Season 5 Episode 36: Muscle Aging, Dogs in the Classroom and Dr. Bayer and Simonis on Storytelling

Get ready to unlock the secrets of muscle aging and discover how it can be reversed in our latest episode! Join me, your host, as I dive into a fascinating study centered around the enzyme 15 hydroxyprostaglandin dehydrogenase (15 PGDH or Gerozine) and its role in muscle regeneration. Learn how blocking this enzyme restored muscle mass in aging mice, and what implications this breakthrough could have for human muscle aging.

We also look at the science of having dogs in the classroom!

But that's not all - we also have two amazing guests, scientists Dr. Bayer and Juniper, who will take us on a journey through their unique areas of study in marine biology, ecology, and mathematics. Plus, we'll explore their self-published book on disabilities in STEM and how storytelling can foster community support. Don't miss this episode packed with scientific discoveries, personal stories, and a few surprises along the way!


The Guest Links:

https://twitter.com/drsrbayer
https://twitter.com/JuniperLSimonis
Uncharted! : https://cup.columbia.edu/book/uncharted/9780231203630

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Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:08

Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zikowski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold onto your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there.

Speaker 2: 0:36

I am recording on my travel mic from my hotel room in between sessions at the NSTA in Kansas City. That's right, I'm recording from the United States again. I'm here as a presenter, but also somebody taking in some really amazing sessions for science teachers. I'm pretty blown away by the quality that I'm seeing at the NSTA from people giving up their time to present sessions. I'm presenting two sessions. I've already presented one and it was amazingly well received, so that makes me feel real good. I am missing the family and, of course, I'm missing the dogs. The podcast is out a little late because of travel.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Let's get to what's happening on the show In science news. We're going to talk about a way to maybe get back some of the muscle loss that happens as you age. In science news there's a really cool huge survey and study and statistical analysis of the effects of therapy dogs in classrooms. In Ask an Expert I have two guests, dr Skyler Bear and Juniper Simonis, who will be talking about a book they are contributors for, as well as some of the cool science that they do. Since we're talking about strength today, let's do a strength pun. Why do bodybuilders lift dictionaries? Well, they want to add definition to their muscles. Hi-o. Okay, on with the show, because there's no time. Wake science time. This week in science news we're going to be talking about muscles aging and maybe a way to reverse it. I don't know, is that a little bit like science fiction?

Speaker 2: 2:20

I love lifting weights. I got into it I don't know in university. It was something that I did to stay healthy and I've really kept up with it. It's part of my mental health plan to try to stay fit. I'm not the slimmest guy, but from lifting weights I'm definitely one of the strongest guys. I'm not a bodybuilder at all, for sure, but I do love lifting weights and I have to say that, as I am in my 40s, I'm definitely the strongest I've ever been in my entire life. So I haven't hit that point where my strength has started to wane. I saw this article and I was like, ooh, I know that's coming. You know, I can't keep getting stronger. My body eventually will hit a peak where it will start its decline as I age, and I was just intrigued by this study.

Speaker 2: 3:16

It is true that as we age, muscles decrease in size and strength, and they definitely decrease in size and strength if you're not using them regularly. On the science podcast you might remember we've had Dr Keith Barr this was years ago who specializes in physiology, and his point is everybody, every single person, if they're able, should be incorporating strength training into their health, especially as they age, because it slows the decrease in your muscles due to aging. As you lose muscle strength, things that were easy become more difficult. Daily tasks increase in their complexity because of this and just holding yourself up and balance becomes an issue. The lack of muscle development, the loss of muscle, can lead to falls, and it doesn't take much for a really bad fall to break bones.

Speaker 2: 4:07

So our story starts with an enzyme. This enzyme has a giant name 15 hydroxyprostaglandin dehydrogenase, 15 PGDH. That enzyme is nicknamed Gerozine. Why is this enzyme such a big deal? This enzyme breaks down a protein. Remember, enzymes are, you know, catalysts for breaking things down. It breaks down a protein called prostaglandin E2. Why is prostaglandin E2 such a big deal? Well, prostaglandin E2 is responsible for activating muscle cells, which are crucial for regenerating damaged muscles. Okay, that's profound.

Speaker 2: 4:52

Why is weightlifting or strength training so good? So if you are lifting weights, you're actually damaging and tearing your muscle fibers. I know this may come as a shock, but it's common knowledge for people that do lift weights. Your body's like whoa what did you just do, you crazy person? And builds the muscle back up, probably stronger, because it understood that it went through trauma and it doesn't want to have that same thing again. So the next week you lift a little bit heavier or you have a little bit more reps in your body is like whoa, I got to keep building this muscle and prostaglandin E2 is part of the chain to get that to go. And if you have that Gerozine enzyme busting down prostaglandin E2, I think you can probably see the problem.

