Episode 178: Transcript
Episode: 178: Public Health is a Utopian Vision
Transcription by Alexander
Charlie Jane: [00:00:00] Annalee, who is your favorite healthcare worker in science fiction or fantasy?
Annalee: [00:00:07] Well, it's a crowded field, but I'm going to have to say the holographic doctor from Voyager because the holographic doctor, first of all, he's delightful. He's very sarcastic and he's kind of generally kind of annoyed that people can shut him down and like cause him to just disappear. But also he eventually writes the hologram equivalent of the communist manifesto called...
Charlie Jane: [00:00:34] Photons Be Free.
Annalee: [00:00:36] Photons Be Free. And winds up causing this uprising among holograms who are being abused and forced to engage in slave labor. So how can you not love a doctor who cares about his patients, grows as a person and becomes a communist? It's just it's an impeccable vibes. So who is your favorite doctor character?
Charlie Jane: [00:01:00] I just want to say that I love the holographic doctor too. And he's he's had a resurgence. He was a huge character in the TV show Star Trek Prodigy. He's apparently going to be a huge character in the upcoming show Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
Annalee: [00:01:13] Good.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:14] And we got to meet Robert Picardo, who plays the holographic doctor, and he was delightful in real life.
Annalee: [00:01:19] He was so nice.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:21] He was a sweetie. He called me a tall drink of water.
Annalee: [00:01:23] Which, I mean, immediately endeared him to me because that is a very correct opinion.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:26] I mean, I was like, “oh, I love you so much now.” So yes, my favorite doctor in science fiction and fantasy, I'm going to say, is Dr. Chef from the book The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.
Annalee: [00:01:40] Oh, yes.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:42] You know, just the concept that he's both the ship's doctor and the ship's chef. It just feels like those are two things that should be combined more often. Like it's those things that are taking care of people. Food and medicine are so closely related. He's super friendly. He cares so much. He's very laid back. But he has this tragic backstory where he's the survivor of this horrible war on his home planet.
[00:02:06] Somebody on Tumblr described him as a weird, otter, gecko, caterpillar, hug friend, which feels about right. There's a lot of great fan art of him on Tumblr. And he's trans. He's just an amazing character.
Annalee: [00:02:19] I love that so much. I love the idea of thinking of health care as going way beyond the lab and having it be about food or about you know, maintaining a nice space for people. And that's a really neglected area of what makes us healthy, basically.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:40] Yeah. And I think that, you know, one of our problems as a society is that our doctors are really antisocial. Like there's kind of this stereotype of the crabby kind of antisocial doctor. And medical schools really enforce that. They encourage you to kind of build a lot of psychological armor. And I love imagining other ways for doctors to be because health is really ultimately a social thing, right? It's not antisocial.
Annalee: [00:03:04] Yeah, listen, I mean, in the United States, the professionalization of medicine grows out of battlefield medicine. So there's a reason why hospitals are set up like militaries with this strict hierarchy. And it's because it was after the Civil War that you started to see doctors emerge as a profession instead of it just being like some crank who drove around with snake oil in a little rickety wagon.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:28] I hadn't thought about it that way.
[00:03:31] Okay, so you are listening to the podcast, Our Opinions Are Correct. It's the podcast that discovered the cure for every disease that will not exist for another thousand years. But we forgot to write any of it down. I'm Charlie Jean Anders. I'm a sci-fi fantasy writer. My newest book comes out in August. It's called Lessons in Magic and Disaster. And it's about a young witch who teaches her mom how to be a witch, how to do magic.
Annalee: [00:03:57] And I'm Annalee Newitz. I'm a science journalist who also writes science fiction. And my next book also comes out in August. And it's called Automatic Noodle.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:08] So today, we're going to be talking about public health and science fiction and fantasy with special guest host, Naseem Jamnia. And later in the show, we'll be talking to Natasha O'Brown with Rutgers University about all the startling discoveries we've made lately about the blood brain barrier.
[00:04:26] Also on our mini episode next week, we'll be talking about fictional healers in science fiction and fantasy. Okay, so let's get healthy.
[00:04:34] [OOAC theme plays. Science fictiony synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]
Charlie Jane: [00:05:05] And now we're so incredibly lucky to be joined by Naseem Jamnia, who was the inaugural Samuel R. Delaney Fellow and is the author of The Bruising of Kilwa, a wonderful book and also a brand new middle grade horror novel called The Glade. Welcome, Nasim.
Naseem: [00:05:23] Hi, thanks so much for having me back again. I'm psyched to be here.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:27] Yeah, it's great to have you back. So why don't we just start off really with a basic and can you just tell us what is public health?
Naseem: [00:05:33] Yeah, absolutely. When I think about public health, I actually think a lot about my training back in the day as a premed. And I particularly think of access to health care. I read a book when I was an undergrad called County: Life, Death and Politics in Chicago's Public Hospital by David A. Ansell. And as the title of the book implies, it was both a personal history of the author's relationship with and working in Cook County Hospital, and the broader history of it.
[00:06:03] And although my memories of the book are fuzzy, but it's pretty foundational in how I understand public health, because it's really about access to preventative medicine, access to public clinics, and then access to health care kind of in general.
[00:06:14] But I, as time has gone on, I appreciate that that really, I think, is only just a chunk, a small chunk of what public health can mean. So I'd be curious as to what the two of you think about when you think of public health.
Annalee: [00:06:24] I mean, I definitely think about it in economic terms. So a lot of what you've already sort of been talking about, which is how do you make health care available to people? Where do you get your resources from? But also, you know, how do you serve members of the public who don't have enough money to pay these incredible hospital bills that we face all the time in the United States?
[00:06:48] But I also think the other piece of it is having the resources to gather data about what kinds of health care issues are affecting that public, regardless of what their economic situation is. And we need that just so that health care providers, hospitals, clinics can be prepared to meet whatever is going on, right? Like, is there a new pandemic? Is there, you know, just some kind of new respiratory disease? Is there a drug problem that is affecting lots of people? They need that data. If you don't have that data, you can't be prepared for fentanyl overdoses.
Charlie Jane: [00:07:23] Yeah. And the way I think about public health, I guess there's two ways. The same way that we have preventive medicine and then medicine that aims to take care of sick people. I feel like public health is about kind of keeping the population from getting sick, keeping us healthy by, you know, immunizations and like making sure we have clean water and resources and like information like Annalee just mentioned, and also mental health. Mental health is an underrated part.
