This time it’s personal...

It may feel like 2Scientists has dropped off the face of the planet since our last release, so we wanted to check in and let you all know where we’re at.

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Our friends out for Oz Ismail’s recording in a pub in London. From left to right: Artem, Sukhy, Sarah and Edward.

Recording the first episode of Biology in Numbers. At the mics are: Heiko Enderling and Parmvir.

Kicking off season 2 of Cancer in our Community. From left to right: Ms. Valerie Goddard, Dr. Green, Topher Larkin, Kenisha Avery, Dr. Blue, Parmvir.

Catching up with 2Scientists friends. From left to right: Sukhy, David B, Parmvir, Anson and David A.

Listen:

The melancholic track “Someday We’ll Make It” comes courtesy of Chicago alt-country singer and songwriter Derek Clegg, thanks to a creative commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Find more of Derek’s work on Bandcamp: derekclegg.bandcamp.com.

Episode transcript

[Background intro music playing is “Someday We’ll Make It” by Derek Clegg]

Parmvir: Hello all, this is Parmvir here, dropping in for our more regular listeners who may have noticed our absence these last few months. Even then, this is not going to be one of our regular episodes since for one thing, there’s only one scientist on this occasion. That’d be me, in case you hadn’t figured it out. This is more of an explanation of our unexpected hiatus and to share what we’ve been during this time.

But yeah, this is the longest break we’ve taken since we first started recording almost 10 years ago (yes, I said 10 years! a mind-blowing fact that we’ll get back to later).

So I’d like to start by introducing my youngest sister Sukhy, who has regular cameos in our episodes asking questions, or in our photos as she comes to hang out for our recordings.

For anyone following me on my personal social media, you may have seen that she was diagnosed with breast cancer just before the pandemic hit. It would be an understatement to say how harrowing it was trying to keep up with her surgeries and treatments and trips to the hospital before we had the vaccine. She was lucky enough to make it through that ordeal to be discharged from oncology in March of 2022. Unfortunately, that lasted until August when she received a diagnosis of metastatic cancer after scans showed tumors in her liver and bones.

At this stage it is incurable - there is no going back to “cancer free”, so to help her work through this diagnosis, as scientists we’ve been drawing on our experience to read through the literature and speak to colleagues about her options, then keeping her informed. You could say that we’ve still been communicating science, just in a very concentrated, non-public and personalized way. Needless to say this has been taking a good chunk of our time and energy, but we couldn’t see ourselves doing anything less.

Not all of our distractions have been bad news though. In the process of recording 2Scientists, I seem to have attracted the attention of a couple of other organizations who are giving me actual money to produce podcasts for them. *whoop whoop.*

First this year I was asked by the Society for Mathematical Biology to help them produce a podcast for their members and a wider listening audience to learn more about math biology. For example how do you put those two subjects together? How can theoretical scientists inform real world biology? And more simply, what does it even mean to be an academic and/or scientist doing research?

We have a whole range of 2Scientists conversations with math biologists so if you want to learn more, go back and find: From Pikas to Politics with Nancy Huntley, The Math Epidemiologist, a COVID-19 special with Brandon Ogbunu, Mental health in Mandarin and modeling in Montreal with Julian Xue. Or you can go back and revisit recordings with two of David’s bosses, past and present: Peter Bentley and Sandy Anderson, one of our earliest guests!

Another project I was excited to be invited back to work on is for Moffitt Cancer Center and their Office of Community Outreach Engagement and Equity. I’m just starting to record the second season of Cancer in our Community, a podcast dedicated to informing the local community about how researchers and physicians at Moffitt are working to reduce racial health disparities in cancer care. In-keeping with our expansion into Spanish language podcasts, this series will also have two episodes in Spanish specifically about the disparities experienced by people living with cancer in the Hispanic community. As a member of the South Asian diaspora, I know that we too are profoundly underrepresented in scientific studies and clinical trials. So for obvious reasons, this podcast is very close to my heart.

If you’re interested in learning more, I’ve added a link to my website for Artha Science Media, my new company for freelance work in the show notes.

But enough about me, you’re here because you subscribe to 2Scientists, where I feel like huge apologies are owed to our last two guests Marvin and Pedro, whose recordings have been gathering digital dust for months now. Especially because we know you want to hear about flying drones with your brain, and creating bacteria from scratch! We loved speaking with them just like all the other scientists who have been so generous in sharing stories about their work with us. We enjoy it so much we’d do it even if we only had a handful of listeners. As it is, we’ve now past the mark for over half a million episodes downloads, HALF A MILLION! And we have you all to thank for that.

So we will get back to recording episodes with new guests. But in honor of our upcoming 10th anniversary, we’re also hoping to have some fun with different platforms to go back and visit our scientists from the past, as a “where are they now” kind of deal.

And as ridiculously ambitious as this sounds having just spent an entire podcast essentially talking about how overwhelmed we are, we’re also hoping to launch a tasty new project, so watch this space to learn more about that!

While you wait for all that though, this seems to be the point of the podcast where I’m obliged to tell you to subscribe if you don’t already do so. You are almost guaranteed to find us on your favorite platform.

If you like to see the photos from events, or read transcripts, go to our website: 2 (as in the number) scientists.org. Follow us on the socials! particularly instagram and youtube, where we’re hoping to create some new material for you.

Let me see, what else…oh yeah, subscribe to our mailing list. We may or may not remember to send you stuff, but that’ll just make it all the more tantalizing for you.

Alternatively get in touch to say hello! We’d love to hear from you. Just use the ever so convenient email address: hello@2scientists.org. In fact, if you message us to tell us what you like, let us know what your favorite episode is and why, or what you might want to learn more about, we will send you a free 2Scientists sticker or bookmark, or lets just go nuts here and say both!

Finally, nothing says “I love you” like a little monetary sumin sumin, so if you’re feeling generous and want to kickstart our next season of recordings, the show notes also include links for you to buy us a coffee or subscribe to our patreon where we only take your money when we make something that we think deserves it.

And I think that’s all for now. I hope this has reassured you all we’re still out here and still thinking about how to get back to business albeit at a pace that means we can look after ourselves and our families. We hope that you’re all taking care of yourselves, and getting your science fixes from other great sources.

Until we’re properly back with you, this is bye from me, Parmvir (and somewhere in the other room, David).

[musical outro]