There’s almost no way to get most of our pulses racing faster than the thought of public speaking. We all have to give talks, both big and small and for many of us, talks of any size spiral us into fear and self-doubt. There are a lot of tools out there to deal with nerves, and this episode goes into several practical tools you can deploy to move from panic to ease when speaking.

This episode is the second of two parts with part one diving into how to level up your talks by treating them like performances! Oh yeah, and in case you like me are still confused…it’s vagus nerve, with “vagal” as the adjective form (such as “vagal tone”). IYKYK.

Want to work with me? I’d love to do a free, 30-minute intro Work Audit call with you to discuss your top blockers at work and start to come up with actionable steps towards your most STEMtastic STEMdentity. Schedule now at https://calendly.com/annahodshire/intro-work-audit-call!

Physiological sigh resources: https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2023/02/cyclic-sighing-can-help-breathe-away-anxiety.html

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Song of week: Midnight Ride by Orville Peck, Kylie Minogue, Diplo

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Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

We all have to give talks - whether it’s a big conference talk in front of hundreds of people or quick meeting presentations. And even though we only spend a small fraction of our time speaking in front of others, our talks are one of the main ways people we don’t directly work with can get to know us. Talks are also one of our fastest ways to communicate the amazing things we do - and can be the most engaging way to get others’ attention!

So why shouldn’t we treat talks like any other performance or competitive activity? We can use the same tricks as competitive athletes to make our talks and our work stand out! This episode is the first of two parts - part two dives into how to get past the nerves when speaking.

Want to work with me? I’d love to do a free, 30-minute intro Work Audit call with you to discuss your top blockers at work and start to come up with actionable steps towards your most STEMtastic STEMdentity. Schedule now at https://calendly.com/annahodshire/intro-work-audit-call!

Loving this but listening while on your dog walk/commute/cleaning/etc? Want to have key notes for each episode? Grab them for free here!! Want to get science hits and pod recaps in your inbox every few weeks? Sign up here for our newsletter, Science Hits and Podcast Blips! I promise to keep these short and fun!

Song of week: Dead of Night by Orville Peck

More about the reticular activating system: Kosslyn, S. M., Ganis, G., & Thompson, W. L. (2001). Neural foundations of imagery. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2(9), 635-642

If you loved this episode:

1. Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
2. Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes!

Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

I’m so excited to bring you this conversation with my very good friends, Taylor Christenson and Tim Remkes! Taylor and Tim met during their bachelor’s degree program in Botany at Weber State University and married shortly after school. They’ve successfully explored several career paths and keep finding themselves back doing what they love with being outside and teaching.

Tim has built his own amazing environmental services company for native landscapes - https://remkesenvironmental.com/. He works directly with clients in Utah, does virtual consults, and specializes in native plants in the Rocky Mountain region. Follow Tim’s Instagram for that yard inspo we all need! @Remkesenvironmental

Taylor is a spectacular artist, teacher, dog foster and dog mom, and flower arranger, amongst many other skills! You can follow her gorgeous arrangements on Instagram at @Perditafarms and buy her bouquets directly at local coffee shops in Salt Lake City during the flower seasons.

Want to work with me? I’d love to do a free, 30-minute intro Work Audit call with you to discuss your top blockers at work and start to come up with actionable steps towards your most STEMtastic STEMdentity. Schedule by clicking here or DM me on Instagram, @STEMdentity!

Loving this but listening while on your dog walk/commute/cleaning/etc? Want to have key notes for each episode? Grab them for free here!! Want to get science hits and pod recaps in your inbox every few weeks? Sign up here for our newsletter, Science Hits and Podcast Blips. I promise to keep these short and fun!

(If the links aren't working...Episode notes link: subscribepage.io/stemdentity-episode-notes. Newsletter link: subscribepage.io/jijZ7P)

Song of the week: Rolling in the Deep by Adele - throwback city!

If you loved this episode:

1. Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
2. Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes!

Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

Welcome to STEMdentity Journal Club! Every month, I find an amazing peer-reviewed journal article and interview one of its lead authors. We talk about their paper, their work, and their STEM identities.

My guest today is Dr. Eric Boyd, a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology at Montana State University. We talk about his group’s paper "Seismic shifts in the geochemical and microbial composition of a Yellowstone aquifer" (2025, PNAS Nexus). We also talk about how he landed the dream job of having a research group that regularly works in Yellowstone, writing awesome methods sections, and the importance of science communication.

Link to the article: https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/4/11/pgaf344/8340224

Link to Dr. Boyd’s research group: http://geoboydology.com/

Want to get science hits and pod recaps in your inbox every few weeks? Sign up here for our newsletter (subscribepage.io/jijZ7P), Science Hits and Podcast Blips.

Want to work with me? I’d love to do a free, 30-minute intro Work Audit call with you to discuss your top blockers at work and start to come up with actionable steps towards your most STEMtastic STEMdentity. Schedule by clicking here or DM me on Instagram @STEMdentity!

Song of the week: Last Nite by the Strokes

Sometimes life is like learning to drive a car in flat, dry conditions and then all of a sudden you find yourself in the middle of the mountains, trying to navigate curves and learning that you might just burn your brakes out if you don’t use your car’s other tools when you’re careening downhill. Just like you needed to shift into a lower gear, we all need tools that help us become more resilient towards work’s (and life’s!) stressors.

Today I talk about two major categories of tools: tools that help you build up your resilience over time, and tools that help you immediately come to a more calm, regulated, resourced place when something big comes up.

