From Los Angeles to New Jersey: Dr. Mike Levine

Dr. Mike Levine is the Director of the Lewis Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University. Originally from Southern California, Mike sat down with me and Marielle Bond to talk about his scientific journey and how he ended up in New Jersey (“of all places!”). He was an absolute joy to talk to, and I was excited to get him on the show because of his passion for training the next generation of scientists and for inspiring fellow Dodger fans (like myself).

Transcription

Transcribed by Courtney-Grace Neizer (she/her)

JP Flores (HOST): What’s up, y’all? It’s your host JP Flores and welcome to from where does STEM? In this episode, I had a conversation with Dr. Mike Levine. Marielle Bond, a lab mate and friend of mine tagged along to co-host. Mike is the director of the Lewis Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University and a member of the faculty of the molecular biology department. Like me, he grew up in Southern California and is a die-hard Los Angeles Dodgers fan. He’s also just a joy to talk to. My lab, including Marielle and I, went to a conference in Victoria, British Columbia, where we pulled Mike Levine, who was one the keynote speakers to come have dinner with us as one of the trainees. He is awesome and I hope y’all enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

START OF EPISODE

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Alright, shoot.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, So I think first things first we need to introduce Marielle because Marielle is co-hosting and she’s never done this before so she’s going to quickly introduce herself. And then I’ll have you give a short autobiography on who you are. Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Okay sounds great.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Hi, I’m Marielle Bond. I’m a third year PhD student in genetics and molecular biology here at UNC. I’m in Doug Phanstiel and Hyejung Won’s lab. So I’m broadly interested in 3D chromatin structure and neurodegeneration. So I specifically am studying Alzheimer’s disease and to understand novel risk genes and which actual genetic variation is increasing risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It’s nice to see you again, Marielle.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): See you again too, Mike.

JP Flores (HOST): Marielle’s also, she’s pretty cool. She’s also like the lead peer mentor for a lot of the first years here… Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah, um I did a lot of outreach. More recently I’m on the student speaker–um student invited speaker committee for our genetics and molecular biology program.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Oh, nice.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): So, we’re inviting faculty from all over to come see…

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): That’s a nice thing.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Not to put you on the spot, but would you be interested and um possibly coming to Chapel Hill next year in the fall?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Anytime, just give me the word and I’m happy to visit. I love that region. I think it’s very beautiful.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah, you gave such an incredible talk at Keystone [Keystone Symposia].

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I think, I think I was um, I think uh I was more inspired than usual.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Oh

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I think I was just excited because it had been a long time since I had been in an in-person meeting. You know I really cut way back on my travel, uh due to covid and due to my various infinite risk factors. And so it was fun, you know, to be at the meeting. I thought it was an excellent meeting…

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): It was an awesome meeting.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Overall you know, it was really invigorating and so uh yeah, I was kind of uh, kind of excited.

JP FLORES (HOST): Yeah, what I like most about that talk is you, you really threw in some jokes in there and I think that really got the crowd going, you know.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I did, you know, I did more than usual–you know I, I used to do a lot of humor. Yeah, right seminars when I was younger. And then I was advised by some uh older guys, you know it doesn’t matter how old you get. I always look to people five and ten years older than me for advice and mentorship. You know, you never outgrow the need for mentorship in this business. I can say. And their advice to me was to cut back on the humor, that uh…

JP Flores (HOST): WHAT?!

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): People are open to humor from younger people. But the older it’s a little weird. Like I’ll tell you a story, uh I grew up in a very eccentric household to say the very least, and um once I was coming back from college–it, during summer. And my mother answered the door, you know she was well in her 40s by then, you know wearing kind of a plastic vinyl uh mini skirt with go-go boots and a weird wig.

JP Flores (HOST): Nice

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Oh and so and so I thought, you know that’s not exactly congruent with my expectations for a uh middle aged mother.

JP Flores (HOST): Right

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I asked that she would please change her clothing. [Laughs]

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): So, uh you know that’s how it is I think when you get older and you start telling jokes, it’s–there’s a little bit of a mismatch between expectations from an elderly Professor, who has supposedly accrued all sorts of wisdom. And then just telling these kind of blue collar jokes. But anyway.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, so, so, can you tell us who’s speaking right now? Who are you? Who are–who, who exactly are we talking to?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah, right, uh so I’m Mike Levine.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I’ve been uh trained for many years in molecular biology and developmental biology. And I would say since I was an undergraduate in college and I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. Uh I have been specifically interested in uh developmental biology and gene regulation. I think those were the interests, like the two things that really stuck with me coming out of uh college; was the lac operon. Which I must have learned, in like three or four different classes, right? …take on it. The biochemist had a take on it. The molecular biologists had a take on it. You know at least three different classes, in depth, because you know back in the seventies, that was it. That’s what we knew about gene regulation.

JP Flores (HOST): Right

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And it is beautiful. So I really came away–that I mean I remember some of those lectures to this day. Uh and then the other was the uh homeotic mutants that I learned in my developmental biology class, from Fred Welt. And you know Fred hardly had to say that these are interesting genes. I mean when you see, you know, when you see a leg growing out of a flies head.

JP Flores (HOST): You’re like, “What?” .

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know, that’s pretty cool, right. You know, there’s something going on there. So those were the things that uh stuck with me–now you know I graduated in 1976 the technology was not there then. To combine these two passions of the lac operon and these weird looking flies, right? Just what you know molecular biology was in its infancy. And it was really only possible to isolate really highly expressed genes out of the uh very first recombinant DNA library’s. Uh you know made from the Drosophila genome. There was no hope, there wasn’t even really a clear strategy forward for isolating genes like the homeotic genes out of their Drosophila genome that came later. So, you know that’s who I am. Um molecular biology, developmental biology, lac operon, homeotic mutants. JP Flores (HOST): Cool. And then prior to going to Berkeley, uh how were you raised? Where did you grow up? And where are you now exactly? Like what is your position? And I know you’re somewhere in New Jersey. I don’t know where that is…

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah, I know. Help me, help me! You know, what am I doing? Um [Laughs]

