Hey everyone, this is Michelle from the Fems of STEM podcast.

And this is Will with Common Descent.

And I am David also from Common Dissent.

And we're here to present the Super Duper, extra special bonus content episode for you guys that we were alluding to in the very last Common Descent podcast episode.

And for those of you that are just tuning in without having listened to that one,

let me tell you what it's about.

So we wanted to talk to our colleagues about paleontologists and diversity in STEM.

David recently attended SVP, which is the Society of Ritbritp paleontologist conference.

So we had three questions that we wanted to ask everyone. Basically, who is a paleontologist that you admire, who also happens to be a woman? Why is diversity important in paleontology?

And why is it important to talk about diversity in paleontology?

We kind of talked about these issues in the last episode, but of course we don't speak for everyone else,

we don't speak for all of our colleagues.

So this is an episode where you get to hear people talk for themselves.

Yeah, it was a cool idea to open up the discussion to other paleontologists at SVP and give them a chance to give their story or their side of the discussion.

Once again, David was one who took the interviews, but we have some really cool stories in here and some really cool discussions.

And it's important because, as you said, at the beginning of the last episode, everyone has their own story and their own slight different experience or similar but unique experience for their life in the field.

Yeah, so just to give our listeners a heads up about what you're about to hear, this is 16 paleontologists selected from around the SVP conference.

These are largely unedited, mostly raw footage.

So you're going to hear the sounds of the conference in the background.

We haven't edited out any of their words, so you're going to hear a lot of ums and a lot of pauses and a lot of them thinking,

because these were answers that

these people gave right off the top of their heads. This is authentic discussion. So we've

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