Speaker 1: I'm TT and I'm Zakiah, and this is Dope Labs.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
Speaker 1: science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship. Okay,
Speaker 1: we got to jump into it because a lot has
Speaker 1: been happening in the education and research space.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, on June fourth of this year, so twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, Trump issued a proclamation suspending the entry of
Speaker 1: international students to Harvard for six months, and he cited
Speaker 1: what he's calling national security concerns and non compliance with
Speaker 1: federal information requests regarding foreign students' activities.
Speaker 3: And the president of Harvard says that's nonsense.
Speaker 1: And people just think that's undergrad but that's graduate students
Speaker 1: and postdocs, okay, And Harvard's just the headline for now.
Speaker 1: But last month, the White House froze two hundred ten
Speaker 1: million dollars in Princeton's grants, and within days we saw
Speaker 1: Columbia pen Brown, you know, all the other IVY leagues,
Speaker 1: we saw half billion dollar funding holes on all of
Speaker 1: their funding for ideological non compliance or.
Speaker 3: What they say is ideological non compliance.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: All this weird, right, this feels like to me, I know,
Speaker 1: beef when I see and this feels like beef. Absolutelyef, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, the Department of Homeland Security is saying this
Speaker 1: is a national security issue and is accusing Harvard of
Speaker 1: everything from anti Semitism to like being in bed with
Speaker 1: the Chinese Communist Party, and a federal judge is already
Speaker 1: hit pause on this. But the message is loud and messy.
Speaker 1: It is definitely beef. And the hit list is not
Speaker 1: just on the education side, it's on the agency side too.
Speaker 1: So we've seen budget slashes to NIH, CDC, NSLF SO
Speaker 1: anywhere from forty to sixty seven percent overnight sometimes. So
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if you are a biologist at Hopkins
Speaker 1: or a grad student at MIT, or a postoc like
Speaker 1: you were saying, Zakiya, the message is the same, and
Speaker 1: that feeds straight into today's big conversation on the impacts
Speaker 1: of these cuts. This is a great place to jump
Speaker 1: into the recitation. So let's start there. What do we
Speaker 1: know tt Well, we know these executive orders and cuts
Speaker 1: are coming fast and furious.
Speaker 3: It feels like every day there's something new.
Speaker 1: It's almost disorienting because every day a new cut happens
Speaker 1: or a new regulation comes out and it's just like
Speaker 1: what is going on?
Speaker 3: You can barely keep up with the news.
Speaker 1: And I think what's interesting is that some of this,
Speaker 1: I guess feels illegal, but we know that there is
Speaker 1: some legal ground that the administration has and that they're
Speaker 1: clinging to that gives the president the right to do all.
Speaker 2: Of this stuff, right.
Speaker 1: But we also know that folks are not taking this
Speaker 1: lying down and people are actively suing the administration to
Speaker 1: try and block these up. So that's what we know.
Speaker 1: But what do we want to know about what's going on?
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the different agencies and how
Speaker 1: the cuts will impact our day today lives, because I
Speaker 1: know it will.
Speaker 2: Yes, it definitely does.
Speaker 1: And I am seeing right now a lot of scientists, students,
Speaker 1: you know, I do a lot of work with students
Speaker 1: that I'm following. They're saying, do I need to change fields?
Speaker 1: I'm in the sciences. Do I need to move to
Speaker 1: another country? So I want to know more about the
Speaker 1: brain drain? But what that means for scholars in America?
Speaker 1: What does that mean for America's collective brain? I'd love
Speaker 1: that question, and I want to know if there are
Speaker 1: any other cuts that we can expect, like what are
Speaker 1: the tea leaves saying?
Speaker 3: Can we anticipate some of these things?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. And the biggest question for me is figuring
Speaker 1: out what we can do to help fight the good
Speaker 1: fight against misinformation and still champion research, innovation and diversity
Speaker 1: of thought that we know is so important and that's
Speaker 1: important to us. That's what Dope Labs is all about.
