Ready? Hey everybody, it's Maddie Sophia and Emily Quang. All this week will be celebrating and

recognizing the scientific contributions of black researchers. That's right. Today is a new

episode, but for the rest of the week, we'll be re-airing some shortwave favorites,

featuring scientists in entomology, aka insect studies, engineering,

biology, and materials science. Talking to black scientists who are not only advancing their fields,

but challenging who gets to be a part of science and whose science is really meant to serve.

It's going to be a great week. Here's the show. You're listening to shortwave

from NPR. So, Maddie, let me ask you as a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Oh, definitely a veterinarian. Nice. I wanted to be a Broadway actress, I think.

Oh, same thing as you're doing right now, pretty much.

None of this came true. When Owen Garrick got asked that question, however,

there was no doubt in his mind what he wanted to be.

I always wanted to be a doctor since I was a kid. Taking care of people, helping folks go from

being unhealthy to healthy, making my grandparents proud, that sort of thing.

Like a lot of kids, Owen squirmed as he got his flu shot, but he also saw the logic in it.

It's not like shots are fun, but they weren't fun for me. But I somehow just thought,

hey, this must be a good thing. Just keeping me healthy is keeping other people healthy.

Yep, that sounds like a future doctor to me.

Indeed, Owen attended Yale Medical School, loved his time there. He was one of 10 black students

in the class of 1998. So 10% of his graduating class was black, which is higher than today's

national average of black students in medical schools, right? Oh, yeah. And that's what we're going

to talk about in today's episode, diversity in medicine. Though black people make up 13% of the

...