[00:07:48] But also keeping track of those pathogens and like, you know, stuff like malnutrition that can lead to disease outbreaks, but also coping with the outbreaks when they happen and like, you know, doing epidemiology to track an epidemic that's already happening to keep it from getting any worse.
Naseem: [00:08:05] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm like podcast listeners can't can't see me nodding as both of you are talking. And I'm really glad, Charlie Jane, that you brought up mental health, because when I was in school, I was so frustrated that mental health was so rarely discussed. And, you know, the times have changed. That was that was a decade ago. But the, you know, behavioral, if we're going to treat behavioral health like an access to behavioral health care, like access to other kinds of health care, then that's a public health concern, right?
[00:08:33] You know, how are people feeling mentally, emotionally? Do they have access to therapy and medicine? Do they have access to diagnoses? Is there a cultural competency aspect of it, which is the answer is yes, this is kind of like that's, you know, a whole other part of it, too.
[00:08:47] You know, these things are inequitable, right? We already know that inequity is in all structures, and that includes health care access, and that includes public health care access. And, you know, one of the things I think about here is like the quote unquote loneliness epidemic. I think COVID really highlighted how ill-equipped we are as a society in the US and as we've seen societies kind of around the world to consider that it's never just about the physical symptoms, even when it's about the physical symptoms, there's all these other aspects that come into play.
[00:09:14] And this is kind of, I think, a larger conversation. I don't want to go too far afield, but, you know, disability, right? Like, that's something that to consider. I was kind of like, you know, thinking around and joking around. I was just like, “incels and white supremacy are a public health problem.” And I was like, “actually, that's kind of true, right?” So…
Charlie Jane: [00:09:28] It is.
Naseem: [00:09:30] You know, just like, oh, I was kidding, but actually, that's real, too.
Annalee: [00:09:34] I mean, especially if it leads to violence.
Naseem: [00:09:35] Exactly.
Annalee: [00:09:36] I mean, that's, you know, it's like fine if you want to have your personal incel thoughts. But like, if you start putting it into practice, that's a community risk.
Naseem: [00:09:43] Absolutely. So, yeah, I think our conversations around public health can certainly broaden to include these things because that's, you know, in the barest understanding of the term, those things follow, right?
[00:09:54] But the problem is like we can't respond to what the public and populations need whether it's mental, whether it's physical, whether it's kind of broader than that without knowing what those needs are. And so I do think that data collection and some sort of systemization, you know, some way that those are centered, that the data can be collected, collated, spread out. That stuff is absolutely necessary.
Annalee: [00:10:17] So let's go into some history, which is always my favorite bit. So where do you think that public health as an idea starts?
Naseem: [00:10:26] Yeah, this is such a great question. And as I kind of talk about later, a lot of people will be like, well, in the West and medieval Western Europe was behind everywhere in the world, including other parts of Europe, all over Asia. You know, we were like way, way kind of ahead of where medieval Europe was, Western Europe. And in West Asia, you know, what's commonly called the Middle East was already building kind of scientifically minded hospitals, things that have broken away from understandings of religious understandings of health.
[00:10:54] You know, for example, what is often called kind of the first hospital medical school was founded in 555 A.D. in Godishapur in Iran. And that was founded, I find this particularly interesting, not only by Iranians, but by migrants who came there, particularly Greeks and Syrians. And so that was already happening.
[00:11:12] But but scientifically minded hospitals also started flourishing during the Golden Age of Islam, which is from the eighth century to 13th century or so. And that's something I was thinking about a lot in The Bruising of Qilwa, because Islam has the moral imperative of care for the poor. And that includes health care. And we see that in kind of the way that health care was treated during during this age.
[00:11:32] And I found an article that was so interesting is by Dr. Andrew Miller at SUNY. And it's called “Jundi-Shapur, bimaristans, and the rise of academic medical centres”. And he explains how there are these mobile clinics called bimaristan's, which is now the general word for hospital that we use in Farsi. And I think it's an Arabic word. Those grew out of wartime clinics during the wartime tents during the time of Prophet Muhammad.
Charlie Jane: [00:11:55] Wow.
Naseem: [00:11:56] Yeah. And so then they became these mobile clinics that went to remote areas to provide state funded care.
Annalee: [00:12:01] Wow.
Naseem: [00:12:02] Yeah, I think that's amazing. And, you know, and this, again, was like places in the population that would not otherwise have access to some sort of medical care. And, you know, so we see those and then there's kind of a shift towards hospitals as hospitals, like physical buildings and the Al-Mansouri Hospital, which was which was in Cairo, constructed in 1284 A.D. Miller shares this really fascinating information about this. Charlie, do you mind reading this for me?
Charlie Jane: [00:12:30] Sure. “The patients received clean clothes and were freely given medication and food. Upon the discharge, the patient was sent with clean clothes and a grant of money to compensate them for lost wages and to aid them in establishing a new livelihood. Bimaristans also pioneered the development of written medical records. These admirably detailed records were compiled, edited by clinicians and formatted in a way that became known as treatments based on repeated experience.”
Naseem: [00:13:01] Yeah, I mean, I was amazed to hear that this is, you know, they were thinking about population health, not just a like, “OK, you're cured now,” but a “what were you doing in your community? Who were you in your families? Do you have, you know, clothes on your back,”because they took the things that they came into the hospital with and kind of kept them and then returned them at the end and then was like, “OK, also, we're going to have we're going to have these these records.” I think this is leaps and bounds what even we we tend to do today in health care. Right. So, I definitely think we can think about this as an early mode of public health, men are taking care of population.
Annalee: [00:13:33] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:13:33] Hell yeah.
Annalee: [00:13:34] Especially like I love the idea of like, “yeah, we send them away with clean clothes.” Like that's just so humane. You know, I mean, it's and that is part of health. Right. Like part of being healthy is like having clothes that might - that aren't soiled and aren't full of, you know, pathogens or toxins of some kind. And like, wow.
[00:13:55] I mean, and going out into communities, it feels like something again that we still haven't really learned how to do in the West very well. So this is just a really great window on how these things developed.
[00:14:08] And of course, you know, as you're saying, it makes sense that you can't really do public health unless you are going out into all different parts of your country or your region and meeting people and seeing what they need.
Naseem: [00:14:23] Absolutely.
Charlie Jane: [00:14:24] Yes. OK. Hit us with another one. What's another early kind of landmark in public health?
