June 15, 2025 • 32 mins
Harvard’s international students on the chopping block, NIH and CDC budgets slashed nearly in half, and entire datasets vanishing overnight. If it feels like a whirlwind, thats because it’s by design. This week Titi and Zakiya sit down with Dr. Chelsea Clinton to map the real-world fallout when science funding and student visas become political pawns. From the looming shortage of 86,000 physicians to foreign governments dangling big money to lure U.S. researchers abroad, we unpack why these moves threaten innovation, public health, and even your pet’s food safety. But it’s not all doomscrolling: we break down practical ways communities can push back, protect local research, and keep facts louder than the chaos.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm TT and I'm Zakiah, and this is Dope Labs.
Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship. Okay,
we got to jump into it because a lot has
(00:24):
been happening in the education and research space.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
I mean, on June fourth of this year, so twenty
twenty five, Trump issued a proclamation suspending the entry of
international students to Harvard for six months, and he cited
what he's calling national security concerns and non compliance with
federal information requests regarding foreign students' activities.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
And the president of Harvard says that's nonsense.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
And people just think that's undergrad but that's graduate students
and postdocs, okay, And Harvard's just the headline for now.
But last month, the White House froze two hundred ten
million dollars in Princeton's grants, and within days we saw
Columbia pen Brown, you know, all the other IVY leagues,
we saw half billion dollar funding holes on all of
their funding for ideological non compliance or.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
What they say is ideological non compliance.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
All this weird, right, this feels like to me, I know,
beef when I see and this feels like beef. Absolutelyef, absolutely,
I mean, the Department of Homeland Security is saying this
is a national security issue and is accusing Harvard of
everything from anti Semitism to like being in bed with
the Chinese Communist Party, and a federal judge is already
(01:37):
hit pause on this. But the message is loud and messy.
It is definitely beef. And the hit list is not
just on the education side, it's on the agency side too.
So we've seen budget slashes to NIH, CDC, NSLF SO
anywhere from forty to sixty seven percent overnight sometimes. So
(01:57):
it doesn't matter if you are a biologist at Hopkins
or a grad student at MIT, or a postoc like
you were saying, Zakiya, the message is the same, and
that feeds straight into today's big conversation on the impacts
of these cuts. This is a great place to jump
into the recitation. So let's start there. What do we
(02:18):
know tt Well, we know these executive orders and cuts
are coming fast and furious.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
It feels like every day there's something new.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
It's almost disorienting because every day a new cut happens
or a new regulation comes out and it's just like
what is going on?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
You can barely keep up with the news.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
And I think what's interesting is that some of this,
I guess feels illegal, but we know that there is
some legal ground that the administration has and that they're
clinging to that gives the president the right to do all.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Of this stuff, right.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
But we also know that folks are not taking this
lying down and people are actively suing the administration to
try and block these up. So that's what we know.
But what do we want to know about what's going on?
I want to talk about the different agencies and how
the cuts will impact our day today lives, because I
know it will.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yes, it definitely does.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And I am seeing right now a lot of scientists, students,
you know, I do a lot of work with students
that I'm following. They're saying, do I need to change fields?
I'm in the sciences. Do I need to move to
another country? So I want to know more about the
brain drain? But what that means for scholars in America?
What does that mean for America's collective brain? I'd love
that question, and I want to know if there are
(03:35):
any other cuts that we can expect, like what are
the tea leaves saying?
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Can we anticipate some of these things?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Mm hmm. And the biggest question for me is figuring
out what we can do to help fight the good
fight against misinformation and still champion research, innovation and diversity
of thought that we know is so important and that's
important to us. That's what Dope Labs is all about.
We love the science of everything and we know how
(04:03):
important it is for our collective global community. So with that,
I think we're ready to jump into the dissection. We
are so excited to have our guests in our new
very smart friend, doctor Chelsea Clinton, to help us navigate
this rarefied air.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Hi.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
I'm doctor Chose Clinton. I'm the vice chair of the
Clinton Foundation.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
I've also been really lucky to teach a lot of classes.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
At the Family School of Public Health.
Speaker 6 (04:29):
At Columbia, have written a number of books invest in
founders that are trying to help our world be healthier
and more sustainable.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
So I think where we want to start with is
setting the stage for what research touches in our society.
Because science is under attack and it's in the headlines
a lot. Can you speak broadly about how research shapes
how we experience our world.
Speaker 5 (04:57):
Oh my goodness, TD, what has research not shaped?
Speaker 4 (05:01):
We're together here on Zoom, facilitated by computers and the
Internet and electricity.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
These are all products research.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
We have medicine, whether we're thinking about vaccines that are, yes,
the product of lots and lots of research to hopefully
prevent us from getting sick. And it's terrible allergy season
right now. I'm so thankful to allergy medicine and the
research that produced it, so I'm not constantly like teary
(05:34):
eyed and coughing and sneezing from the moment I wake up.
I have three kids and they're all obsessed without our space.
And we got to go to Cape Canaveral last year
on a family trip, and I'll never forget when we
were just like on a regular amazing tour and saw
(05:55):
the control room where scientists and other folks had been
stationed when we first sent a man to the moon,
and our tour guide either told us or it was
on a plaque that there's more computing power now in
an iPhone than there was in that entire room back
(06:16):
in nineteen sixty nine, or like my kids can't believe
we used to get lost.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Yeah, like they're so surprised.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Like when I talk about like when Grandma and pop
Up and I would go on trips and we would drive.