Speaker 2: 5:42

Previously, a team at Stanford University blocked 15 PGDH or Gerozine and it restored the withered muscles within mice and it improved the strength. After a month of treatment they obviously looked at muscle density. They didn't have the mice. Do you know bench presses and squats to see how how both the mice were getting right If they increase this enzyme, the mice lost muscles and lost strength. So after a month of having elevated levels of Gerozine, these mice lost their muscle mass. Interestingly enough, this enzyme starts to accumulate in the muscles of old mice Just due to aging. More and more of this enzyme starts to pack up inside the bodies of older mice and if it packs up and there's more of it, guess what it's breaking down? That's right, that prostaglandin E2 and that prostaglandin E2 protein which you need to help rebuild muscle. So if you can't rebuild muscle, you're constantly in a withering state. A drug was created to inhibit or slow down 15 PGDH or Gerozine in old mice and after a one month, muscle fibers and things like synapses that led to the signaling to increase, muscle mass increased and the animal strength increased as well. So this breakthrough can now move potentially to humans in clinical trials and help those who are suffering muscle loss due to the natural aging process. But also think about everybody else that might have elevated levels of these enzymes. And in mice they found that if there were nerve injuries there was elevated levels of this protein and if there were motor nerve diseases, there were elevated levels of this enzyme. So it's not just the aging process where this could potentially help people. Isn't this a cool study? Now, it's not a steroid. It's basically rewinding the clock for those people who are starting to see a loss of muscle. That's science news for this week.

Speaker 2: 8:00

This week, in Pet Science, I'm going to be covering a study that was inspired by a booth of you know, there's these booths at science conferences. I'm at the NSTA. If Chris is listening to this episode, she's going to laugh. She loves the booths because they have swag, which is like free pens and pencils, which teachers need to, because kids are always not having pens and pencils and sometimes they have notepads and they have. They have resources, so it's it's kind of a cool place to go and I've been blown away by what's at the NSTA. Anyways, that's neither here nor there.

Speaker 2: 8:36

The reason why we're doing this study is I ran into a booth of two amazing people that are representatives of pets in the classroom. That's what it's called pets in the classroom. They help facilitate linking your classroom, as a teacher, to a therapy dog, or helping you bring a pet into the classroom and they have three different things. They have tropical fish, they have lizards and they have like small mammals. And I just got talking to these two about how impactful animals in the classroom are and I was just mentioning Bunsen and Beaker and we got and then 20 minutes went by and we both had tears in our eyes and I was like how can I shoehorn this conversation into the science podcast? So I found a study that just came out that talked about this exact topic. This is from the Journal of Veterinary Behavior and it's about therapy dogs and school well-being. It's a huge qualitative study. So let's break down what happened as quickly as possible.

Speaker 2: 9:42

118 participants aged 18 and above, categorized as academic professionals, health professionals or educational professionals who had experience with therapy dogs who worked with kids, children and adolescents, were part of the study. You had to have experience with therapy dogs for school-aged kids and the idea was to gather information about what's going on. What are the good and the bad? What is the experience of having a therapy dog in the classroom? Questionnaires were sent out about how the therapy dog perhaps enhanced school well-being. All right, so here are some of the themes Social well-being, student regulation. So regulation is meaning to keep a calm demeanor and not have spikes in your emotions of happy, sad, fearful, angry, right, okay, social well-being, emotional well-being, behavior well-being, learning well-being. And then they also looked at things like dog phobias. Did the dogs trigger distress in kids? Some kids do have dog phobias. Then they looked at other stuff, like some kids have severe behavior outbursts. Were those lessons? So it was a huge qualitative study.

Speaker 2: 11:01

Here are some of the positives which are so wholesome. Number one the therapy dogs overwhelmingly enhanced students' enthusiasm, confidence and motivation to attend school, attend school and engage in school. I can tell you as a teacher that is the number one thing To get kids to come to school and to get kids to engage with school. Therapy dogs overwhelmingly enhanced that. Therapy dogs provided unconditional support and encouragement with kids. They also promoted social interactions with kids from different social groups, different peer groups and different learning abilities. So the dog was a catalyst for all of those soft skills that we want kids to have. The therapy dogs contributed to greater social and academic engagement, which was measured by assessment, and they fostered students and they fostered opportunities for students to develop communication skills as well as form friendships. More positive mood states were recorded. The dogs provided comfort and it led to a decrease in stress, anxiety and arousal levels of children as well. The therapy dog was used as a role model for emotional and behavioral regulation, which positively influenced the students with their own emotional management. These are all amazing findings.

Speaker 2: 12:34

I teach high school kids who are mostly academic. I don't teach many kids with huge behavior problems I have and I can't tell you how disruptive those are and nine times out of ten it's not the kids fault. They had a rough go at life. They have their brain. Chemistry is not, as you would expect in a quote unquote child like a normal, normal child. They just have struggles. These are big. These findings are big.

Speaker 2: 13:04

Now there are some negative effects with therapy dogs. Some students with a generalized fear of dogs had a little bit more anxiety and panic in the presence of therapy dogs. Students without experience with being around dogs, especially without pet dogs at home, may not understand that how a dog acts. They may call out to the dog and the dog may not look at them and they may feel rejected. So they're just. They don't have a lot of experience that a dog isn't necessarily like a human and won't acknowledge them like a human all the time there were some students with behavior difficulties who did become over aroused and wanted to monopolize the time with the therapy dog. There were some challenges around the safety and welfare of the therapy dog with kids. Now, remember, these are kids. Not all kids know how to treat an animal, and they did. They did see some challenges with like inappropriate hugging or over excitement or like squeezing the dog's face or pinching the dog. The kids weren't necessarily being cruel, they just didn't know how to treat a dog.

