Cat: 0:00

We want to talk about the NIH paying off beyond our dreams. This is a hard episode to begin. How are you feeling, Ashley?

Ashley: 0:10

Yeah, this is hard. I mean, this is something that's obviously really near and dear to our hearts. The National Institutes of Health is the funding for the biomedical research that happens in this country and therefore actually in most of the world, given the status of the United States and the money that we have here. So it's not a small deal. And this is something that's really personal to me as a scientist. It's personal to Cat as someone among scientists and a scientist herself. So yeah, here we

Cat: 0:37

Yeah, this has been a moment where almost every scientist in our lives is being impacted right now. So should we go over a couple of the facts that impact what we're going to talk about today and kind of what we know at this moment and why we're recording this episode?

Ashley: 0:53

Yeah, let's talk about what, what got us here. Why are we so freaked out, Kat?

Cat: 0:57

So many possible answers to that question. Here are some facts. On January 20th, um, an executive order came out that includes language that may impact many of the scientists we know and many programs at universities, um, including the program that Ashley is currently the co director of at UC San Diego, which is the Start Neuro program. Um, other things happened this, last week. Um, Science. org, for instance, reports on this, that on January 22nd, the NIH and many other agencies had a wide range of restrictions imposed. Um, this includes a freeze on meetings, travel, communication, hiring, um, and this is kind of details still emerging about what's going to happen and what this means, so there's a lot of uncertainty. Um, but one big thing that's happening for, uh, America's scientists are the study sections of the NIH and the advisory committees of the NIH are part of this freeze. So we wanted to focus a little bit on, hey, what's the NIH? What is this? What does it do? How does it work? Um, and we think that this is a really important part of America's scientific legacy and current scientific capacity, and we know a lot about it, don't we, babe? So we wanted to use our, our, our knowledge to sort of just explain this more to people.

Ashley: 2:17

Yeah, I think people probably don't realize like that so many drugs, probably all of the drugs you use, everything we know about cancer, how the brain works was funded at some point or is still funded by the NIH funding. Yeah. And one thing I want to say, too, is there's kind of like two categories of things that are happening here. So, one, there's the, the stuff where there's this direct targeting of the NIH in terms of saying, okay, no external communication. Uh, no study sections, we'll get into what that means, um, in a second. But then there's a second category of, uh, targeting of DEI work specifically. And that actually goes beyond the NIH, but does impact to NIH because they're federally funded programs.

Cat: 3:04

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So there's like a broad range of things happening here. We don't have certainty about all of them, but we're going to tell you a little bit about the things that we do know here. And one place I think it's useful to start, we did a little bit of research for this episode, which as two researchers is our favorite thing and our comfort in moments of uncertainty. And so let's go over a couple of things about How does the NIH work, and what do we know about it? So, there's some really good information out there put together by a group called United for Medical Research. This is a coalition of research institutions, patient health advocates, um, and this includes places like Stanford University, the American Cancer Society, MIT, the Alzheimer's Association, Harvard, and John Hopkins. Essentially, this is a big coming together. of so many of America's entities that work on science. Um, so they are a great resource, we'll link, uh, their website in the show notes. And some facts we get from them, NIH funding generates, they say, 2. 46 dollars in economic activity for every one dollar of funding. So right off the bat, it's a major contributor to economic output. They estimate, um, nine, 92. 9 billion in economic output. Um, and I think 2023 is that stat. The NIH funded research grants support, uh, like 400, 000 jobs nationwide. This drives economies. You can look up how it drives impact for your specific state. We live in California. So we looked up, um, what happens in California because of the NIH. In California, the NIH supports 13. 5 billion worth of economic activity, probably. More than that, the University of California is, no surprise, a really big, top funded NIH institute. So those are some kind of grounding facts that I thought were interesting to kind of just set the table on what level of activity we're talking about here.