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I’ll tell you why I’m in New Jersey–okay, so I’ll start with the second part of your question. Um I am the director of the Lewis Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University. Uh I am also a member of the faculty of the molecular biology department. All the faculty in this interdisciplinary uh Institute of uh Genomics at Princeton have a dual appointment in one of the standing departments, that maybe half of us are in molecular biology. So that’s the you know the most common, but we have faculty whose uh dual appointment is physics, chemistry, uh engineering, computer science. We really have quite a diverse group of faculty in one building, under one roof. Which makes it kind of interesting and that was really um attractive for me when I relocated from um Berkeley to–to uh uh Princeton, also two professors here uh Liz Gavis, Thomas Gregor, developed a method for live imaging in a fly embryos. And uh that really was attractive to me, you know um I have been looking at gene expression in the drosophila embryo for 40 years.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And prior to coming here for almost 30 years, I looked at uh gene expression and fly embryos using fixed tissues, in situ hybridizations and antibodies standing. And then suddenly this uh breakthrough method was developed here at Princeton, to be able to visualize all those stripes and uh images in living embryos, and it was kind of a shocking experience, you know, after all those years of looking at fixed tissues. I could never wrap my head around the extreme dynamics…

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Mmm hmm

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): … that you observe when you look at things live, it all happened. It’s like life itself. It just happens a whole lot faster than it seems. I don’t think we could really wrap our heads around. [Laughs] You know real time, at least I can’t. And so that was truly a revelation, you know to–to see the live imaging. I was so intrigued by it that uh you know, I wound up coming here, but I would say it was the live Imaging is what put Princeton on the map for me. I knew about the Lewis Sigler Institute. I knew they were trying this experiment and interdisciplinary research focused around uh genomics, what–which interested me, but it was really the opportunity to do live imaging that you know kind of rejuvenated my–my interests in studying gene regulation in the drosophila embryo.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, was good enough to pull you out of the West Coast, that’s for sure.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know it’s rough, I mean, you know, you–I think I showed you some of the movies um at the meeting that you attend

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yeah, yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You have to tell me was it worth it.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, 100%

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I mean my family and I had a pretty good life in–in Berkeley. Um my two adult sons live on the west coast, you know, my wife’s family, you know knock on wood, her parents are still alive at age 93 and 98 and they’re in Los Angeles.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Wow

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Uh so, you know our families very much on the west coast. It was quite a big move for me to move from California. Where both my wife and I are from, and have lived there for a long time, uh our roots are there, our family is there and then uh move to the east coast. Where really we have no personal connections. This was purely a scientific move.

JP Flores (HOST): You have us

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): [Laughs] Yes because you guys are on the East Coast.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): That’s funny, you know I’ve built myself as the only Jew in America with no relatives on the East Coast. I don’t have any family, you know family connections to New Jersey or New York. That’s not why I moved here. It was really purely the science and I would have to say, it wasn’t really to be a fancy director. That’s not my thing. You know I love–I truly do love the science and I’m quite passionate and obsessive about it and uh they’re not going to hire a 60 year old guy to come as a rank and file a senior professor to make fly movies, right?

JP Flores (HOST): Right

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Mmm hmm

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): There was a pound of flesh required

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And so I–I was uh willing to be the director of this and it’s a great Institute. I–I you know I have no complaints about that. That was not my primary motivation in coming here. It was to really get into the uh live imaging, to be closer to the source of the movies. Now you asked me, where did I come from you uh know prior to that. JP I think you and I probably have a lot of similarities.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Um I come from a blue collar family. My father did graduate from college just ahead of me. He went back to school at night.

JP Flores (HOST): Oh wow

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): When I was in uh high school, he–he graduated from college and he was the first and only member of the family uh to graduate college prior to me going. There was no academic tradition in my family, there was really no science. There was no member of my extended family on either my mother or my father’s side who had any interest or knowledge of science. My father was a political science uh major and my mother was a really good typist. So she, you know, had part-time jobs typing or she would type from home and she told me when I was in middle school, “Learn to type Michael, you’ll always be able to get a good job.” And that was kind of the mentality and I am quite a fast typist actually. [Laughs]

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): So I was the only boy in the typing classes, in uh middle school. I took a year of typing and uh you know for an old guy of my generation I can type.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs] Are you–what part of LA, where you uh–did you grow up in?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah, we bounced around, like, like you we bounced around.

JP Flores (HOST): Okay

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): So I was born in West Hollywood.

JP Flores (HOST): Right

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know my mother’s family’s kind of interesting. She, her–her grandfather, was a silver miner in uh southern Arizona, old Jacob Isaacson, and he founded the town of Nogales, Arizona. I only mentioned this because we–he had what the Jews call, “shpilkes”.

JP Flores: [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Shpilkes are ants in the pants. You can’t sit still.

JP Flores (HOST): [To Marielle Bond] Did you know that?

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): I did [Laughs]

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah so you know shpilkes.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): So old Jacob, had the shpilkes gene.

JP Flores (HOST): Okay

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): He gave it to my grandmother, his daughter. She gave it to my mother and my mother gave it to me. There is no question about it.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): None of us–that’s not true, my father’s family, they’re normal sedentary people that were just assumed, you know stay where they, you know, were born. But my mother’s family, they were always on the move. They just–I’m telling you it’s a gene and I definitely got that gene. You know because this is my fourth faculty gig, right. I started at Columbia and I was at UCSD, then I was at Berkeley for a long time and I was there longer than I would have been except my wife said, you know our children have to live, you know have to grow up somewhere. Right, so I was there for the longest before uh moving here. That’s the shpilkes. Right and so my mother had it and she was constantly causing the family to move from one place to another. To finally get to your question. So we live for a little while in uh Hollywood or West Hollywood.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): We lived for a little while in Crenshaw which was kind of interesting.

JP Flores (HOST): Oh, wow

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah, kind of an interesting experience. You know we bounced around, uh you know, we actually lived in Beverly Hills and the one apartment building that we could afford to live in, you know uh in Beverly Hills. So I went to kindergarten at some school–elementary school in Beverly Hills.

JP Flores (HOST): Nice

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): But then finally we moved out to the San Fernando Valley

JP Flores (HOST): Okay

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): First Encino and then Tarzana. So that’s where I primarily grew up, was in that.

JP Flores (HOST): Gotcha, yeah, very similar. Yeah, that’s like a valley over actually from where I used to live.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah, right. So it’s not so different from your experience and–and maybe your parents had the same sense. I mean we never had much money, uh but my father did have a sense of uh you know trying to send my sister and me to the best possible schools that he–you know, in districts that he could afford to live in. So he found that one apart, available apartment in Beverly Hills, right? I mean we were way too poor to live in Beverly Hills, but he managed to find that one apartment, you know five years old to to send me to that school. Uh and so, you know I did benefit from going to pretty good school districts. Most of the people I grew up with had way more money than me, you know came from, you know, solidly middle class maybe to upper middle class family, but we were very much a blue collar, a blue collar working class family.