Speaker 2: 14:13

In the end all of these things could be mitigated so that the overwhelming benefits of having the dog are there and we minimize things that are negative for the other children who maybe it's not as positive for. You could obviously screen a classroom to see if you have more kids who are fearful of dogs than not. Maybe the therapy dog is not a good choice for that classroom With kids with with severe behavior problems. Again, therapy dog handlers maybe aren't prepared to deal with those kids because they've never had experience with kids who can get rapidly aggressive, violent, over-emotional. And if you have clear expectations and rules for how you interact with the therapy dog and the therapy dog handler and that's communicated prior, things went a lot smoother. So in the end, this big qualitative study with over 100 people who interact with therapy dogs and how they're used in the classroom, I think we can see that there is some great benefits there. And those challenges they're real. I think we could probably work together to mitigate them. Getting kids to school, getting kids to engage in school, is the number one issue of nearly every teacher that I talk to, and if dogs can help with that, let's bring in the dogs.

Speaker 2: 15:35

That's Pet Science for this Week. Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the science podcast free. Number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our PawPakPlus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun.

Speaker 2: 16:01

Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen stuffy, the Beaker stuffy and now the Ginger stuffy. That's right, ginger, the Science Cat, has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen to. Okay, on with the show. Back to the interviews. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I have two guests today Dr Skyler Baer and Dr Juniper Simonis, both authors, contributors to a book called Uncharted how Scientists Navigate their Own Health Research and Experience of Bias Skyler, how are you doing?

Speaker 1: 16:51

I'm doing great. I'm enjoying the Alaskan afternoon here in Juneau, Alaska.

Speaker 3: 16:57

Oh and Juniper, how are you doing? I'm doing pretty well. I am out in Portland, oregon and it is getting to be the wet season for sure. It's cool and off and getting wet and getting dark early.

Speaker 2: 17:14

Wow, Alaska Skyler, have you lived there most of your life or have you hopped around?

Speaker 1: 17:20

No, I've only been here about a year. I spent about 36 years on the East Coast in the US and the Northeast before moving out here. Oh, so a little different winters, maybe, if you've experienced it yet, Well, I used to live in Maine and we had the real snow and real winters. And in Alaska it's just a little bit darker and the hills are a bit steeper, but it's kind of the same in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2: 17:48

And same thing for you over there, juniper. Have you lived in the Portland area your whole life or jumped around?

Speaker 3: 17:54

No, I've jumped around quite a bit as well. I grew up in Northern Illinois, just outside of Chicago, okay, and I went to a grad school in Ithaca, new York, at Cornell, and have moved around quite a bit. But I've been out here in Portland since 2015, a little over eight years now.

Speaker 2: 18:20

Okay, okay. So one of the questions just real quick to get a little background on your both. I introduced you as doctors. You've got some science training, skyler, what's your training in science?

Speaker 1: 18:34

Yeah, so I have wanted to be a marine biologist my whole life, since I was a little girl, and I completed that dream.

Speaker 2: 18:43

Yay, congratulations.

Speaker 1: 18:45

Thank you. Yeah, I did my bachelor's in marine bio, my master's in biological oceanography and then my PhD from the University of Maine in marine biology. I'm, by training, really a marine ecologist. Okay, and I study mostly invertebrate population dynamics, but I dabbled in other aspects of marine biology as well.

Speaker 2: 19:12

Okay, same question over to you, juniper. I heard you went to Cornell. That's cool. Andy from the office, do you have all the Cornell gear, like he does?

Speaker 3: 19:29

No, unfortunately I have very different when you go to a school as a grad student compared to when you go as an undergrad, in terms of the sort of Hurrah components to it. But yeah, I got some t-shirts and stuff somewhere, but yeah, so my training fairly similar to Skyler. I also am an ecologist by training and I got my undergraduate from the University of Illinois in Urbano-Champaign in integrative biology and my PhD from Cornell University in ecology and evolutionary biology and I'm a quantitative ecologist and I do a lot of a lot of typey typey right Software and mathematical models and stuff like that to help answer questions using data. And the questions that I'm typically interested in have to do with, you know, populations of critters of different types and understanding kind of how different human management practices or environmental pressures or whatnot impact those populations.

Speaker 3: 20:58

However, very recently within the last five months basically I had a domain switch in my career and I have recently started working in the human services and public health sector. I just started working for the state of Oregon actually doing very similar work on human populations, so writing software and models to study human populations and make forecasts about them, and in particular, I work on benefits programs like Medicaid and people with disabilities and aging services and self-sufficiency programs and doing the human dimensions, forecasting of that for budgetary and caseload kind of planning purposes. So it's definitely a new field for me and I'm really interested in seeing how I get to kind of put this, my history, to use it in new space.

Speaker 2: 22:17

Okay, I like how you talked about how you're a typey, typey scientist sometimes, as opposed to the other ecologists that are a high key, looky or muddy boots, we call it, or Bodhi, bodhi Sampley scientists. We need all types of scientists. Skylar, I have a question for you. You said you wanted to be a marine biologist your whole life. Were you the kid, that was like scooping stuff up out of the ocean from the the soonest you could. Like you mentioned you were on lived on the east coast, I believe.

