Welcome back to the Stronger by Science Podcast. My name is Eric Trexler and I am your one and only host for today's episode.

If you watch the show last week, that was a solo episode as well.

Of course, the advertisers are beating down my door trying to get a piece of the show.

The fan mail is absolutely pouring in, but some people have been wondering what's up with the solo shows.

People have even been speculating that perhaps the holidays have made it logistically difficult to coordinate schedules and maybe that's why I've been doing

some shows solo rather than having a co-host. But nonetheless I want to put some of these

rumors to rest and I want to come clean about

Greg's absence in this show and the prior show.

So as many of our listeners know, many months back, Greg spearheaded an effort to unionize all of the Stronger by Science

Podcast co-host, both the present and former Stronger by Science Podcast co-host.

So during that effort, I tried to undermine that unionization

through all possible legal channels and some other channels as well.

Nonetheless, my efforts to undermine that process were ultimately ineffective and that union did form.

And that brings us to where we are today. The Stronger by Science

Podcast co-host union wants family contact to be reinstated. One of the policies of this show, which is an industry standard policy,

is that if you co-host a podcast,

you really shouldn't be contacting friends or family members and the reason for that is in order to protect the show quality and the focus of the show we want to make sure that everybody is really all in on the production. So naturally we tell people you know you have to cut

off contact with family and friends and like I said that that's an industry standard. So now that this union is meddling in all of our business, they want

family contact to be reinstated. They might also want friend contact to be reinstated, but it was

really unclear in the communications that I got.

So basically the bottom line is that I refuse to be taken advantage of.

So those negotiations are at a stand still and I really don't see

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