Naseem: [00:14:30] Yeah, if we switch our focus to Western Europe, and this is kind of a little bit more where a lot of people will have more familiarity, I think you can make the argument that in 1847 in Austria, Semelweiss, who linked hand washing with infant and maternal mortality rates and was ostracized for claiming that maybe people who are touching cadavers should not then go try to give, you know, try to provide maternal care to people who are in labor.
Annalee: [00:14:56] Oh, no.
Naseem: [00:14:56] Yeah, I know. What a concept. Right. You know, so I think that we can talk about this as an early public health study because he was doing kind of systematic data collection, looking at this clinic versus that clinic and then finding, “oh, the people who are going to one clinic are coming straight from the morgue.” Right.
[00:15:11] Yeah. And, you know, I think that's that's a really tragic story, the way that he was treated for daring to question, you know, humoral theory as was understood.
[00:15:23] But usually, you know, certainly when we're studying public health in schools, the big thing that is discussed is the beginnings of epidemiology. The systemization of data collection around public health. And that was tied to a study done in 1850, 1854 by John Snow.
[00:15:40] There was an outbreak of cholera at the time. He took a lot of data, water samples, kind of all these different public wells, and then eventually traced it to one particular public well in London. And that's kind of tends to be celebrated as like the seminal public health epidemiology study.
[00:15:54] But, yeah, you know, he wasn't shunned by his peers and put into a psychiatric asylum. So, you know, maybe maybe that's why we look upon that so favorably.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:02] Yeah, lucky guy. And, you know, I'm tempted to make a joke about how John Snow actually did know something after all. But, yeah, thinking about fiction, I mean, when I think about like the great kind of public health story and fiction these days, I think about the movie Contagion, which everybody was rewatching in 2020 and which is this kind of like very like serious look at a disease outbreak.
Naseem: [00:16:25] Yeah, I think, you know, one thing that I've been thinking about was about medical humanities, which in general looks at the interplay of health care concern and literature, although its examination of speculative fiction is narrower than one might expect. And in limited ways, I did look at a few articles that were about science fiction and particularly looking at that as a way to chart pathways through the COVID pandemic, which, incidentally, is still still going on. We talk about it as if it's over, but it absolutely is not.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:54] Cosign.
Naseem: [00:16:54] Yeah, and that kind of seems to be where a lot of people are thinking of like, oh, if we look at science fiction, if we look at it beyond the kind of use of technology or kind of like the integration of biology and technology, but actually into thinking about what futurities look like, that is one place that people look and they tend to look for it in the realm of pathogens and the realm of pandemics and whatnot.
Annalee: [00:17:17] Yeah, one story that I'm hoping that we can talk a bit more about is Karen Lord's story, The Plague Doctors, which I feel like deals with pandemic but puts it in a very public health context.
[00:17:34] So it's not like Contagion where we're just sort of watching, you know, people watching civilization fall apart and like evil bloggers spreading misinformation. Like she's really thinking about the infrastructure of care that you need to set up in order to handle a pandemic.
Naseem: [00:17:49] Yeah, I love that story. I think it's absolutely brilliant. It really is a public health story, not just a pandemic story. You know, it follows this research scientist in 2080. She's trying to find a cure for a pox before it becomes a plague. Her niece is infected. Her niece is patient zero, essentially happens in the opening scene. And there's this really fascinating passage where they kind of discuss what needs to happen in order for a cure to take place. So Charlie Jane, I'd love if you could read that for me.
Charlie Jane: [00:18:18] Absolutely. “Gilles had access to a vast library of medical statistics, clinical summaries, and experimental results from hospitals, labs, and institutions worldwide. Jennifer was involved in a project that collated similar information from community clinics, herbalists, and healers in the Rural and Emergency Medicine Network. Audra knew that the lab reports and autopsy summaries she submitted to Dr. Pereira ended up with the REM Network along with all the work of the community clinic team, but visualizing their drop of data as part of an ocean of knowledge was both humbling and heartening. Best of all, Dagmar had secured funding…”
[00:19:13] Man, I love Karen Lord's writing so much.
Annalee: [00:19:15] Yeah. And that's like one of the things that's a big theme in the story is where the funding comes from.
Naseem: [00:19:21] Yeah, absolutely. And what do they need that funding for? I think there's a misconception about what money does in science, because there is monetary interest in science, right? But what's particularly fascinating to me in this story is that it's not just the money of like, we need, you know, these reagents, we need to be able to get this to this location or whatever.
[00:19:40] They specifically, one of the things they want money for is the security force, which I find, you know, the anxiety around this is fascinating because after, you know, the research team has assembled, the, you know, two of the members, the main character and her boss are talking. They confirm monies for security and someone's like, “well, why do we need security?” And the other, another character tells them like, “well, there is a lot of conspiracy theories right now because the authorities and media are not telling every, you know, people what is going on. You know, the electrical grid collapses. People are like, oh, labs are hoarding medicine. So we should break into labs and get that medicine and that information.”
[00:20:21] And the point being that like information is the kind of resource right now that people are after and the team is desperate to protect themselves. So, you know, and I think this is an aspect of science that that feels a little science fictiony and also feels very true to life because when people are scared and they don't have information, what do you do?
[00:20:39] And, and there's right now, there's a particular tension between where do you get your information from? You know, what's the reliability of sources in the U S there's a great disavowal of expertise. We don't want to trust experts anymore. And so what does that mean? And what does that mean for our health?
Charlie Jane: [00:20:54] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:20:55] Yeah. I mean, one of the things that's great about that story is that it acknowledges something that we rarely think about with pandemics, which is that different areas are going to be affected differently. And the main characters are all on an island nation. And of course, Karen Lord lives on Barbados. So she knows about being from an island nation.
[00:21:17] And part of the security that they need is they're just trying to keep people off the fricking island because they're trying to maintain isolation from the mainland where things are really falling apart. And on their island, they're not falling apart as much. And so I love that we get that kind of granular understanding. Like you were saying, Naseem, about why they need that security, because the island is trying to communicate with the mainland. And so they need physical security, but they also need network security. They need to have, you know, secure channels to communicate, which is really, really difficult for them to set up.
[00:21:52] And I just loved all of the kind of like health hacker moments in the story where they're like, we've got a secure network and suddenly they can use video again because they have enough bandwidth.
Naseem: [00:22:02] Yeah, like I said earlier, I love the story. I think it's brilliant. It digs into kind of this so-called, but not really hypothetical situation of what do you do? But it really is like, what does it take to do scientific public health work? You know, what are the personal costs that come with it? I think that's something that's handled so brilliantly is that it's not just about the science, it's also about what you as a scientist or as a researcher have to sacrifice. I think the use of the main character's niece in that and brother is done particularly well, and it really makes it hit home in a different way.
