Science Friday - Scientist Politicians, Microbiome, Wildlife Car Accidents. June 1, 2018, Part 1

Episode Date: June 1, 2018

This year’s midterm elections have seen an upswing in the number of scientists running for office. There are approximately 60 candidates with STEM backgrounds in the races for federal offices, and 200 for state positions, according to 314 Action, an advocacy organization that helps scientists run for office. But why would a scientist want to leave the lab for the Hill? According to volcanologist and Congressional candidate Jess Phoenix, “Science by definition is political because the biggest funder of scientific research in our country is the government.” And Aruna Miller, who is a Maryland State Delegate for District 15 and a former civil engineer for the Department of Transportation, says that “Your job as an engineer isn’t only your profession. It is to be a citizen of your country…. You have to be engaged in our community.” By now, we all know about the microbes that live in our gut and digestive tract—different species of bacteria living together in the same environment. Now researchers are trying to learn more about what keeps these bacteria living together in harmony. Scientists suspect the secret “microbe whisperer” is actually a member of the immune system—a molecule called immunoglobulin A. That molecule keeps the gastrointestinal system free of pathogens and, researchers hope, might one day be used to combat diseases of the digestive tract. States like Wyoming and Montana are high risk for wildlife-vehicle collisions. These accidents result in expensive damages and sometimes even death for both wildlife and drivers. One group of scientists found an unlikely solution. You’ve probably driven by one before and not noticed it, but wildlife reflectors are poles on the side of the road. There have been a lot of studies on reflectors, but Riginos said the results are mixed and not very impressive. So Riginos and her team developed an experiment. They’d cover up some reflectors, leave others uncovered, and then compare the results. “We covered them with this cheap, easily available and durable material, which just happened to be white canvas bags,” Riginos said. And to their surprise—the bags turned out to be more effective than the reflectors. “We could actually see that in the white bags situation, that the deer were more likely to stop and wait for cars to pass before crossing the road, instead of just running headlong into the road,” said Riginos. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. Mount Kilauea in Hawaii has been erupting actively for 30 days, and there is no end in sight. But what we have seen are some rare events associated with volcanic activity, like burning blue methane, and volcanic fog, also known as Vogue. It's a welcome opportunity for scientists to study these weird events and for, you know, wondering about what happens the next time. And here to share with us what they're learning is Sarah Kaplan, Science Reporter for the Washington Post. Welcome back, Sarah. Thanks. Good to be here. So they're learning all kinds of stuff this volcano is teaching them.

Yeah, the cool thing about Kilauea is that, you know, even though we've been paying attention for the past 30 days, ever since these new fissures opened up in a neighborhood and started spewing lava, Kilauea has actually been erupting continuously for 35 years. It's the most active volcano in the world. and it's covered in instruments. It's kind of like a patient in the ICU. There's just seismometers and gas sensors all over that place. And so that means that when it does behave in weird ways like it's doing right now,

scientists are getting really good information about what's going on. Yeah, let's talk about some of that interesting stuff. Most recently there's been something called friatic, a friatic eruption. What does that mean? Yeah. So, you know, Killway is a shield volcano. So usually it erupts in this kind of oozing lava. It's not explosive like Mount St. Helens or Cracketoe or something.

But what's happening right now is the lava is actually oozing out of a different part of the volcano than it normally does. And that's kind of, it's like someone sucking on a straw. It's pulling the lava in a different direction. So it's draining out of its main vent. And so this main vent in the summer, as the magma sinks beneath the water table, the water that's in the ground, that water is getting heated up and then flashing into steam. that steam creates a lot of pressure, and it can blow rocks and gas and dust really high into the atmosphere. It looks very dramatic.

There was an eruption a couple weeks ago that was actually sent ash plumes five miles into the sky, so enough to disrupt airplane traffic. Wow. So you mentioned how instrumented the volcano is, and it's probably the most studied volcano on the planet, right? Does scientists know then, and I'm sure they get asked this at least twice a day, when things might start to slow down? Yeah, I mean, that's the real question with something like this. This is not a natural disaster like an earthquake or a hurricane where there's an end in sight. Even though Kilauea is so well understood, we still don't really know sort of exactly what's happening in the plumbing.

And it's hard to say, will these fissures eventually close up? Is this a permanent change? Is this the new main way that magma is going to make its way to the surface right in the middle of people's neighborhoods? So there's a lot of people in Hawaii right now still, you know, evacuated from their homes, not able to go back and not knowing when they will be. Okay. Let's move on to our next short subject in science, and that is stick insects. We don't talk much about them, but they have some rather... No, and we should.

