Carry the One Radio: The Science Podcast

Let’s be real -- life can be stressful. For those facing early life stress, the consequences can even affect their very biology. Fortunately, Rebekah Rashford is a young Ph. D. candidate at Princeton University who is uncovering just how these stressors affect people. In this Young Scientist Spotlight (our 16th!), Rebekah Rashford shares how she began her journey in science, her sources of inspira...

Roughly 4% of the world’s population is affected by a rare disease, and while we are learning every day how to better diagnose and treat these conditions, there is still much to uncover. Rare Disease Day, which lands on the last day of February every year, seeks to raise awareness and improve access to care for patients and families living with rare diseases. For both scientific and clinical persp...

We don’t usually hear the words science and art together, but we’ve been misled -- science and art exist together on multiple planes, constantly informing each other in beautiful and unexpected ways. This is the second episode in our two-part mini-series on science and art. Here, we’re joined by visual artists and science communicators Kelly Montgomery and Sophie Wang. They both discuss how they’v...

Did you know you could scuba dive for science? Well, that’s exactly what Gaby Keeler-May does in the waters of New Zealand! In our latest Young Scientist Spotlight episode (#15!), learn about how Gaby’s scuba diving class in Santa Cruz, California, led her to investigating invasive seaweeds in New Zealand! We discuss how she conducts each dive (safety first!) and what they do with the tons of seaw...

You feeling stressed? Well, take a break from work and listen to our latest Young Scientist Spotlight with Sero Parel. Sero is a Neuroscience graduate student at Princeton University, who is interested in studying stress and how stressful moments can change the course of our developing brain. For Sero, their research goes way beyond any old science experiment. Their work asks fundamental questions...

We don’t usually hear the words science and art together, but we’ve been misled -- science and art exist together on multiple planes, constantly informing each other in beautiful and unexpected ways. This is the first episode in our two-part mini-series on science and art. Here, we’re joined by choreographer-slash-educator Suba Subramaniam and computational-biologist-slash-generative-artist Dr. Al...

New Year, new you, new …. ant? Dr. Balint Kacsoh, a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses his work on the genetics of social interactions in ants in our latest Young Scientist Spotlight. Listening to this conversation, you’ll learn a ton of interesting ant facts, like how ants bites are used to staple together wounds in the jungle. You'll also learn some amazing ways that ant resear...

Stephanie Renee is a non-traditional undergraduate student. After working in non-scientific fields, she decided to go back to school a few years ago to pursue a bachelor's in neuroscience with the goal of becoming a clinical neuropsychologist. In this spotlight interview, she shares her experiences working in a metastatic breast cancer lab, her thoughts on science education and research training a...

“All day strong, all day long”, “the painkiller hospitals use most”, “the extra strength pain reliever”. We see pain reducing drugs like Advil and Aleve advertised all the time. But how do these drugs actually work? Can they relieve all types of pain? What about prescription drugs? Why are opioids the best we have, and awful at the same time? How are new medicines evaluated? And is anyone trying t...

For this eleventh installment of “The Spotlight” we interviewed Oluwasegun Akiniyi, a bioengineering masters student at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile Ife, Osun State, Nigeria. We talked about his education journey and current research endeavors using a robotic device to rehabilitate the hand of stroke patients. We discussed how his identity influences his research, and the intricacies of pursu...

A brain is very computationally efficient – you can look at a group of objects and your brain will instantly calculate the average features (size, orientation, etc). But how fast is this process – can it even be done with images that flash by so quickly you aren’t sure if you even saw them? To learn more, we interviewed Maria Servetnik, a Master’s student at the University of Leuven in Belgium who...

What do bumblebees and octopuses have in common? They’re both invertebrates - or as Dr. Yan Wang says, “the shiny and squishy things.” And what makes them different? Well, beyond the obvious, octopuses are extremely anti-social, while bumblebees depend on their societies to survive. In this episode, you’ll hear about Dr. Wang’s research on bees and how they get their roles in bee society plus a li...