[00:22:39] One of the conversations that they have is about how, “well, we can't control anything, but we can control our clinics. We can control our lab and the ability to work on a cure, but that's difficult, right? It's not like we'll work on a cure and everything will be okay.” It's just like, “well, we're going to do the best that we can.” And, you know, the difficulties come in protocols. It comes in clinical trials. It comes in consent to have volunteers, you know, having data from other clinics that are also doing the work.
[00:23:06] One of the things that I loved was the discussion of negative data, trials that have failed that comes part way through, because this is such a key part of science that rarely gets published, because that's not what you publish. You publish when you have results, but negative data is results. And it's such a key part of the scientific process. So I love that.
[00:23:25] And another thing that the story talks about is the hoarding of data for the rich over the poor. Which I find so compelling because it's true. It's exactly what happened. So even though it's a plague story, really, it's a story about what does it take to mobilize to do public health work? How do we make direct impacts onto the communities that we protect for ill or for better? And what is the cost to ourselves?
Annalee: [00:23:47] Yeah. And also, like you said, I mean, it humanizes the situation by focusing on healers. And I think that's another interesting part of public health stories is kind of focusing on what it means to be a healer, both the kind of magical, wonderful part of being a healer, but also the burnout, you know, the rough part of being a healer.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:09] Mm hmm. And of course, we're going to talk about healers more in our next week.
Naseem: [00:24:14] Yeah, healers are a gimme, but I think there's, you know, so many other kinds of public health stories we can tell.
Annalee: [00:24:20] Yeah, I mean, one kind of story that we're seeing a lot now, I guess you could call it eco health or like a mutation type story. You know, it goes back to things like The Andromeda Strain where we're thinking about what happens when a new kind of, in this case, alien pathogen enters the landscape.
[00:24:39] Obviously, Jeff Vandermeer's novel Annihilation, which became a film, also his novel Born deals with this. I mean, I kind of think of Vandermeer in a way as the as the poet of this type of story where we're thinking about human health as one component of a larger ecosystem and the ecosystem itself becomes sick in a lot of these stories.
[00:25:03] Annihilation, you could read it as this is a problem with the whole landscape that's been kind of colonized by this force that we don't really understand.
Charlie Jane: [00:25:16] Yeah. And, you know, I I love stories about like community care and like taking care of the community. One book that jumps out at me is These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein, which is all about like trying to like care for the community and like there's a new drug that's entered the community and like, you know, trying to like deal with addiction and the role of big pharma and just like whether your community has access to health care and like how to keep everybody healthy when people are dying around you.
Annalee: [00:25:45] Yeah. And then there's stuff like The Last of Us, which kind of combines plagues with the environment with access to health care. And, you know, that show is just blowing up right now, partly because I think it does reflect our anxieties about that.
Charlie Jane: [00:26:00] It’s all about quarantining.
Annalee: [00:26:01] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:26:01] Oof.
Naseem: [00:26:02] Yeah. I like seeing how the show deviates from the game as a gamer. I always find that interesting. Yeah, I'm glad, you know, we're talking again about access to health care. And, Annalee, it's funny that you use the word colonized because, you know, The Bruising of Qilwa is about colonization, right?
[00:26:15] But when I was writing it, one of the big things I was thinking about was migrant access to health care, particularly queer and trans migrant access. I was thinking about like linguistic and cultural barriers because it's a fantasy. I was also thinking about magical ones. But in real life and in fiction, colonizer imaginaries are terrified of the idea of having done to them what they have done to others. And being colonized by migrants is a particular fear. I think we've really seen this in Europe, particularly with a lot of the Syrian migrants that are happening.
[00:26:47] And so in Qilwa, there is a plague. There's two plagues, actually, but the main public health crisis is migrants, lack of access to health care, inadequate resources, stuff like food. And that's deliberately in place because of government policies, of the government buying out public clinics, of them deciding who gets access to health care and what kinds of health care.
[00:27:09] And, you know, the city state of Qilwa very openly fears its own recolonization, but that's different than kind of this Western imaginary because they have colonization. Western imaginary is thinking about retaliatory colonization. But in Qilwa, I was thinking about like, this is a place that has been colonized and now has some sort of autonomy and power and is doing upon others what they had done unto them.
Charlie Jane: [00:27:31] Yeah. And of course, like colonizers routinely have used like biological warfare to spread diseases among the people they colonized.
Naseem: [00:27:38] Yeah. No, absolutely. I think it's really naive to suppose that science and public health are not linked with colonization. We know we have examples in the United States. I mean, like the term smallpox blanket exists for a reason, right? And one book that I think really highlights this stunningly is Seth Dickinson's The Trader Baru Cormorant.
[00:27:58] It's such a masterclass on approaches of colonization from different angles. And it has two prongs that it uses science. One is this idea of social hygiene, you know, quote unquote social hygiene, which in the empire mask is compulsory heteronormativity against the kind of indigenous forms of queerness that exists on Baru's Island, but also one of physical hygiene. They use tools of dentistry and vaccinations, you know, as modes of colonization. And, you know, those are those are tools of public health, right?
[00:28:27] But it's not a bad thing to want to be like, “OK, let's make sure that people have like decent teeth because having access to dental care affects your entire quality of life.” You know, and it's not a bad thing to be like, “let's give vaccinations to people so that we can maybe cut down on things like malaria.”
[00:28:43] But it feels very much like the British brought railroads to India kind of argument, you know, like what is the cost of, quote unquote, scientific progress in the name of public health? In Baru, it's about autonomy and independence and cultural traditions. Those are all eliminated as much as possible because of this kind of colonization. So I think there's an interesting tension here about what kinds of public health stories can we tell in speculative fiction? And are they simplified to, you know, to pure, quote unquote, pure science? Or do they acknowledge the kind of complexities that exist?
Annalee: [00:29:16] Yeah, and acknowledging kind of the coercive nature of public health, like that public health can be a way of lifting up a community and maintaining the community's health. Or it can be it can be at the same time a way of, you know, keeping the community from having access to their own culture, like you said, or it can become coercive programs that terrify people that they don't fully understand.
Charlie Jane: [00:29:40] Yeah. Hygiene is a very flexible concept.
Naseem: [00:29:44] Absolutely.
Annalee: [00:29:45] Oh, my God. Yeah. Mental hygiene and physical hygiene. Just do what the authorities tell you to do.