Tell us why. So stick insects are really strange animals. They look like sticks, as you could probably guess from the name. And another way that they mimic plants is that their eggs actually look like seeds. Some of the eggs are even, you know, I was looking at pictures, and they're basically indistinguishable from an acorn. They're covered in these hard, tough shells, and they even have a substance on them that prevents, that protects them from acid. And scientists have kind of been curious, like, why is this? Why put all this energy into making your egg look like a seed?

And they thought maybe it's because stick insects are doing the same things with their eggs that plants do with seeds, which is you get an animal to eat it, and then it passes through the gut and gets pooped out somewhere. else and that's how you spread. And so they were, some researchers in Japan thought they might test and see, you know, can a stick insect eggs survive the journey through an animal's digestive system? And it turns out actually they can. They recently fed 70 eggs to some birds, and not only did 14 make it out, you know, totally not cracked, not harmed, but two of them hatched a healthy infant insect.

So why do they have to resort to such trickery to spread their DNA around like this? Not only look like a plant, but, you know, reproduce like one. Yeah. I mean, the thing is that even though stick insects are insects, they are sort of similar to plants in that they're not very mobile. You know, they're pretty slow, and a lot of them don't fly. And so if you are a stick insect mom and you're trying to make sure that your offspring not only survive but also spread, then getting a bird to do the dirty work of carrying your eggs a long way, that's a good way to do it. And they actually do something, another really clever thing, where they get ants to bury their eggs.

Their eggs have these little nutrient capsules on them that ants like, and the ants will take them into their nests. Yeah, so stick insects are really good at getting other animals to do work for them. Cool. Let's move on to a group of ex-government officials playing a game of pandemic this week. Things got a little too real. Explain what happened. Yeah, it was pretty high stakes. So the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security does these.

pandemic simulations. This is the third one and was called Clayd X. And they basically invited a bunch of government officials and experts to come in and basically simulate what would happen if a very virulent form of influenza started spreading around the globe. They were faced with all kinds of questions as, you know, they were role playing as U.S. government officials. So they had to decide, do we impose a quarantine? Do we have a travel ban? Do we send military support to the countries that are being affected. Once it hits the U.S., how do you develop a vaccine, who gets that vaccine first? And over the course of the simulation, it emerges that this virus, which has no vaccine at the time, was actually had been bioengineered by a terrorist group. And they'd inserted the virulence

gene from NEPA virus, which is actually, there's an outbreak of NEPA in India right now, into a flu virus, and so you wind up getting this disease that is, you know, spreads really easily and has a 10% lethality rate. And by the end of the simulation, 150 million people had died around the globe. Wow. So that was part of, wow. That's scary. Were they surprised themselves, why are they the size of the number of deaths?

Yeah, I mean, so the, this simulation had been planned out beforehand by experts at Johns Hopkins, And it wasn't as though the participants involved could change the outcome. The point was more to sort of raise the questions of here are the major issues that the government will face in a situation like this. And everyone who was involved said that this situation is highly plausible. It doesn't mean it's going to happen, but it could. It actually comes at a time when the infrastructure in the U.S. right now for dealing with pandemics is, you know, people are calling. for it to be stronger. Timothy Zimmer, who served on the National Security Council, focused on global health security, actually left the administration earlier this month,

and his team was disbanded. And, you know, no administration, you know, people on both sides of the aisle say that no administration is really prepared for something like this, and it is particularly pressing at the moment. Well, thanks for some good news, Sarah. Anytime. Oh, it's always good to have you. Happy to hear you. Sarah Capel and Science Reporter.

for the Washington Post. And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. All right, you know the little riddle, the chicken one? Now, why did the chicken cross the road?

Well, today we're going to ask, why did the deer cross the road? And if you live in the mountainous west, this question does not lead to a punchline. Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, are all states' rich. in four-legged megafauna from deer to pronghorn or elk or moose. And in these states, the idea that you may someday hit one of these majestic animals, well, they can feel inevitable. And that's why conservation scientists in Wyoming are trying to find cheap ways to keep deer off the highway and away from speeding cars.