Often we'd go to Atlanta and drive to South Carolina,
and sometimes we would take purposeful side adventures, and sometimes
we would take accidental side adventures and we would have
to stop and.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
Ask re directions. Like they can't get over that.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
And I'm like, I know, we didn't have maps on
phone in our pockets.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
They've never seen a map quest print out.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Right, like not Lattice West. It's like research anyway. Research.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yes, my niece and nephew don't understand commercials. They're used
to everything being on demand.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
Yes, converged, isn't it funny?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
And I think that brings up like when you talk
about just how leaving your home and choosing Google Maps
or Apple Maps to take you from point A to
point B. First of all, some people are getting lost
with that. And can you imagine traveling in space with
less technology? Going to space with less technology than that
is wild to me. But I think these research initiatives
(07:26):
that lead to products and tangible things that materially change
how we exist, how we interact with one another. I
think the thing that people sometimes separate from researchers.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
They're like, oh, that's innovation or technology, but.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
It takes so much, it takes so many resources. I
think about how these huge institutions like the National Institute
of Health, the FDA, the CDC, these are huge pillars
in our national society, but globally what as well, And
I think it's important for people to understand why we
(08:03):
need these huge research institutions.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
We absolutely need the National Institutes of Health and the
other parts of our public health infrastructure and ecosystem in
our country. I think not only about the National in
Suits of Health and all of the extraordinary research that
it has supported over the years to help on everything
(08:29):
from enabling the first sequencing of the human genome right.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yes, the human genome project was huge and from nineteen
ninety to basically two thousand and three a long time
scientists were working to give us the full genome of
a human, but also other organisms that we used to
understand human conditions and science. So you coline that bacteria
Baker's yeast, sacromic Sarah visit sounded like Harry pottersmatos yes,
(08:56):
and mice just a couple episodes ago, we were talking
about fat studies understanding fat metabolism in mice that wouldn't
be possible without the Human Genail Project.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
Which was a lot of work that was made possible
because of NIH funding. To everything that we're still learning
about cancer, to all that we thankfully do know about allergies,
to all the vital work that's being done on mental health,
which historically hasn't received the funding that would be merited
(09:29):
if we just think about all of the mental health
challenges across our population. Overdose deaths dropped last year for
the first time in decades and dropped, and I think
this is right. Forty eight out of fifty states, I
think only two states had an increase in overdose death.
So much of what we know about how to help
(09:51):
prevent addiction use disorders, treat addiction use disorders, save someone's
life so that they can get into treatment.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Narcan the nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
And I think what you said before is just so
spot on, Like people think of it as innovation or discovery,
like these other words are so closely linked to research,
but may not always be understood as such.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Just thinking of the impact that research has had in
the ways that you were saying, cancer research, allergy research,
all of these things that totally progress us are now
being impacted. We saw that a leaked budget pass back
shows that of NIH is going to get cut and
then forty four percent to the CDC. Can you speak
(10:54):
about how losses on that scale have a ripple effect
through biomedical discovery and the public health safety Net?
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Yeah, so I think TD I also saw that leak budget,
I guess about a month ago now, and I think
we can think about this in a number of ways,
and I think they're all super critical for people to understand.
And I will say too, like I also am a
believer in efficiency, but efficiency generally means doing more with
(11:27):
the same amount or trying to have even better outcomes
with the same amount of money.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
It's not getting rid of things wholesale.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
And we know through multiple research efforts that for every
dollar that the NH has invested, many many times that
amount is generated through how those research innovations and discoveries
get commercialized in ANH case, often with medical device companies
(11:58):
or pharmaceutical companies. And I think what also often isn't
well understood, is yes, of course, like that those innovations
and help save so many lives, help really disrupt diseases
that have beleaguered humanity for not only thousands, but sometimes
millions of years. But it's also about all of the
(12:19):
jobs that are supported through those research grants. The NIH,
I think, over the last handful of years, has supported
research funding and more than two thousand academic institutions and
hospitals through small research partners. You think about all of
the jobs that are supported directly by those research grants
(12:41):
in laboratories, but also the people who work in those buildings,
then the people who work in the coffee shops or
the restaurants or the bars, where the people who work
in those buildings then spend time before after work, where
those people's children go to school. And so it's really,
(13:01):
I think purposefully in a wonderful way that NIH has
really been the National Institutes of Health and recognize that
super smart researchers are in institutions big and small, in
like every corner of our country, and that their potential,
their ideas, they're hoped for discoveries and innovations merit being funded.
(13:26):
After of course going through a super rigorous process to
assess which among those really deserve the dollars.
Speaker 5 (13:34):
In any given year.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
So TD, it's really just it's not only catastrophic for
what we won't discover to help keep all of us healthier,
it's what we then won't create in terms of wealth
because we're not having those companies created, or people who
are healthier who can then go to work for longer.
It's also about all of the people whose lives are
(13:59):
being currently disrupted or who are worried that their lives
are going to be disrupted because of interruptions and funding.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Absolutely, this is a great point because when we're thinking
about research, sometimes folks think of this as people in
lab coats, but there's an entire infrastructure that supports those
folks and their equipments. There's industries and jobs outside of
research that will be impacted by funding cuts. And because
of this, we're seeing a lot of scientists choosing to
take their talents to South Beach like Lebron And when
(14:27):
I say South Beach, I don't mean Miami. Now, I'm
talking about outside of the United States.
Speaker 5 (14:31):
Countries are actively recruiting our scientists.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
Yes, I'm sure that you both have a lot of
friends like I have friends who've gotten job offers from
literally all over the world. The European Union is setting
aside hundredsivillions of dollars. Individual countries are setting aside like
ten civilians or hundreds civilions of dollars. Some countries have
whole new departments that have sprung up, yes, to try
(14:54):
to recruit American scientists. It's very hard for me to
reconcile the we're going to make America grade again while
we are actively undermining part of what has made America
grade again, which is like the many decades long partnership
between the public sector and the private sector, between academic
institutions and private industry, between people who work in labs
(15:18):
and then those who build companies off of the research
that those labs generate. And that's part of what hasn't
made our country healthier and more sustainable and wealthier. And
I don't think it's an accident that now you have
so many countries trying to recruit away our best scientists.