Ashley: 5:03

Yeah. And I think it's important to remember that this funding is not just directly, you know, to scientists themselves, but there's an entire infrastructure that is in place to support the science. And that includes things like administrators and includes things like who's going to take care of the animals or the cells or buy the equipment. Like all of this stuff, these are, these are jobs. These are real jobs. And, you know, when I think about like where I want society to go and where I want us to like, put people's efforts. It's in stuff like this. Like it's towards this scientific enterprise, which is getting us to discoveries and ultimately improving our health and helping us understand how things work in our bodies. And yeah, so it's like, you know, we're not just paying a bunch of like, you know, scientists, but like, you know, these are, these are like, it's a whole thing. It's a whole system that this supports. And, you know, If you think about your local university, for example, you know, like, okay, we think of universities as where students go and they pay for their education, and that's all true, and that is a big part of what happens at a university, but at a research university, something like where I work at UC San Diego, we also get a ton of funding that's all grant funding from places like the NIH, and that supports people in their jobs working at the university, so there's a whole separate Part of the university that's not just like students going to classes. It's the research and all of that that's happening, too

Cat: 6:28

And there's just no controversy about the benefit that it is to have a system like, you know, um, the UC system, like, in terms of how much it transforms people's lives, benefits the state, you know, lifts society. This is the mechanism of moving towards the future, in my opinion. You know, one, Um, study that we read for this episode, which I thought was, again, just a great pointed example to have in mind, um, NIH funding contributed to every single one of the 210 new drugs that were approved by the FDA between 2010 and 2016. So you take a new medication in America, NIH funding almost certainly was part of understanding that. And a lot of that funding is basic science that allows us to develop like the biological targets for drug action. So you may hear of things, or there might be a pharma brand name associated from it, right? But Ashley and I both live and work in this world of the people who are uncovering the basic mechanisms that allow us to develop medicine.

Ashley: 7:34

Yeah, absolutely and like that's that's an amazing statistic And then I think there's a lot of things that are even really hard to quantify here. So for example You know, we have many friends now who are out working in industry, so they work at places like Johnson Johnson and Pfizer. And guess where those people were trained? They were trained at universities on federal funding. They couldn't do their jobs at Pfizer and Johnson Johnson where they're doing things like uncovering cures for schizophrenia or whatever it might be, right? They couldn't do any of that without that training. And that is not something we've quantified, it's very hard to quantify. But that's where it all happens. And so it is literally, literally impossible to do science without federal funding, period.

Cat: 8:19

absolutely. We have structured it this way and it's working for our society actually. Now we can debate, people do debate very fiercely, how we run the NIH and how we allocate scientific funding. There is, you know, a lot to talk about there. But this has been paying off. You know, it's so central to how American science works. And I think that point about you don't just get scientists, scientists are the result of this long pathway of many years and investment. And it's, it's such a communal networked kind of thing too. And this is part of what we're seeing in this moment is how networked it is because look at you and I, right babe, like all of our friends in our text threads are being impacted at this moment. Because, you know, this funding is so tied together.

Ashley: 9:08

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that it, it impacts people that are, you know, directly working at the NIH, but then all of these subsequent impacts that we mentioned at the start of the episode, like study sections and insecurity about funding and everything, it's impacting all of them.

Cat: 9:22

So, so a couple things here, maybe to bring some clarity to what a study section is, you know, you might be seeing this in the news, okay, NIH freezes study sections, the scientists are freaked out about it. Let's break this down for people and explain. Uh, so quoting from, again, a Nature Press piece on this, and we'll link this in the show notes, um, these panels that the NIH runs, they're called study sections and advisory councils, those serve slightly different things, um, sometimes scheduled a year in advance. They can include more than 30 participating researchers, so a lot of these are external folks, they're experts in their fields, and it takes time to reschedule, so the disruption to this could be pretty significant. Again, we have a lot of uncertainty, but Researchers in America currently waiting for a grant review decision are in a very precarious, frightening position because of this. So one thing we thought we'd share with you, all our listeners, is you might not know how precarious science really is. Even when you're a very successful scientist in a funded lab, you're still living inside of this calendar of funding and this calendar of, um, grants, and, and they're, they're carefully planned, like scientists organize their entire lives around this. Um, anything you would add to this, Ashley, or like, you're, you've lived, kind of lived this, right?