And one group found an unexpectedly, unexpectedly effective technology, cheap white canvas bags. Here now with more is Wyoming Public Radio reporter Maggie Mullen. She recently reported on the story for the Mountain West News Bureau. Welcome to Science Friday. Well, thanks for having me, Ira. It's great to be here. Nice to have you. Cheap canvas bags. That's right. Yeah, so just to paint a little bit of a picture to begin with. So the white canvas bags were placed on the top of these wildlife reflectors,

which are basically these series of tall poles with this red reflective material on the side of them that are intended to flash when headlights hit them, and that's supposed to warn wildlife. And, you know, this was part of an experiment by some Nature Conservancy scientists to find out, you know, do these reflectors actually keep animals off the road? You know, these reflectors are all over the world. They're not just in Wyoming and Montana,

but the studies that have been done on them, the results are really quite mixed. So the scientists wanted a definitive answer, do these reflectors work? And do they get one? No, the reflectors are not, they at least know that the reflectors aren't as good as these white canvas bags. The experiment that they designed was they put these bags on some of the poles and they left the others uncovered. And they covered these poles with just what happened to be these white canvas bags because they're cheap, they're durable, they are easily available.

And to their great surprise, these white bags ended up working much better. They used, you know, thermal footage to, you know, look at the deer and they can actually see them, you know, approaching the road and then seeing these bags and acting more cautious and actually waiting for cars to pass before they cross the road. And so what reason can they give for having the success with the white bags? Well, it could be two different things. To the human eye, these bags are pretty easy. They're pretty visible. They're pretty easy to spot. But if you think about, you know, headlights kind of striking a series of white bags, it could be that they just kind of startled the deer or alerted them to the cars.

It's also possible that the bags looked to the deer like their rump patch. A lot of times deer raise their tail and show a white rump as a warning sign to other deer. Like, hey, there's a predator around or some other kind of danger, like a speeding vehicle. Wow. So is this now, you know, we now know. what you can do with your public radio tote bag. If it's a white bag. That's right. We were thinking this might be the most public radio resolution there has ever been.

So is this being adopted? I mean, seriously, people are using it now? Well, that's the thing. Not anytime soon in Wyoming. And I do know there are some folks in the UK that have gone out and actually put some white bags up on their roadside poles. But, you know, there's still some work to be done. More testing needs to be done to see the long-term effects.

Because that's the thing. The white bags could have just been this shiny new object that the deer were reacting to. So I think these scientists are hoping that they can look at it over a longer period of time, and then they can kind of start to think about developing something more permanent that does even better than the bags. And everybody can try their own experiment with their public radio toad back. Thank you, Maggie. Yeah, thanks so much. I read.

Maggie Mueller reporter for Wyoming Public Radio. We're going to take a break when we come back. The immune system of the gut has a lot more to do than killing viruses. and we'll talk all about this, and it's a new discovery about a key molecule that may help keep it healthy. So stay with us. We'll be right back after this break. This is Science Friday. I'm Irafledo.

You know, it's taken about, well, like 10 years, but finally the turn, microbiome is not such a foreign-sounding word to us anymore. We all know about the trillions of bacteria that live in our gut and digestive tract, different species living and growing together in the same playground. Now researchers are trying to learn more about what. keeps microbes living together in such harmony. Scientists suspect the secret microbe whisperer is actually a member of the immune system, a molecule called immunoglobulin A. You probably know IGA. It's something that is not foreign, but it's a molecule that both keeps the GI system free of pathogens, and researchers hope might one day be used to combat diseases of the digestive tract. here to tell us what we're learning about how IGA affects the microbiome are my guests.

Thaddeus Steppenbeck, Professor of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University of School of Medicine in St. Louis. Dr. Steppenbeck, welcome to Science Friday. Are you there? Thank you very much for having me on. Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for having me on. You're welcome. Margaret Connor is Associate Professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Dr. Connor, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. I want to give out our phone number 844-724-8255 if you want to talk about the microbiome and, you know, I-G-A, and also you can tweet us at SciFRI, SCI-FRI. All right, let's walk through this, Dr. Stappenbach first. So we've known for a while about the trillions of microbes living together in the gut. The question that researchers are exploring now is how are they doing that? Is that right? Yeah, that's right.

I think, you know, the intestines are a really interesting environment. You have a lot of challenges there. You have this really thin barrier of epithelial cells that's required because you have nutrient exchange that's going on. But at the same time, you have this, really this other organ living in the lumen of the gut called the microbiome that's really required to really maximize the nutrient uptake from specific food products. And so it's quite a challenge. So the paradox is how do you kind of keep the piece then in this particular organ? And scientists have been studying various things that we make to try and keep microbes at bay.