And also, as we saw in our recent Nature report,
(15:39):
the three quarters of them were thinking about leaving.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I talked to someone who was in public health, and
she was saying, what happens to my field if we're
not tracking what's happening. She was working on maternal health
and infant Oh.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
Yeah, because we got rid of the pregnancy Risk Assessment monitoring.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Success and so she was the less than is the eighties.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
And a couple of weeks after Trump took office, we
didn't publish something called the Weekly Morbidity Immortality Report, which
I know sounds super wonky and probably a lot of
people listening to like, what is that and why should
it care? Well, we had published it every week in America,
including through multiple wars. After the tragedy of the terrorist
(16:18):
attacks on nine to eleven, the CDC had published that
every week since the early nineteen sixties, and then we
just didn't And.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
Now we're back to publishing it.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
But it just shows you how much we've taken for
granted that we have a government that, through different presidential administrations,
even through the first Dump administration, that had a real
commitment to tracking the public health and wellbeing of Americans.
How many people got sick with bird flu this week?
(16:49):
How many people died from gun violence? What are the
rising rates of depression or cancer? What are the questions
and we should be asking from shift's immortality, how many
people have died and morbidity, how many people may have
gotten sick or injured, and we just like didn't do that.
And in fact, multiple data sets have now been taken down,
(17:13):
which of course makes it harder. Back to the theme
of research for researchers, including can you imagine when you
were like applying to PhD programs. If you're like, oh,
I think I want to do this. I know the
government tracks all this data and anything from food safety,
water safety to cancer rates. You're like, I go to
this website to check this government data. Worse, then all
(17:34):
of a sudden it's not there, gone gone, And.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
The Morbidity and Mortality report allows us to find out
what's going on in the United States. I can recall
reading this back in maybe it was April or May,
but there was one of the newsletters that said, hey,
people are doing these procedures at this medical spa, and
now we realize this was a source of HIV because
of how they were doing this needle procedure a beauty spot. Okay,
(18:00):
in order to figure these things out what's happening, you
have to have somebody that's tracking and surveilling, which is
what some of our major centers do.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Proposed cuts for the centers for disease control, Well, certainly
we can our outbreak surveillance and responsiveness. And I do
take quite seriously the people who are part of the
Trump administration who are committed, as they say, you make
America healthy. But I struggle given other parts of the
(18:30):
administration are so supportive of the cuts to NIH research funding,
including on chronic disease. Of the cuts that have already
been levied against multiple universities are inclusive of cardio metabolic
health broadly diabetes in particular. I also struggle because the
EPA cuts will make it much harder to enforce clean
(18:53):
water and clean air regulations. There's also been rumors that
they may clawback some of the rules and guidelines around
how much chemical effluent can be released into water as
industrial wastewater, and so I also don't want there to
be artificial red and yellow food dye and our food.
(19:14):
And I also recognize that we need to do a
better job of helping all of us understand the importance
of things that all our grandmothers probably new intuitively and
we seem to have forgotten, like go outside when you
can get a good night's sleep, like drink a lot
of water, eat a balanced meal. And yet it's just
it's impossible for me to reconcile that with the cuts
(19:37):
to funding around how best to help people do that,
with the proposed cuts that are currently being debated now
in Congress to supplemental nutritional benefits making it harder for
low income Americans to be able to afford healthy food,
harder to think we're going to urge people to go outside,
but the air quality is going to be worse, and
DAN and.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
All of those things compound, and it also makes me
think about, you know, we are freshly off of a pandemic,
all of that research that is trying to be done
to understand long term effects of having COVID, some folks
that are still suffering with long COVID and just understanding
COVID as a virus itself. And you have someone in
(20:20):
an administration, You have a cabinet that does not believe
in vaccines. You have folks that are in charge of
our health and safety who just don't believe in certain things,
and that will have a negative impact on all of us. Chelsea,
(20:49):
you talk about brain drain a lot and brain drain
is the migration of highly skilled, highly educated, and professionally
specialized people from one place to another where their talents
are needed, or to another where their talents are respected
and that get better pay, research funding, political stability, quality
of life, or career prospects. I want to know what
(21:11):
you think about brain drain for the United States or
the possibility of it coming up really soon.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
So the United States has been, and I don't think
this is a controversial statement, truly has been the envy
of the world from a research and scientific knowledge production
capacity perspective. And that's been true for a few reasons.
One the strength of our universities. Partly that strength, of
(21:41):
course has been catalyzed and then supported by research investments
through our universities, partly because of our student visa program,
which is also under threat. And so for great students
from anywhere with great ideas who got into a great
American university, that there were pathways for them than to
(22:05):
be able to come here and study. And then on
the other side that we have whole countries, not even
just like academic institutions and other parts of the world,
but whole countries like France, in Denmarket, Singapore, China, many
of them saying we would love to have you come
here and do your work on log COVID, on depression,
(22:29):
on diabetes, on high risk pregnancies, and Alzheimer's, all of
these areas that we know at least some people, particularly
in the institutions that have been targeted, including Harvard Columbia,
Johns Hopkins and others, you have had their work stopped.
Speaker 5 (22:43):
And so I think the brain drain risk is very real.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
While we are cutting back many billions of dollars, and
we are telling our scientists today and our future scientists
that we have disdain for.
Speaker 5 (22:58):
Your expertise, and we don't believe your expertise.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
We're going to make you continually prove your expertise, and
we're gonna have an uncertain regulatory environment.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
And then you have China is an exception saying actually
we're going to invest a trillion dollars.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
We're going to invest trillion dollars in new science over
I think it was the next decade. So you have
some countries like, all right, hundreds of millions of dollars
and China be like, actually a trillion dollars, and we're like,
we're just we're just going to like lop Off, like
tens of billions of dollars, and I don't think anything
about that is efficient.
Speaker 5 (23:31):
I think that it is actually profoundly inefficient.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
We also saw that the Association of American Medical Colleges
is saying that by twenty thirty six, we will be
short eighty six thousand physicians. Eighty six thousand. This is
real major impact on literally everyone. I think of the
people because we've done an episode on maternal health where
(23:57):
we were talking about folks who were in like basically
health deserts where they had to travel very, very far
to see a doctor. Now reduce a number of doctors
that are available even more. We are going to see
that people will not have a good quality of life,
people will die, will be more sick. America is not
going to be a healthy, happy place where people can thrive.