Naseem: [00:29:52] I think there's a really interesting opportunity here for speculative fiction. That's like the beauty of speculative fiction is the ability to speculate. So many of the stories that we have that are related to public health and specfic are the stories of fear, the stories of survival. There's kind of a large scale population health disaster.
[00:30:10] And obviously, we need those, right? The fact that we so recently are still dealing with a large worldwide scale pandemic shows that we still need stories like that.
[00:30:19] But I'd love more stories to acknowledge like the class and racial tensions that are involved in public health, how health care is so often tied to the rich. Because when we're talking about public health, we are talking about poverty. It's something like Charlie Jane mentioned this earlier, like access to nutrition and clean water and education. These are poverty issues. These are public health issues. And I love that you used the phrase community care earlier, because I want to see more of those stories.
[00:30:46] Speculative fiction can chart different ways of thinking about issues that are relevant to us. Then how do we care for our communities, not just in the face of public health crises, but outside of those crises? Health is not just illness, you know, how can we be preventative? How can we take into account, you know, like everybody in our communities and what they need access to, and not just a select few people.
Annalee: [00:31:10] I love that. Thank you so much for joining us for this conversation, Naseem. That was so amazing. I learned a ton.
Naseem: [00:31:17] Thanks for having me.
Charlie Jane: [00:31:18] Where can people find you online?
Naseem: [00:31:20] I am now on Bluesky.
Charlie Jane: [00:31:22] Yay!
Naseem: [00:31:23] I’m jamsternazzy on Bluesky or whatever. You can type in jamsternazzy and I’ll come up. I'm slowly fading off of Instagram, but still technically still on Instagram at jamsternazzy. I have a newsletter, which you can find links to on my website at naseemrights.com. I send it out every other week, very faithfully. And The Glade comes out May 27th. So I hope people give spooky books to kids in their lives and check out that one as well. It's about mushrooms. Mushroom horror.
Annalee: [00:31:50] Amazing. Love a little mushroom horror.
[00:31:54] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.
Charlie Jane: [00:31:57] So hey, speaking of staying healthy, the way you can keep this podcast healthy is by supporting us on Patreon. It’s practically a public health duty to give us some of your support if you can, and it makes you part of our healthy, growing, vibrant community.
[00:32:14] You get to hang out with us on Discord, where we’re just hanging out and chatting about all our favorite pathogens, and you get a mini episode every other week when we’re not giving you a regular episode. Anything you can give us is really appreciated and goes back to into making this podcast happen. And we just super, super appreciate it. So you can find us at our opinions are correct. Wait, no. So you can find us at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect.
[00:32:42] Okay, so next up we're going to talk about the blood brain barrier with Natasha O'Brown.
[00:32:46] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.
Charlie Jane: [00:32:50] And now we're so lucky to be joined by Natasha O'Brown, an assistant professor at Rutgers University who runs the O'Brown Lab studying how to strengthen the blood brain barrier, but also how to deliver drugs more effectively past it by studying zebrafish, among other things. Welcome, Natasha.
Natasha: [00:33:09] Thank you.
Charlie Jane: [00:33:11] So just to start off like really basic question, what is the blood brain barrier and how does it protect us against things like Alzheimer's disease and strokes?
Natasha: [00:33:20] Yeah, so the blood brain barrier or the BBB, it's basically the brain's bouncer. It's not a wall. It's more like a very selective door guy at an exclusive nightclub. So it decides who gets in, who gets kicked out, and who's not even getting near the VIP section.
[00:33:36] And so the brain needs this super tightly controlled environment to function properly. No rowdy molecules, no surprise guests, no inflammatory cytokines. Everything has to be exactly right. And you also want to make sure that your quotient of dudes to women is right, right?
[00:33:54] And so then when the bouncer slacks off and the door gets leaky, things start going wrong. And this is happening in a lot of different neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's and stroke and Parkinson's and ALS. It seems like a never ending list of these diseases where we actually start to see that the barrier is breaking down before any symptoms of memory loss are showing up.
[00:34:14] So a lot of people are thinking that the leakiness of the barrier is actually being part of what causes or at least speeds up disease progression and not just something that's happening after the fact.
Annalee: [00:34:25] It feels like there's been a lot of progress just in the last few years in studying the blood brain barrier. Is this because of things like COVID or is there something else going on?
Natasha: [00:34:35] I think COVID helped in a lot of ways because COVID can cross the barrier and it can have barrier effects. Though I'm definitely not a COVID expert and I was not in any way relayed in 2020. But I do think there have been a lot of other things like advances in new model systems that allow us to kind of start figuring out how things are happening dynamically, like in zebrafish, like what I study.
[00:35:00] So by having this new system, we can actually start to tease apart things within like a normal physiologically relevant setting, not something that's kind of contrived and you're adding this particular cell type or this particular cell type in a dish that isn't like what a normal blood vessel is. And then I think that the tools that we have have also expanded dramatically. So including live imaging, you can do that in my zebrafish. You can do that with two-photon microscopy in mice. So you can put like a literal window on the brain of a mouse and see barrier function in real time. And you can see different cells interacting. So we can do that in the entire fish brain.
[00:35:36] But then also with single cell RNA sequencing. So now we have all of these kind of molecular handles, if you were, for what makes a barrier cell or what might be influencing barrier properties. So while the barrier is created by these blood vessels in your brain, they don't act in a vacuum.
[00:35:55] And in fact, if you actually dissect out a brain and take out the blood vessels and just put them in a culture dish, within 24 hours, they've lost their barrier properties. So they need these signals from the surrounding brain tissue to actually keep the barrier properties. It's a very active process. It's not passive.
[00:36:11] And that when you have this barrier breakdown, it's involved in so many diseases. I think that's another part is the fact that we're learning that the barrier is breaking down in all of these neurodegenerative diseases and including things like brain fog that's associated with like long COVID and stuff like that.
Charlie Jane: [00:36:27] Right.
Annalee: [00:36:28] I just want to ask one quick question. Because you mentioned that you can create a literal window on a mouse brain. And I just want listeners to understand that that's an actual like physical window.
Natasha: [00:36:39] A physical window. So you literally, you can do two ways. So one, you can do what's called a cranial thinning. So they just kind of shave off bits of the skull. So that's a thin window preparation. And the other way that I like better is you just take off a piece of the skull and then instead you put a like a plastic cover, an actual window onto the brain, and you have to let the mice recover, right? It's surgery.