Mucous is something that's very popular to study and very interesting. We make a number of proteins that will kill bacteria, almost like antideastrobes. deceptic type molecules. But then there's this really curious, this really curious observation where our immune system makes a specific type of immunoglobulin, immunoglobulin A, and secretes nearly four grams of this a day into our GI tract. And it's this immunoglobulin A that seems to be a really key key piecekeeper in the intestine. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, Because of our understanding of the diversity of the microbiome, we've become very interested in what microbes in the gut are bound to IGA, and then what are the consequences of this.

So there's a lot of very interesting studies going on looking in health and disease at what microbes actually get tagged by IGA, and then what molecules on the bacteria actually get bound by IGA. Dr. Kutter, an immunoglobulin is part of the immune system, so how does it end up in the microbiome? Well, it is produced by cells, B cells that sit below the epithelial layer, and these cells produce the IGA that then is bound to a specific receptor that sits on the membrane of the epithelial cells, that's what we call the basal membrane. And the IGA is specifically bound to this receptor that's called the polyimminoglobulin receptor.

And once that's bound, the IGA bound to that receptor is transcytose or transported across the epithelial cell and released from the apical side of the cell that then is released into the lumen. There's a cleavage so that a piece of that immunoglobulin receptor is still attached to the IGA molecule, and at that point, we call it secretory IGA, and it then, as I say, is released into the lumen or the interior of the gut, and it typically can, it binds and sort of resides in this mucus layer that sits over top of the epithelial cell. Dr. Stappenbach, what keeps the IGA from just attacking all the bacteria in the microbiome,

as if they were pathogens, if it's part of the immune system? Yeah, so this is the really, I think this is the really awesome thing about IGA. So normally when an immunoglobulin, immunoglobulin, g in your bloodstream tags a pathogen, this then gets recognized by specific cells in your immune system, and then there's a way to kill it. You set off in a pro-inflammatory response. The opposite actually happens in the intestine with IGA. So the interesting thing is that the bugs that are bound with IGA, if they happen to be seen by the immune system, say there's local damage or there's another type of infection, this will mute the immune response and keep the intestine essentially from destroying itself.

And Dr. Connor, you published a paper that showed how the microbiome coats itself with this IGA to protect against pathogens? Yes. This was work that was actually primarily done in my collaborators lab, but they used a specific bacteria called bacterioides fragilus. In this lab, the work was primarily done by Greg Donaldson and his advisor, Sarkas Mazemanian. And they showed with this particular bacteria that's normally a commensal in the gut, and is, I guess, what we would call a friendly commensal. It's there, and it resides in the kind of the mucus layer over top of these epithelial cells,

and it adheres very closely to the epithel layer, but yet it doesn't induce a inflammatory response. And what they showed is that these bacteria produce, they have basically a fuzzy layer on the bacteria that's produced by the bacteria. And it actually is what they call commensal colonization factor that it appears to be is made up primarily of an immunoglobulin-like variable chain molecule that actually then attaches to, IGA that's specifically made to the bacteria or these fragilous bug, and by attaching to that, then this bug can actually sit at the, and sit next to the epithelial cells and provide a colonization niche and without inducing an inflammatory response. Our number, let's give out the number, 8447248255. Let's go to Durham, North Carolina.

Hi, Jennifer. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi there. Sorry, my phone just cut out. I was just calling because I have a pretty serious case of celiac disease, and my IGA numbers are usually very high in kind of the negative sense of the term. And I'm just wondering as far as fighting off infection and any more serious diseases, what impact that might have.

Okay, good question. What does IGA have to do with, you know, these, these, various diseases that people get in their stomachs and their intestines. Dr. I can take this one. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, sure. So I think this one, so I think the role of IGA in celiac disease is a little bit of a puzzlement

because as the caller mentioned, there is higher levels of secretory IGA in this particular disease. It can be associated with food products that are in gluten. containing diets. What's what I think is is still I think not really clear is in this particular case instead of the IGA being immunomodulatory or downmodulating immune responses, it seems to have the opposite response and stimulate a stimulated immune response. This could have something to do with our with our own genes. But it also could, there's also some really interesting work suggesting that there could be prior viral infections that could actually set us up to have this kind of opposite

response to secretory IGA in this particular disease. So if you have celiac or a disease like it, your body is reacting just the opposite the way it should be. Exactly. And we don't know why that is. No, not yet. But you're saying in a healthy gut, the IGA is there to help regulate and calm things down in the microbiome. And that's what you're talking about here. Yeah, that's exactly right.