(24:20):
And we'll see that probably on the coasts there will
be more doctors there, but the middle of America will
suffer the most.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
I'm from Arkansas originally, and in Arkansas, more than thirty
percent of women in Arkansas live more than two hours
from anything that could be considered like women's healthcare, and
so that also is a painful part of this conversation too,
because we think about all of the innovations made possible
by research for things like at home testing or where
(24:50):
telehealth could be really powerful to help close care gaps.
But what will the next generation of all those innovations
be if we don't have research to try to continue
to improve upon them and to continue to push them forward.
Speaker 5 (25:06):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
And TD again, I know we talked about the data
sets earlier, but Texas and Georgia have said they're no
longer going to share maternal health data and now if
we don't have the federal government provide it was ongoing
of surveillance function that it had been doing again I
think since the nineteen eighties. It's also just going to
(25:29):
be well impossible to hold people accountable for either policy
decisions or practice decisions that could lead to women dying
while pregnant or in childbirth or postpartum. It also, though,
then makes it much harder, if not impossible, to purpose
research into the areas where we should be investing. Yes, dollars,
(25:51):
but also the people like the two of you, who
are looking to do something to help save more women
who are pregnant or giving further postpartum because they won't
necessarily know what they've died from, right, so they won't
know what indications to investigate.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
I think there are so many things it feels almost
insidious because we are losing the tracking, We're losing the surveillance,
the ability to see what's coming. We're losing the strength
to fight anything once it arrives. And I think we
want to consider these are decisions being made, but what
I don't want us to lose is both hope and
(26:28):
agency and ability to act.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Absolutely when we think.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
About standing in the face of calls that are coming
from far away, and some people are choosing to privately
maintain things. I'm hearing about citizen science efforts, I'm hearing
about a lot of community things that are happening. While
we might not be able to stop funding cuts and
talent flight, there may be other things that we, as
(26:56):
people with platforms, our listeners, as people with platforms and communities,
can do to push back against the negative rhetoric we
hear around science and research and even how they might
engage people in their day to day lives.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Oh gosh, well, I would say one they are probably
as many right answers as there are are people listening,
like we each know, like our families are our communities best.
I do think at a kind of at a community,
at a state level, I would certainly urge all of
us to know what is happening in our communities and
our states when it relates to research. There are states
(27:31):
that very much are who have taken action against the
Trump administration. In some of these areas, there are universities
who've taken action against the Trump administration, effectively saying, oh,
you can't stop paying for work that you committed to
pay for, like these grants or contracts, like this is illegal.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
I think it's channeling my grandmother again here.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
Like the discipline of gratitude I think matters, Like saying
thank you and like we're so grateful and we're standing
with you.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
I think matters.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
I think only thirty nine states have currently the ability
to assess even some level of food safety. If you're
in one of the eleven states where that's not true,
you should probably know that about calling actually not only
your governor and state legislature, but probably you're senator and
congress people too, if that's something you're concerned about.
Speaker 5 (28:21):
So I just think You're so right. These have to
be such localized efforts.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
And I think even one of the things I do
with our kids, and I don't know if this is
helpful for other people who might be parents or who
have small humans in their lives, they do try to
help my kids understand like there really is science all
around us, right, and so whether that is there just
amazement that we have maps in our pockets, or it's
(28:47):
the multivitamin that they take with breakfast in the morning,
that really science is all around us, and that means
like research is all around us. And I hope that
then helps them, whether they grow up to be scientists
or not, understand and just the incalculable debt that we
owe to the many generations of people who have had
(29:07):
such profound optimism, which I think science is to believe
that there's more to know and more to understand, and
more to do to try to help keep our world
healthier and safer and full of even more wonder.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
That's one of me and the Key's favorite things to say.
We say science is in everything in science is for everybody,
and so everything you're saying that just speaks to our heart.
We firmly believe in continuing to educate yourself and don't
shut up.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
That was the takeaway.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Keep talking, keep talk, learning more, talking about what you've learned,
and making sure that we are holding folks accountable and
saying no, that is not true.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
This is what we need.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
These are the things that we require when we live
in this country. It is our right to ask for
those things.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
It is our right to demand more from our governments,
and so we should not be quiet, turn up our marketphone.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
And also the Trump administration saying they're no longer going
to prove the COVID vaccine for healthy kids and adults.
Speaker 5 (30:05):
Also call it the hypocrisy.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
Like you say, in one side, you think parents should
have vaccine choice, and now you're saying to parents that
we don't have vaccine choice.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Right. The math isn't mathing.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
Yeah, that math doesn't math like that is not that
is not reconcilable.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
The more we talk about these things help people frame them,
because you don't always get to put these pieces of information.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
First of all, there's so much coming out day to
day you don't get to and.
Speaker 5 (30:33):
That's on purpose.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
To write the chaos and the there was like a
brief period a few weeks ago where the trumpstration proposed
like cutting all like pet food safety regulation, and then
a few days later there was a salmonella outbreak in
pet food and so then they were like, oh, wait, no,
we maybe need this people, because there is such a
barrage that I think is purposeful to force a response.
And then also the barrage is partly fueled by whatever
(30:57):
the reversals are to what had been said, sometimes even
earlier that same day.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
So's the goal is not to get disoriented, to stay
the course, pick a topic.
Speaker 5 (31:06):
Yep, and understand what's real and not real. Yep.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
This has been such an important conversation and one that
I think puts a lot of context around how these
cuts will impact all of our lives. Yes, I think
what you said at the n Chelsea is crucial. Don't
let the disorienting nature of the news quiet you. Yes,
we have to stay the course. We have to keep
educating ourselves so no one can pull the wool over
(31:35):
our eyes, and we can't stop calling out the lies
and hypocrisy. We have our marching orders. We know what
we have to do, and so me and Zekiah will
continue to yell into these mics. You can find us
(32:05):
on X and Instagram at Dope Labs podcast, tt is
on X and Instagram, at dr Underscore t Sho, and
you can find Zakiya at z said So.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Dope Labs is a production of Lamanada Media.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Our senior supervising producer is Kristin Lapour and our associate
producer is Issara Savez. Dope Labs is sound design, edited
and mixed by James Farber. Lamanada Media's Vice President of
Partnerships and Production is Jackie Danziger. Executive producer from iHeart
podcast is Katrina Norvil.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Marketing lead is Alison Kanter.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex
sudi Ura, with additional music by Elijah Harvey. Dope Lab
is executive produced by US T T Show Dia and
Zakia Wattley.
