Hey short ravers, Emily Kwong here. So this week our team is stepping away to attend the

annual meeting for Triple AS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Basically we'll be attending the conference to scope out some more cool science stories for you all.

Meanwhile, to close out Black History Month, we're going to revisit some of our favorite

conversations with Black scientists this week. Today, geneticists Janina Jeff, on the complicated

intersection of genetics, ancestry and race. I love this episode so much and I hope you enjoy it.

You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

Hey everybody, Emily Kwong here. And as you might have guessed, being a reporter and a podcast

co-host, I spend many hours marinating in the medium and listening to other podcasts.

And what I recently started to listen to and love is in those genes. Welcome to the family,

everybody. You're listening to in those genes. A science and culture podcast that uses genetics

to decode the lost histories of African descendants. The host and executive producer is population

geneticist Janina Jeff. Janina's podcast is in so many ways an extension of her career in genetics

and an interrogation of science. She's a researcher at Illumina, a biotech company, and is super

interested in the influence of genetics on human health. So really, it is my love for genetics,

Black people and the arts that has inspired me to make this show, but also because tons of people

use science to perpetuate a bunch of bulls**t about Black folks. And it's four of these reasons

that from the start, Janina decided to root this podcast in something she calls scientific

Senkova, which she learned from her grandfather through his trips to Ghana.

There's a Ghanaian proverb called Senkova. In English, it means it's never too late to go back

and fetch what has been lost or forgotten. The proverb has been an important cultural element

to pan-African. A reminder to us all to connect to our original roots. I see genetics as a

...