So we know, you know, we know, so we and others that do experiments in mice and inflammatory models, we know that there are, that there's variation that we can see in these models with the amount of inflammation in the intestine. And what my lab has tied this to is the levels of IGA that are present in the intestine. So mice that have very low levels of intestinal IGA have an enhanced damage response. or enhanced inflammatory response, and mice that have normal levels of IGA have the opposite. So usually that's the case.

So is there any talk about giving people more IGA? I mean, it seems weird if people with celiac have too much IGA, why would we want to give them more? But you're saying that if, you know, we don't have the right balance, could you give more IGA? And that maybe help out with what's going on in your microbiome. Yeah, I think for certain, for certain, so the strange thing about IGA, deficiency is the real defect can be an autoimmune enhancement of autoimmunity and an inflammatory

response. So giving the IGA, it would really be to help calm down the level of inflammation and those types of diseases. So I don't think celiac would be a great candidate for this, but something like inflammatory bowel disease might be. And Dr. Kanner, where do you, where would you like to come out? Is there any sort of treatment that here may be a vaccine of some sort using IGA? Well, there are a number of vaccines that are in the process of being developed or maybe undergoing licensure. There's one vaccine, the rhodovirus vaccine, which is targeted to the gut because rotavirus causes diarrhea, primarily in young children. And that particular vaccine is an oral vaccine. It's live. It induces IgA responses, and these are likely contributing to protection. We had showed a number of years ago using a mouse model that

IGA was actually critical to protection from reinfection. And in the absence of mice that lack IGA were not able to be protected when they were reinfected. So IGA is probably critical for some of the pathogens. So we want to have of IGA there specifically to a pathogen that's coming across the gut epithelia and causing like diarrheal diseases. But it's been very hard to make those vaccines that induce high levels of IGA. But in some cases, people are proposing also to use, when you were talking about, you know, do we want to administer IGA?

it's not currently being used, but there are certainly many studies in animal models that passive administration, like feeding of IGA, can block infection by many different pathogens. That's interesting. Amira Flato, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. I've heard over the years of people getting immunoglobulin shots at the doctor to tweak up their immunosus,

Is this the same? Is this IGA or is this something totally different, Dr. Stappenbeck? I think it's the same type of, I think it's something that's potentially the same type of idea idea. So IGA is, or IGG is given to patients that have an immunodeficiency. And this is usually, this is really important because this is a life-saving type of therapy. I think this is something that if we can identify that we have patients that have, that are deficient for IGA and their intestines, particularly the lumen of the intestine. This is something we could, you know, I would say we would want to consider actually trying. I'd say if we can get a couple of phone calls in before we go.

Let's go to Jenny in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Hi, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, I was wondering about the effect of not producing any IGA at all, which is my case. and most doctors don't seem to have any information about this. I was wondering if there could be any connection to overproduction of histamine. Okay, let me get a question answered. Dr. Steppenbeck? Sure.

So this is a pretty common condition called IGA deficiency. About 1 in 700 people have this particular deficiency. And there's actually a lot of controversy. around over whether or not this is actually a problem or not. Many physicians will say that this is something that you can live with and this is okay. And then some people worry about auto-inflammatory diseases occurring. I think what is going on here with many people with IGA deficiency is there's compensation by other immunoglobulins, namely immunoglobulin M can compensate for the loss of

IGA, particularly in response to infections. But I think the interesting piece here is this predisposition to autoimmunity. And to me, I think that that's something that needs to be further explored. So I think your doctor's confusion is probably still justified because we don't have a good enough handle on this. But I'm hoping that my lab and many and other people in the field will solve this. Here's a tweet from Michael. It says, I've been taking probiotic supplements whenever I feel sick, especially for gastro sickness, my recovery timeline is greatly reduced. Is this related to IGA?

Faddeus? So, sure. So what's very interesting is when you introduce a new microbe into the intestine, it takes a few weeks to develop an immune response to it, to develop IGA. It takes about two weeks. The interesting thing is that these IGA responses then are thought to be durable over several months.