I'm TT and I'm Zakiah, and this is Dope Labs.
Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship. Okay,
we got to jump into it because a lot has
(00:24):
been happening in the education and research space.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
I mean, on June fourth of this year, so twenty
twenty five, Trump issued a proclamation suspending the entry of
international students to Harvard for six months, and he cited
what he's calling national security concerns and non compliance with
federal information requests regarding foreign students' activities.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
And the president of Harvard says that's nonsense.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
And people just think that's undergrad but that's graduate students
and postdocs, okay, And Harvard's just the headline for now.
But last month, the White House froze two hundred ten
million dollars in Princeton's grants, and within days we saw
Columbia pen Brown, you know, all the other IVY leagues,
we saw half billion dollar funding holes on all of
their funding for ideological non compliance or.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
What they say is ideological non compliance.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
All this weird, right, this feels like to me, I know,
beef when I see and this feels like beef. Absolutelyef, absolutely,
I mean, the Department of Homeland Security is saying this
is a national security issue and is accusing Harvard of
everything from anti Semitism to like being in bed with
the Chinese Communist Party, and a federal judge is already
(01:37):
hit pause on this. But the message is loud and messy.
It is definitely beef. And the hit list is not
just on the education side, it's on the agency side too.
So we've seen budget slashes to NIH, CDC, NSLF SO
anywhere from forty to sixty seven percent overnight sometimes. So
(01:57):
it doesn't matter if you are a biologist at Hopkins
or a grad student at MIT, or a postoc like
you were saying, Zakiya, the message is the same, and
that feeds straight into today's big conversation on the impacts
of these cuts. This is a great place to jump
into the recitation. So let's start there. What do we
(02:18):
know tt Well, we know these executive orders and cuts
are coming fast and furious.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
It feels like every day there's something new.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
It's almost disorienting because every day a new cut happens
or a new regulation comes out and it's just like
what is going on?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
You can barely keep up with the news.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
And I think what's interesting is that some of this,
I guess feels illegal, but we know that there is
some legal ground that the administration has and that they're
clinging to that gives the president the right to do all.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Of this stuff, right.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
But we also know that folks are not taking this
lying down and people are actively suing the administration to
try and block these up. So that's what we know.
But what do we want to know about what's going on?
I want to talk about the different agencies and how
the cuts will impact our day today lives, because I
know it will.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yes, it definitely does.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And I am seeing right now a lot of scientists, students,
you know, I do a lot of work with students
that I'm following. They're saying, do I need to change fields?
I'm in the sciences. Do I need to move to
another country? So I want to know more about the
brain drain? But what that means for scholars in America?
What does that mean for America's collective brain? I'd love
that question, and I want to know if there are
(03:35):
any other cuts that we can expect, like what are
the tea leaves saying?
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Can we anticipate some of these things?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Mm hmm. And the biggest question for me is figuring
out what we can do to help fight the good
fight against misinformation and still champion research, innovation and diversity
of thought that we know is so important and that's
important to us. That's what Dope Labs is all about.
We love the science of everything and we know how
(04:03):
important it is for our collective global community. So with that,
I think we're ready to jump into the dissection. We
are so excited to have our guests in our new
very smart friend, doctor Chelsea Clinton, to help us navigate
this rarefied air.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Hi.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
I'm doctor Chose Clinton. I'm the vice chair of the
Clinton Foundation.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
I've also been really lucky to teach a lot of classes.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
At the Family School of Public Health.
Speaker 6 (04:29):
At Columbia, have written a number of books invest in
founders that are trying to help our world be healthier
and more sustainable.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
So I think where we want to start with is
setting the stage for what research touches in our society.
Because science is under attack and it's in the headlines
a lot. Can you speak broadly about how research shapes
how we experience our world.
Speaker 5 (04:57):
Oh my goodness, TD, what has research not shaped?
Speaker 4 (05:01):
We're together here on Zoom, facilitated by computers and the
Internet and electricity.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
These are all products research.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
We have medicine, whether we're thinking about vaccines that are, yes,
the product of lots and lots of research to hopefully
prevent us from getting sick. And it's terrible allergy season
right now. I'm so thankful to allergy medicine and the
research that produced it, so I'm not constantly like teary
(05:34):
eyed and coughing and sneezing from the moment I wake up.
I have three kids and they're all obsessed without our space.
And we got to go to Cape Canaveral last year
on a family trip, and I'll never forget when we
were just like on a regular amazing tour and saw
(05:55):
the control room where scientists and other folks had been
stationed when we first sent a man to the moon,
and our tour guide either told us or it was
on a plaque that there's more computing power now in
an iPhone than there was in that entire room back
(06:16):
in nineteen sixty nine, or like my kids can't believe
we used to get lost.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Yeah, like they're so surprised.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Like when I talk about like when Grandma and pop
Up and I would go on trips and we would drive.