Speaker 1: We love the science of everything and we know how
Speaker 1: important it is for our collective global community. So with that,
Speaker 1: I think we're ready to jump into the dissection. We
Speaker 1: are so excited to have our guests in our new
Speaker 1: very smart friend, doctor Chelsea Clinton, to help us navigate
Speaker 1: this rarefied air.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 4: I'm doctor Chose Clinton. I'm the vice chair of the
Speaker 4: Clinton Foundation.
Speaker 5: I've also been really lucky to teach a lot of classes.
Speaker 4: At the Family School of Public Health.
Speaker 6: At Columbia, have written a number of books invest in
Speaker 6: founders that are trying to help our world be healthier
Speaker 6: and more sustainable.
Speaker 1: So I think where we want to start with is
Speaker 1: setting the stage for what research touches in our society.
Speaker 1: Because science is under attack and it's in the headlines
Speaker 1: a lot. Can you speak broadly about how research shapes
Speaker 1: how we experience our world.
Speaker 5: Oh my goodness, TD, what has research not shaped?
Speaker 4: We're together here on Zoom, facilitated by computers and the
Speaker 4: Internet and electricity.
Speaker 5: These are all products research.
Speaker 4: We have medicine, whether we're thinking about vaccines that are, yes,
Speaker 4: the product of lots and lots of research to hopefully
Speaker 4: prevent us from getting sick. And it's terrible allergy season
Speaker 4: right now. I'm so thankful to allergy medicine and the
Speaker 4: research that produced it, so I'm not constantly like teary
Speaker 4: eyed and coughing and sneezing from the moment I wake up.
Speaker 4: I have three kids and they're all obsessed without our space.
Speaker 4: And we got to go to Cape Canaveral last year
Speaker 4: on a family trip, and I'll never forget when we
Speaker 4: were just like on a regular amazing tour and saw
Speaker 4: the control room where scientists and other folks had been
Speaker 4: stationed when we first sent a man to the moon,
Speaker 4: and our tour guide either told us or it was
Speaker 4: on a plaque that there's more computing power now in
Speaker 4: an iPhone than there was in that entire room back
Speaker 4: in nineteen sixty nine, or like my kids can't believe
Speaker 4: we used to get lost.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like they're so surprised.
Speaker 4: Like when I talk about like when Grandma and pop
Speaker 4: Up and I would go on trips and we would drive.
Speaker 4: Often we'd go to Atlanta and drive to South Carolina,
Speaker 4: and sometimes we would take purposeful side adventures, and sometimes
Speaker 4: we would take accidental side adventures and we would have
Speaker 4: to stop and.
Speaker 5: Ask re directions. Like they can't get over that.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, I know, we didn't have maps on
Speaker 4: phone in our pockets.
Speaker 1: They've never seen a map quest print out.
Speaker 5: Right, like not Lattice West. It's like research anyway. Research.
Speaker 1: Yes, my niece and nephew don't understand commercials. They're used
Speaker 1: to everything being on demand.
Speaker 5: Yes, converged, isn't it funny?
Speaker 1: And I think that brings up like when you talk
Speaker 1: about just how leaving your home and choosing Google Maps
Speaker 1: or Apple Maps to take you from point A to
Speaker 1: point B. First of all, some people are getting lost
Speaker 1: with that. And can you imagine traveling in space with
Speaker 1: less technology? Going to space with less technology than that
Speaker 1: is wild to me. But I think these research initiatives
Speaker 1: that lead to products and tangible things that materially change
Speaker 1: how we exist, how we interact with one another. I
Speaker 1: think the thing that people sometimes separate from researchers.
Speaker 2: They're like, oh, that's innovation or technology, but.
Speaker 1: It takes so much, it takes so many resources. I
Speaker 1: think about how these huge institutions like the National Institute
Speaker 1: of Health, the FDA, the CDC, these are huge pillars
Speaker 1: in our national society, but globally what as well, And
Speaker 1: I think it's important for people to understand why we
Speaker 1: need these huge research institutions.