So I think if you're talking about effects then that are shorter time than two weeks, it's probably not, that's probably something else that's going on with the probiotic, but there are potentially effects related to IGA being produced in response to a probiotic that you're taking. We know so little about the microbiome, don't we?

I mean, what's going on down there? It's amazing. I think that's, I think it's true. There's a lot to discover. We've talked so much about this and it's the same, you know. Well, it's just like a new frontier for us, isn't it? Yeah. Okay.

Well, we'll have you all back. Faddeus Steppenbeck is professor of pathology and immunology at Washington University School of Medicine and St. Louis, Margaret Connor, Associate Professor of Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor, College of Medicine in Houston. Thank you both for taking time to be with us today. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, you know, midterm primaries are happening all around the country this week. And after the break, we're going to talk to a couple of scientists who are throwing their

lab coats into the ring. We'll ask what they think scientists could bring to the political process. We'll talk about scientists entering into politics. After this break, stay with us. We'll be right back. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. The year in politics, well, how can you say differently?

It's been unprecedented. It's hard to predict what might happen each week. Well, each moment. And the midterm elections have shown us something that we haven't seen before. A record number of scientists have entered races around the country at all different levels. In some congressional primaries, it was STEM versus STEM as a Texas engineer beat a mathematician. So why have scientists finally decided to run with such a paucity of politicians having a science background? What could a scientific perspective bring to government?

I want to introduce my first guest. Aruna Miller is a civil engineer, and currently is a Maryland state delegate for District 15. That covers Montgomery County, Maryland, and she's running for Maryland's six congressional district seat that's in Congress. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you very much. So before you were a state delegate, you worked as a civil engineer for the Department of Transportation. What made you decide to go into politics? Well, there's a lot of reasons why I want to give back to my country.

I mean, that's the reason why I decided to get into politics, because policymaking has an impact on our life from the moment we wake up till the moment we close our eyes. I also want to bring on Jess Phoenix, who is a volcanologist, and she's currently a congressional candidate for California's District 25. She's based out of Acton, California. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me, Ira. It's great to be here. So when it comes to science, are any issues really not all? Politicians will share your point of view. How would you communicate with a colleague who doesn't share your view, Jess?

What do you hope to bring to the table? Well, one strategy I've noticed that works really well, and I think I picked this up when I used to teach college at Cal State, L.A., is to ask questions. If somebody says they don't believe something that you know to be scientifically a good, solid thing, you can say, well, why do you believe that? And then you wait, and then you listen. because you can't enter a dialogue with someone unless you have an actual conversation. You have that opening. And if you come at something from a perspective of, oh, you're wrong, you're wrong, then you're setting yourself up for failure because you're already putting the other person into a hostile position.

So I like to just ask questions. And I think that usually is a really good way to understand where somebody may be getting information that just isn't up to the standard that you'd like it to be as a scientist. Now, Aruna, you have some experience in politics being. Maryland state delegate. Can you be successful, as Jess is saying and talking to your colleagues? Absolutely. You know, policymaking has a lot to do with coalition building and reaching a consensus,

much like what Jess is saying. And it starts with being a good listener. You know, you're going to have differences of opinion, no doubt about that. But at the end of the day, it's about everybody working towards a common goal, which is to create policy that's going to. to impact the greater good of our community. On number 84472485, you can also tweet us at SIFRI. I want to ask you the question I asked Aruna.

Jess, why do you study volcanoes? I'm sure you must be out in Hawaii doing some work, right? No, I've missed out. I've been running for Congress for the last 13 months, but I have before. So what, okay, what made you leave volcanoes, so to speak, and run for Congress? Well, the last five years, actually, I've been running a nonprofit called Blueprint Earth. It's an interdisciplinary environmental science research and education organization. And so I deal a lot with students, college and university students and elementary students.

And a lot of our students come from non-traditional backgrounds for the sciences. So we have 76% women participate, 54% people of color, and 60% of our students come from low-income backgrounds. So when I saw, just from observing how they would interact with each other and what I would hear them say about difficulties their families were facing or things that they were concerned about for their futures, say student loan debt or trying to find a job in the place where they grew up, being able to go to a four-year public university near their house wasn't an option for a lot of them. So I thought, well, you know, a lot of people are being impacted by policies and by the state of the world. and there are things in there that are not based in evidence. They're based on opinion or based on what lobbyists or pollsters told people to do. So I think that, you know, it was really just the, it was the urgency of seeing Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke, etc, running things into the ground in some cases. And kind of this rule by opinion and by money.