Often we'd go to Atlanta and drive to South Carolina,
and sometimes we would take purposeful side adventures, and sometimes
we would take accidental side adventures and we would have
to stop and.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
Ask re directions. Like they can't get over that.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
And I'm like, I know, we didn't have maps on
phone in our pockets.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
They've never seen a map quest print out.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Right, like not Lattice West. It's like research anyway. Research.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yes, my niece and nephew don't understand commercials. They're used
to everything being on demand.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
Yes, converged, isn't it funny?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
And I think that brings up like when you talk
about just how leaving your home and choosing Google Maps
or Apple Maps to take you from point A to
point B. First of all, some people are getting lost
with that. And can you imagine traveling in space with
less technology? Going to space with less technology than that
is wild to me. But I think these research initiatives
(07:26):
that lead to products and tangible things that materially change
how we exist, how we interact with one another. I
think the thing that people sometimes separate from researchers.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
They're like, oh, that's innovation or technology, but.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
It takes so much, it takes so many resources. I
think about how these huge institutions like the National Institute
of Health, the FDA, the CDC, these are huge pillars
in our national society, but globally what as well, And
I think it's important for people to understand why we
(08:03):
need these huge research institutions.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
We absolutely need the National Institutes of Health and the
other parts of our public health infrastructure and ecosystem in
our country. I think not only about the National in
Suits of Health and all of the extraordinary research that
it has supported over the years to help on everything
(08:29):
from enabling the first sequencing of the human genome right.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yes, the human genome project was huge and from nineteen
ninety to basically two thousand and three a long time
scientists were working to give us the full genome of
a human, but also other organisms that we used to
understand human conditions and science. So you coline that bacteria
Baker's yeast, sacromic Sarah visit sounded like Harry pottersmatos yes,
(08:56):
and mice just a couple episodes ago, we were talking
about fat studies understanding fat metabolism in mice that wouldn't
be possible without the Human Genail Project.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
Which was a lot of work that was made possible
because of NIH funding. To everything that we're still learning
about cancer, to all that we thankfully do know about allergies,
to all the vital work that's being done on mental health,
which historically hasn't received the funding that would be merited
(09:29):
if we just think about all of the mental health
challenges across our population. Overdose deaths dropped last year for
the first time in decades and dropped, and I think
this is right. Forty eight out of fifty states, I
think only two states had an increase in overdose death.
So much of what we know about how to help
(09:51):
prevent addiction use disorders, treat addiction use disorders, save someone's
life so that they can get into treatment.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Narcan the nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
And I think what you said before is just so
spot on, Like people think of it as innovation or discovery,
like these other words are so closely linked to research,
but may not always be understood as such.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Just thinking of the impact that research has had in
the ways that you were saying, cancer research, allergy research,
all of these things that totally progress us are now
being impacted. We saw that a leaked budget pass back
shows that of NIH is going to get cut and
then forty four percent to the CDC. Can you speak
(10:54):
about how losses on that scale have a ripple effect
through biomedical discovery and the public health safety Net?
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Yeah, so I think TD I also saw that leak budget,
I guess about a month ago now, and I think
we can think about this in a number of ways,
and I think they're all super critical for people to understand.
And I will say too, like I also am a
believer in efficiency, but efficiency generally means doing more with
(11:27):
the same amount or trying to have even better outcomes
with the same amount of money.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
It's not getting rid of things wholesale.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
And we know through multiple research efforts that for every
dollar that the NH has invested, many many times that
amount is generated through how those research innovations and discoveries
get commercialized in ANH case, often with medical device companies
(11:58):
or pharmaceutical companies. And I think what also often isn't
well understood, is yes, of course, like that those innovations
and help save so many lives, help really disrupt diseases
that have beleaguered humanity for not only thousands, but sometimes
millions of years. But it's also about all of the
(12:19):
jobs that are supported through those research grants. The NIH,
I think, over the last handful of years, has supported
research funding and more than two thousand academic institutions and
hospitals through small research partners. You think about all of
the jobs that are supported directly by those research grants
(12:41):
in laboratories, but also the people who work in those buildings,
then the people who work in the coffee shops or
the restaurants or the bars, where the people who work
in those buildings then spend time before after work, where
those people's children go to school. And so it's really,
(13:01):
I think purposefully in a wonderful way that NIH has
really been the National Institutes of Health and recognize that
super smart researchers are in institutions big and small, in
like every corner of our country, and that their potential,
their ideas, they're hoped for discoveries and innovations merit being funded.
(13:26):
After of course going through a super rigorous process to
assess which among those really deserve the dollars.
Speaker 5 (13:34):
In any given year.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
So TD, it's really just it's not only catastrophic for
what we won't discover to help keep all of us healthier,
it's what we then won't create in terms of wealth
because we're not having those companies created, or people who
are healthier who can then go to work for longer.
It's also about all of the people whose lives are
(13:59):
being currently disrupted or who are worried that their lives
are going to be disrupted because of interruptions and funding.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Absolutely, this is a great point because when we're thinking
about research, sometimes folks think of this as people in
lab coats, but there's an entire infrastructure that supports those
folks and their equipments. There's industries and jobs outside of
research that will be impacted by funding cuts. And because
of this, we're seeing a lot of scientists choosing to
take their talents to South Beach like Lebron And when
(14:27):
I say South Beach, I don't mean Miami. Now, I'm
talking about outside of the United States.
Speaker 5 (14:31):
Countries are actively recruiting our scientists.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
Yes, I'm sure that you both have a lot of
friends like I have friends who've gotten job offers from
literally all over the world. The European Union is setting
aside hundredsivillions of dollars. Individual countries are setting aside like
ten civilians or hundreds civilions of dollars. Some countries have
whole new departments that have sprung up, yes, to try
(14:54):
to recruit American scientists. It's very hard for me to
reconcile the we're going to make America grade again while
we are actively undermining part of what has made America
grade again, which is like the many decades long partnership
between the public sector and the private sector, between academic
institutions and private industry, between people who work in labs
(15:18):
and then those who build companies off of the research
that those labs generate. And that's part of what hasn't
made our country healthier and more sustainable and wealthier. And
I don't think it's an accident that now you have
so many countries trying to recruit away our best scientists.
And also, as we saw in our recent Nature report,
(15:39):
the three quarters of them were thinking about leaving.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I talked to someone who was in public health, and
she was saying, what happens to my field if we're
not tracking what's happening. She was working on maternal health
and infant Oh.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
Yeah, because we got rid of the pregnancy Risk Assessment monitoring.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Success and so she was the less than is the eighties.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
And a couple of weeks after Trump took office, we
didn't publish something called the Weekly Morbidity Immortality Report, which
I know sounds super wonky and probably a lot of
people listening to like, what is that and why should
it care? Well, we had published it every week in America,
including through multiple wars. After the tragedy of the terrorist
(16:18):
attacks on nine to eleven, the CDC had published that
every week since the early nineteen sixties, and then we
just didn't And.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
Now we're back to publishing it.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
But it just shows you how much we've taken for
granted that we have a government that, through different presidential administrations,
even through the first Dump administration, that had a real
commitment to tracking the public health and wellbeing of Americans.
