When you think about the future of medicine, do you picture cure-all pills? Instant diagnostics from a drop of blood? What about going back to the basics with plant-based treatments with a side of spiritual healing?

In this episode, we sat down with scientist and social entrepreneur Dr. Victoria Hale, co-founder of an ayahuasca tea company called Sacred Medicines. Listen to our conversation about how psychedelics are making a comeback (especially in the mental health space), what it takes to get FDA approval for new treatments, and the ethical and cultural debate surrounding the increased Western attention on traditional ayahuasca tea ceremonies.

Check out the episode page at carrytheoneradio.com for links to Sacred Medicines and more reading!

This episode was produced by Stella Belonwu, Cindy Liu, and Seesha Takagishi. Episode art by Stella Belonwu and Seesha Takagishi. All music by Blue Dot Sessions.

What do cancer cells and t-shirts have in common? You might be surprised! In this Young Scientist Spotlight, Dr Danielle Twum explains how she uses her communication skills and expertise to help doctors and researchers improve the way they treat cancer. In addition to working in industry, Dr Twum also works with AAAS IF/THEN to teach young students about being a scientist.

We talk about her transition from studying corals to cancer, how the hungriest cells in our body can be a tumor’s best friend and the importance of telling a story with your science. By the end, you may never look at a shirt tag the same way again!

This episode was produced by Maggie Colton with help from the team at CTOR. Music by Valentin Sosnitskiy. You can follow Dr Twum @forgedonyx on Twitter and Instagram.

The earth can’t wait, and it’s imperative that we are climate aware and are moved to action to maintain it. In this episode covering sustainability and climate change, we talk to Dr. Sheri Weiser, a physician-scientist at UCSF with a long history of researching food insecurity and climate justice. Dr. Weiser has been a Principal Investigator on over 25 research grants and has published over 165 manuscripts in this area.

In our conversation with Dr. Weiser, we learn about how her work exposed her to the harsh climate realities faced by the food insecure on a daily basis. Additionally, Dr. Weiser shares her path to sustainability activism and some initiatives she has led in the UC system to tackle climate change with a key focus on environmental justice and equity. These include, but are not limited to, integrating sustainability across the UC curriculum, directing the Global Food Initiative at UCSF, co-leading the launch of UCSF’s EaRTH Center this Earth Day (April 22nd), and creating a myriad of opportunities for student involvement.

To learn more about the Global Food Initiative, the UCSF Climate Change and Mental Health Task Force, the UCSF EaRTH Center, and the UCSF Human Health and Climate Change student group, see the links below!

Global Food Initiative: https://www.ucop.edu/global-food-initiative/

Climate Change and Mental Health Task Force: https://psychiatry.ucsf.edu/climatechange

EaRTH Center: https://earth.ucsf.edu/

Human Health and Climate Change Student Group: https://ucsf.campusgroups.com/club_signup?group_type=27712&category_tags=

For free tickets to the Center for Climate Justice launch event, https://www.eventbrite.com/e/uc-center-for-climate-justice-launch-event-tickets-148653952975?aff=erelexpmlt

This episode was written and produced by Rachel Rock and Stella Belonwu with editing help from the rest of the CTOR team. Music used in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions and Niklas Schreiber.

Before this episode, if someone asked me what could be done to improve maternal and newborn health outcomes, one of the last things on my mind would have been “kindness” because that part should be obvious, right? Wrong. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Afulani and Dr.Walker, two faculty members in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and affiliates with the Institute of Global Health Sciences at UCSF. They share information about the disparities in women’s health and the importance of patient-centered care across the globe, particularly in these pandemic times, where navigating patient interactions with physicians can be varied and complex.

Contact tracing is a term that almost all of us are familiar with, but what exactly does it entail? As part of a collaboration with the Institute of Global Health Sciences (IGHS) at UCSF, we spoke to three contact tracing experts in San Francisco.

From our conversations with librarian and manager at the Excelsior Branch Public Library Ramses Escobado, deputy director of the Center for Global Health Delivery, Diplomacy and Economics Jess Celentano, and Infectious disease doctor Mike Reid, we discuss contact tracing from epidemiological and health equity lens.

We discuss their newly found roles in the sector of contact tracing, how contact tracing goes beyond facilitating infected parties to quarantine, the barriers to contact tracing, how to measure the success of contact tracing efforts, what characteristics make a good contact tracer, and how we envision a future post COVID-19.