I thought we could do a lot better than that and bringing evidence and policymaking. is something that we need more of and not just from scientists. But scientists typically shy away from being politically active, don't they? Well, I think that's been the case for the last 64 years since Robert Oppenheimer was persecuted for speaking out against, well, about the dangers of nuclear technology. Then he was stripped of his security clearance. And I think that's when scientists sort of said, oh, well, we better shut up and do our work. And unfortunately, that's not the case because science is inherently politically political.

When a government makes its funding decisions, it is telling you what its political priorities are. So we really, really need to have a voice as a scientific community because no one is going to speak up for us. And we have to get better about communicating the value of our research and what we do to the public. Aruna, would you agree? Absolutely, Ira. In fact, you know, I should point out that three of our presidents have been engineers. We had George Washington, Herbert Hoover, as well as Jimmy Carter. So the very first president of our nation was really with a science background, engineering background.

So we're here. It's just taken us a little bit longer to really dive into these fields at the federal level especially. But if you take a look at local politics, state delegates, councilmen, you do see a lot of people with science and engineering background running for public office now, which is very encouraged. With so many people skeptical of politics and politicians, not trusting politicians, does being a scientist help with your public perception? Absolutely, because, again, we come with evidence-dates, you know, data that's how we make our decisions. Logical, predictable. We work within certain confines of laws. And right there alone, I think the public has a certain.

element of trust with you. Now, policymaking gets a bad reputation, the politics of it, but once you remove that aside, policymaking has a significant impact on our lives. And again, much like engineering and science, we're both working towards making lives better for the people that we either work with or we represent. Let's go to the phones on number 844-724-8255. Mara in Northampton, Pennsylvania. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, thank you for taking my question. I was just wondering, what makes you more qualified than our current politicians that run? Jess, you want to take that first?

Yeah, sure, sure. So I don't know if it's a question of being more qualified. I think it's being differently qualified and in some cases better qualified to address particular issues. But the way I see it is we have 80% of our current representatives in Congress are lawyers or business people. And lawyers in particular are trained to argue for whoever is paying them. They can play devil's advocate on a number of issues. That's helpful in a court of law, but in political decision-making, it doesn't necessarily end up with people who are working for the best interests of their constituents, you know, fact-based plans that are going to produce the best outcome for the community. And so I think that as scientists, we have the ability to not only weigh things in a more impartial manner than a lot of other fields because that's part. of our training, but we're very methodical about it.

And we also are really good at creative problem solving. Engineers are the same way as scientists. We take situations that arise in the real world that are often unexpected, and we figure out how to deal with them, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to do our jobs. And I would add to that also that I think our elected representatives should be reflective of their communities. So, as just said, when you have a majority of our elected officials that are of a certain professional background, I think we need to bring greater diversity to the policy table. And it's just not just scientists and engineers.

It could be educators. It could be firemen. It could be people of a whole host of different backgrounds. I think we need to have that because that's the best way in which we're going to come up with the solutions to the problems that a nation of 320 million people are going to face as we move forward. Well, let's talk about some of those problems. Let's talk about some of the issues. What are the top one or two issues that are not being addressed

or that you think scientists can better address if you get elected? Jess, let me. Go to your first, then, Aruna. Yeah, Runa, go ahead and take it. No, I was just going to say, I'm sure Jess would agree with this, climate change, right? This is something that's facing us globally. And this is happening right now. And our entire civilization exists on how we're going to address this urgent issue.

And I think that is one of the top things that we're seeing absent in the Trump administration, that it is not being handled in the way that we would like to see it handle. That, you know, science is being attacked somewhat here. I've never seen this before, at least in my lifetime. And I would add to what Aruna just said, too, because it's a great, it's basically what I say to people. But then, you know, we actually, we have an example for this in our past. We have a big picture problem that is partially manmade and partially natural. So that's with climate change.