Speaker 1: 22:49

Yeah, oh, yeah. No, I, we didn't live on the beach, but every summer we'd spend a week or two at least going to somewhere on the coast, and so I spent a lot of time looking for shells or, yeah, digging stuff up. And I spent a lot of time in elementary school copying diagrams of whales and other figures to make my own, you know, guidebooks, you know, when you're like seven or whatever you think that that's really fun to do. So I was pretty obsessed with, you know, animals that lived in the deep, especially for a long time.

Speaker 2: 23:26

They're pretty magical. My day job I'm a high school chemistry teacher and when we can, I organize a trip to Vancouver Island, to this marine biology station called Banfield, and there's usually one or two kids from Landlock, alberta, canada. We get out to that island and they're like, yep, I'm going to be a marine biologist because it's there's, there's the pretty, it's pretty cool, what's in the ocean for sure. And then just quick same question kind of over to you, juniper what, what was it about? Ecology, biology? Were you a kid, a science kid, when you're young?

Speaker 3: 24:03

I was.

Speaker 3: 24:05

And yeah, I, you know, I grew up in the Midwest but definitely was flipping over logs and rocks, looking, looking for critters in the backyard, going, going, hiking and camping a lot with my family when I was young but really got me interested in the outdoors and like, yeah, understanding, like wow, there are so many critters, like you look in this spot and there are all these different kind of critters, and then you're looking at a spot that's nearby but you know, maybe it's, you know, got, you know you're in the soil as opposed to up on the side of the tree a little bit and it's completely different critters.

Speaker 3: 24:45

And at the same time, I have always been a huge math nerd, just like full stop giant math nerd my entire life, and it's really. It wasn't until kind of the end of my undergraduate time when I realized that I could actually do those two things together and do like math about outdoorsy things, as opposed to like, oh, I like to do math and maybe on the weekends I get to go outdoorsy or whatever. Getting to do those together was something that I didn't really realize was possible until I was in college.

Speaker 2: 25:30

Cool. Well, you both have really inspirational stories. Thank you for sharing a little bit of your science background. I appreciate that. I'd imagine the marine biologist over there fields tons of questions. Who would win in a fight this ocean creature versus this ocean creature? And maybe Juniper could calculate the statistical advantage one has. I'm not sure, but I have both of you here for a specific reason and that's to talk about the book I mentioned at the top Uncharted, how Scientists Navigate their Own Health Research and Experiences of Bias, and it seems like it's a pretty big topic, I guess, to you, to you, skyler. What's going on with this book? What's your role with it? I guess?

Speaker 1: 26:20

Yeah, so this book started probably really in 2018. I don't know if you know this, but writing books can take a long time, and one of the things I didn't mention that I do, jason, is I've worked in science communication for a long time Go Skyler. Yeah, and I don't know if you've heard of the story collider, have you?

Speaker 2: 26:48

The story collider. Yes, yes, I've heard of that. Yes, excellent.

Speaker 1: 26:51

So I first told a story for the story collider actually about when I used to do deep sea research. That's a story for another day, but that was way back in 2013.

Speaker 1: 27:02

And then I started producing with them, producing shows- so, I got really good at crafting science stories to be told on stage. I did a lot of telling. I coached a lot of scientists and non-scientists for these shows and in 2018, I told a story to a bunch of story collider producers at a retreat about this one time in my PhD program, where I was in a boat as surface support for a bunch of scuba divers in my lab and I worked in a scuba diving lab and I used to be able to scuba dive at the beginning of my experience there, but about six months into my program I got diagnosed with a heart condition that wouldn't let me scuba dive anymore, and it was really hard. I was like 25 years old and kind of still thought I was probably invincible, physically at least, and it was a hard shift. And it was hard for me too, because it produced friction with other people I worked with, because I think there's some perceptions I was lazy or that I wasn't doing the scuba diving work. I could do everything else, but I wasn't allowed to as much as I wanted. So I'm sitting in this boat and it's like a really cold November on the coast of Maine. There's practically snow in the air and this fishing boat comes over to me and they're like hey, do you wanna bucket a hot water? And I assumed that the bucket of hot water, which smelled like bleach and had like dead shrimp or whatever in it, by the way, was for the divers from when they come back up because they'd be cold and they go. No, this bucket of hot water is for you. And it was a really important moment for me. I know that sounds strange, but it was like someone seemed to care about me, and not just the scuba diving, and it was kind of a turning point for me.

Speaker 1: 28:57

So I told a story about that and the executive director of Story Collider, erin Barker, who's a friend of mine, she's like you know, that's a really beautiful story and has to do with, like, disabilities in field work and science. Another person who told a story for the Story Collider lately that's similar is Gabby Serrano-Marx. I feel like you two should get together and do something, and so I emailed Gabby because I thought that was like a really great idea and we're like well, we both have stories about, you know, disabilities or medical conditions as scientists. But you know, it would be really awesome, as if we had a project or a book or something of lots of stories, because we don't wanna just hear our voices. We wanna hear other people's voices and their experiences, because disabilities are often not talked about as much in terms of diversity in STEM and other fields too. But so we saw it as an opportunity to come together, recruit pitches from people, come up with a book proposal.

