Hello, everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today is Monday, July 7, 2025, 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, this show is and will always be 100% free to download as long as we keep making it.

We are on episode 558 now.

I think we're 11 years deep, which is amazing.

And that is all thanks to the incredible

support of folks 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 talk nerdy to learn more. This week's top patrons

include Anu Badovaj, Chuck Ble, Daniel Lang, David J.E. Smith, Joseph Lamore, Mary Neva,

Brian Holden, David Compton, Gabrielle F. Haramillo, Joe Wilkinson, Pascuali Jolati, and Ulrika Hagman.

Thank you all so much. So this week, I had the opportunity to chat with author Anika Burgess. She is a photo editor and a writer. She's actually a freelance contributor to the photo department at the New York Times. And she has a brand new book out. It's called Flashes of Brilliance, the Genius of Early early photography, and how it transformed art,

science, and history. So without any further ado, here she is, Anika Burgess.

Well, Anika, thank you so much for joining me today. Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Absolutely. I'm super excited to talk to you about

your new book, your first book, Flashes of Brilliance, the Genius of Early Photography and How It Transforms,

Art, Science, and History. And this is really exciting because you are coming at this as a photographer.

As you may know, my podcast, which has been around for over a decade now, it started as like a pure science communication podcast.

So I would interview either scientists or science writers, science journalist, science communicators.

And I always would notice that science journalists and communicators would sort of come from two different camps.

You had your scientists who then decided

that they wanted to get more involved in Scicom and Journo, and so they would, you know, enter from

that sort of field. And then you had your Journos who went to J-School, who just, like, love the science

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