How many people got sick with bird flu this week?
(16:49):
How many people died from gun violence? What are the
rising rates of depression or cancer? What are the questions
and we should be asking from shift's immortality, how many
people have died and morbidity, how many people may have
gotten sick or injured, and we just like didn't do that.
And in fact, multiple data sets have now been taken down,
(17:13):
which of course makes it harder. Back to the theme
of research for researchers, including can you imagine when you
were like applying to PhD programs. If you're like, oh,
I think I want to do this. I know the
government tracks all this data and anything from food safety,
water safety to cancer rates. You're like, I go to
this website to check this government data. Worse, then all
(17:34):
of a sudden it's not there, gone gone, And.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
The Morbidity and Mortality report allows us to find out
what's going on in the United States. I can recall
reading this back in maybe it was April or May,
but there was one of the newsletters that said, hey,
people are doing these procedures at this medical spa, and
now we realize this was a source of HIV because
of how they were doing this needle procedure a beauty spot. Okay,
(18:00):
in order to figure these things out what's happening, you
have to have somebody that's tracking and surveilling, which is
what some of our major centers do.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Proposed cuts for the centers for disease control, Well, certainly
we can our outbreak surveillance and responsiveness. And I do
take quite seriously the people who are part of the
Trump administration who are committed, as they say, you make
America healthy. But I struggle given other parts of the
(18:30):
administration are so supportive of the cuts to NIH research funding,
including on chronic disease. Of the cuts that have already
been levied against multiple universities are inclusive of cardio metabolic
health broadly diabetes in particular. I also struggle because the
EPA cuts will make it much harder to enforce clean
(18:53):
water and clean air regulations. There's also been rumors that
they may clawback some of the rules and guidelines around
how much chemical effluent can be released into water as
industrial wastewater, and so I also don't want there to
be artificial red and yellow food dye and our food.
(19:14):
And I also recognize that we need to do a
better job of helping all of us understand the importance
of things that all our grandmothers probably new intuitively and
we seem to have forgotten, like go outside when you
can get a good night's sleep, like drink a lot
of water, eat a balanced meal. And yet it's just
it's impossible for me to reconcile that with the cuts
(19:37):
to funding around how best to help people do that,
with the proposed cuts that are currently being debated now
in Congress to supplemental nutritional benefits making it harder for
low income Americans to be able to afford healthy food,
harder to think we're going to urge people to go outside,
but the air quality is going to be worse, and
DAN and.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
All of those things compound, and it also makes me
think about, you know, we are freshly off of a pandemic,
all of that research that is trying to be done
to understand long term effects of having COVID, some folks
that are still suffering with long COVID and just understanding
COVID as a virus itself. And you have someone in
(20:20):
an administration, You have a cabinet that does not believe
in vaccines. You have folks that are in charge of
our health and safety who just don't believe in certain things,
and that will have a negative impact on all of us. Chelsea,
(20:49):
you talk about brain drain a lot and brain drain
is the migration of highly skilled, highly educated, and professionally
specialized people from one place to another where their talents
are needed, or to another where their talents are respected
and that get better pay, research funding, political stability, quality
of life, or career prospects. I want to know what
(21:11):
you think about brain drain for the United States or
the possibility of it coming up really soon.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
So the United States has been, and I don't think
this is a controversial statement, truly has been the envy
of the world from a research and scientific knowledge production
capacity perspective. And that's been true for a few reasons.
One the strength of our universities. Partly that strength, of
(21:41):
course has been catalyzed and then supported by research investments
through our universities, partly because of our student visa program,
which is also under threat. And so for great students
from anywhere with great ideas who got into a great
American university, that there were pathways for them than to
(22:05):
be able to come here and study. And then on
the other side that we have whole countries, not even
just like academic institutions and other parts of the world,
but whole countries like France, in Denmarket, Singapore, China, many
of them saying we would love to have you come
here and do your work on log COVID, on depression,
(22:29):
on diabetes, on high risk pregnancies, and Alzheimer's, all of
these areas that we know at least some people, particularly
in the institutions that have been targeted, including Harvard Columbia,
Johns Hopkins and others, you have had their work stopped.
Speaker 5 (22:43):
And so I think the brain drain risk is very real.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
While we are cutting back many billions of dollars, and
we are telling our scientists today and our future scientists
that we have disdain for.
Speaker 5 (22:58):
Your expertise, and we don't believe your expertise.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
We're going to make you continually prove your expertise, and
we're gonna have an uncertain regulatory environment.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
And then you have China is an exception saying actually
we're going to invest a trillion dollars.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
We're going to invest trillion dollars in new science over
I think it was the next decade. So you have
some countries like, all right, hundreds of millions of dollars
and China be like, actually a trillion dollars, and we're like,
we're just we're just going to like lop Off, like
tens of billions of dollars, and I don't think anything
about that is efficient.
Speaker 5 (23:31):
I think that it is actually profoundly inefficient.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
We also saw that the Association of American Medical Colleges
is saying that by twenty thirty six, we will be
short eighty six thousand physicians. Eighty six thousand. This is
real major impact on literally everyone. I think of the
people because we've done an episode on maternal health where
(23:57):
we were talking about folks who were in like basically
health deserts where they had to travel very, very far
to see a doctor. Now reduce a number of doctors
that are available even more. We are going to see
that people will not have a good quality of life,
people will die, will be more sick. America is not
going to be a healthy, happy place where people can thrive.
(24:20):
And we'll see that probably on the coasts there will
be more doctors there, but the middle of America will
suffer the most.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
I'm from Arkansas originally, and in Arkansas, more than thirty
percent of women in Arkansas live more than two hours
from anything that could be considered like women's healthcare, and
so that also is a painful part of this conversation too,
because we think about all of the innovations made possible
by research for things like at home testing or where
(24:50):
telehealth could be really powerful to help close care gaps.