This interview was conducted via zoom in September 2020. If you’d like to learn more about current contact tracing efforts and the resources that are available for people impacted by the pandemic, be sure to check out the following links:

https://oewd.org/employees-impacted-covid-19#Paid%20Sick%20Leave

https://globalhealthsciences.ucsf.edu/

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/php/principles-contact-tracing.html

https://globalhealthsciences.ucsf.edu/covid-19/contact-tracing

This episode was written and produced by Stella Belonwu, Maggie Colton, and Ben Mansky. Music from this episode was produced by Blue Dot Sessions and 4barrelcarb

Let’s be real -- life can be stressful. For those facing early life stress, the consequences can even affect their very biology. Fortunately, Rebekah Rashford is a young Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University who is uncovering just how these stressors affect people.

In this Young Scientist Spotlight (our 16th!), Rebekah Rashford shares how she began her journey in science, her sources of inspiration, and how she balances her hobbies with her academic pursuits. You’ll discover that her joy for scientific discoveries is exceptionally infectious!

This episode was produced by Kanchi Mehta. Music used in this episode is Town Market by the Blue Dot Sessions. This interview was completed via Zoom in October 2020.

Roughly 4% of the world’s population is affected by a rare disease, and while we are learning every day how to better diagnose and treat these conditions, there is still much to uncover. Rare Disease Day, which lands on the last day of February every year, seeks to raise awareness and improve access to care for patients and families living with rare diseases. For both scientific and clinical perspectives, we speak with Dr. William Gahl from the NIH, as well as Linda Manwaring, a genetic counselor from Washington University in St. Louis. In addition, we hear directly from a young patient named Aiden and his caregiver, Shaun, about their experiences living with a rare disease.

This episode was written and produced by Iris Chin, Marilyn Steyert, and Devika Nair with editing help from the rest of the CTOR team. Music used in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions.

For more information on Rare Disease Day, visit https://www.rarediseaseday.org/, and to learn more about the Undiagnosed Disease Network, visit https://undiagnosed.hms.harvard.edu/.

We don’t usually hear the words science and art together, but we’ve been misled -- science and art exist together on multiple planes, constantly informing each other in beautiful and unexpected ways.

This is the second episode in our two-part mini-series on science and art. Here, we’re joined by visual artists and science communicators Kelly Montgomery and Sophie Wang. They both discuss how they’ve used art to communicate big ideas, and how scientists can approach making knowledge more accessible.

We’d like to share some comic excerpts from JKX’s latest project "Gaining STEAM!". They are done by each of the co-founders. The excerpt titled "Squirrel Comic..." is by Jaye Gardiner. The design titled "Khoa" is by Khoa Tran. Lastly, the work titled "Kelly" is by Kelly. To see more of their work, check out jkxcomics.com, or @JKXcomics on Instagram or Twitter.

Sophie’s activist collective, Free Radicals, posts on freerads.org, and are on Instagram and Twitter @freeradsorg.

This episode was written and produced by Stella Belonwu, Celia Ford, and Devika Nair. Music from this episode was produced by Blue Dot Sessions. Episode art by Stella Belonwu.

Did you know you could scuba dive for science? Well, that’s exactly what Gaby Keeler-May does in the waters of New Zealand! In our latest Young Scientist Spotlight episode (#15!), learn about how Gaby’s scuba diving class in Santa Cruz, California, led her to investigating invasive seaweeds in New Zealand!

We discuss how she conducts each dive (safety first!) and what they do with the tons of seaweed they pull from the waters (spoiler alert: it may become your next meal!). Gaby also shares her experience applying to graduate school internationally and being a PhD student who has had over 5 years of work experience. By the end of this episode, you’ll want to be swimming with the seaweeds of New Zealand, too!

You feeling stressed? Well, take a break from work and listen to our latest Young Scientist Spotlight with Sero Parel. Sero is a Neuroscience graduate student at Princeton University, who is interested in studying stress and how stressful moments can change the course of our developing brain. For Sero, their research goes way beyond any old science experiment. Their work asks fundamental questions about what is actually happening to the brains of those whose lives are impacted by certain levels of stress. In this conversation you will get a glimpse into how an activist and a graduate student in neuroscience can be one and the same person.

This episode was produced by Hasan Alkhairo. To learn more about Sero, you can follow them on Twitter at @mx_sero.