JP Flores (HOST): Gotcha, yeah, so, I know you’re a Dodger’s fan. Did you play up–did you grow up playing baseball at all? Or

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST: You know uh I was terrible at sports.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know, it’s like, I just had very poor hand-eye coordination.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): My favorite sport was football.

JP Flores (HOST): Oh, wow

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Hmmm

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know, I could catch the ball

JP Flores (HOST): Did not see that coming.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And I was pretty quick. I could never hit a baseball. I love playing baseball. I mean I love–you know, I had a lot of energy.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Growing up as a kid and I loved sports. I just wasn’t very good at it. And it turns out the best sport that I could play was uh football. You know, it was tag football in junior high and high school. But uh I was way too small to ever make, right?

JP Flores (HOST): Me too, me too! [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah right, yeah, just to show. No, no, I mean, I actually–I actually inquired when I first started at Taft High, which had a very good football team.

JP Flores (HOST): Did you go to Taft?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I went to Taft.

JP Flores (HOST): Oh, wow. Okay.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah, so like a lot of famous sportsmen, you know

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Like baseball team, pretty good football team. And I remember talking to one of the coaches when I first started at Taft. Which in those days was 10th grade, right. So it wasn’t it was you–you stayed in elementary school, sixth grade, junior high was 7/8 and 9th grade and then high school was 10th, 11th, and 12th. So in 10th Grade, you know, I love football. I just liked the physical contact, you know, I–I just like the intensity of the game. Not that I was great. I was not great. I was fast that’s for sure, but, you know I was quick, probably like you [To JP Flores]

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I had you, know, but–I wasn’t, I just wasn’t especially coordinated. And uh except I could catch a football.

JP Flores (HOSE): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I was pretty good at that.

JP Flores (HOST): Cool.

Dr. Mike Levine (HOST): And uh I asked the coach. He said you’ll never make varsity

JP Flores (HOST) & Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laughing in unison] Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You could work and work, and uh you may get out a B, the B team to junior varsity, but you’ll never

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laughs] B team

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah, do I really want to get a haircut?

JP Flores (HOST) & Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laughing in unison]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yes, just to go to junior varsity. Forget it.

JP Flores (HOST): Right

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Forget it.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, Marielle and I have talked about other sports. So like fishing and golfing. I’m really trying to take up the North Carolinian attitude, I guess.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): You were fishing long before you were here.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Fishing–I would find that kind of rough. I just don’t have the patience for it.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yeah, yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You’re sitting there with a rod. I know you can do like fly fishing and that’s a more active form of fishing. And I like the fact that you–you have to know something about the different larval forms of the–of the flies in the life cycle, of the insects that the–the fish will you know, go for them. And–and that part’s cool, but it’s not for me. I think tennis if I can go back.

JP Flores (HOST): Oh tennis!

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yes, you know, I would–I would play tennis because that’s something you can do your whole life time and it’s you know, it’s got a lot of action and you get a good workout, you know. I need to get energy out. I have a lot of excess not as much now, but growing up I had a lot of excess energy.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, I feel like you have a lot of energy now, but I don’t know.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Still got that

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): My fifteen-year old grandson, who my wife and I are raising for various reasons, he said something to me like um, you have a lot of energy for an old guy.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs] I respect it.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I took that as a compliment.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST) & JP Flores (HOST): Oh, yeah [In unison]

JP Flores (HOST): For sure

JP Flores (HOST): Um so as the director of the Lewis Sigler Institute for Integrative genomics, I have two questions, right. One, do you even know who Louis Siegler is? I’m sure you do. Maybe, maybe you don’t.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I-I, do.

JP Flores (HOST): Okay and two, um what are some responsibilities that you feel like, you just didn’t realize you’d take up being a director?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Right. I mean, uh you know as far as Louis Siegler.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Peter Lewis uh was the head of Progressive Insurance and an undergraduate at Princeton.

JP Flores (HOST): Okay

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Oh

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And, and so he contributed the–the funds

JP Flores (HOST): Ohh

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Who um the uh former president of Princeton, uh Shirley Tillman, who is a fellow gene regulation in development person.

JP Flores (HOST): Oh wow

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I knew Shirley very well, from meetings. Uh prior to coming here. I did not know Peter Lewis

JP Flores (HOST): Okay

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): But Paul Sigler, was Peter Lewis’s roommate, in uh college, at Princeton and Paul Sigler was an x-ray crystallographer and a really very good guy. I didn’t know him well, but I knew him. Like I’d hear him give seminars and stuff and I followed him because he moved from the University of Chicago to Yale University and then he died suddenly of a heart attack at a fairly young age, you know maybe 59 or 60. And so Peter Lewis gave the money in honor of Paul uh Sigler. So it’s kind of cool. I mean, I, you know, to me Lewis Siegler, it’s–it’s like a nice sounding name.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Because very–I have very good memories of Paul Sigler as a wonderful scientist, a wonderful structural biologist, and he struck me as just a really good guy, down to earth guy, you know someone who was easy to talk to.

JP Flores (HOST): Cool, yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): So as far as my responsibilities here, yeah I would say, you know, like I did some administrative stuff uh at UC, but it’s different at Berkeley. Like you know, you’re maybe a division head for three years, but all senior faculty sooner or later are going to do this. It’s, it’s just kind of one of the chores, [Laughs] you know of, of getting old. So I had been the head of the Genetics, Genomics, and Development Division for four years at–at Berkeley before coming here. So I wasn’t totally unaccustomed to, you know, having to make decisions about people’s teaching schedule and what committees they’re going to serve on, you know, so there’s stuff–it’s stuff like that. So I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t coming in here, you know unaware of the expectations. Uh I’m a little surprised by you know, it’s a lot of fundraising that uh you know goes into this uh position and that surprised me uh a little bit.

JP Flores (HOST): What does that look like? Fundraising?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know I’m the world’s best…

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Hmm?