Speaker 4: We absolutely need the National Institutes of Health and the
Speaker 4: other parts of our public health infrastructure and ecosystem in
Speaker 4: our country. I think not only about the National in
Speaker 4: Suits of Health and all of the extraordinary research that
Speaker 4: it has supported over the years to help on everything
Speaker 4: from enabling the first sequencing of the human genome right.
Speaker 1: Yes, the human genome project was huge and from nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety to basically two thousand and three a long time
Speaker 1: scientists were working to give us the full genome of
Speaker 1: a human, but also other organisms that we used to
Speaker 1: understand human conditions and science. So you coline that bacteria
Speaker 1: Baker's yeast, sacromic Sarah visit sounded like Harry pottersmatos yes,
Speaker 1: and mice just a couple episodes ago, we were talking
Speaker 1: about fat studies understanding fat metabolism in mice that wouldn't
Speaker 1: be possible without the Human Genail Project.
Speaker 4: Which was a lot of work that was made possible
Speaker 4: because of NIH funding. To everything that we're still learning
Speaker 4: about cancer, to all that we thankfully do know about allergies,
Speaker 4: to all the vital work that's being done on mental health,
Speaker 4: which historically hasn't received the funding that would be merited
Speaker 4: if we just think about all of the mental health
Speaker 4: challenges across our population. Overdose deaths dropped last year for
Speaker 4: the first time in decades and dropped, and I think
Speaker 4: this is right. Forty eight out of fifty states, I
Speaker 4: think only two states had an increase in overdose death.
Speaker 4: So much of what we know about how to help
Speaker 4: prevent addiction use disorders, treat addiction use disorders, save someone's
Speaker 4: life so that they can get into treatment.
Speaker 1: Narcan the nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose.
Speaker 4: And I think what you said before is just so
Speaker 4: spot on, Like people think of it as innovation or discovery,
Speaker 4: like these other words are so closely linked to research,
Speaker 4: but may not always be understood as such.
Speaker 1: Just thinking of the impact that research has had in
Speaker 1: the ways that you were saying, cancer research, allergy research,
Speaker 1: all of these things that totally progress us are now
Speaker 1: being impacted. We saw that a leaked budget pass back
Speaker 1: shows that of NIH is going to get cut and
Speaker 1: then forty four percent to the CDC. Can you speak
Speaker 1: about how losses on that scale have a ripple effect
Speaker 1: through biomedical discovery and the public health safety Net?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think TD I also saw that leak budget,
Speaker 4: I guess about a month ago now, and I think
Speaker 4: we can think about this in a number of ways,
Speaker 4: and I think they're all super critical for people to understand.
Speaker 4: And I will say too, like I also am a
Speaker 4: believer in efficiency, but efficiency generally means doing more with
Speaker 4: the same amount or trying to have even better outcomes
Speaker 4: with the same amount of money.
Speaker 5: It's not getting rid of things wholesale.
Speaker 4: And we know through multiple research efforts that for every
Speaker 4: dollar that the NH has invested, many many times that
Speaker 4: amount is generated through how those research innovations and discoveries
Speaker 4: get commercialized in ANH case, often with medical device companies
Speaker 4: or pharmaceutical companies. And I think what also often isn't
Speaker 4: well understood, is yes, of course, like that those innovations
Speaker 4: and help save so many lives, help really disrupt diseases
Speaker 4: that have beleaguered humanity for not only thousands, but sometimes
Speaker 4: millions of years. But it's also about all of the
Speaker 4: jobs that are supported through those research grants. The NIH,
Speaker 4: I think, over the last handful of years, has supported
Speaker 4: research funding and more than two thousand academic institutions and
Speaker 4: hospitals through small research partners. You think about all of
Speaker 4: the jobs that are supported directly by those research grants
Speaker 4: in laboratories, but also the people who work in those buildings,
Speaker 4: then the people who work in the coffee shops or
Speaker 4: the restaurants or the bars, where the people who work
Speaker 4: in those buildings then spend time before after work, where
Speaker 4: those people's children go to school. And so it's really,
Speaker 4: I think purposefully in a wonderful way that NIH has
Speaker 4: really been the National Institutes of Health and recognize that
Speaker 4: super smart researchers are in institutions big and small, in
Speaker 4: like every corner of our country, and that their potential,
Speaker 4: their ideas, they're hoped for discoveries and innovations merit being funded.