Speaker 1: 30:02

I actually bought a book called how to Write a Book Proposal. Yeah, but it was really useful book, absolutely. It's really good.

Speaker 2: 30:11

We've self-published a book. It's a ton of work. Yes, yeah, so we did find a publisher, though, because I'm in this reading, yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:19

Yeah, and we did find a publisher. Columbia University Press and editor Miranda Martin approached Gaby about book ideas and she's like well, we actually do have one, and so that is how we got started. And you know, it started with a conversation back in 2018 and five years later, it was published in August just two months ago.

Speaker 2: 30:43

Oh well, congratulations. I have all of my stuff hooked up to my corny soundboard. I won't torture you with the applause button, but that's what's going on in my head. Very cool, I'm just gonna bring Juniper in real quick, just because I would like to hear. Juniper, what's your contribution? Are you one of the storytellers in the book?

Speaker 3: 31:06

Yeah, go ahead, yeah. So I am one of a couple dozen. I wanna say there are contributors.

Speaker 4: 31:18

And.

Speaker 3: 31:18

I have a chapter in the book called this is Wallace, alfred Russell Simonas, and it is about my service dog named Wallace and how we navigate the world, and in particular, how we navigated a very challenging situation during the 2020 social justice uprisings in Portland, where police officers were using very dangerous chemical munitions and weapons against people like myself who were protesting in support of Black Lives Matter and racial justice causes, and trying to navigate the need for myself to be safe and supported in an environment and the fact that the environment in general was not safe for others and, in particular, for folks who are Black or are of other racial minorities or marginalized folks, and so that's really what my chapter focused on.

Speaker 2: 32:46

Okay, I'm pausing for a second because my wife has got home and Bunsen and Beaker are barking. They're very happy, so I apologize for that. I will edit this out in a second. Okay, it looks like they've calmed down, skyler, how many are the little short stories? Are they like little essays? What can people expect if they get the book?

Speaker 1: 33:09

Yeah, so there are 32 stories in six different sections. They, I think, are between like a thousand and 3000 words, so they're not super long. Two of the stories are from Gabby and myself and there's six sections, and one of the ways that we well the way we arranged this book is through stages of a nautical journey. So both Gabby and I have spent like time at sea and undergrad on tall ships and learning what it means to be a good shipmate and thinking a lot about setting course for a journey that might be uncharted, and we thought that that word uncharted was really familiar to science.

Speaker 1: 33:57

To be uncharted in science is to be data that's unaccounted for. To be uncharted Navigating is to be off the map. And in medicine, if you're an uncharted case of some disability or chronic condition, you tend to not be as accounted for in our medical system. And we thought that that word brought together a lot of aspects of our author's lives as scientists with medical conditions or disabilities. And so the six sections have to do with. The first section is getting underway, like you went on a ship all the way through a section called in the heart of the maelstrom. Maelstrom is a type of storm that's really, really bad.

Speaker 2: 34:46

I love the structure of this. Sorry, yeah, I think that's cool.

Speaker 1: 34:51

And then I mean there's six, but I'll just I'm just telling you three of them. But the last one is I am the captain of my ship and so the stories in each section sort of follow the theme of the section. So, getting underway you have a lot of stories of people setting out on their career usually and I am the captain of the ship or a lot of people who've sort of made peace in one way or another, working with their body through their career or life, and so we really wanted to make it a fun theme and not just separate people by their medical condition or career stage or some other demographic. So we just thought it was a lot more interesting and more fun to read that way.

Speaker 2: 35:38

I think that's inspired Well done. I was smiling from ear to ear, as I kind of got what you were talking about. That was very cool, very, very cool. To bring in your own experience that way and your love for the ocean and then swirl it into a book structure, that's great. So, skyler, where is your story on this nautical journey? Which section?

Speaker 1: 36:02

It's in section two, which is between the double and the deep blue sea. The title of my chapter is called my Brown Waterproof Boots. But yeah, that's a section where a lot of people are sort of feel like they're in between things and don't necessarily have great choices, but they keep going. It's a lot of what the theme is in that section.

Speaker 2: 36:30

And Juniper, which section is yours, your story in?

Speaker 3: 36:34

Definitely in the heart of the maelstrom, yeah, I guess, yeah, a section that's got a lot of folks who are, you know, in one way or another, in the middle of the thick of things and trying to really figure out, you know, maybe, what's the least bad of a set of options, or you know what's the first cargo that needs to get tossed overboard to lighten the load or whatever it is. You know, metaphorically and realistically, there's some really good chapters in there on, you know, making the best of what is a difficult situation.

Speaker 2: 37:15

Okay, and just another follow-up when can people find the book? Where can they pick it up? Skylar, you can find it on Amazon.

Speaker 1: 37:29

Sorry, you can find it on Amazon. You can find it through the publisher, columbia University Press. You should be able to find it on any of your favorite book websites bookshoporg, or you can find it on Amazon Bookshops bookshoporg. Often you can order books that you want through your local bookshop. They will often do that for you if you want something. So there's a lot of different options and I can give you the website, some of the websites for the book afterwards as well.

Speaker 2: 38:02

Skylar, is there anything else about the book you'd like people to know?