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, what do you, what do you mean fundraising? You guys sell chocolate bars or like?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know so, so, you know, you get before, uh you know alumni and you know uh people who are you know, who contribute to Princeton. I mean Princeton it’s a wonderful place in the sense that the–there’s just a loyal group of graduates of this institution. Like I graduated from Berkeley and I think Berkeley is a great university, it is, but I don’t have this huge warm feeling towards alma mater, you know.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I have warm feelings about some of the professors I had and the level of instruction, but I don’t feel this personal emotional bond to–to uh Berkeley. I mean I love the place, but here it is emotional. There are a lot of graduates who just feel this deep connection to the history uh and the ethos uh of the place. They–every year they have the so called P-rade, where all sorts of alums come in. And I think they draw maybe at 25% of all the graduates still alive, come in every year. You know uh and it’s like zombie movie. I mean it’s an invasion of these people in orange and it’s kind of scary.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And so I–I think it’s really nice. I mean, I uh I’m really touched by the enthusiasm, the sincerity of the connection that people feel to this place. And I feel a little cheated that I just don’t–I did not have that kind of experience Berkeley was such a big school. It was such an impersonal place. The instruction was great. Yeah no sure. I took chem one and the great Glenn Seaborg gave a couple of guest lectures. I mean the guy is a name on the periodic table.

JP Flores (HOST): Right

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): But it was the classroom with 800 people and I was always the last one in because it started like at 8 a.m.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laugh]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Here, it’s like I can barely see this guy, you know the–in the front stage, but nonetheless you get a sense that–yeah, I had some lectures from Glenn Seaborg. I mean, that’s pretty cool.

JP Flores (HOST): [To Marielle Bond] Yeah, yeah do you have that emotional connection to UNC?

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): I thought I did, because I went to UNC for undergrad too.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Oh, yeah. Well, yeah.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Um and then I stayed and I thought, I thought, I would keep on caring about UNC basketball and my,my will to watch games has plummeted.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Is that right?

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah, I don’t know

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah, you have become, you have a become–become, a Blue Devils fan.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): I just have become less of a college sports fan, I think.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Okay, okay, okay.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Never, never, a Blue Devils fan,

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Marielle Bond (Co-host): [Laughs], would not go that far.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): But I imagine UNC, being quite a pleasant place to be an undergraduate.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): It’s just, it’s again, it’s a really big school, where you don’t feel like you’re getting a really

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Is it that big?

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah, I don’t–I’m not good with numbers of schools like– JP Flores (HOST): It’s like 10,000 undergrads, I think or something.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Something like that, like my–all my introductory classes had like 200

JP Flores (HOST): Okay

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Right

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): A little over a two-hundred people.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Right

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Just to have a biology major, it’s getting a little bit better now, but like I hear other people in my graduate program coming from places where they have genetics majors and it’s all from these smaller schools that have more specialized things.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Right, right.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, cause I had at least…

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I didn’t think UNC was that big. I mean although, 10,000, it’s not terrible.

JP Flores (HOST) & Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [In unison] Yeah

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I mean, maybe that’s roughly twice the size of the undergraduate student population of Princeton. Princeton’s very small.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Mm hm

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Berkeley had…

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah

JP Flores (HOST): Like 30,000

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Twenty-five–30,000

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): …undergraduates and a whole lot of graduate students.

JP Flores (HOST): Wow

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): For a while they were talking about making Berkeley strictly a graduate uh university.

JP Flores (HOST): Like UCSF

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): They couldn’t do though because of the demographics.

JP Flores (HOST): Right

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And population increase in California. They certainly couldn’t afford to turn Berkeley into a strictly a graduate school.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yeah because I–I have the deepest emotional connection to Occidental. It is–

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It is a small plate right? It’s a small place, yes?

JP Flores (HOST): Oh yeah, yeah it’s 2,000 undergrads. I think the biggest class I had was 25 people.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Wow

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Even as a freshman?

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah [Laughs]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Wow

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah so that’s great. So that’s pretty great.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, and I–I remembered watching Dodger games in my professors houses and things like that. So it’s–it’s just, I do everything for Occidental. I donate, I serve on their admissions committees.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Oh good for you.

JP Flores (GUEST): So its–yeah, I love it. I like it a lot.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I saw you did some interesting research on these um on these uh cone snails.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laughs] Loves his cone snails.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Which are really interesting snails.

JP Flores (HOST): Oh, yeah, yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I’m a diabetic. I take fast

JP Flores (HOST): Oh

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): …acting insulin and I think those may have first been identified in the cone snails.

JP Flores (HOST): Yep, yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Is they start out and they–well, you know.

JP Flores (HOST): Mm hm

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): They paralyze their prey.

JP Flores (HOST): Fish.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): The, you know, right the fish and they do it among other things by infusing them with insulin. So they go into kind of a you know, a sugar, you know, they, they, drop their sugar levels and they go into kind of a shock.

JP Flores (HOST): Right

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Some of those insulins are very fast acting, out of the cone snails and I believe that’s uh what I take. [Laughs]

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yeah!

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): So you know, it’s very good. JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, the cone snail work actually propelled me into uh research. It really got me thinking about science just in general and it’s cool because it was an example of just this is an extraordinary thing that happens in nature and we can harness that for biomedicine. Right. That’s, that was the appeal for me. How much homework did you do on this Mike? How much do you know about me? [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Oh you know, I-I I’m a quick study. I–I just went online, saw the stuff.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It didn’t take long.

JP Flores (HOST): Okay. Okay, cool.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I know how, you know, I’ve read a lot of CVS. I’ve been on a lot of search committees, and this and that. I know how to get down to the essence of one soul.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, okay

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): You also have a pretty big digital footprint. You do.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You do, you do. You’re out there JP.

JP Flores (HOST): Thank you. Thank you. But anyway

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It’s a good thing. Why not, you only live once.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah! YOLO

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Don’t you think, don’t you uh Marielle, that uh the LA guys they got something going.

JP Flores (HOST) & Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laugh in unison]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): He’s–he’s got so much energy.

JP Flores (HOST): [Continues laughing] Mike…Mike does too!

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): It’s you LA guys!

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): No but you know but I think there’s something about LA, I mean I have to say, and I’m sure you know uh true for you JP.

JP Flores (HOST): Yep

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Of course many years later, when I grew up in LA it was such a pleasant place, out in the valley and the 60s. I mean I used to go hiking with friends. It was all open, trails and the Santa Monica Reserve. I mean it was a fantastic place to grow up and you go into one person’s house after another, the parents are all from the East Coast or the Midwest. Nobody was from

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): …then and they all had an energy and there was this kind of this pioneering spirit. You know, it was a wonderful place to live but I have to say it’s like a lifestyle, you know, you wake up. You throw on a T-shirt and some flip-flops.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And you just go out and kind of, ohhhh [Says in high pitched voice]

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I think I’ll go to the park and

JP Flores (HOST): They laugh at–

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Sit at the park, you know it’s like such a relaxed lifestyle.