[00:37:05] But this is something that people like Andy Sih's lab are doing this awesome live imaging of these vascular interactions in real time. So then you could put in inflammatory response or you could see whether or not these immune cells were actually going into the brain. So they're doing this in live animals. What we've been doing with fish for years, but you know, whatever the mouse field has caught up. So…
Charlie Jane: [00:37:28] Wow, that is so fascinating. So one of the ways that we've been learning a lot about the blood brain barrier just literally in the 2020s is about how to get drugs past it. It feels like there was a huge study out of Yale in 2022, UT Dallas in 2021, you know, using a specific molecule or antibody to get drugs past the barrier into the brain. Why is this such a big deal? And is the hard part like sealing the barrier again after you get the drugs in?
Natasha: [00:37:55] Yeah, so it's still a huge problem. I think more less than 2% of drugs that are currently on the market can cross the BBB in effective doses for treating what you want. So like even for chemotherapeutics, especially for brain tumors, this is a huge problem. You need to get it across the barrier and simply upping the dose so that it gets the effective dose is not good for the rest of your tissues, right? You don't like your liver will crap out way before that.
[00:38:21] There are a couple different ways that people have been trying to bypass the barrier. So some of them, what you kind of talked about with the antibody is usually what I refer to as a Trojan horse method. So they basically look for something that's normally expressed and normally allowed into the brain, right? Because again, the barrier is selective, but it's not exclusive. So it does allow some things to get into the brain. You need that to get certain nutrients into the brain.
[00:38:46] And so specifically they're using more often than not this transferrin receptor, which is expressed on all of your blood vessels, but that includes the ones in your brain. And then they can attach a cargo. So that's their drug of choice. And then so when the transferrin receptor gets bound by this, the antibody, basically, it gets internalized into the blood vessels and it makes its way out into the brain. Hopefully, just because it makes its way into the blood vessel doesn't mean it makes its way into the entire brain. So that's been one of the issues.
[00:39:15] Another issue is that these things are expressed in lots of different tissues. So even though you are getting stuff into the brain, and it's way better than when I started in the barrier field in 2015, it's been a huge change. But you're still now having issues where these antibodies are kind of accumulating in other tissues like the liver or the testes. So, you know, maybe not a great place to have certain drugs, especially chemotherapeutics, if you're at a reproductive age. So it's not perfect yet by any means.
[00:39:47] And then the other thing that I think I've been hearing a lot about is this focused ultrasound. And so you can either use like micro bubbles, but it's literally jiggling the barrier open with sound waves. That's how you can think of it. So that one is way less invasive. And you can be very targeted about where you're doing. But on the flip side, you need to have a very special like facility to do this. It's not something that everybody can have or just give an injection at whatever hospital you're at. Right? And you need to know where you're targeting.
[00:40:20] So I think that in that way, if you don't necessarily know exactly or you could miss some things like including brain tumors that you have your main tumor that you need to get dissected or you'll start treating it and that the treatments are working really well with the focused ultrasound. So getting chemotherapeutics into those brain tumors. But then you have the kind of metastases or what I refer to as these, the secondary tumors that are kind of lurkers that are not, they are still barrier containing tumors. And if you don't know where to target it, then those would get missed with this technology because you're not doing the focused ultrasound throughout the entire brain. Right?
[00:40:58] So everything has pros and cons. Again, made huge strides towards that. And both of those, they don't physically open the barrier too much. So both of those are transient. I think with the focused ultrasound, it's within 24 hours. It's back down to completely regular levels. So it's a very transient pulse, but it's just getting the right equipment, figuring out the right strategy.
[00:41:20] There's this great talk. I'm forgetting her name at the barrier conference a couple of months ago where she was doing it for Alzheimer's disease with amyloid beta antibodies with this ultrasound.
Charlie Jane: [00:41:30] Oh, wow.
Natasha: [00:41:31] And found out, though, that her control, which was just the ultrasound, was just as good at clearing stuff as the adding the antibodies. The antibodies didn't really do anything. And so her control is not really what she thought, but it's actually, you know, opening the barrier is maybe a potentially beneficial to transiently open it. You don't want to keep it open forever. That leads to stroke and other things. Right?
[00:41:53] But there's kind of this new idea of like maybe an occasional brain cleanse is the way. It's not bad. Yeah?
Annalee: [00:42:05] So before we started talking, I think that I had this very basic idea of the blood brain barrier being kind of like a plastic bag around your brain. Right. And actually, as you're talking, of course, I'm realizing this is the barrier is really kind of like almost like insulation around all of the blood vessels that are in our brain. And as you said, it's permeable. And so there's all these little ways to worm through that insulation.
[00:42:29] But the blood brain barrier is everywhere in our brains. It's just on the outside of our of our blood vessels in there. Thank you for clarifying that for me. But also, how is it then? I mean, you've been talking about how we get medicines past the barrier. How do pathogens get past it? Are they doing something similar? Are they like kind of faking their way through the bouncers there?
Natasha: [00:42:51] Yeah, that's exactly what COVID does. Right? It actually binds to these receptors. So very much doing that Trojan horse method. So and also this idea that nothing can get across. I think that's also been kind of a pervasive myth, if you will, that it's just sealed, right? That nothing gets through. And if that was true, then your brain would be completely cut off from the rest of your body, which makes no sense. Like you need your brain to be connected to to the rest of your body. I mean, a blood vessel is a blood vessel. Right? So you whatever is circulating throughout the rest of your body is also making its way through the blood vessels in your brain.
[00:43:27] The brain is very much a diva. It needs everything just so.
Charlie Jane: [00:43:32] Finicky.
Natasha: [00:43:33] Yeah, it's finicky, but it's it still needs to be slightly in tune. Right? At least on this plane. So you need to make sure that it can do some sampling. Right? So if it was completely cut off, you would have no idea that you were, you know, maybe starving or then you wouldn't change your behavior to go or you're thirsty. So there are actually areas of the brain, which is something else that I think a lot of people don't appreciate.
[00:43:58] And I didn't really appreciate before I got into this field – was that there are several areas of your brain called these circumventricular organs that are always leaky. So and that kind of modulate some of these things like sleep and hunger and so like hormonal regulation.
Charlie Jane: [00:44:15] I mean, anybody who's ever been hangry.
Annalee: [00:44:16] Yeah.
Natasha: [00:44:16] Yeah, exactly. It's just just think about it. Your barrier is just a little open. But and the idea that these things are fixed is also kind of a myth. Right? These properties, they oscillate during the day and night time. So there's some opening at night time. That's what helps. That's why you need your sleep. Right? You need to clear out whatever is accumulated, like whatever the waste products are.
