Hey listeners, this is just a quick message to say we're not going to publish the nature podcast tomorrow as normal. Instead, it'll be on Thursday. In fact, the same goes for nature's issue. That too will be delayed by a day. Why? We and the rest of nature are joining shutdown stem and strike for black lives. Aside from reporting on COVID-19, we're stopping business as usual for a day to spend time

reflecting on racism in academia, to educate ourselves and to define actions we can take to

help eradicate anti-black racism in academia and STEM.

We at nature recognise that we're among the overwhelmingly white institutions of science that have been and remain complicit in systemic racism, and that we must strive harder to correct those injustices and amplify marginalised voices.

This is true right down to the podcast team and myself personally. I am white and so in the majority of my

team. None of us are black. This lack of diversity makes our show lesser and we need to do more.

We may be stopping business as usual for a day, but in the days, weeks and years to come,

we will continue to work towards eradication of racism.

I'm Nick Howe from me and the rest of the multimedia team. Thanks for listening and see you on Thursday.