Ashley: 10:44

Yeah, I mean, so, you know, the way that federally funded science works is you apply for grants. So, um, labs when, when say like someone like a scientist gets a job at a university, they get like a little bit of startup funding and, you know, in many ways this is like starting a startup. Small business, right? You get a little bit of seed funding from the university so you can kind of get going But then after that it's all grant funded So every five years or so You're kind of relying on this like influx of funds that you've applied for you've thought about like exactly what you're going to do You write a plan for and you submit that to this study section. And so that study section they are the The powerful folks who decide, who look at everybody's science, everybody's proposals, and they say, here's what we're going to fund, and here's what we're not going to fund. Which I think is another, yeah, go ahead,

Cat: 11:32

sorry. Sorry. We're both really, really passionate about this. I, you know, I think a thing that sometimes is really helpful for people to understand too is like, this isn't just like, we hired some contractors. Only people who are atop of their field sometimes can even evaluate these proposals. Like, that's how specialized it is. You know, you are trying to figure out what should America fund in cancer, you need the cancer scientists there. And that means you need the cancer scientists You know, to organize them from across institutions and out in the public. And, you know, I know that it can sound like, wow, y'all, this is a lot of meetings, but I actually want to draw attention to how, what a beautiful, collaborative, open kind of project this is, you know, that scientists, you know, organize their time in this way and come in. And I know we can debate parts about it, but I just want to make that point that this is, Yeah. A way that we feed into our own accountability to the public and make sure that, you know, we're studying and funding the right thing. We put a lot of work into it because it's that important.

Ashley: 12:44

yeah, this is central to the process of science. And I think, you know, it's kind of interesting because we, people will contrast like, oh, you know, the way like. Industry works is so competitive and it's cutthroat and we have to worry about like every single dollar and like,

Cat: 12:58

Industry is not nearly as competitive. I have been in both. It's not nearly as

Ashley: 13:03

Right and then we and then we like talk about government like oh, there's all this like, you know Spending you know, whatever and there's like a bunch of like people who are getting free government money or whatever Like if you knew how intense it was around science, right? And how every dollar is scrutinized and every one of these grants it goes through like literally you are being Critiqued by Nobel Prize winning scientists who are looking at your science and saying Is this going to work or not? Do we believe in it or not? And like, as you said, this is not a perfect process and like plenty of scientists will critique this process, but that's like internal baseball, right? For the, for like the big argument here, it's like, look, this is a highly scrutinized, every dollar is thought through and yeah, and,

Cat: 13:51

It's something we can be proud of. It's something we can be really proud of as an American public that we have this transparency. We have this, like, it's laid out on the table and we try at least our hardest to make your, your thing rises and falls based on how good the work is, you know, and based on, you know, how powerful the science is. And yeah, like all things are imperfect and we got all things involve humans and we gotta, you know, work to make it better. But, but this is,

Ashley: 14:19

shoveling money into scientists mouths. Like that's just not what's happening, right? It's extremely hard to be a scientist, even when we have all this money, because you're competing for it, you have to demonstrate that you can cut it, you can do it, right?