[00:44:39] If you don't, it's like when New York City, when the trash collectors went on strike, that is that is. Alzheimer's and A beta plaques.
Annalee: [00:44:49] Yeah.
Natasha: [00:44:49] So that that is very much kind of what you need.
Annalee: [00:44:54] So stuff is draining out of your brain back into the blood vessels as well as coming out of the blood vessels.
Natasha: [00:44:58] Yeah. So it's also a two way street.
Charlie Jane: [00:45:01] Right.
Natasha: [00:45:03] So it's yeah. And that's also part of why some of these drugs for the initial ones, they were targeting this efflux transporter because this PGP, because actually it wasn't so much that you're never taking things into the cell. It's just that the blood vessels are so good at being like, no, no, we don't want it. Goodbye. So I think that that really it's many different aspects, but we are understanding way more about the barrier than when we first discovered. And that was a bunch of old white dudes that were injecting animals with random colored dyes. And they're like, huh, something different's going on in the brain.
Charlie Jane: [00:45:38] Right.
Natasha: [00:45:39] So that's why they called it a blood brain barrier. Right? So…
Annalee: [00:45:42] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:45:43] So why zebrafish? What is it about zebrafish that allows us to understand the BBB better? And are there other creatures you mentioned mice that are useful?
Natasha: [00:45:53] Yeah. I mean, there are lots of creatures that are useful. I personally think the zebrafish are the best system, but I also dabble in mouse. But I say that I do a garnish of mouse. And so I think the zebrafish are phenomenal. They're vertebrates just like us. But they develop externally. They're small. They're optically transparent, which means we can image them. And because they're so small, we can image their entire brain. So even with those cranial windows and the mice, you have to focus on a specific area and you can't go that deep.
[00:46:25] In the little tiny fish, we can go all the way through the brain and do that in real time. So we don't even have to do surgery. We can just image them. We put them on a microscope. In fact, my people are doing that right now. That's one of the beauties. They also develop quickly. And so they have a functional blood brain barrier by five days post-fertilization. So within five days, you have a fully functional barrier and they have a lot of highly conserved traits.
[00:46:51] They're not a perfect system. There is no perfect model system. So even, I mean, cancer in mice has been cured 40 times, but we can't, they can't cure it in humans, right? So I think that kind of doing a, I like to think of it, doing a cross species evolutionary kind of approach is probably best. And so there are even species of fish, like sharks and lampreys, like some cartilaginous fish that don't have a blood vessel barrier.
[00:47:18] And then you can even think like Drosophila, like flies, fruit flies, those have been used to study. They don't have blood vessels at all, but they do have a hemolymph brain barrier. So I think any species where you have created something that needs to be like a, you've put all this energy into creating a brain with these higher cognitive functions, you need to protect it.
[00:47:40] And actually a lot of the same transporters that are expressed in, you know, human endothelial cells are expressed by those Drosophila, the glia that make up the barrier. So David Bilzer's lab has shown that really elegantly.
[00:47:54] So, but I think that zebrafish offers you this ability to do stuff rapidly and to do the imaging advantages…
Charlie Jane: [00:48:00] And it matters that they're vertebrates, like the fact that they're vertebrates changes things.
Natasha: [00:48:05] And that makes them a lot closer. Yeah. And so that they use the blood vessels and the blood vessels are molecularly almost indistinguishable from the ones in mammals. And so those same tools can be used but applied now to look at dynamic changes rather than kind of static changes after you've done some sort of, you know, perturbation and you need to actually dissect out the brain and then do all the slicing and then do the staining and whatever.
[00:48:30] We have transgenics where we can look at live imaging. We don't even have to inject a tracer. We can just have it circulating throughout the fish. So we have very green fish.
[00:48:42] And then you also, the other advantage of zebrafish is that because they're so small and they just take up whatever small molecules you put in the water, you can do drug screening in them really easily. You just need the right assay. And so recently we've been coming up with a good assay for that. And so I have a technician who's been able to screen through 2300 small molecules for things that can open the barrier in just two months.
Annalee: [00:49:04] Wait, so you're literally putting the chemical into the water with the fish. So you don't have to like inject the fish. They're just like doo-doo-doo in the water.
Natasha: [00:49:14] They just take it up. But it's an in vivo system.
Annalee: [00:49:19] That's so interesting.
Natasha: [00:49:20] I mean, in vitro is great. But again, you can only do stuff in vitro, in cell culture, if you know everything that's going into it. And the truth is, we don't know everything that is going into it. I don't know if we will ever know everything that goes into like how the sausage is made. You're always going to be missing certain things or you're going to be biased about how you think things are being made.
Annalee: [00:49:45] Well, yeah. And as you said earlier, it's a dynamic system. So it seems like it would be really important to be looking at a living creature and how this is happening. And also their body is changing in response to the chemistry. And so you want to know what's happening with that goes on. And if it's... Yeah.
Natasha: [00:50:01] Yeah. I mean, so if something opens the barrier in cell culture, but would actually kill the fish if you can't get to it.
Charlie Jane: [00:50:09] That's not great.
Annalee: [00:50:09] Yeah, exactly. No, I mean, that's the thing is like, that's why petri dishes are great, but like not always helpful for living animals.
Natasha: [00:50:18] Yeah. And again, I will always, I always believe in multiple model systems, right? So like, you use whatever you're starting with in fish. And we just, we were just injecting these things in mice, right? So because we now have a mouse protocol, so we identify a small molecule in the fish and now we can try injecting it into the mouse. And it looks pretty promising in the mouse that it's also opening a barrier.
[00:50:39] So again, because these are highly conserved features, you can use it. It's not foolproof by any means, but it's still, I think a better way. And then I have collaborators that do these kind of cell culture models using human derived cells. And so then he's going to test those concepts. So if we can actually apply all of these model systems at once, but I think of zebrafish as being like a phenomenal screening species. So you can get through stuff really quickly.
Charlie Jane: [00:51:05] That's amazing. So you mentioned earlier that we kind of used to think that the brain was just sealed off, that like nothing could get in or out, that it was just like, you know, a fortress or whatever. And I've seen papers talking about this debate over whether the blood brain barrier is like, whether the brain is like an immune privileged site. And I guess I have a kind of a philosophical question. Did we believe that because we think that our brains are like special and separate from the rest of us? And like, you know, sci fi is full of like brain transplants and like your brain is like you and your body is just this container. Is what we're learning that our brains and our bodies are kind of one system and that it's all connected and you can't just yoink it out?
