Hello everyone and welcome to talk nerdy. Today is Monday, December 18th,

2023 and I'm the host of the show, Kara Santa Maria.

Now, this is the last show of 2023.

We always go on hiatus for two weeks.

So we will be back on January 8, 2024 with a brand new episode. Before we dive into this week's

content I do want to thank those of you who make TalkNurdy possible.

Remember TalkNurdy will always be 100%

free to download even now that we are in our ninth

going on our 10th year.

Wow.

The way that we model the show and the way that we're able to do that is because we rely to a much lesser extent recently on advertisements and to a much greater extent on support from listeners just like you.

If you would like to pledge your support on an episodic basis,

all you've got to do is visit Patreon.com

slash TalkNurdy where you can learn more. This week's top patrons include

Daniel Lang David J. E. Smith, Mary Niva, Brian Holden, David Compton,

Gabriel F. Haramillo, David Compton, Gabrielle F.

Haramio, Joe Wilkinson, Pasquale Jalati, and Ul Rica Hagman.

Thank you all so, so much from the bottom of my heart.

I hope that you all have a wonderful holiday and I'm just so

grateful for all of the support over all the years. All right, let's get into this week's

episode. So this week I had the opportunity to speak with Melissa

Civini. She is a science journalist at KNAU, which is Arizona Public Radio.

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