Speaker 4: After of course going through a super rigorous process to
Speaker 4: assess which among those really deserve the dollars.
Speaker 5: In any given year.
Speaker 4: So TD, it's really just it's not only catastrophic for
Speaker 4: what we won't discover to help keep all of us healthier,
Speaker 4: it's what we then won't create in terms of wealth
Speaker 4: because we're not having those companies created, or people who
Speaker 4: are healthier who can then go to work for longer.
Speaker 4: It's also about all of the people whose lives are
Speaker 4: being currently disrupted or who are worried that their lives
Speaker 4: are going to be disrupted because of interruptions and funding.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, this is a great point because when we're thinking
Speaker 1: about research, sometimes folks think of this as people in
Speaker 1: lab coats, but there's an entire infrastructure that supports those
Speaker 1: folks and their equipments. There's industries and jobs outside of
Speaker 1: research that will be impacted by funding cuts. And because
Speaker 1: of this, we're seeing a lot of scientists choosing to
Speaker 1: take their talents to South Beach like Lebron And when
Speaker 1: I say South Beach, I don't mean Miami. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about outside of the United States.
Speaker 5: Countries are actively recruiting our scientists.
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm sure that you both have a lot of
Speaker 4: friends like I have friends who've gotten job offers from
Speaker 4: literally all over the world. The European Union is setting
Speaker 4: aside hundredsivillions of dollars. Individual countries are setting aside like
Speaker 4: ten civilians or hundreds civilions of dollars. Some countries have
Speaker 4: whole new departments that have sprung up, yes, to try
Speaker 4: to recruit American scientists. It's very hard for me to
Speaker 4: reconcile the we're going to make America grade again while
Speaker 4: we are actively undermining part of what has made America
Speaker 4: grade again, which is like the many decades long partnership
Speaker 4: between the public sector and the private sector, between academic
Speaker 4: institutions and private industry, between people who work in labs
Speaker 4: and then those who build companies off of the research
Speaker 4: that those labs generate. And that's part of what hasn't
Speaker 4: made our country healthier and more sustainable and wealthier. And
Speaker 4: I don't think it's an accident that now you have
Speaker 4: so many countries trying to recruit away our best scientists.
Speaker 4: And also, as we saw in our recent Nature report,
Speaker 4: the three quarters of them were thinking about leaving.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: I talked to someone who was in public health, and
Speaker 1: she was saying, what happens to my field if we're
Speaker 1: not tracking what's happening. She was working on maternal health
Speaker 1: and infant Oh.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because we got rid of the pregnancy Risk Assessment monitoring.
Speaker 2: Success and so she was the less than is the eighties.
Speaker 4: And a couple of weeks after Trump took office, we
Speaker 4: didn't publish something called the Weekly Morbidity Immortality Report, which
Speaker 4: I know sounds super wonky and probably a lot of
Speaker 4: people listening to like, what is that and why should
Speaker 4: it care? Well, we had published it every week in America,
Speaker 4: including through multiple wars. After the tragedy of the terrorist
Speaker 4: attacks on nine to eleven, the CDC had published that
Speaker 4: every week since the early nineteen sixties, and then we
Speaker 4: just didn't And.
Speaker 5: Now we're back to publishing it.
Speaker 4: But it just shows you how much we've taken for
Speaker 4: granted that we have a government that, through different presidential administrations,
Speaker 4: even through the first Dump administration, that had a real
Speaker 4: commitment to tracking the public health and wellbeing of Americans.
Speaker 4: How many people got sick with bird flu this week?
