About Cultivated Curiosity
I’m Kelly Thomas, PhD — a scientist, mother, and athlete. Cultivated Curiosity is my weekly field journal in pursuit of a longer, sharper, more curious life — and raising kids who live one too.
I trained as a biomedical engineer at Columbia and earned my PhD in biomedical sciences at NYU, where I solved the crystal structure of the Laminin Receptor, earned a patent, and worked on the development of a cancer therapy. I spent two years in Siddhartha Mukherjee’s lab at Columbia HICC researching acute myeloid leukemia. I’m currently Director of Scientific Content at TEDMED, where I built and hosted two podcast formats: TEDMED Conversations and TEDMED Now. Cultivated Curiosity is what comes next — a publication entirely my own.
I write for women who want the rigor of healthspan without the hustle. I’m tired of the noise. The protocols you don’t have time for, the wearables that tell you whether you’re ready for the day before you’ve had a thought of your own, the optimization tournaments that mistake measuring for living. I’m also deeply invested in living a longer, healthier, more vibrant life — and helping the people I love do the same. That tension is what this publication lives inside.
Every Tuesday morning, you’ll get one of four kinds of pieces:
The Experiment — what I’m trying on myself, with data.
The Paper — one piece of research, translated for your real life.
The Household — what I’m observing about my kids, my marriage, my aging parents.
Second Opinion — what’s worth your attention, and what isn’t.
No biohacks. No protocols you don’t have time for. No supplement empire. Just one scientist-mother, paying attention, asking better questions, and writing it up.
If that sounds like something you want in your inbox on a Tuesday morning, subscribe below.
— Kelly
P.S. I live in Connecticut with my husband, our two kids, and our cavapoo. I play tennis, I strength train, I practice yoga, I cook, and I read. I’m also, somewhere underneath all of that, still the same kid who asked for a microscope so I could make my own slides to see things up close and got up for 6am practices before school.