JP Flores (HOST): They just make fun of me for it.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): No where we are–

JP Flores (HOST): They make fun of me for it.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Because you’re surrounding yourself with high strung Northeasterners. [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): LA–I mean LA definitely had, you know these parents from New York City and stuff.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): There were certainly some intensity and energy but the overall culture, because the weather was so great, is so great and you don’t have to look at a weather report. You never have to worry. It’s going to be too cold. It’s going to rain or something. You just put on your flip-flops and go out and uh cruise around.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yep, it’s like Terry Furey. [Laughs]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah he still does that. [Laughs]

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah. All right, so Mike as a director, I think we mentioned that we are very passionate about mentorship, you know outreach things like that. Uh what–what are your thoughts on mentorship and, and diversity, equity, and inclusion, especially as you’ve taken this like, higher administrative role?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah. Yeah. You know um, you know my story, is a little different. The person you know, when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley, it was very hard to get into a laboratory. It’s not working–like being at Occidental. I don’t know how UNC was. But you had to beg

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): To get into a laboratory. And by the time I was a junior uh at Berkeley uh I knew I wanted to do research and I really wanted to get into a lab. Now I was a work study student.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Mm hm

JP Flores (HOST): Yep

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I had this kind of like I was part of this Federal training program–

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): That’s what I did.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You did that. Okay.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah, I cleaned, I cleaned pipettes. [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah that’s what I did.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): That’s what I did. So I cleaned pipettes in a really famous lab, Ellen Wilson’s lab, where Mary-Claire King was a postdoc. I mean she went on of course to discover BRCA. And so, you know, I kind of knew her and while I was in the background cleaning, you know pipettes for the lab. But the first lab I was really giving a chance to do you know research, was O’Neill Ray Collins, a very famous black uh botanist.

JP Flores (HOST): Cool

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And he kind of gave me my chance. So, you know, it’s a reversal, like the black guy gave this white kid a chance, right?

JP Flores (HOST): Right, right

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): So, I do feel a debt of service. I do feel like I have been extremely lucky and I have to give back. I also have a different perspective. I transferred from San Francisco State University

JP Flores (HOST): Oh

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And a little state university Northridge, where I went, for a semester each. So my first year was not at Berkeley, it was at these uh state universities.

JP Flores (HOST): CSUN?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Pardon me?

JP Flores (HOST): Cal State Northridge, CSUN?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Exactly. I went to Cal State Northridge, for the reason that my parents left town because my father had some part-time job in upstate New York. So I thought well there’s free rent. I can live in my house.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Cal State, you know uh Northridge. I was at San Francisco State. So why not just switch over to Northridge. No big–no big deal and have free rent because I had no money. I did get into Berkeley uh when I applied out of high school. But San Francisco State gave me a full fellowship and I had no money. So I went to San Francisco State. So I know what it’s like to transfer, you know, from a lesser university away, to like a high pressure uh university. It was kind of an interesting transition, you know, took me a little while to make that transition from the state universities to the UC to–to Berkeley role of a sudden, you know, the students are better on average and you know the

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): The competition is a little more fierce, but there’s something in California, that’s so great. It is so great. That we need to do more of that here. And that is the community college transfer.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It is a little known fact. That one third, one third of all the students that go to UCS , including Berkeley. Are community college transfers.

JP Flores (HOST): Yep

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): I didn’t know that.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah my best friend–

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Oh, you know, so like if you’re–yeah, so like a lot of my friends uh out of high school, they weren’t such great students, they messed around, whatever. Went to community college, transferred to these great schools.

JP Flores (HOST): Yep

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And so, you have access, no matter, you know, you get a second and third chance, and so no matter what you did in high school, you can go to community–anybody can go to community college, just have to be 18 and or graduate from high school. And you know, you could take a light load

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You could take–you could spread it over three, four years those, two years of general education. And if you get the good grades you have access to UCLA to UC Berkeley, you know, to these really top universities.

JP Flores (HOST): I completely forgot about that, because when I moved out here, I just, I didn’t hear it at all. Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): There’s such a stigma here.

JP Flores (HOST): Really? Wow

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): I feel like–about going to community college.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah, you know, there may be a little in California but not as much and this

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): This is the engine of opportunity. I think it is the number one engine of opportunity, because you could be anybody

JP Flores (HOST): Yep

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And you can make that transition. I didn’t exactly do that. But I almost did that, so I understand it. Now Princeton has started a transfer program from some of the local community colleges and I really would like to see that expand. I–for me this would be the number one way

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): To take underprivileged students, not necessarily, you know, just racially under privileged, economically underprivileged, you know to really give you know people from modest backgrounds of all stripes, and opportunity for a big-time education because I think that’s what that’s the transformative thing. I look back at that education I got at Berkeley and you know, even though I came out with blue collar family education was second To None. I worked hard, you know, I mean I was into it, you know, I worked hard in my classes. I was a good student. I got good grades and I learned a lot, but I worked at it. I had the opportunity, right. That was the main thing as I, I had the opportunity and then I found you know uh Professor Collins who took me into his lab and gave me a chance to, to do research and I had a ball. You know, that was when I discovered yeah, this is what I wanna do.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, you got to stop giving me project ideas man. I’m already doing enough, like. [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah, right [Laughs]

JP Flores (HOST): Come on man [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): So we do have, we do have, uh through the institute, we have a very uh passionate graduate student body here.