Cat: 14:34

Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think an important part here is people often imagine some single PI who's like an egghead in a university and they're just kind of sitting on their cash or whatever. Um, those people, again, Think of them like small business owners. They train postdocs. They run many, many studies. They might be, at this point, group science, which we've talked about in our podcast, is a rising thing that's necessary to do cancer research again, to do neuroscience, to do cell biology. We're in a place in science where there needs to be highly networked, large collaborations. So, um, you know, the single scientist alone is not really the model anymore. And what we have is instead this kind of beautiful network of trainees and students and, and those people are at, really at risk if funding cycles get disrupted. So, um, I, you know, we've, we've both lived this. We were both postdocs, Ashley and I, and the number one thing on your mind is, can I, become funded. You essentially scrap for your own salary a lot of the time and fund yourself. That's how much of a meritocracy it is. You're proving that you're worth a salary and we both lived through that. We've both won grants. And then you might also be making these calculations that are like, okay, my grant runs out at this time. And if I have like a five month grant, a gap, and I don't have any money to fill that gap, I might have to leave science.

Ashley: 16:10

yeah. And I've seen people leave science because they can't get the next round of funding, and that is something that happens, and, you know, it's, it's funny that sometimes, like, government spending gets characterized, like, it's not a meritocracy or something, but, like, in this case specifically, and, and it's actually problematic how much in science it's thought of itself as a meritocracy, like, and we can talk about that separately, but, like, it

Cat: 16:36

people argue we should have more like lottery disbursement of funds,

Ashley: 16:39

right, right,

Cat: 16:41

it's keeping people from doing their lab work,

Ashley: 16:44

Right, exactly. But

Cat: 16:46

a different topic. Yeah, but it is again. It's something I'm proud of. I think of all of our friends We are our dear friend Matt Lovett Barron who's a really exceptional neuroscientist and like every single day I talk to him is right he's writing a new grant and he's funding other scientists and he's you know, creating incredible value for society and This is what he's spending his time on competing in these processes, right?

Ashley: 17:11

yeah. And again, I think it's important that we remember these are jobs, like, these are people who have jobs, all the people that work in these labs, like, if you want to talk about employment in this country, like, you have to include the people who are doing research for their jobs. And those are great jobs. But like,

Cat: 17:29

I'm going to say it again, NIH funding for every dollar we get back 2. 46. That is an amazing return and, and then if you get cancer, these are the people who are going to help you.

Ashley: 17:44

yeah.

Cat: 17:45

So I want to talk to you, Ashley, about the STARTNeuro program. Which is related to this because it is an NIH funded program, among other funds, but you've won a big grant from the NIH, and this is part of what you've been working on. So can you tell us a little bit about STARTNeuro? Mm

Ashley: 18:07

the big picture here is like, you know, we've talked about sort of, okay, people get training to have PhDs, um, and there's been this. recognition in science that that training is not accessible to everybody. And that's a problem, right? And it's a problem for two reasons. Like the, the reason I often cite is, is a problem with equity. Of course, I want everybody to have a chance to be a scientist in this country. So that's one side of it. But then it's also a problem for like, you know, maybe a kind of more practical thing, which is like, we know that. diverse teams are better. And so if we actually want the best science, we want diverse teams, right? So for either of those reasons, it seems really important that we get everybody into this career path or at least have an option, right? To, to follow this career path. So, you know, to that end, the NIH has, um, set up some amazing programs. to give access to more students. And so I, in 2020 with, my co director, Brenda Bloodgood, we applied for a grant for this. So this is, um, this mechanism is called ENDURE, which is a appropriate, I think, name

Cat: 19:12

very topical

Ashley: 19:13

at the moment. So this program, it stands for Enhancing Neuroscience Diversity Through Undergraduate Research. education experiences. Um, it's funded by the NIH as well as the brain initiative now, which you might've heard of. This is a thing that Obama kicked off to really throw some more money into neuroscience research, knowing how important it was. So

Cat: 19:34

a huge impact as well.

