - 26
Getting smashed
Mar 27, 2019·40m - 27
Molecular Microbreweries
Mar 11, 2019·31m - 28
Med School Mixology
Feb 26, 2019·36m - 29
Brewbotic ManIPAulation
Feb 11, 2019·38m - 30
Day drinking with Disney Devotee
Host Sadie Witkowski interviews graduate student Sarah White about her research in Learning Sciences, starting with a Disney laundry fact and a beer toast.
Jan 28, 2019·31m - 31
Quantum Communication Cocktails
Jan 14, 2019·39m - 32
Chaparr-Ales
Dec 31, 2018·45m - 33
Drinking to DeGrowth
Dec 19, 2018·40m - 34
Growler of Genetic Research
Dec 3, 2018·33m - 35
Inebriation and Evolution
Nov 12, 2018·34m - 36
Malted Mathematics
Oct 30, 2018·37m - 37
Colloidal Cocktails
Oct 15, 2018·39m - 38
Antarctic Ales
Oct 2, 2018·28m - 39
Picking up chick(adee)s
Host Sadie Witkowski interviews biology graduate student Brianna Bennett about her research and a random bird fact about bearded vultures.
Sep 3, 2018·39m - 40
To sprout in drought
Host Sadie Witkowski interviews plant biology graduate Rishi Masalia about his research and a weird fact about banana flavoring.
Aug 20, 2018·40m - 41
Local BEEr episode
Aug 8, 2018·33m - 42
Cluster of Galaxy Hops
Host interviews a graduate student about astronomy research, starting with a weird fact about alcohol clouds in space.
Jul 24, 2018·34m - 43
World War Eww: Skull Trophies and Other Curious Collections
Host Sadie Witkowski interviews graduate student Heather Shire about her random weird fact: the bizarre journey of Napoleon's severed penis.
Jul 10, 2018·39m - 44
A Stimulating Conversation
Host Sadie Witkowski interviews postdoc Corey Inman about his research background and current work in neurosurgery, with casual conversation over drinks.
Jun 26, 2018·44m - 45
Nectar of the Gods
Host Sadie Witkowski interviews graduate student Molly Edwards about her research while they enjoy drinks.
Jun 12, 2018·37m - 46
AI Winter (Ale)
May 28, 2018·38m - 47
PUBlic History
May 15, 2018·49m