Socializing with Scientists
Socializing with Scientists presents the untold stories of immunologists, neuroscientists, environmental chemists, and more, recounting how their early life built their current life, and sharing what they do now to make the world a better place. And how do they define success, anyway? Listen to find out the surprising secrets of curious people.
https://socializingwithscientists.com/
Our music is called "Discussion," and was composed by Folk Acoustic.
Episodes
29 episodes
Katie McMahon considers humidity's effect on babies' growth (she's a human environment geographer)
Katie was a curious, hard-working kid, but it wasn't until her freshman year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that she found her calling. That year, she happened to be placed in two geography classes, and her career trajectory...
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Season 2
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Episode 13
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46:55
Brian Walsh peers at Earth from the moon (he's a space physicist)
To prepare for the moment his telescope landed on the moon, Brian read sports psychology books. "You're not going to read Kepler or Isaac Newton [to learn] about how to deal with high pressure situations," he said. It turned out he didn't actua...
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Season 2
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Episode 12
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1:04:40
Sarah Kugel brings science to a small town (she's the director of a nature center)
Sarah Kugel grew up smashing pokeweed berries to make her own paint and assembling intricate habitats for garter snakes. She was a kid who loved nature, and, when she went to college, s...
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Season 2
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Episode 11
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37:44
Happy Thanksgiving!
I'm thankful for all of you, and for the scientists who make this podcast possible! I hope you have a relaxing and peaceful Thanksgiving.If you'd like to email us with comments or suggestions, we'd love to hear them at socializingw...
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Season 2
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Episode 10
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3:33
Brad Nelson makes tiny robots that deliver medicine to the body (he's an engineer)
Brad grew up in small town Illinois, playing outside all summer, building go-karts and tree houses in the woods. He went to the University of Illinois to study engineering and Carnegie Mellon for robotics. Later, he shrunk his focus: he began b...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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59:42
Melissa Harrison explores the foundations of human life, in fruit flies (she's a biologist)
Melissa was born into a family of scientists, but she always wanted to be a historian. As she grew up, however, she realized that science allowed her to satisfy her infinite curiosity and desire for discovery, and so she "went into the family b...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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52:07
Case van Genuchten turns arsenic waste into a valuable raw material (he's an environmental engineer)
Case was a regular California kid: he skateboarded, he surfed, and he also liked math. He tried a few different majors in college, but finally found his calling: environmental engineering. He went to graduate school, and a lucky encounter durin...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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1:12:13
Cassia Low Manting observes the brain on music (she's a neuroscientist)
Ever since she was a little girl, Cassia has loved playing the piano. Her mother made sure she had music lessons, and Cassia felt like she was fulfilling her mother's dream learning the instrument. But she also loved science and mat...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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49:05
Charlotte Stagg reaches deep into the brain using ultrasound (she's a neuroscientist)
Charlie grew up in England, surrounded by books. At age 11, she declared that she wanted to be a research scientist. When she was a teenager, however, she started gravitating towards helping people more directly and went to medical school at ag...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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55:45
Bradley Smith watches dingos, and also Bluey (he's a comparative psychologist)
Bradley grew up in suburban Australia, fascinated by the scientists in movies like Jurassic Park. He also eagerly read biographies and memoirs, and his love of animals and people soon grew into a successful career as a comparative psyc...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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56:30
Samuel Dicken ponders ultraprocessed food (he's a clinical scientist)
As a child, Samuel enjoyed eating "potato smileys" and "turkey dinosaurs," even though most of his meals were homemade. As he grew up, he played sports and became interested in optimizing his nutrition to improve performance. But his first day ...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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51:34
Fadi Lakkis is a kidney match-maker (he's a physician scientist)
Fadi Lakkis grew up in Lebanon during a time of political unrest, which led him to perpetually question the world around him. Once he became a nephrologist with a speciality in immunology and transplantation, this questioning pushed him to do b...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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1:13:58
Allison Brager helps soldiers survive, and thrive (she's a U.S. Army neurobiologist and sleep scientist)
Allison grew up during a tumultuous time in a city bruised by crime. Playing sports helped secure a kid's reputation, so she focused on athletics, eventually becoming the first female pole-vaulter in the state of Ohio. Division I universities r...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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53:05
August Update!
We have several great episodes in the works! I can't wait to share them, starting in September.
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Season 1
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Episode 16
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1:07
Lidya Yurdum studies whether singing helps babies feel good (she's a social psychologist)
Raised in a bilingual household in Istanbul, Lidya had lots of questions. She was keenly interested in people, and, on top of that, wondered things like, does her personality change when she speaks a different language? This led to her pursuing...
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Season 1
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Episode 15
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52:32
Katie Amato wonders what it means to be human (she's a biological anthropologist)
As a child, Katie thrived in her suburban Chicago backyard, reading The Boxcar Children and leading her little brother on adventures. A second grade unit on Jane Goodall cemented her curi...
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Season 1
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Episode 14
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57:50
Jenna Alley finds the good in parents (she’s a developmental health psychologist)
Jenna was never really interested in school. She loved theater and the arts, but academically, she struggled. She had dyslexia, and "always felt like I was failing...never thought I was very smart," she said.It wasn't until her sop...
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Season 1
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Episode 13
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55:50
Shannon Curry is in charge of a spacecraft orbiting Mars (she’s a planetary scientist)
The first time she looked through a telescope, Shannon lost her breath. A self-proclaimed "science camp kid," she learned early that she wanted to do research, and that space would be her subject.
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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36:58
Scott MacIvor wants people to enjoy green spaces in cities (he's an urban ecologist)
When he was a child in Kitchener, Ontario, Scott MacIvor would go on urban walks with his mom. He had a bucket, and was allowed to bring home one piece of nature each day: a snake, or a bumblebee, a caterpillar. He loved examining them all....
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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1:05:37
Heather Mefford hunts down unruly genes (she’s a human geneticist)
When she was a kid in Iowa, Heather didn't know what she wanted to be when she grew up. She loved solving problems and adored science and math, and when she went to college, she majored in chemical engineering. Then she had an internship: it so...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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55:34
SUMMER 2025 UPDATE!
The first eight episodes of Socializing with Scientists Season 1 have been a blast! Next Wednesday we'll publish another interview, but this week we're taking a little breather. I wanted to talk about what's coming up, to say thank you to the s...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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6:57
Scott Krayenhoff helps hot cities cool off (he's an urban climatologist)
Scott has always been a deep thinker. Dinner table conversations on his family's homestead on Vancouver Island instilled in him a strong environmental ethic, and a love for math and science pushed him to excel in college.But when a profe...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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1:01:52
Jan Gogarten is searching for the next deadly germ (he’s a wildlife disease ecologist)
Jan was born in Germany, but he grew up in the US: his parents moved after Chernobyl, because their lab Geiger counter showed high radiation levels despite being hundreds of miles from the reactor. His parents were scientists, but a...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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48:05
Cédric Girard-Buttoz learns the language of chimps (he's an evolutionary biologist)
When he was six years old, Cédric wanted to be Tarzan, following monkeys around the forest and studying their behavior.He has pretty much made his dream come true. Cédric Girard-Buttoz has researched lemurs in Madagascar, macaques in Ind...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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1:08:40