Speaker 1: 38:06

Yeah, so one of my favorite things about this book is that we have illustrations for each chapter, yay, and it was really exciting because we had applied to the Sloan Book Foundation for funding to pay all of our contributors, which we thought was really important, and then they gave us extra money to hire an illustrator, tiffany Chen, who is a early career artist who's also been trained in some science as well, and she did a great job either doing portraits of our storytellers or conceptual diagram that they requested.

Speaker 1: 38:47

So, that is a fun aspect of the book. And one more thing is that we have discussion questions at the end of the book, you know if you want to do a book club reading or student work with students on it. And also lots of resources on disability at the end of the book as well.

Speaker 2: 39:09

That is amazing. My favorite thing about the Bunsen and Beaker account is when our cartoonist gets the new piece of art done. Did that just tickle you pink when you saw some of the photos that matched whatever was going on in the stories?

Speaker 1: 39:27

Yeah, it was really exciting To see them actually printed in the book was pretty exciting, that's cool. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:39

Well, congratulations, and I hope some of our listeners pick up the book. We have some centered questions we asked the guests on the Science Podcast about, and the first one is a pet story. We challenge our guests to share a memorable story from their life with pets. I guess we'll go to Juniper first. Juniper, do you have a story you could share with us?

Speaker 3: 40:03

I sure do. I have a lot of stories about pets. Some of them are sad and some of them are happy, but I think the story that I want to share is really how I came to be the mom of Wallace, who is my service dog.

Speaker 3: 40:28

That was maybe eight years ago or so after I had just moved to Portland. I had been dealing with a number of pretty traumatic episodes in my life. I happened to be at a session with my therapist who had a therapy dog. She noticed how much I was able to start opening up when I even just made eye contact with the dog and was talking with her. Certainly by the time I put my hands on her little curly guy I started opening up considerably. Pretty quickly she realized and helped me understand that I was doing a lot of stimming and physically making contact with and getting anxiety out on her dog through pretty productive scratching and rubbing and being nice and cuddly with the dog. That was really what gave us the idea that a dog might be something that I could get into my life. That would be very beneficial for me, even just at a pet level. But then as I started to look into what service dogs can do, the more I started to understand the depth and breadth to which folks have figured out how to train dogs, in particular to provide really awesome support for folks with disabilities.

Speaker 3: 42:21

I reached out to a local trainer in the Portland area that I met through a friend and we started chatting and had been planning on going to a couple of shelters that we had in mind and doing temperament testing. I really wanted to get a rescue dog. What ended up happening, actually, was that this trainer had another family that she was working with who had a dog named Murphy, who was really awesome. He was this at the time, maybe four or five month old little labradoodle who was doing really well and excelling in all of his training. For one reason or another, that family wasn't going to be able to keep him. There was a service dog to be who was looking for a new home. It just happened to be a really serendipitous timing. I met Murphy, who is now named Wallace, and instantly we were in love. From the moment we locked eyes with each other. He came over and visited with me for an afternoon and we went on a walk. As soon as we got back to the house and he just came right up to me and we just physically locked up and linked up.

Speaker 3: 44:06

I haven't felt that level of connection, even with other pets that I've had in a way that allowed me to relieve some of that anxiety. Eight years later, seven and a half years later, we've gone through a whole lot of training. We have lots of experiences. We travel pretty regularly. Even just last weekend or not this past weekend, but the week and a half ago we were just out in California. I play roller derby and he comes with me everywhere that we go and he sits on the bench and watches me skate. He's on the plane with me and he travels everywhere and does such a great job.

Speaker 3: 44:56

I don't want to spoil too much about my chapter in the book but, like I said, it's about a particularly challenging episode and I think it really speaks to how folks like myself who navigate the world with a service animal have to negotiate the complexity of what that means. Even if there are spaces where we are allowed to be and a service animal is allowed to be, it can be unsafe for them. How that impacts our accessibility and what we're able to do and participate in is a pretty important part of the story that is in the book. I'll leave that up to folks to read later if they're interested in the details.

Speaker 2: 46:00

What a beautiful story, juniper, thank you for sharing. I selfishly am asking are you on social media anywhere? Can people see any photos of your doggo?

Speaker 3: 46:14

Yes, they can, because as long as you're listening.

Speaker 2: 46:18

That's the first thing. They're going to be bugging me if I don't ask.

Speaker 3: 46:22

Oh for sure. So yeah, my social media handles tend to be Juniper L, as in Leona, which is my middle name. Yeah, so Juniper L Simonus at Twitter I think it's still at Twitter, even though it's X or whatever but Facebook and Instagram and stuff like that. And yeah, there's pretty common photos We'll see of the curly guy Perfect.

Speaker 2: 46:57

Perfect, perfect. We'll have some. We'll have some links in our show notes For sure. Again, thank you for sharing Wonderful Skyler. Same question to you. I don't know if you'd like to share a pet story too.

Speaker 1: 47:09

Oh, I have so many, oh, so many. I guess I'll talk about my oldest dog. We have three dogs at home and a cat right now. And Millie is older, she's 12 and a half and I got her when she was about five months as a rescue and when I didn't know what I was doing with a dog at all. And the first week I got her she pooped on my bed and she also. We were in a small boat driving over to this floating dock where I had to pull up some nets of scallops because that's what I studied at the time and she jumped off of the boat. This little puppy swam all the way around this raft Like I thought she was going to get just taken out with the current, just to be on the other side of where I was. And so she just. She's always had a really strong personality and she's a black lab rottweiler mix with like a bit of chow.