Speaker 4: How many people died from gun violence? What are the
Speaker 4: rising rates of depression or cancer? What are the questions
Speaker 4: and we should be asking from shift's immortality, how many
Speaker 4: people have died and morbidity, how many people may have
Speaker 4: gotten sick or injured, and we just like didn't do that.
Speaker 4: And in fact, multiple data sets have now been taken down,
Speaker 4: which of course makes it harder. Back to the theme
Speaker 4: of research for researchers, including can you imagine when you
Speaker 4: were like applying to PhD programs. If you're like, oh,
Speaker 4: I think I want to do this. I know the
Speaker 4: government tracks all this data and anything from food safety,
Speaker 4: water safety to cancer rates. You're like, I go to
Speaker 4: this website to check this government data. Worse, then all
Speaker 4: of a sudden it's not there, gone gone, And.
Speaker 1: The Morbidity and Mortality report allows us to find out
Speaker 1: what's going on in the United States. I can recall
Speaker 1: reading this back in maybe it was April or May,
Speaker 1: but there was one of the newsletters that said, hey,
Speaker 1: people are doing these procedures at this medical spa, and
Speaker 1: now we realize this was a source of HIV because
Speaker 1: of how they were doing this needle procedure a beauty spot. Okay,
Speaker 1: in order to figure these things out what's happening, you
Speaker 1: have to have somebody that's tracking and surveilling, which is
Speaker 1: what some of our major centers do.
Speaker 4: Proposed cuts for the centers for disease control, Well, certainly
Speaker 4: we can our outbreak surveillance and responsiveness. And I do
Speaker 4: take quite seriously the people who are part of the
Speaker 4: Trump administration who are committed, as they say, you make
Speaker 4: America healthy. But I struggle given other parts of the
Speaker 4: administration are so supportive of the cuts to NIH research funding,
Speaker 4: including on chronic disease. Of the cuts that have already
Speaker 4: been levied against multiple universities are inclusive of cardio metabolic
Speaker 4: health broadly diabetes in particular. I also struggle because the
Speaker 4: EPA cuts will make it much harder to enforce clean
Speaker 4: water and clean air regulations. There's also been rumors that
Speaker 4: they may clawback some of the rules and guidelines around
Speaker 4: how much chemical effluent can be released into water as
Speaker 4: industrial wastewater, and so I also don't want there to
Speaker 4: be artificial red and yellow food dye and our food.
Speaker 4: And I also recognize that we need to do a
Speaker 4: better job of helping all of us understand the importance
Speaker 4: of things that all our grandmothers probably new intuitively and
Speaker 4: we seem to have forgotten, like go outside when you
Speaker 4: can get a good night's sleep, like drink a lot
Speaker 4: of water, eat a balanced meal. And yet it's just
Speaker 4: it's impossible for me to reconcile that with the cuts
Speaker 4: to funding around how best to help people do that,
Speaker 4: with the proposed cuts that are currently being debated now
Speaker 4: in Congress to supplemental nutritional benefits making it harder for
Speaker 4: low income Americans to be able to afford healthy food,
Speaker 4: harder to think we're going to urge people to go outside,
Speaker 4: but the air quality is going to be worse, and
Speaker 4: DAN and.
Speaker 1: All of those things compound, and it also makes me
Speaker 1: think about, you know, we are freshly off of a pandemic,
Speaker 1: all of that research that is trying to be done
Speaker 1: to understand long term effects of having COVID, some folks
Speaker 1: that are still suffering with long COVID and just understanding
Speaker 1: COVID as a virus itself. And you have someone in
Speaker 1: an administration, You have a cabinet that does not believe
Speaker 1: in vaccines. You have folks that are in charge of
Speaker 1: our health and safety who just don't believe in certain things,
Speaker 1: and that will have a negative impact on all of us. Chelsea,
Speaker 1: you talk about brain drain a lot and brain drain
Speaker 1: is the migration of highly skilled, highly educated, and professionally
Speaker 1: specialized people from one place to another where their talents
Speaker 1: are needed, or to another where their talents are respected
Speaker 1: and that get better pay, research funding, political stability, quality
Speaker 1: of life, or career prospects. I want to know what
Speaker 1: you think about brain drain for the United States or
Speaker 1: the possibility of it coming up really soon.