Ever stepped on a Lego? Taken a fall during a sports match? Had an awful headache? Yeah, we have, too. Why are they all such awful experiences? Well, simply put, they all cause pain. But… what exactly is pain? In the first episode of our two-part mini-series on pain, we will hear from experts in the field of pain research: Dr. Allan Basbaum, Professor and Chair of the Department of Anatomy at UCSF...

How do our brains control reproduction (and eating, and sleeping, and drinking, and everything)? How do you submit your dissertation, get a PhD, move across the country, and join a new lab in the midst of a global pandemic without totally losing it? In this Young Scientist Spotlight, we talked with Dr. Katherine Hatcher to find out! This episode was produced by Celia Ford. Music used in this episo...

Science doesn't happen in a vacuum, and racism both in science and society contributes to disparities in the health outcomes of Black Americans. In this episode of The Spotlight, we talked to Dr. Debora Kamin Mukaz about her work studying how social factors and biology converge to affect risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Hear about her journey into epidemiology, and what doing this resear...

Are you tossing and turning all night? Well, what’s the secret to a good night’s sleep, anyway? And what really is the answer to Billie Eilish’s album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? In this episode, we talk to Dr. Ying-Hui Fu, a professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Fu has been researching sleep for decades, and her book Sleep to Th...

How do our brains know who’s boss? In this Young Scientist Spotlight, neuroscientist Dr. Nancy Padilla tells us how she studies social dominance in mice. In the process, she walks us through her journey from college in Puerto Rico to postdoctoral research in California, sharing lessons learned along the way. We can’t wait for you to meet this rising neuroscience star! This episode was produced by...

These days, homeopathy and some forms of alternative medicine fall soundly in the realm of pseudoscience. Not only that, but the wellness industry has capitalized on the popularity of these practices in predatory ways, selling promises of improved health with no evidence to back them up. In the United States, the marketing of these alternative ‘wellness’ products primarily targets women – evidence...

If you live in an earthquake-prone area, there's probably one question on your mind a lot of the time: when is the next big one going to hit? In this episode, we talk earthquake prediction with Dr. Barbara Romanowicz, a geophysicist at UC Berkeley and the former director of the Berkeley Seismology Lab. And while earthquake prediction is definitely important, our conversation revealed to us that th...

“You just do things differently and that's fine!” In the fifth Spotlight, UC Berkeley's Jen Pearlstein talks about her research on how stress affects decision making, how she's making mental health care more accessible, and being a disabled scientist. Find her on Twitter @JenPearlstein and check out her blog, Voicing Vulnerability at http://voicingvulnerability.blogspot.com/. For more of Jen's wri...

Artificial intelligence guides nearly every aspect of our lives: what TV shows we’re recommended, whose opinions we see on social media, what we buy, how we invest our money...the list is endless. But what does “artificial intelligence” mean? What do these algorithms know? If we could look inside a robot’s mind, would we see a reflection of ourselves? Dr. Dan Yamins, Dr. Kim Stachenfeld, and Dr. G...

Global Health in the Time of COVID is a miniseries from the Institute for Global Health Sciences at UCSF produced by Carry the One Radio. Each week, we speak to health experts at UCSF to learn more about them, their work, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed their practice and research. In this week's episode, we talk to Dr. Madhavi Dandu, a clinician and professor of medicine at UCSF who dir...

Global Health in the Time of COVID is a miniseries from the Institute for Global Health Sciences at UCSF produced by Carry the One Radio. Each week, we speak to health experts at UCSF to learn more about them, their work, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed their practice and research. In this week's episode, we talk to Alexandra Keir, Jane Fieldhouse, Dr. Lucia Abascal, and Maeve Forster, w...

Global Health in the Time of COVID is a miniseries from the Institute for Global Health Sciences at UCSF produced by Carry the One Radio. Each week, we speak to health experts at UCSF to learn more about them, their work, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed their practice and research. Our first episode features Dr. Kim Baltzell, a professor of nursing at UCSF and director of Global Action i...

For this fourth installment of “The Spotlight” we interviewed Jhia Jackson, who is a sociology PhD candidate at UCSF. We discussed her educational journey, current research on pediatric palliative and hospice care, her career as a professional dancer, being black at UCSF, cats, and ways to stay sane in grad school. This episode was written and produced by Stella Belonwu. Music from this episode wa...