Hello, everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy.

Today is Monday, January 19th, 2026, and I'm the host of the show, Dr. Kara, Santa Maria.

And as always, before we dive into this week's episode, I want to thank those of you who make

Talk Nerdy possible. Remember, if you are interested in supporting the show, all you've

got to do is visit patreon.com slash Talk Nerdy. You can learn more about how to make a per episode

donation. That is what keeps, you know, keeps us able to book these episodes, to pay the editors

for me to pay my producer assistant, who also, she just does so much important work on the back end

and also carve out that time for each of these interviews.

So it's not, you know, we keep it cheap,

but it's definitely not free.

So I'm really excited that we're able to offset those costs

so that we never ever have to charge for an episode or put it behind a paywall.

What was I going to say? Oh gosh, yes, I want to give shoutouts to the top patrons this week. And one of

them, I was so lucky. This past weekend, we did some shows in Seattle with the other podcast.

I work on The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. And I got to

meet one of the patrons there. So I want to give a shout out to Dr. David Compton. A, thank you so

much for all of your support over the years and B, keep fighting that good fight as a rural physician

way up north.

I hope it's not too cold now that you're back home.

I also want to thank Resolutriel, Chuck Blev, David J.E. Smith, Daniel Lang,

Mary Neva, Anubadavaj, Brian Holden, Gabbo Jai, Ulrika Hagman, Pascuali Jolati, and Joe Wilkinson as well.

All right, let's get into the episode.

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