Ashley: 19:35

yeah, that and the brain initiative had a huge impact. Um, definitely still going to some degree. Um, so yeah, so this is, this is a program to get. more students from more backgrounds into neuroscience research. And, um, you know, like when I go to community colleges and I talk about this program, like first and foremost, you know, community college students who, who we are trying to serve in our program, they, They often don't even understand like everything we just talked about, like how research happens, like what actually research is, right? And so there's kind of this first step for us of just like telling people what it means to do research and it's like, Okay, you know, everybody has someone in their lives who has Alzheimer's or is struggling with Parkinson's. Okay, how do we help those people? And for some people, you know, the answer is med school. But then we go in and we want to tell students that There's this other amazing thing that happens which is like we just try to understand how these things work and that's how we get to cures or how we get to treatments.

Cat: 20:35

I think about, yeah, when I was a college student, I didn't know how science worked. I knew that you could be a scientist or something, but I didn't know how you got there, you know? And the whole path is so invisible to so many people. And that's a big problem that I think STARTNeuro sheds some light on.

Ashley: 20:53

totally. So, so then, so then for us, you know, when, um, students transfer to UC San Diego, so, um, at UC San Diego, like a lot of big universities, we have a lot of transfer students, which means, you know, they started at community college and then they, um, come to UCSD for their last two years. And, uh, our goal is to help those students find labs and fund them to work in those labs, because we know that. Um, many of them need funding elsewhere, like we work with, um, predominantly students that come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. They need a job on campus. And so we say like, look, what if the job we give you is working in a research lab and getting training and actually opening this door into research to be the someone who's, you know, actually curing some of these things that we care about? So

Cat: 21:40

it's like Um, you know, um, providing them directly with money right now, which helps them in their persisting college right now

Ashley: 21:48

again, these are jobs.

Cat: 21:50

yeah, their jobs and making sure that, you know, what they actually are working on is leading them to on a career pathway. I think something that people might not know outside of California is like, you know, can you give us a little bit of background about this whole community college to UC thing that happens? Because I actually think it's pretty unique.

Ashley: 22:10

Yeah, I think we have this thing where we think about, you know, oh, students in college and we think about kind of like what the default student in college looks like. And I think that that's wrong in a lot of cases. So if you look, you know, across the United States, for example, and you just tally up how many people are in college, about a third of those people are at a community college. So, first and foremost, this is a huge mechanism for education in this country, and it is predominantly students who maybe, you know, couldn't afford four years at a college, um, maybe are not sure if college is right for them, so they're going to do it part time and kind of work on the side, right? There's a lot of different reasons people choose community college. It's a huge swath of students in this country, but none of those students, or I should say Very few of those people will be able to get the training they need. To become a scientist because that doesn't exist at community colleges. There's not research happening there.

Cat: 23:03

this blew my mind when you started Start Neuro. I didn't know this, like that, you know, you could be a kid who has made it in so many ways that are so beautiful and important. I'm like, Oh, I promise you I wouldn't cry during this episode and it's happening. But here's what happens. Imagine being a kid who gets to community college, transfers to the UCs, which is a structure that many people fought for, that is a huge mechanism for socioeconomic mobility, and you make it, and then you just barely miss being able to get on the pathway to become a scientist, because essentially they're there on the campus too late to ever get a lab job. By the time they find out about it, or even realize what science, you have to do to go to a science PhD program, they're, they're just too late. And that is so ridiculous.

Ashley: 23:58

Yeah. And it's insane too, because like. You know, for me, for neuroscience, San Diego is a huge hub for neuroscience research, arguably the biggest hub in the world. And the community colleges that are two miles from campus don't have access to that

Cat: 24:16

Yes.

Ashley: 24:17

happening literally down the street. It's, it's, it is our

Cat: 24:20

These are, I'm crying again. Stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.

Ashley: 24:24

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Cat: 24:25

These are, our neighbors. These are our neighbor's kids. And so you saw this need and you were like, we need a program. We need something that directly helps transfer students. It's an unmet need and it's a huge population. And so it's like this magic little lever that you found. So tell me about like the impact of STARTNeuro. What's happened because of it for

Ashley: 24:49

Well, I want to be super clear. I didn't start this program. So I, um, picked up the baton from a couple of amazing people, one of whom passed away two years ago. His name was Eduardo Macano. He was a scientist at UC South. Now I'm going to cry.