Speaker 1: 48:19

We found out she got this thick fur, but she, when she was younger, loved to play and chase pretty much any animal to try to play with it, and one of the places I used to live with a roommate who had an Australian shepherd, a young one. There was this big field in the back and occasionally the owner of the property would lease out the back to a local farmer.

Speaker 1: 48:47

This is a main tip with his sheep in, and you could see the sheep move around this rural neighborhood, and so for a while they were in our backfield grazing away, and the fence around it was this flexible electric fence. But it turns out they don't always leave those fences on all the time. So my dog, millie, and Finn, the other dog, were running around there, like one or two years old, going crazy, next to the fence.

Speaker 1: 49:19

We're keeping an eye on them and they roll over the fence and it's not clear that they were shocked at all, like because we've seen them get shocked and they would have reacted very differently. And they pause and they look at us, but then they look at the sheep and we're like Millie, finn, come here, come here. But then they look at the sheep and they just start chasing them around and round and, like Finn is trying to herd them and Millie jumps on one. One of them, escapes the pen and into the woods and the sheep that Millie jumps on just falls over like it's dead. And I'm like, oh my God, my dog just killed a sheep. The farmer is going to shoot her because that's allowed, because it's property rights, and my friend says to me she goes, wait, wait. We used to have sheep on my family farm. She played dead. And you know, because we hop in the fence, we grab the dogs and we're watching this sheep with like baited breath and after a couple of minutes it gets up and just like walks away.

Speaker 2: 50:28

It's like that worked.

Speaker 1: 50:29

Yeah, he's like oh my God, you know, thank, thank God that my dog didn't get shot, basically. But so that was. I had a lot of adventures similar to that with Millie, but that was probably one of the most memorable stories.

Speaker 4: 50:45

That is a lot.

Speaker 1: 50:47

But yeah, she's, she loves adventure, she's, she's always game per adventure. So you know she loves Alaska.

Speaker 2: 50:56

Sounds a little bit like our beaker, our Golden Retriever Chaos Agent. So thanks for sharing, Skyler.

Speaker 1: 51:05

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 51:07

The other question that's kind of standard on our show is we ask our guests for a super fact. It's something that they know that blows your mind a bit. We'll do a reverse or we'll go back to you. Skyler, I was wondering if you have a super fact for us.

Speaker 1: 51:23

Yeah, you know, I studied scallops for my PhD and I don't know if your listeners are familiar with what those are, but they they have like the pretty shells with sort of the ridges all the way down to the bottom, and people often eat just the muscle in them. They're sort of just a single meat and a lot of people don't realize that they have a bunch of other organs and they swim. They can swim most of them and the super fact that I think is really interesting is that they have tens to hundreds of eyes. It's a defining characteristic of them and they add eyes as they grow.

Speaker 2: 52:06

Oh, that's freaky.

Speaker 1: 52:07

Yeah, because what animals do you know of that add eyes as they grow? There's not many.

Speaker 2: 52:14

I don't know, something in Dungeons and Dragons, probably.

Speaker 3: 52:18

Yeah, that's horrible.

Speaker 2: 52:21

That's amazing, though that is a super fact. Do all of the eyes work equally? Like, like what? What do we know how they see? Like, are they?

Speaker 1: 52:34

Yeah, yeah. So that's a great question. I don't know.

Speaker 2: 52:38

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm just so puzzled by having so many eyeballs looking everywhere.

Speaker 1: 52:42

I know Well. So I have a friend, dan Spicer, who's a professor at University of South Carolina who studies scallop vision. He's gotten grants for this Okay. So if you want, I can send you his info.

Speaker 2: 52:55

I would love to know more about these eyeball, these scallopy things.

Speaker 1: 52:59

Yeah, yeah, they can detect. They think they can detect, I think, particles moving in the water.

Speaker 2: 53:05

Oh, my God.

Speaker 1: 53:06

So how it all gets processed, though, you know, in their, in their brain, quote, unquote, you know which is kind of a, I think, a bunch of nerves, not really a brain in the sense that we think of Right, how that all gets processed into like decision making or movement or reaction. You know, I think they're still figuring, figuring that out.

Speaker 2: 53:28

So, yeah, that would be a very complicated life for a human having that many eyeballs.

Speaker 1: 53:34

Yes, definitely.

Speaker 2: 53:37

Think about if you needed glasses, skylar that would break the bank.

Speaker 1: 53:41

Totally 100%.

Speaker 2: 53:43

That's a super fact Over to you, Juniper. Do you have a super fact for us?

Speaker 3: 53:49

Yeah, this isn't my super fact, but maybe it is. This is Wallace's. One of Wallace's favorite snackety snacks that we get when we go to the grocery store and he's a really good boy and the fresh meat section is still open are sea scallops. So they don't have all of the eyeballs on them still and it is just the muscle inside, but Wallace loves to slurp them down. He is a big but yeah, a super fact about me is that I am a four time world champion roller derby skater with the Rose City Rollers Wheels of Justice here in Portland Oregon.