JP Flores (HOST): Hm

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Really reaches out, they give lectures at the local community colleges. We try to give some of the students at least in the local community colleges opportunities to do research in the LSI, even if they can’t transfer here to come to Princeton as uh undergraduates. We still try to give access to our facilities and you know, give them a taste of, you know, world class, you know research opportunities. I think that–you know, you can’t do everything and I draw from my experience and my experience is, there’s a lot of great kids who didn’t have the right opportunities growing up. We’re going for that second chance, go to the community college’s and you know, let’s open up our resources at the elite universities to them and uh you know show them what a world-class education is all about. And you know, one by one you’ll make a difference.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah 100%. Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. Uh, we have one more serious question before we move into our fun questions.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Very good.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, so as we round out my second year and her third year. What advice would you give yourself um? Or what advice would you give people that are, you know, early on in their graduate careers? Uh, something that’ll you know, help us be more successful in the future.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah. Yeah. I think you know, that is an important question. Um learn the technology, don’t forget that being a graduate student, you know has a serious training component to it. And of course you want to make a discovery. Of course, you want to see something about nature that nobody else has seen before. This is the prime directive of all scientists, you know from undergraduate researchers up to, you know, senior faculty, of course, that’s what you want to do. But I think you position yourself for discovery if you really take command of uh demanding technology. And so whatever that is, you know for some it’s like I’m gonna learn state of the art imaging, I’m going to learn how to use a lattice light sheet microscope, and do some beautiful quantitative live imaging. Uh for others its genome technologies, you know, maybe it’ll be HI-C or micro CSA’s. Whatever it is, you know in your field of interest whatever your final destination is and the kinds of questions you want to really address, uh uh you know, when you have all the tools at your command, think about what are the emerging technologies relevant to those problems?

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It’s a long road to…being a scientist, right? I mean I’ve been running a lab for 40 years.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And you know, this is what I mean by a long road and uh discoveries driven by technology. You can have the greatest ideas on earth and the technology is not there. You’re not going to be able to address it.

JP Flores (HOST): Yep.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): In many cases I’ve had to wait. My lab has had to wait for technologies to come along and for us to finally get to the problem that’s been eating away at us for years and years and years.

JP Flores (HOST): Right

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): So learn deeply, a technology, a mastered and that will make you a very desirable, as a postdoc like if you’ve mastered an imaging or a genome technology and you go to a lab that hasn’t. Well, they’re going to want you. All right, so it, it just from a marketing point of view, it gives you value. But it also positions you for finally getting to those questions. I know what it means to defer. Asking the big questions you want to ask, because when I was a PhD student, you know, I learned molecular biology. I learned the tools of just dealing with genes so that as a postdoc I could participate in, you know, the isolation of the homeotic genes and finally get to those things I learned as an undergraduate. So don’t be afraid to defer some things because it’s a long road.

JP Flores (HOST): All right. Thank you for that. Well said.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah. Are you ready for the fun questions?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Absolutely! This,this wasn’t so bad. I didn’t find those to be painful.

JP Flores (HOST): Not fine?

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): They weren’t bad questions JP Flores (HOST): I mean [Laughs]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Serious questions.

JP Flores (HOST): I’ve been doing this for a little bit. Yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Of course.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, all right. So the first one’s a little bit of a curveball to Marielle, but like did you see her talk at Keystone?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know I’m not sure I did and I apologize.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST) & JP Flores (HOST): [Laugh in unison]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I mean, you know.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): It was a late night.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Well, right. I know they have the not ready for prime time players.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Right? You know I only have a certain, what–when did you give it, did you give it before or after my talk?

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Before. I was in the session with Rick Young.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Oh, okay. You were? When, when, when Young was beamed in?

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yes.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know, when he was, when he was beamed in, in his man cave at uh MIT.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You spoke in that session. You spoke in the end of that session.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah, there were two trainees.

JP Flores (HOST): Were you snoozing?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I don’t know if I was snoozing or if I you know, I–to be honest with you, I probably left at the coffee break so I can go into my uh uh room and work on my talk.

JP Flores (HOST) & Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah [In unison]

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah, I was giving the first talk the next morning.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yeah.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah, you had it early.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And and I was, I was, I was uh nervous about it.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): We also went a little–

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I’ve always been nervous about my talks. Pardon me?

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): The big wigs in my session went a little over. They were– [Laughs]

JP Flores (HOST): They did, yeah. They did go over.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah, right, right.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): So I was just sitting there like, yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah you know I work uh–so I’m sorry Marielle I–I think missed your talk.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I apologize for that but it, it you know, it’s because even though I’ve been doing this for so long, uh I still get nervous for my talks and I want to make sure of two things. You know that uh I know exactly what I want to say. And that I stay on time. I–I feel like that is important. I think it gives a bad message when, sometimes you know, you make a mistake you go over. It’s not like I’ve never gone over. Of course. It happens.

JP Flores (HOST): Right.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I worked pretty hard to try to stay within the time limits.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yeah. Do you want to ask the next question? [To Marielle Bond]

Marielle Bond [CO-HOST]: Yeah, so at Keystone you were talking about how you wanted to make movies in one way or another. You make fly movies.

Dr. Mike Levine [GUEST]: Yes

Marielle Bond [CO-HOST]: Would you make a regular, like–like a real Hollywood movie, what would you, what would you make it about? [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine [GUEST]: What a–that is such a great question.

JP Flores (HOST) & Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laugh in unison]

Dr. Mike Levine [GUEST]: My older son Eli, uh went to film school–

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Mm

JP Flores (HOST): Ohh wow

Dr. Mike Levine [GUEST]: At San Francisco State. And uh he’s really quite talented. I mean he has a really good. He does some editing at–for a uh commercial firm. But um I always felt like he should make uh movies. You know, I don’t know uh what, I mean I wouldn’t do a rom-com. I can tell you that.

JP Flores [HOST]: Ohhh

Marielle Bond [CO-HOST]: [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine [GUEST]: Like my favorite movies are you know, pretty standard like Godfather.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs] God–yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Uh you know, uh-uh you know, yeah I would say a lot of the uh Martin Scorsese movies, you know, Goodfellas uh

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know Raging Bull, you know, I like the action or in movies a little bit of violence. Not a lot of violence. I mean I have to close my eyes if there’s too much blood.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): But uh you know, I like the movies that kind of you know punch you in the gut.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Mm

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I–I love the Apocalypse Now, you know

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Which was an aggravating movie. It came out not long after the Vietnam War which hung over my head throughout my childhood. I might add and uh you know, I saw it when it first came out and it’s a rough movie, you know, it’s it’s not, you know, you don’t get popcorn and sit back and relax and watch that movie. I mean it’s really, it’s really grabbing you by the collar.

JP Flores (HOST): Geez

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It was kind of great.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): So I think so, you know, I don’t know maybe a war movie.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know what? I always liked um–

JP Flores (HOST): Saving Private Ryan. [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I don’t know about that, you know, I like also, you know just as I try to do as a scientist, really zooming in. On kind of this constrained space, like maybe a submarine movie.

JP Flores (HOST) & Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Oh, oh [In unison]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I like action, those are so good.

JP Flores (HOST): …Mike Levine!