Cat: 25:04

Yeah, Eduardo. So you picked up the legacy.

Ashley: 25:07

Yeah. So he, he actually started what he called, you know, the start program with some NSF funding. We could do a whole other episode on

Cat: 25:14

Oh, so this is how far back the scientific funding

Ashley: 25:17

Yeah, yeah. So that program ran from 2015 to 2018. It was, he got, you know, a three year grant to do it. Um, he was the one who recognized that this was like a, a need in our community. Um, I was brought in in 2020 when we applied for this new mechanism. So I, I want to give like full credit to him and also to Brenda who really like laid the foundation for this

Cat: 25:37

Absolutely. Well, thanks for correcting me because that's just actually like a beautiful example of how scientific funding that leads to impact leads to more impact and then like another program that helped more people. Like, tell me, I think something like 40 students have gone through this program. Like, some people have gone to grad school. Like, tell me about it.

Ashley: 25:55

Yeah. So, you know, this iteration of the program, which started in 2020, every year we bring in 10 students. So, you know, um, half of our students at this point have graduated from UCSD. The other half are still at UCSD finishing up. And those students are in PhD programs. So one of them, is actually in the neuroscience PhD program here at UCSD, which is incredible. Um, another one is like very close to me. I don't want to like cross my fingers too hard, but like, um, so, you know, um, they're, they're on this path and, you know, for example, the students that. that is here. Um, you know, she was doing research when she was here trying to understand, um, how Alzheimer's impacts these particular cells in the brain, which are called astrocytes, which do a lot of important work. Anyway, um, so they, they're doing amazing research. Um, something I'm particularly proud of is that, you know, almost all of the students that have gone through our program are still in science in one way or another. So even if they're not in PhD programs, they are continuing to work in the labs that they worked in either at the Salk Institute or UC San Diego. So they're still working in those labs or they're working at companies or they're kind of like working as clinical coordinators for different research programs. They're doing lots of amazing, amazing things. And. I think that having the foundation with us was helpful in that regard.

Cat: 27:18

Well. That's under, that's so sweetly understated. I'm gonna embarrass you because I'm your wife and here's what happens. Like, these students come, they come to a summer program. Ashley spends hours and hours and hours of her summer with them. They teach them not just about neuroscience, but they kind of teach them how to be at a big college campus, how to navigate it. Um, we had a park event with these students and I was sitting around with a circle of them and we were talking about learning how to do your laundry, know, we were talking about learning how to do your grocery shopping, um, third time cat's gonna cry, um, you know, because I just, all this stuff is happening at the same time for these students, these are such brilliant, great kids and they're also, you know, living away from home for the first time and they're learning how to be at college for the first time and we don't want them to. Not see themselves as scientists just because they're struggling with something like laundry or groceries or whatever. So you meet with them all year long. You've taken them to the big neuroscience conferences. You've taken a bunch of them to travel on a plane for the first time.

Ashley: 28:33

Yeah.

Cat: 28:33

And, uh, teach them how to pack for that.

Ashley: 28:36

Yeah, yeah, there's a

Cat: 28:37

this is, this is how we change America's scientific workforce through work like this. Compassionate human centered work like this.

Ashley: 28:46

Yeah. Yeah, and I and I think you know, the Sort of mentorship that we give students throughout and the sort of reminders about yeah You belong here and and and working with them really closely on like how to navigate Balancing coursework and you know doing your laundry or whatever. It might be like there's all of that side of things You know, and that's all really important, but I don't want to understate the impact of giving these students financial support to be able to choose to do this, right? Because many of our students like would have been and and like maybe spend the first quarter Kind of working a job also in addition to research and then i've seen several students say, okay That's too much. So they they do the research part of it and then they get to pour all of those hours into their own training. Like we're basically helping people leverage their own time and the financial support is absolutely necessary for

Cat: 29:38

You're a job creator in the American economy. Yeah.