Speaker 4: So the United States has been, and I don't think
Speaker 4: this is a controversial statement, truly has been the envy
Speaker 4: of the world from a research and scientific knowledge production
Speaker 4: capacity perspective. And that's been true for a few reasons.
Speaker 4: One the strength of our universities. Partly that strength, of
Speaker 4: course has been catalyzed and then supported by research investments
Speaker 4: through our universities, partly because of our student visa program,
Speaker 4: which is also under threat. And so for great students
Speaker 4: from anywhere with great ideas who got into a great
Speaker 4: American university, that there were pathways for them than to
Speaker 4: be able to come here and study. And then on
Speaker 4: the other side that we have whole countries, not even
Speaker 4: just like academic institutions and other parts of the world,
Speaker 4: but whole countries like France, in Denmarket, Singapore, China, many
Speaker 4: of them saying we would love to have you come
Speaker 4: here and do your work on log COVID, on depression,
Speaker 4: on diabetes, on high risk pregnancies, and Alzheimer's, all of
Speaker 4: these areas that we know at least some people, particularly
Speaker 4: in the institutions that have been targeted, including Harvard Columbia,
Speaker 4: Johns Hopkins and others, you have had their work stopped.
Speaker 5: And so I think the brain drain risk is very real.
Speaker 4: While we are cutting back many billions of dollars, and
Speaker 4: we are telling our scientists today and our future scientists
Speaker 4: that we have disdain for.
Speaker 5: Your expertise, and we don't believe your expertise.
Speaker 4: We're going to make you continually prove your expertise, and
Speaker 4: we're gonna have an uncertain regulatory environment.
Speaker 5: And then you have China is an exception saying actually
Speaker 5: we're going to invest a trillion dollars.
Speaker 4: We're going to invest trillion dollars in new science over
Speaker 4: I think it was the next decade. So you have
Speaker 4: some countries like, all right, hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 4: and China be like, actually a trillion dollars, and we're like,
Speaker 4: we're just we're just going to like lop Off, like
Speaker 4: tens of billions of dollars, and I don't think anything
Speaker 4: about that is efficient.
Speaker 5: I think that it is actually profoundly inefficient.
Speaker 1: We also saw that the Association of American Medical Colleges
Speaker 1: is saying that by twenty thirty six, we will be
Speaker 1: short eighty six thousand physicians. Eighty six thousand. This is
Speaker 1: real major impact on literally everyone. I think of the
Speaker 1: people because we've done an episode on maternal health where
Speaker 1: we were talking about folks who were in like basically
Speaker 1: health deserts where they had to travel very, very far
Speaker 1: to see a doctor. Now reduce a number of doctors
Speaker 1: that are available even more. We are going to see
Speaker 1: that people will not have a good quality of life,
Speaker 1: people will die, will be more sick. America is not
Speaker 1: going to be a healthy, happy place where people can thrive.
Speaker 1: And we'll see that probably on the coasts there will
Speaker 1: be more doctors there, but the middle of America will
Speaker 1: suffer the most.
Speaker 4: I'm from Arkansas originally, and in Arkansas, more than thirty
Speaker 4: percent of women in Arkansas live more than two hours
Speaker 4: from anything that could be considered like women's healthcare, and
Speaker 4: so that also is a painful part of this conversation too,
Speaker 4: because we think about all of the innovations made possible
Speaker 4: by research for things like at home testing or where
Speaker 4: telehealth could be really powerful to help close care gaps.
