Welcome to No One Told Us, the podcast that tells the truth about parenting and talks about all the stuff you wish you knew before having kids.

I am your host, Rachel, and today I'm really excited to speak with Dr. Elizabeth Adkins Marnik, the chief scientific officer of those nerdy girls and the science education and outreach director at MDI Biological

Laboratory. She has a PhD from Tufts University where she studied the role of CD4T cells in the

immune system and autoimmune disease. She then joined the MDI Biological Laboratory where she received

an NIH postdoctoral fellowship. And during these training experiences, Liz discovered a passion for science education and

communication.

Then the COVID pandemic hit, and Liz began using her immunology expertise to educate the

public by starting her page on Instagram, ScienceWiz, Liz.

Outside of science, Liz is also a wife, mother of two,

runner, hiker, and avid reader. Oh, I'll have to ask you what you're reading at the end. Thank you so much for joining. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you so much for having me. I wanted to do this episode for a lot of reasons. It seems like a very good time to kind of talk through these things. I also, I don't know if I've

ever shared this publicly because now it's kind of embarrassing, but I also used to be kind

of vaccine hesitant. I mean, my kids are vaccinated, but I was really scared. I remember being

pregnant with my first baby and hysterically crying about having to get one of the vaccines that

you get when you're pregnant, maybe the T-DAP or something like that. And it was one of like

the scariest times I've had. I just, I was seeing so much now I know misinformation about this

online. And it's so important. And this is why I love your work. It's so important to have

these conversations from a place of compassion and trying to understand instead of trying to shame

because we're all just trying to do our best and keep our kids healthy and keep ourselves healthy.

And some information might be wrong. But that doesn't mean that, you know, we're bad people or bad

parents necessarily. So I really appreciate your approach. And I hope that anyone who's listening

who is vaccine hesitant can learn something and feel better about their choices. So again,

I really appreciate your work. And I'm so glad you're here. I wanted to start with kind of your

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