Andrew Huberman on the physiological sigh and other useful breathing tools: https://www.hubermanlab.com/newsletter/breathwork-protocols-for-health-focus-stress

Want to work with me one-on-one? I’d love to do a free, 30-minute intro Work Audit call with you to discuss your top blockers at work and start to come up with actionable steps towards your most STEMtastic STEMdentity! Schedule by clicking here or DM me on Instagram, @STEMdentity!

Loving this but listening while on your dog walk/commute/cleaning/etc? Want to have key notes for each episode? Grab them for free here!! Want to get science hits and pod recaps in your inbox every few weeks? Sign up here for our newsletter, Science Hits and Podcast Blips! I promise to keep these short and fun!

(If the links aren't working...Episode notes link: subscribepage.io/stemdentity-episode-notes Newsletter link: subscribepage.io/jijZ7P)

Song of week: Midnight City by M83. If this isn’t a pump-up jam, I don’t know what is

If you loved this episode:

1. Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
2. Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes!
3. Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

We are all scientists, engineers, and artists, and we can use this innate curiosity and creativity to keep pointing ourselves towards the life we want. We all know about frameworks like growth mindset, but sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the flurry of work pressures and before you know it, work feels stagnant and the farthest thing from magical.

In this episode, I dig into core values versus limiting beliefs, growth mindset, and how we can apply tools to move towards the jobs and careers we want.

Want to work with me? I’d love to do a free, 30-minute intro Work Audit call with you to discuss your top blockers at work and start to come up with actionable steps towards your most STEMtastic STEMdentity. Schedule by clicking here!

Loving this but listening while on your dog walk/commute/cleaning/etc? Want to have key notes for each episode? Grab them for free here!! Want to get science hits and pod recaps in your inbox every few weeks? Sign up here for our newsletter, Science Hits and Podcast Blips! I promise to keep these short and fun!

If the links aren't working...Episode notes link: subscribepage.io/stemdentity-episode-notes

Newsletter link: subscribepage.io/jijZ7P

Song of the week: Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen - live in London

https://youtu.be/YrLk4vdY28Q?si=J6UkDSgLWdoKIic_

If you loved this episode:

1. Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
2. Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes!

Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

Five jobs in five years was a whole lot and a complete life-changer all in one. In this episode I walk through how each job came about and highlight some of the key lessons I took away from each one. This episode is all about putting sampling and ikigai (episode 1!!) into practice.

Want to work with me one-on-one? I’d love to do a free, 30-minute intro Work Audit call with you to discuss your top blockers at work and start to come up with actionable steps towards your most STEMtastic STEMdentity. Schedule by clicking here!

Loving this but listening while on your dog walk/commute/cleaning/etc? Want to have key notes for each episode? Grab them for free here!! Want to get science hits and pod recaps in your inbox every few weeks? Sign up here for our newsletter, Science Hits and Podcast Blips! I promise to keep these short and fun!

If the links aren't working...Episode notes link: subscribepage.io/stemdentity-episode-notes

Newsletter link: subscribepage.io/jijZ7P

Song of the week: In the Fall by Future Islands & Katrina Ford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e50VztTH2M

If you loved this episode:

1. Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
2. Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes!

Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

What if you’re in your STEM career path (school, first job out of school, nth job….) and you don’t feel like you’ve found a job that lights you up? Or like you mostly like your job but something(s) is missing?

This is so normal AND we can actively start moving ourselves towards jobs and careers that let us shine at what we love. In this episode, I go over techniques for starting to figure out what makes you light up at work.

Loving this but listening while on your dog walk/commute/cleaning/etc? Want to have key notes for each episode? Grab them for free here!! Want to get science hits and pod recaps in your inbox every few weeks? Sign up here for our newsletter, Science Hits and Podcast Blips! I promise to keep these short and fun!

If the links aren't working...Episode notes link: subscribepage.io/stemdentity-episode-notes

Newsletter link: subscribepage.io/jijZ7P

Song of the week: Blender by Inna True, https://youtu.be/1Mf_FlKb1PE?si=SgbRKTUPG4CbZ2yd. This song is a banger, dance it out!!

Want to work with me? I’d love to do a free, 30-minute intro Work Audit call with you to discuss your top blockers at work and start to come up with actionable steps towards your most STEMtastic STEMdentity. Schedule by clicking here!

If you loved this episode:

1. Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
2. Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes!
3. Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

We are all scientists, engineers, and artists, and we can use this innate curiosity and creativity to keep pointing ourselves towards the life we want! 

Welcome to STEMdentity with Anna Hodshire, the podcast for STEM and STEM-adjacent professionals who aren’t here to just churn through emails, meetings, overwhelm, and burnout. We’re here to find our own unique paths and identities that lead us to our most creative selves. 

In this trailer, I jump right in: I’ve had 5 jobs in 5 years since graduating and I’ve learned a whole lot along the way about myself. I might be an assistant professor in a tenure-track career at a research university, but it was a far from linear path to get here and I know I’ve just scratched the surface of finding my most aligned, awesome STEMdentities. 

If you already know you want to expand your team of support around you by working directly with me, reach out for a free, 30-minute Intro Work (or School!) Audit call! Let’s dig into your thorniest problem right now and get you unstuck. Schedule at https://calendly.com/annahodshire/intro-work-audit-call or DM me @STEMdentity (Instagram) or LinkedIn - Anna Hodshire! 

If you loved this episode: 

• Give a follow! We officially launch on January 6, 2026. 
• Share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros! 
• Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes!

PS - we're all bad at file naming amirite ;)