Ben Kuebrich


Ben Kuebrich is a reporter for High Plains Public Radio, an NPR station in Western Kansas. He spent 10 years studying neuroscience and working in laboratories at institutions such as Emory University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Tokyo. During that time, he also fell in love with listening to podcasts. He started his career in audio doing research and fact-checking for the Gimlet podcast “Science Vs.” You can also listen to his podcast “Selects,” which highlights the work of independent podcast producers.

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Clockwise: lab mouse, zebrafish, octopus, rat pushing a cube, nematodes, fruit fly.

The term ‘model organism’ should be reserved for biological systems

By referring to artificial neural networks as model organisms, we run the risk of distorting funding priorities and disregard the explanatory power of a shared evolutionary history across biological organisms.

By Marc Coutanche
13 November 2026 | 6 min read

New phase of BRAIN Initiative spawns basal ganglia ‘parts list’

With a standardized cell naming system and infrastructure for data collection and analysis, the basal ganglia project sets the stage for a whole-brain primate atlas.

By Claudia López Lloreda
12 November 2026 | 1 min watch
Research image showing genes containing microexons in mice.

Machine-learning model spots autism-linked variants that scramble splicing

The model provides a way to investigate genetic variation in regions of the genome whose functions have been difficult to interpret.

By Giorgia Guglielmi
12 November 2026 | 4 min read