Speaker 4: But what will the next generation of all those innovations
Speaker 4: be if we don't have research to try to continue
Speaker 4: to improve upon them and to continue to push them forward.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: And TD again, I know we talked about the data
Speaker 4: sets earlier, but Texas and Georgia have said they're no
Speaker 4: longer going to share maternal health data and now if
Speaker 4: we don't have the federal government provide it was ongoing
Speaker 4: of surveillance function that it had been doing again I
Speaker 4: think since the nineteen eighties. It's also just going to
Speaker 4: be well impossible to hold people accountable for either policy
Speaker 4: decisions or practice decisions that could lead to women dying
Speaker 4: while pregnant or in childbirth or postpartum. It also, though,
Speaker 4: then makes it much harder, if not impossible, to purpose
Speaker 4: research into the areas where we should be investing. Yes, dollars,
Speaker 4: but also the people like the two of you, who
Speaker 4: are looking to do something to help save more women
Speaker 4: who are pregnant or giving further postpartum because they won't
Speaker 4: necessarily know what they've died from, right, so they won't
Speaker 4: know what indications to investigate.
Speaker 1: I think there are so many things it feels almost
Speaker 1: insidious because we are losing the tracking, We're losing the surveillance,
Speaker 1: the ability to see what's coming. We're losing the strength
Speaker 1: to fight anything once it arrives. And I think we
Speaker 1: want to consider these are decisions being made, but what
Speaker 1: I don't want us to lose is both hope and
Speaker 1: agency and ability to act.
Speaker 2: Absolutely when we think.
Speaker 1: About standing in the face of calls that are coming
Speaker 1: from far away, and some people are choosing to privately
Speaker 1: maintain things. I'm hearing about citizen science efforts, I'm hearing
Speaker 1: about a lot of community things that are happening. While
Speaker 1: we might not be able to stop funding cuts and
Speaker 1: talent flight, there may be other things that we, as
Speaker 1: people with platforms, our listeners, as people with platforms and communities,
Speaker 1: can do to push back against the negative rhetoric we
Speaker 1: hear around science and research and even how they might
Speaker 1: engage people in their day to day lives.
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, well, I would say one they are probably
Speaker 4: as many right answers as there are are people listening,
Speaker 4: like we each know, like our families are our communities best.
Speaker 4: I do think at a kind of at a community,
Speaker 4: at a state level, I would certainly urge all of
Speaker 4: us to know what is happening in our communities and
Speaker 4: our states when it relates to research. There are states
Speaker 4: that very much are who have taken action against the
Speaker 4: Trump administration. In some of these areas, there are universities
Speaker 4: who've taken action against the Trump administration, effectively saying, oh,
Speaker 4: you can't stop paying for work that you committed to
Speaker 4: pay for, like these grants or contracts, like this is illegal.
Speaker 5: I think it's channeling my grandmother again here.
Speaker 4: Like the discipline of gratitude I think matters, Like saying
Speaker 4: thank you and like we're so grateful and we're standing
Speaker 4: with you.
Speaker 5: I think matters.
Speaker 4: I think only thirty nine states have currently the ability
Speaker 4: to assess even some level of food safety. If you're
Speaker 4: in one of the eleven states where that's not true,
Speaker 4: you should probably know that about calling actually not only
Speaker 4: your governor and state legislature, but probably you're senator and
Speaker 4: congress people too, if that's something you're concerned about.
Speaker 5: So I just think You're so right. These have to
Speaker 5: be such localized efforts.
Speaker 4: And I think even one of the things I do
Speaker 4: with our kids, and I don't know if this is
Speaker 4: helpful for other people who might be parents or who
Speaker 4: have small humans in their lives, they do try to
Speaker 4: help my kids understand like there really is science all
Speaker 4: around us, right, and so whether that is there just
Speaker 4: amazement that we have maps in our pockets, or it's
Speaker 4: the multivitamin that they take with breakfast in the morning,
Speaker 4: that really science is all around us, and that means
Speaker 4: like research is all around us. And I hope that
Speaker 4: then helps them, whether they grow up to be scientists
Speaker 4: or not, understand and just the incalculable debt that we
Speaker 4: owe to the many generations of people who have had
Speaker 4: such profound optimism, which I think science is to believe
Speaker 4: that there's more to know and more to understand, and
Speaker 4: more to do to try to help keep our world
Speaker 4: healthier and safer and full of even more wonder.