And then we had the same issue when the dust bowl happened back in the 30s. And the government actually worked closely with scientists and local communities to create strategies to solve the problem. And that's where we are. We need to have kind of a hand-in-hand approach with government, scientists, and the public to solve this problem because climate change is the greatest national security threat that our country is going to face over the next 50 years because it's a threat multiplier. So it's something that we need to deal with because you may not think it affects you on a day-to-day basis as you go about your life. But it does actually amplify the effects of terrorism and terror groups, of food insecurity and of, migration issues. So these things will become matters that affect all of us, even if you don't feel it today. Yes, Aruna, go ahead. No, I was just going to add to that, Ira. Also, I think we have to recognize in the 21st century we're in the technology era. So we are going to have to deal with issues related to artificial intelligence. We're going to have to deal with autonomous vehicles. The way we communicate with one another is through technology. So these are all fields.

that are going to affect all of us where I think people of science and technology background could really play a critical role. I'm Ira Flato, this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking with two scientists running for office, Jess Phoenix, who's running for congressional seat in California's 25th District, and Aruna Miller, who is also running for Maryland's sixth congressional seat, our number 84447-248255.

Jess, you're running a very grassroots campaign. You said we're in a new era and politics as usual won't hold. What do you mean by that? What do you see changing? People are tired of candidates who are all fluff and no substance, I think. And we saw that with the election of Donald Trump. We want candidates who are different. And not that Hillary didn't have substance.

She had a lot of substance. Don't get me wrong. but it's just that we don't want talking heads, we don't want people who are entrenched in the political system, we want people who are going to be genuine and genuinely committed to what they believe in and who will stand strong for whatever it is that the community needs them to be a voice for.

And I don't think that the days of big money and basically buying elections are going to hold sway forever. I mean, Citizens United really opened the floodgates for that, but I think it's something that we can change because when people start to unpack why decisions are being made and at the end of every line of inquiry you have money and you have lobbyists, I think that really shows that, I mean, people get very disenchanted with the way that politics is being done. And I feel that. I see it all the time on the campaign trail. And, you know, when you're a scientist and you get new

data and the data says, hey, people don't like the old way or the current way, we need to try something new. So that's what I've been doing. Let me get a phone call in. from Chicago. Cooking in Chicago, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, I are glad to be on. I have a question for your science politicians. Increasingly, religion is getting more and more influence in what's going on in politics, and science and religion can be on opposite ends of things, and I'm just curious as scientists in politics, how do you deal with that? Well, I mean, I can tell you, I personally try to separate my faith from anything that I do in policymaking

because, again, that's a personal issue, and it's not something that's subject to what I'm going to be doing that's going to affect other people's lives. So that's the first thing. And absolutely, there are people that come with their faith, and it serves really a lot of good in our community, in many of the way they serve our community, and that's a good thing. But I earnestly believe that we have to separate church from state. All right. That's about the last, that's about all. Tell me, for talking about science and politics. Jess Phoenix is a volcanologist, currently a congressional candidate for California District 25, and Aruna Miller, a civil engineer. She's running for Maryland's sixth congressional seat there. Thank you both for joining us today. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. It's great to be with you guys.

One last thing before we go. Apollo astronaut Alan Bean died this week at the age of 86. He was the fourth human to walk on the moon, and in his later years, he switched his focus to art, painting pictures that tried to give the rest of us a glimpse of life and space what it was like. Back in 2009, he shared with us his joy of lunar exploration. Humans aren't robots, and humans, when they go somewhere, whether it's Mars or the moon or anywhere else, they do human things. Now, they say, okay, I want you to spend every minute doing useful work, and you spend a lot of it doing useful work the most you possibly can.

But then all the sudden you, you know, I can remember picking up rocks and throwing them just to see how far I could throw them because that's what humans do. I remember a couple of times people looked at me and he says, quit messing around, Alan, let's get back to work. But you just, you're trying to do, you know, one, two, three, four, but being a lot of a human, you stop and you sing or you throw a rock or you, I don't know, that's what humans do. That's why we're different than robots. Astronaut and artist Alan Bean passed away at the age of 86. One more thing.

Heads up, Chicago. Join us on Saturday, June 16th for a special night of science and music at the Harris Theater. We're going to talk with mathematician Eugenia Cheng and E.Herb on the piano. We'll search for urban coyotes with W. B-B-E-Z's Curious City, and we're bringing you a radio play about space rocks falling from the sky, performed by your own second city. We don't want you to miss that. That is Saturday, June 16th.

Tickets and information at ScienceFriday.com slash Chicago. ScienceFriety.com slash Chicago. Saturday night, June 16th. Come on out and watch and enjoy Science Friday. Charles Berkwist is our director, senior producer Christopher Taliatta, and our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, and Katie Hailer. Technical Engineering Help from Rich Kim, Sarah Fishman, and Jack Harowitz. And of course, we're on all the social media, and you can even ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday whenever you want.

So every day now is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato in New York.