In this episode Chris talks to Julian Schmitt, leader of the junior research group “Quantum fluids of light” at the University of Bonn. Julian recently received an ERC Starting Grant, the ML4Q Independence Grant and in 2022 he was awarded the ML4Q Young Investigator Award honoring his contribution to the cluster’s program which particularly requires the collaboration between different sites. They talk about Bose-Einstein condensates and the differences between the atomic and the photonic sort. They recap how Julian got into the atomic molecular and optical physics AMO research community where major breakthroughs often seem to be possible already with relatively small teams. They also chat about how optical quantum gases can shed new light on exciting open questions in physics, such as grand canonical condensates or the interplay between quantum physics and thermodynamics.