Speaker 1: That's one of me and the Key's favorite things to say.
Speaker 1: We say science is in everything in science is for everybody,
Speaker 1: and so everything you're saying that just speaks to our heart.
Speaker 1: We firmly believe in continuing to educate yourself and don't
Speaker 1: shut up.
Speaker 3: That was the takeaway.
Speaker 1: Keep talking, keep talk, learning more, talking about what you've learned,
Speaker 1: and making sure that we are holding folks accountable and
Speaker 1: saying no, that is not true.
Speaker 2: This is what we need.
Speaker 3: These are the things that we require when we live
Speaker 3: in this country. It is our right to ask for
Speaker 3: those things.
Speaker 1: It is our right to demand more from our governments,
Speaker 1: and so we should not be quiet, turn up our marketphone.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 4: And also the Trump administration saying they're no longer going
Speaker 4: to prove the COVID vaccine for healthy kids and adults.
Speaker 5: Also call it the hypocrisy.
Speaker 4: Like you say, in one side, you think parents should
Speaker 4: have vaccine choice, and now you're saying to parents that
Speaker 4: we don't have vaccine choice.
Speaker 2: Right. The math isn't mathing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that math doesn't math like that is not that
Speaker 5: is not reconcilable.
Speaker 1: The more we talk about these things help people frame them,
Speaker 1: because you don't always get to put these pieces of information.
Speaker 2: First of all, there's so much coming out day to
Speaker 2: day you don't get to and.
Speaker 5: That's on purpose.
Speaker 4: To write the chaos and the there was like a
Speaker 4: brief period a few weeks ago where the trumpstration proposed
Speaker 4: like cutting all like pet food safety regulation, and then
Speaker 4: a few days later there was a salmonella outbreak in
Speaker 4: pet food and so then they were like, oh, wait, no,
Speaker 4: we maybe need this people, because there is such a
Speaker 4: barrage that I think is purposeful to force a response.
Speaker 4: And then also the barrage is partly fueled by whatever
Speaker 4: the reversals are to what had been said, sometimes even
Speaker 4: earlier that same day.
Speaker 1: So's the goal is not to get disoriented, to stay
Speaker 1: the course, pick a topic.
Speaker 5: Yep, and understand what's real and not real. Yep.
Speaker 1: This has been such an important conversation and one that
Speaker 1: I think puts a lot of context around how these
Speaker 1: cuts will impact all of our lives. Yes, I think
Speaker 1: what you said at the n Chelsea is crucial. Don't
Speaker 1: let the disorienting nature of the news quiet you. Yes,
Speaker 1: we have to stay the course. We have to keep
Speaker 1: educating ourselves so no one can pull the wool over
Speaker 1: our eyes, and we can't stop calling out the lies
Speaker 1: and hypocrisy. We have our marching orders. We know what
Speaker 1: we have to do, and so me and Zekiah will
Speaker 1: continue to yell into these mics. You can find us
Speaker 1: on X and Instagram at Dope Labs podcast, tt is
Speaker 1: on X and Instagram, at dr Underscore t Sho, and
Speaker 1: you can find Zakiya at z said So.
Speaker 2: Dope Labs is a production of Lamanada Media.
Speaker 1: Our senior supervising producer is Kristin Lapour and our associate
Speaker 1: producer is Issara Savez. Dope Labs is sound design, edited
Speaker 1: and mixed by James Farber. Lamanada Media's Vice President of
Speaker 1: Partnerships and Production is Jackie Danziger. Executive producer from iHeart
Speaker 1: podcast is Katrina Norvil.
Speaker 2: Marketing lead is Alison Kanter.
Speaker 1: Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex
Speaker 1: sudi Ura, with additional music by Elijah Harvey. Dope Lab
Speaker 1: is executive produced by US T T Show Dia and
Speaker 1: Zakia Wattley.