But what will the next generation of all those innovations
be if we don't have research to try to continue
to improve upon them and to continue to push them forward.
Speaker 5 (25:06):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
And TD again, I know we talked about the data
sets earlier, but Texas and Georgia have said they're no
longer going to share maternal health data and now if
we don't have the federal government provide it was ongoing
of surveillance function that it had been doing again I
think since the nineteen eighties. It's also just going to
(25:29):
be well impossible to hold people accountable for either policy
decisions or practice decisions that could lead to women dying
while pregnant or in childbirth or postpartum. It also, though,
then makes it much harder, if not impossible, to purpose
research into the areas where we should be investing. Yes, dollars,
(25:51):
but also the people like the two of you, who
are looking to do something to help save more women
who are pregnant or giving further postpartum because they won't
necessarily know what they've died from, right, so they won't
know what indications to investigate.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
I think there are so many things it feels almost
insidious because we are losing the tracking, We're losing the surveillance,
the ability to see what's coming. We're losing the strength
to fight anything once it arrives. And I think we
want to consider these are decisions being made, but what
I don't want us to lose is both hope and
(26:28):
agency and ability to act.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Absolutely when we think.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
About standing in the face of calls that are coming
from far away, and some people are choosing to privately
maintain things. I'm hearing about citizen science efforts, I'm hearing
about a lot of community things that are happening. While
we might not be able to stop funding cuts and
talent flight, there may be other things that we, as
(26:56):
people with platforms, our listeners, as people with platforms and communities,
can do to push back against the negative rhetoric we
hear around science and research and even how they might
engage people in their day to day lives.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Oh gosh, well, I would say one they are probably
as many right answers as there are are people listening,
like we each know, like our families are our communities best.
I do think at a kind of at a community,
at a state level, I would certainly urge all of
us to know what is happening in our communities and
our states when it relates to research. There are states
(27:31):
that very much are who have taken action against the
Trump administration. In some of these areas, there are universities
who've taken action against the Trump administration, effectively saying, oh,
you can't stop paying for work that you committed to
pay for, like these grants or contracts, like this is illegal.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
I think it's channeling my grandmother again here.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
Like the discipline of gratitude I think matters, Like saying
thank you and like we're so grateful and we're standing
with you.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
I think matters.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
I think only thirty nine states have currently the ability
to assess even some level of food safety. If you're
in one of the eleven states where that's not true,
you should probably know that about calling actually not only
your governor and state legislature, but probably you're senator and
congress people too, if that's something you're concerned about.
Speaker 5 (28:21):
So I just think You're so right. These have to
be such localized efforts.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
And I think even one of the things I do
with our kids, and I don't know if this is
helpful for other people who might be parents or who
have small humans in their lives, they do try to
help my kids understand like there really is science all
around us, right, and so whether that is there just
amazement that we have maps in our pockets, or it's
(28:47):
the multivitamin that they take with breakfast in the morning,
that really science is all around us, and that means
like research is all around us. And I hope that
then helps them, whether they grow up to be scientists
or not, understand and just the incalculable debt that we
owe to the many generations of people who have had
(29:07):
such profound optimism, which I think science is to believe
that there's more to know and more to understand, and
more to do to try to help keep our world
healthier and safer and full of even more wonder.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
That's one of me and the Key's favorite things to say.
We say science is in everything in science is for everybody,
and so everything you're saying that just speaks to our heart.
We firmly believe in continuing to educate yourself and don't
shut up.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
That was the takeaway.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Keep talking, keep talk, learning more, talking about what you've learned,
and making sure that we are holding folks accountable and
saying no, that is not true.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
This is what we need.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
These are the things that we require when we live
in this country. It is our right to ask for
those things.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
It is our right to demand more from our governments,
and so we should not be quiet, turn up our marketphone.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
And also the Trump administration saying they're no longer going
to prove the COVID vaccine for healthy kids and adults.
Speaker 5 (30:05):
Also call it the hypocrisy.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
Like you say, in one side, you think parents should
have vaccine choice, and now you're saying to parents that
we don't have vaccine choice.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Right. The math isn't mathing.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
Yeah, that math doesn't math like that is not that
is not reconcilable.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
The more we talk about these things help people frame them,
because you don't always get to put these pieces of information.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
First of all, there's so much coming out day to
day you don't get to and.
Speaker 5 (30:33):
That's on purpose.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
To write the chaos and the there was like a
brief period a few weeks ago where the trumpstration proposed
like cutting all like pet food safety regulation, and then
a few days later there was a salmonella outbreak in
pet food and so then they were like, oh, wait, no,
we maybe need this people, because there is such a
barrage that I think is purposeful to force a response.
And then also the barrage is partly fueled by whatever
(30:57):
the reversals are to what had been said, sometimes even
earlier that same day.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
So's the goal is not to get disoriented, to stay
the course, pick a topic.
Speaker 5 (31:06):
Yep, and understand what's real and not real. Yep.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
This has been such an important conversation and one that
I think puts a lot of context around how these
cuts will impact all of our lives. Yes, I think
what you said at the n Chelsea is crucial. Don't
let the disorienting nature of the news quiet you. Yes,
we have to stay the course. We have to keep
educating ourselves so no one can pull the wool over
(31:35):
our eyes, and we can't stop calling out the lies
and hypocrisy. We have our marching orders. We know what
we have to do, and so me and Zekiah will
continue to yell into these mics. You can find us
(32:05):
on X and Instagram at Dope Labs podcast, tt is
on X and Instagram, at dr Underscore t Sho, and
you can find Zakiya at z said So.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Dope Labs is a production of Lamanada Media.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Our senior supervising producer is Kristin Lapour and our associate
producer is Issara Savez. Dope Labs is sound design, edited
and mixed by James Farber. Lamanada Media's Vice President of
Partnerships and Production is Jackie Danziger. Executive producer from iHeart
podcast is Katrina Norvil.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Marketing lead is Alison Kanter.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex
sudi Ura, with additional music by Elijah Harvey. Dope Lab
is executive produced by US T T Show Dia and
Zakia Wattley.
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