2Scientists

2Scientists is an interview show in which scientists talk about their own work, and the conversation is allowed to wander. The range across these episodes is wide. A guest named Marvin considers what he would still trust to a regular interface rather than a neural one, and mentions people driving a Formula One car with their brains. The same conversation covers races held at USF and at the University of Alabama, pitched as something more inclusive than what society currently offers. In 'The salamander scientist', Christian Brown describes what may be a new form of locomotion in salamanders and puts a pointed question to fellow herpetology enthusiasts: if long legs and big feet are a climbing adaptation, why do hundreds of other climbing species manage without them? David Hillman, an old friend from the host's doctoral studies, explains how drug companies gather reports of side effects. The detail is the draw. Medical information helplines take reports from physicians, pharmacists, nurses and consumers, and European rules, the UK's included, require companies to search literature databases such as PubMed every week. In Belfast, AP remembers slowly working out that molecules might be built to behave as logic gates, and calls himself a real tortoise for it. That conversation was recorded in his lab, masks on, with giant plastic molecules on hand to play with. Another guest, introduced as someone unafraid to speak her mind, talks microfluidics and argues that research is collaborative, since asking the right person can settle in seconds what reading papers alone would not. Grad student Renee Fonseca, just graduated from USF, is interviewed over a beer at the Mermaid Tavern in Florida while the crew hides from a developing tropical system. The show normally asks guests how they reached their current stage in science; with her, the questions reach further back, to a story about her Colombian dad. Settings like these set the tone. The talk is friendly and teasing, and the jokes stay in: an uncomfortable old lab chair with a nickname, a search for the collective noun for Daves. The extras are homemade. Some episodes close with a credited track, including one by Tampa-based The Easy Button and one from the album 'Old Friends' by AP's friends. Outtakes go to Patreon supporters, co-producer David Basanta photographs the recordings, and one episode runs a contest to guess how many times the word salamander gets said. What a listener gets is research explained by the person who did it, with the personality left in. 'The salamander scientist' is a good first pick, with a sharp research question sitting right beside jokes about beards and lost sleep.