Ashley: 29:44

Yeah,

Cat: 29:45

So, this has been really cathartic and wonderful to talk about, and what actions can people take at this moment to show their love for science, to show their support for a program like STARTNeuro?

Ashley: 30:02

I mean, I think there's a few things, right? I mean, you can call your representatives. Um, I did this the other morning. We'll put the instructions in the show notes. It, it literally takes a few minutes. You call your, your, um, your senators and your congressmen. You say, you know, I care about the NIH. I'm really worried about the freeze on funding. I, you know, want that to be known. doesn't

Cat: 30:22

Yeah, these calls actually matter. I know it's just, sounds ridiculous, uh, but it really, really matters, um, to do this and to do it to your specific representative and they tally this stuff. And yeah, Ashley did it, um, which I was grateful for because I hate making phone calls and we were sitting there with our coffee and we had this little script and it would really matter at this moment if you would do this.

Ashley: 30:46

Yeah, totally. And I mean, I think, you know, so that's like specifically maybe for NIH funding. I, I think there's like a bigger battle to be fought to try to figure out, you know, what we need to do to get people to, how do I put this? I don't know, to like,

Cat: 31:06

Hmm.

Ashley: 31:08

To like underline what DEI work is for and obviously, you know, this, I think the thing I struggled with this past week was like, and I told you to this when we were having dinner the other night, sorry, my words are like at the

Cat: 31:22

It's okay. Take a, take a beat. It's okay. This is hard to talk about because it matters so much to us.

Ashley: 31:29

So I said this to you the other night, but I, when I read those executive orders on Tuesday morning, I felt like this, like, floor fall out of my, like, gut. Like my, my heart just, like, sank, like, to the floor. And the reason for that is it's not just STARTNeuro. It's not just, like, the funding for science. You know, these executive orders, and there's two of them, about DEI work. Just Like cut through everything we believe in the way I teach my classes the way everybody I would consider a colleague teaches their classes is built on these values and You know, I don't know how to call a congressman and tell him that exactly But there's like some battle on the home front that needs to happen Where it has to be really clear that this stuff really matters in a way. That's like even just deeper than about funding right now. It's like, and a recognition of like what this country was built on and, and the backs on which it was built. And that hurts so, so much. So I don't know, this is not a note to end on, but I,

Cat: 32:46

it's no, you know

Ashley: 32:47

uh,

Cat: 32:48

Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Thank you for sharing. I know I know that I've seen You know, I'm sorry. It's really hard to talk about this, but For years this has been your whole life And it matters. It really, really matters. I think it's like at the core of making progress as a society. So I think it is a note to end on.

Ashley: 33:12

yeah.

Cat: 33:13

is our, this is our stuff worth protecting. And worth having hope about in this moment.

Ashley: 33:19

yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, and I saw someone post something to this degree, which is like that work of protecting the people In your circle that you feel like you need to protect that work that needs to continue like that's non negotiable Like I am still teaching my classes in a way that I try to invite all students in I am still meeting one on one with students to talk about how to apply to grad school like all of that work It's gotta still happen because some Stupid executive order is not gonna tell me how to do my job and what my values are

Cat: 34:01

Yeah. This brings me back, right back to the NIH. Because you know what? You know what's also interesting? And important here, people at the NIH cannot talk about this and we can,

Ashley: 34:13

Yeah.

Cat: 34:14

on us to, I don't think people necessarily know this, but you know, you're not, you know, there's lots of structures in place that mean if you are internal to this work, you know, you don't get to be out there and be an advocate and we have to advocate For the, as the public, for the things that we want. We are the only ones who can. It's on us to voice this. It's on us to say we care about it. It's on us to say, you know, this is something that matters to us to keep this work going.

Ashley: 34:45

We're going to keep it going in the ways we can, right now.

Cat: 34:49

Yeah. For our community and neighbors.