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You get the, you get the–you cut from one scene to another the guys are sweating, you know, they’re in this under oxygenated tube under the water.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It’s just a stressful scene. There was the movie from Hitchcock where–where window were all the actions like just a couple of scenes, you know, you’re, you know guy in his apartment looking into another apartment. That’s maybe something like that, you know, really dissecting the action in some very constrained and taught sort of space.

JP Flores (HOST): Hm, yeah. Marielle has been throwing this idea around of like, creating a sitcom and I think it’d be so funny if it–if you followed through on that and had Mike as like a guest star.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): It would be fun

JP Flores (HOST): “Woah, that’s Mike Levine!” [Laughs]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Well, you know the problem with me, as–as my son Eli would tell you immediately, it’s like I’m a ham and you know, he made some movies through college.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Uh huh

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And he only allowed me in one of his movies and I–it wasn’t a speaking part. JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): He said you know, you’re just such a ham.

JP Flores (HOST) & Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laugh in unison]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You’re not a very good actor.

JP Flores (HOST): Oh, no

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You’re always just having it and so, you know, I’m not sure you–you know, you should put me high on your list [Laughs]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Oh

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Of, [laughs], of guest you know of guest stars, you know I don’t know. It, you know, it used to. I don’t know if they still do this at meetings. At some of the Gordon conferences of Yesteryear they would sometimes um and by asking people asking some of the speakers to give mock presentations, you know making fun of some of the other speakers.

JP Flores (HOST): What?!

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Woah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): So I did like this whole John Gurdon thing.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I did like this whole British thing

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Pretty good, it was a while ago.

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): But I know what you mean by this, lots of ways to poke fun at the scientific establishment.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And at uh individual scientists. Because as a group we do take ourselves pretty seriously and I can tell you, now that I’ve watched the tidal wave of time, watched over all the work we’ve done over the years, all the stuff that seemed of such vital importance and intensity. It’s gone, forgotten, you know. So you do get a perspective, you know looking over–over time. It does make all this energy and intensity and self-importance and sense of history, makes it kind of funny.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Just inherently, a little bit. You got to enjoy the moment. That’s what I learned.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You got to enjoy the moment-to-moment action because very little of what we do really has staying power.

JP Flores (HOST): We can tell you are, that’s for sure.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): What’s that?

JP Flores (HOST): We can tell you’re enjoying the moment. We got you.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I didn’t in the past. I’m enjoying it more now, you know uh as an older scientist. When I was younger it’s like I just want to go on to the next thing.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, got you

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): With the news. Oh paper got it to sell whatever, and uh no celebrations. Like okay on to the next experiment, right?

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Right now I feel like yeah those moments those very rare, you know good moments, you know where you know, you got something interesting. Yeah, enjoy it, absolutely enjoy the day.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah.

JP Flores (HOST): Okay, and the very last question, because right we don’t want to take up too much of your time is, what is your favorite thing to do outside of science? And why?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Oh boy, you know probably movies.

JP Flores (HOST): Movies, really?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I would have to say, I mean uh I uh grew up. You know, I’m not gonna elaborate, in a dysfunctional family and I don’t mean dysfunctional like one of the Hollywood movies.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Because they have no conception of the family that I grew up in, it was a weird.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): But, there was one thing we did as a family: my sister my parents, and I, which was fantastic. We would go to the movies, you know and and Wednesday night, was uh the the night where you know, the new releases first came out.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And I had an uncle who was uh the manager of one of the movie palaces out in the San Fernando Valley.

JP Flores (HOST): That’s really cool…

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): We would go there and he had a little red flash light and he showed us to our seats

JP Flores (HOST) & Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laugh in unison]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): The curtains would open and uh it was magic for me. It was an escape from the family with my family. And so I have very warm feelings about that. My wife and I had our two sons and uh we raised the boys. We almost, every week did what we call the movie uh dinner combination.

JP Flores (HOST): That’s so cute.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): That’s so nice.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): So we go to a movie and then we would go as a family uh we we go to dinner then go as a family uh to a movie.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And I think I think the boys Eli and Aaron still remember that.

JP Flores (HOST): Nice.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Lily and I certainly remember it well. Um so I yeah, I like going to the movies and the covid’s been rough because…about that but I started I went recently with my grandson. We went to some action-packed movie. I don’t remember.

JP Flores (HOST): Awesome. It wasn’t the Mario movie, right?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It was the Mario movie!

JP Flores (HOST): It was the Mario movie!

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It was the Mario movie!

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laughs] We saw the Mario movie!

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yes, it was the Mario movie.

JP Flores (HOST): We just saw it! [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It was kind of fun.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): It was pretty good.

JP Flores (HOST): It was good!

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Uh you know uh Liam and I just had such a great time. I mean, it just, it just reminded me of how much I love the movie’s.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I would say yeah, I would say that’s–I’ve been watching plenty movies over the covid era on television, but it’s just not the same.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Not the same.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): There is the magic of the lights going down, the curtains opening and that big screen. There’s just nothing like it, 100%.

JP Flores (HOST): That’s awesome. Do you have any more fun questions? [To Marielle Bond]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): I don’t, yeah [Laughs]

JP Flores (HOST): You’re tired man.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): I’m tired. [Laughs]

JP Flores (HOST): She’s got an event after this. [Laughs]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): And a meeting.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Oh wait a minute, wait a minute, before you go you just have to tell me one last thing.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): What’s the punchline of your talk? [To Marielle Bond]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Me?

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): At the, at the uh Keystone. Yeah.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): At Keystone. The punchline? Like main–

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah what was your main? Yeah what was your main uh pitch?

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): It was called A Tale of Two Time Courses, because in Doug’s lab we do a lot of time courses and we map all these genomic events over differentiation.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Right. Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): So the main–it was like, just like lessons learned from performing these genomic time courses at really high temporal resolution or really high sequencing depth.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Right.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): And we’ve learned various related things about like the relationship between looping and RNA and um gene expression.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): So what is the–do, do you see a positive correlation or total independence to the loops form…?

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah. I think the, the big point to come out of it is like we think that under when, like a gene is going from like highly expressed to even higher expression. It’s going to compete with the looping machinery and it’s going to actually out compete.

JP Flores (HOST): Yep.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Oh wow.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): And if it’s going in like if transcription is going this way and cohesion is going this way, transcription can beat it out.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I got you. If anything it’s an anticorrelation.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): But then under some circumstances like your classic like gene comes into like deactivated gene comes into proximity with enhanced or via loop, that seems to be a positive correlation. So.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It’s a little complicated.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): It’s a little complicated. We called it a complicated dance and we had a fun, fun like gift of DNA as a woman and RNA as a man coming together and dancing. [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It’s funny because didn’t I talk about Romeo and Juliet?