Natasha: [00:51:44] Yeah, unfortunately for Walt Disney, right?
Annalee: [00:51:49] Yeah, all those other people who froze their brains and vitrified their brains.
Charlie Jane: [00:51:53] All the vitriolized, vitriously preserved brains. I don't know.
Natasha: [00:51:58] But I do think that it's true. I think it's partially... well, it's a few things. One, we didn't necessarily have the tools to see things in real time or to do this imaging. So now from some of these live imaging and these cranial windows, we're starting to see some of this infiltration. And then also where you can label the immune cells and you can actually watch them go into the brain, right?
[00:52:23] We also would just take a section or, you know, a piece and then make generalized rules. But the thing is that the brain is, again, not a static thing and the brain has very different regions that do very different tasks. So there might be certain regions of the brain, like the cortex is almost impossible to break the barrier. It's so tight. It has so many different redundancies built in. But then there are other parts of the brain, like the cerebellum seems like, whatever, olfactory bulb, whatever.
Annalee: [00:52:51] Just keep smelling. No problem.
Charlie Jane: [00:52:53] Gotta get those smells.
Natasha: [00:52:55] Yeah, yeah, you're fine. Who doesn't need it? Yeah. But there are certain parts that are just easy easier or harder to break. And so I think that that's part of it. I also think that we try and apply the same rules to the brain that we would to immune cells and other tissues. I think there is something to be said for the fact that the brain compared to other tissues, it is way less, but it's not zero. Right? So I think that's also this idea of a wall versus like a selective bouncer. I think that's the biggest difference.
[00:53:27] And then there is more and more evidence, especially with COVID and like these immune cells that have gone into the brain and they just linger and they just stay there. So it's possible. And it happens with different types of diseases.
[00:53:44] Granted, it probably happens with some other types of diseases. We just haven't looked nearly as hard at the effects on the brain as we did with a concerted… We had a ton of experimental groups all at once, all that weren't exposed and then were exposed with COVID right in the very short discrete amount of time. And then that probably just underlies some sort of, you know, susceptibilities for it.
[00:54:06] I kind of think the same thing about stroke or even migraines, right? Certain people, like as migraine, just somebody's barriers, like a little bit leakier in certain areas. Is that why they start getting some of these auras? None of that's proof.
Annalee: [00:54:21] Oh, no. Does that mean I have a leaky brain?
Natasha: [00:54:28] That's kind of one of the old school readouts of barrier dysfunction is like, oh, it's having a seizure. So you definitely have barrier leakage, right? Like stuff is getting across. That's making these neurons fire. That is a very large amount of leakage. I would argue. I kind of think of most of these like mutant leakage or, I mean, in everybody that you get a cold, you might have a little bit, you can repair it or it can go back down to baseline or maybe there's a small area that isn't there, but it's not going to be a huge issue.
[00:54:56] And I kind of think of it like that slow drip in your sink or whatever that maybe once every 20 minutes, you have a drip. No big deal. But over years, you get that rust stain, right? And that stain is that barrier leakage. And it's in a particular area because of the way that the faucet falls, right? It's not the entire basin is breaking. And it takes years of this and multiple kind of assaults to really damage it.
[00:55:24] But then I could think of like a stroke, for example, as extreme is more like the pipe broke, right? So like you have a burst pipe and everything gets out all at once versus like these barrier leakage events if it makes you feel better. Plus it's not as bad. It's at least not as advertently, you know, and maybe some leakage is good, right? So that's also part of the question.
Annalee: [00:55:48] Yeah. Like you were saying, like it seems like that might be a possible therapy for some issues, right? Like maybe we just need to be draining. Cause I know people have talked about that idea that maybe it's the cleansing mechanism in the brain that's failing in those situations with the plaques. So yeah, maybe we just need to do a brain flush, like you said.
Natasha: [00:56:09] Yeah, just a cleanse.
Annalee: [00:56:13] Yeah, brain cleanse. Right, right. Yeah. It doesn't sound creepy at all.
Charlie Jane: [00:56:15] Just a little brainwash.
Annalee: [00:56:16] We'll come up with a better name.
Natasha: [00:56:18] Brain wash?
Annalee: [00:56:19] No, no, no.
Natasha: [00:56:21] It's your annual purge, right?
Charlie Jane: [00:56:24] But that is part of what got me interested in this topic is this notion that we've been so arrogant about our brains. Like we're so proud of our brains. As hominins, we're really like, our brains are like the best brains. And they're also just like, they're the real us and our bodies are just, it's like this Cartesian kind of thing of like, and our nervous system isn't just our brains, right? It's our neurons throughout our body.
Natasha: [00:56:45] And the glia. I will argue the glia are also very important.
Charlie Jane: [00:56:48] Oh yeah. Don't diss the glia.
Natasha: [00:56:51] No, definitely not. So that's also part of the, neurons are great, but yeah, I finally started touching neurons for the first time a couple of years ago. But I have more about the glia.
Charlie Jane: [00:57:02] Oh my gosh. So where can people find you online?
Natasha: [00:57:06] You can find me on Blue Sky or LinkedIn or on my website. Feel free to shoot me an email. I tend to try and respond if you have questions. OBrownLab.com is very easy to find me.
Charlie Jane: [00:57:17] Awesome.
Natasha: [00:57:18] I'm very colorful and loud as you can tell.
Annalee: [00:57:21] Yeah, you can't see this but we can see many beautiful fish stickers all over Natasha's office. It's pretty awesome.
Natasha: [00:57:29] Not to mention the hot pink cape that my mom just sewed for me.
Annalee: [00:57:32] Amazing. I feel like all scientists should have a pink cape or whatever color they prefer. Some kind of cape.
Charlie Jane: [00:57:42] Awesome. Thank you so much.
Natasha: [00:57:44] It was great to talk to you.
[00:57:47] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.
Charlie Jane: [00:57:50] Thank you so much for listening. If you just somehow stumbled on us, this has been Our Opinions Are Correct. You can find us wherever you find your podcasts. Please subscribe. Please leave a review if you can. It really helps.
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[00:58:11] Thank you so much to our incredible, just genius producer and engineer, Niah Harmon. Thanks to Chris Palmer and Katya Lopez-Nichols for our music. And thanks again to all of you for listening and supporting us. So we'll be back with a new episode in two weeks. And we'll have a mini episode next week for our Patreon supporters. And if you are a Patreon supporter, we'll see you on Discord.
Both: [00:58:33] Bye!
[00:58:34] [OOAC theme plays. Science fictiony synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]