Speaker 4: 54:40

Fun.

Speaker 3: 54:41

Yeah, we are the defending world champions and the season is back and underway and we are ranked first right now again and have a pretty awesome competition coming up here in just a couple of weeks in Portland at the end of October, beginning in November, with teams from Montreal, victoria and Australia, from St Louis and New York, and Black Diaspora A Boroughless team is going to be there as well. So going to be a really awesome competition coming up soon.

Speaker 2: 55:24

Now this is the thing where you shoot around the ring and you body check people out and you slingshot. Is that? Am I on the right track?

Speaker 3: 55:32

Basically, yeah. So it's like it's a lot like rugby on skates, but without a ball.

Speaker 2: 55:41

Okay, Juniper, I have to ask a follow up question. How many times have you been injured doing this Like is this a common thing, or have you been lucky?

Speaker 3: 55:51

I mean it's like any contact sport. I have definitely had my share of bumps and bruises. I did tear my meniscus a while ago. People do have. There are plenty of people that have metal in part of them, screws holding bones together or whatever. And certainly like any sport, even non contact sports, head safety is a really big deal and I have had concussions before, but thankfully not serious ones, playing roller derby. But it is like any sport, especially a contact sport. It's pretty physical and definitely folks do get hurt, but it's not a super prevalent part of the game. That's not like you're not trying to hurt people. You know it's the contact rules are, you know, in a lot of ways similar to hockey. You know it's not like the roller derby. You know in the 70s and 80s that was more like professional wrestling. There's no elbow throwing or punching or anything like that Flexing and checking and that kind of stuff. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2: 57:14

Very cool. I think I played a video game where it was roller derby and I think one of my person super moves was like to suplex somebody in the middle of the thing. So we're not talking that level, okay.

Speaker 3: 57:28

But you know I'm not going to yell at anybody's. Yeah, I'm like that's, that's hilarious and fun and awesome too. So like certainly I mean even to just like monkey around on skates. Especially when you're like doing that kind of stuff, it takes some serious skill. Oh well, but you know this is not scripted or anything like that. It's, you know, pay to play amateur sport. That's, you know, pretty, pretty big worldwide.

Speaker 2: 58:01

Well, that is a super fact in its own right. We've got the scallops with the so many eyeballs. Thank you, schuyler. And Juniper is a world champion at this roller derby stuff. So there you are, folks listening, we got two super facts, two. Two for the price of one. This doesn't happen often on the science podcast. Well, we're at the end of our chat. First off, I want to thank both of you for being a guest on the science podcast, talking about your background, but then also your contributions and the you know the coming up with the amazing idea, Schuyler, for this book and being a having a section in it, juniper, I appreciate you both talking about that. I do want to ask one more time. Can people find you on social media, schuyler? Are you on the threads? Are you on the InstaFaces or the X slash Twitters?

Speaker 1: 58:56

Yeah, so I am on the X slash Twitters, I'm also on Blue Sky and I am on Instagram and Facebook and I have a personal website. But on Twitter X, whatever, or Dead Bird, whatever you want to call it I am Dr SR Bear, dr SR B-A-Y-E-R on Twitter and Schuyler Bear B-A-Y-E-R. You can usually find me on social media.

Speaker 2: 59:32

Awesome, Are you? Which platform would you say you're primarily on?

Speaker 1: 59:37

Well, probably Twitter and Instagram. On Instagram I'm SKYLARRB26. But I think Twitter might be easier to access me.

Speaker 2: 59:51

Perfect, yeah, we are. The Bunsen and Beaker account is following you on Twitter slash X, whatever it's called. And then one more time, Juniper, your social media handle, if you wouldn't mind.

Speaker 3: 1:00:04

Yeah, juniper El Simonis, and I'm also on the Twitter and Instagram and Bookface and I might have some other accounts. I used to be pretty active on Twitter before it imploded. I'm not so active anymore these days, which has been kind of nice to sort of take a step back. I used to use social media a lot for work and working and science, communication stuff and I definitely got really overwhelmed on it. So I have been taking a little chill. But you know, just send me around on the threads.

Speaker 2: 1:00:46

We'll have your some of your social media handles in our show notes.

Speaker 3: 1:00:49

Thank you, yeah, thanks for having us.

Speaker 1: 1:00:51

Thanks for having us, Jason. This has been great.

Speaker 2: 1:00:54

We are proud to have Bark and beyond supplycom now as an official sponsor of the science podcast. Bark and beyond supplycom is a small, family owned company that started off making joint supplements for dogs, but now they sell toys and treats and a whole bunch of other goodies. Skip the big box stores and check out the amazing deals and awesome stuff at Bark and beyond supplycom. You'll see a link in our show notes and use the coupon code Bunsen B U N S E N for 10% off at Bark and beyond supplycom. Click the link, skip the big box stores. How about the little guy? Well, that's it for our show this week. Sorry, no family section, it just didn't work out. We'll have a good one next week. I'd like to thank our two science guests, dr Schuyler Bear and Juniper Simonus, and check the show notes for links to the book. We'd also like to give a shout out to our top tier of the Paw Pack, the top dogs. Without their support we wouldn't be able to do what we do. Take it away, chris.

Speaker 4: 1:02:04

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