In parallel to my podcast, I make extended – more raw – versions available to my supporters on Patreon. After a while, I open these episodes to the public.

This time I opened another conversation with my co-host Bart Geurten about the success of the Greens in the EU parliament elections, homeopathy, and postdocs.

In parallel to my podcast, I make extended – more raw – versions available to my supporters on Patreon. After a while, I open these episodes to the public.

This time I opened one of my personal favorites: my conversation with Gary McDowell, who actually studied the situation of postdocs in the USA.

Postdocs are, besides graduate students, the main workforce in academic research. Following the PhD, the postdoc position is the only way to follow a research career within academia. Many PhDs around the world are advised to go to the USA for a postdoc – or two – because it is known for its large research output and high quality research institutes. Around two thirds of postdocs in the USA are foreign born.

Bart went to the bi-annual meeting of the German Neuroscience Society (NWG) and took his brand new digital audio recorder! He interviewed a professor, a student, and an exhibitor about what they get out of this experience.

He even got one of his students to give us a poster presentation! The poster is in the attachment! But a little warning: the goal was to give the full conference experience, so he is using neuroscience jargon.

Bart also gave a talk at the Women’s Career Network WoCaNet. He interviewed the graduate students and the postdoc who organized this conference and gives us some insight into his own contribution at WoCaNet.

In this episode, I talk about the science fiction movie ANYA with its creators, Anthropologist Dr. Carylanna Taylor, and Jacob Okada of First Encounter Productions (not a sponsor).

The plot of ANYA could happen today! It all starts with a couple in New York that has difficulty having a baby. The groom is a member of the Narval People who keep to themselves – mostly because they think there is a curse that prohibits them from having children with anyone but other members of the community. They bring in a geneticist to find out why they are having problems procreating, and this is where the story becomes interesting.

Pint of Science is a science communication festival that happens once a year in May. On three consecutive days, scientists go to bars and pubs to communicate their science to the public.

I talked with Elodie Chabrol, a member of the core organizer team, about her work as a freelance science communicator, and of course, Pint of Science.

After an unforgivable delay this episode is finally out. We had some personal and technical delays. Sorry about that.

Anyways, in this episode Bart and I continue a conversation about the Energiewende. Based on the latest episode we spoke about which solutions we think should work well. The big problem seem to be the “Not In My BackYard” stance of many people who live where the new infrastructure need to be built.

Since Brexit was supposed to happen, we also talk about Brexit, and how it is hurting science in the UK.

In this episode of B&D we have three guests to talk to us about Brexit: Clare Hancock, an English PhD student working in Göttingen, Germany, Andrew Phillipides, a Welsh professor in Brighton, UK, and Thomas Nowotny, German professor, who also works in Brighton, UK.

We touch on several aspects of Brexit and how it impacts science and scientists, and we also talked about the general politics of Brexit.

Disclaimer: Clare only joined the conversation late, due to technical difficulties.

As the title says! We are looking for curators for the Science for Progress rotating curation twitter account.

If you are active in academia adjacent topics or the interface of science and society, you are a candidate! More specifically, we like to feature people actively engaged in Science Communication, Open Science, or Science Policy, or are trying to improve the quality of research and the work conditions in academia!

Get in contact by emailing me under info@scienceforprogress.eu, and let me know who you are, your Twitter handle, and which topics you’d like to talk about!

Still not sure? Check out all of our past curators! You can also find them in our Twitter list!

On September 27th, just days before I moved from Portugal to Germany, I made it to the Global Climate Strike in Lisbon. While I was there I collected footage of the march, and shared some impressions of it.

I put it all together in a YouTube video, and a photo album on Facebook! Enjoy!

This summer climate change has finally made it back into public discussion in Germany. In the last episode on climate change, Rüdiger Eichel and I spoke about Fridays for Future and how the results of the election for the European Parliament reflected the increased awareness for environmental topics in the EU.

In this episode I talk to Tom Brown from the Karlsruhe Insttitute of Technology. He models how we can use different energy distribution systems to balance the fluctuating power production from renewable sources. There are many variables and options to consider. But the good news is that a carbon neutral economy in Germany should be possible.

We focus on Germany, because it’s Europe’s biggest economy. It is highly industrialized, and still very much reliant on fossil fuels for power production. And on top of transitioning away from fossil fuels, Germany is also fading out nuclear power as well. So, if Germany can manage a transition to a carbon neutral economy, every country should be able to achieve this, too. So it is worth keeping your eyes on Germany and the Energiewende.