JP Flores (HOST) & Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah [In unison]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Our talks went together. [Laughs] Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It sounds like uh we’re kind of on the same page and certainly what you just briefly described there is consistently the kind of things we see in the fly genome as well.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah, it kind of–

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): In studying, you know, the activation of gene expression specific times during development so forth.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah in some ways it was a lot of like just kind of like reconciling these opposing views of like…

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): When you state…you know, Marielle you stay with that, uh you know, I still think we’re going to enter an era, unprecedented era of genome engineering and being able to control when you make the loops and when you control when you want to turn on a gene and if you want an enhancer at the other end of the chromosome.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know turning on that gene we’ll be able to engineer that at, at will. And so I think it is still an exciting problem for me personally, as you know, it doesn’t get better than switching on and off a gene. I still go back to the lac operon.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): What are those regulatory switches. But you know the role of the 3D genome, the role of chromosome folding, just the role of the chromosome. On control of individual genes, very exciting problem.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah

JP Flores (HOST): It’s very

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Very exciting, and uh you know you stay with that.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah, I think I… [Laughs]

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah. Yeah, you should hire her as a post-doc.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Well, anytime. [Laughs]

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): What you already gave a talk at a Keystone meeting.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Give me a break. You know, you’re in.

JP Flores (HOST): As a third year too. That’s, that’s pretty–

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): That’s very good. That’s a very high honor actually.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah it was really cool.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah, that’s great. Well, congratulations. I’m really sorry I missed it. I’m sure I was just freaking out about my talk.

Marielle Bond (Co-HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Hyperventilating thinking oh my God, oh my God.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): I did the same–

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I had to present–to prep my talk.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): for mine.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): What’s that?

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): I did the same thing for the session before mine. I was like I’m just gonna go in the room and talk.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah, exactly.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah, I miss the poster session because I was freaking. [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Yeah no, no, I was definitely yeah, I was only freaking out as well.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): But anyway.

JP Flores (HOST): We’ll see you soon. We’ll see you soon, if a…

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): We’ll see you–; I’ll, I’ll let you know–

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Oh! I would love to come. I love to see you guys we can uh get a couple drinks in Chapel Hill.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, yeah!

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Or slum it down in Durham.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah I’m down, I’m down! [Laughs]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): They don’t make our–they don’t make the visits for faculty long enough, it seems.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, they gotta make a little later.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): They, like I feel like they’re here one day and gone the next. We had a couple weeks back, we had Doug’s um friend from grad school that has a lab at Boulder.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): That was visiting here and we did not have a second to…

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): But wait a minute, wait a minute. If you–if you the students

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Hm

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): are inviting the speaker

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): you should get all the time.

JP Flores (HOST): I agree.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): We should get all the time. No, instead they meet with–they meet with the faculty.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I can assure you and this is no knock on the there’s great faculty at UNC. But if you invite me I want to hang with you guys.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think that’s the main problem.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): We would, we would get a lunch with you. You know what I’m gonna I’m gonna use this as a bargaining chip. [Laughs]

JP Flores (HOST): We should turn it into like we have lunch with you but also dinner because I know faculty have dinner with the visiting speakers.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah.

JP Flores (HOST): I think it’d be cool to just have a dinner.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Oh, no, the dinners are more fun.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know, I can have lunch with the faculty. I think you got to turn it around.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, I agree–

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): If you feel compelled for me to talk to some of the faculty. I can have a quick lunch with them.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): The dinner should be with you guys.

JP Flores (HOST): I agree.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): I like that idea.

JP Flores (HOST): You should pitch that. [To Marielle Bond]

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): I’m going to pitch that. Thank you.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You can get a, you can get a proper meal out of it.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): A free meal, what the heck.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): I would love, instead of a Panera lunch.

JP Flores (HOST): We’re already broke. You know.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know what, you know, really? What the heck?

JP Flores (HOST) & Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah [In unison]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): But you know a lot of the faculty and you know I’m going to see them meetings or…

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah

JP Flores (HOST): Exactly, exactly.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Right, right and I’m definitely much more interested in what I mean. One thing that keeps me going is um I try to embrace the young people the way they think about problems, the technologies they use. You know, um I know they’re not young for you. But you know people like, you know, Alex Stark and Joanna Wysocka and you know Eileen Furlong, I mean I really draw from that younger generation of scientists.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Because they think so differently about the problems as compared to how I was trained and this kind of keeps me in the game. I think and so like the last thing I want to become is one of those old farts. Who says, “Oh, you know the Millennials, the Generation Z.” [Inaudible]

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs] Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): You know, I don’t like that. I mean, I–I think if you want to stay vital you’ve got to see what the young people are up to and so I would much rather hang with you guys.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): We’ll make that happen.

JP Flores (HOST): We’ll make that happen, yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Very good.

JP Flores (HOST): I think my favorite part of Keystone was just pulling you away from other people.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): That was the best.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): That was a blast! I really appreciate, I really appreciate you doing that.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): I was a little nervous because I took the mask off and I thought, you know covid risk here.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): [Laughs]

JP Flores (HOST): [Laughs]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): But I got, I got the covid as I knew I would.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): My 10 year old grandson, you know, that was just a matter of time.

JP Flores (HOST) & Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah. [In unison]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): And so one day he came back with home with yet another cold.

JP Flores (HOST): Ohh Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): Of course it wasn’t a cold. For him it was just a cold.

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah.

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): For you it’s a…

JP Flores (HOST): Yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): But it’s fine, you know, we that was a risk and I’m grateful that it didn’t happen until after all the vaccines boosters

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): packed slowly.

JP Flores (HOST): Cool uh well, thank you so much for taking the time…

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It was great seeing you guys and I do look I really hope you’ll follow through and invite me … [Inaudible] for next year–

Marielle Bond (CO-HOST): I’m going to, I am going to tell them… [Inaudible]

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): that would be just a lot of fun.

JP Flores (HOST): You were the first person that came to her mind, our mind really.

Dr. Mike Levine (GUEST): It’s really been, I would say it’s been um it’s been a number of years since I’ve been in you know, the triangle research. [Music begins to fade in]

JP Flores (HOST): Oh really wow [Music fades episode out]