Hello, everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy.

Today is Monday, April 27, 26, and I'm the host of the show, Dr. Kara, Santa Maria.

And as always, before we dive into this week's show, I want to thank those of you who support Talk Nerdy, keep it going, and offset that cost so that individuals who cannot afford to support the show don't have to pay to listen.

I use the platform Patreon.

So if you're interested in pledging your support on an episodic basis,

all you've got to do is visit Patreon, p-at-R-E-O-N dot combs, this week's top patrons include

Chuck Blev, David J.E. Smith, Daniel Lang, Mary Neva, Will DeFrain, David Compton, Brian Holden,

Gabbo Jay, Ulrika Hagman, Pasquale Jalati, Rika Maharaj, and Joe Wilkinson.

Thank you all so much. So this week I had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Helen Pearson.

She earned her degree in natural sciences at the University of Cambridge and then did a PhD in

developmental genetics at the University of Edinburgh.

But after that, she decided, you know, SciCom and Science Journalism is going to be the way to go.

And she actually wrote and edited for the journal Nature for over 20 years.

In 2022, she became a senior editor for Nature.

And then in 2026, just this year, she won a night science journalism fellowship at MIT.

So she'll be moving across the pond and hanging out with us in Boston, starting later this year.

She has a new book out called Beyond Belief, How Evidence Shows What Really Works.

And without further ado, here she is, Dr. Helen Pearson.

Well, Helen, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you so much for having me.

I am so excited to talk about your new book, Beyond Belief, How evidence shows what really works. And I have to say, this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart as somebody who works in, well, was in academia. Now I'm more in a clinical kind of applied capacity as a psychologist in a major research hospital, but also for, God, the last

15 years of my life, I've worked as a public science communicator. And other than talk nerdy,

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