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Mark Bittman
Then I thought, what if I've scaled businesses? What if I scaled my philanthropy? What if I did as much in one year as I've done in my whole life? See how your wealth could have even Greater meaning@creativeplanning.com impact is your kid's birthday coming up?
Liv Perez
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Podcast Host / Narrator
hey science nerds. You know how a tiny slip of wet earth can trigger a massive mudslide? Well, it's true. All it takes is for a small patch of saturated soil to lose its grip on the hillside. As it starts to move, it gains momentum, breaking the bonds of the dirt beneath it. The flowing mud pulls even more earth down, which pulls even more and boom. The small slip turns into a massive mudslide. It works the same way with just one comment or review for a podcast. So leave a review and start a landslide of support. Thanks so much. Every spring we celebrate National DNA Day to commemorate the discovery of the double helix structure in 1953. The DNA double helix is one of the most important scientific discoveries of the 20th century. It fundamentally changed the way we look at genetics. And not to be someone who admires form over function, but it also is kind of beautiful. If you zoom out a bit, you it's wild to see something so essential to our species look like an elegant work of art. So this episode, we celebrate both DNA and art by talking to artist and molecular biologist Kendra Crick. Then I'll tell you about what makes the heart so resistant to cancer. But first, scientists observe some. You know what, you'll just see some really interesting behavior from the remora fish. You know that one house guest who always overstays their welcome? Well, trust me, you haven't met the worst one yet. But scientists have. And it's the humble remora. That's the little suckerfish famous for hitching rides on sharks and whales by sticking to their body. But some of these fish are taking their so called free ride just a little too far. A new study led by researchers from the University of Miami showed that remoras have been spotted diving head first into the rear ends of manta rays. Yeah, you, you heard that right. The researchers looked at footage from thousands of manta ray surveys from hubs around the globe, from the Maldives to Florida. The footage was captured between 2010 and 2025. And in just seven of those recordings, they saw remoras actually swimming into the cloaca of manta rays. The cloaca, by the way, is an opening used for both pooping and birthing babies. And a lot of animals have one like and manta rays. But let's just say that I don't know if nature meant for it to be a guest house. One video was captured by a free diver in Florida and they posted it on social media. So of course I had to take a look. The remora was hanging out near a manta ray's pelvic fins. As the divers swam closer with their camera, the remora seemed to panic and shot straight into the manta's cloacal opening. It happened really fast. And the manta ray was also visibly startled. It like shuddered and some might describe it as squeezing its cheeks if it had cheeks. But then the manta ray just kept on swimming, leaving the intruder inside. This is a rare video of this behavior, which is called cloacal diving. That's actually in the paper. How fun. And they published their work in the journal Ecology and Evolution in collaboration with the Manta Trust and the Marina Megafauna Foundation. Remoras have hidden in the bodies of whale sharks, but manta rays are much smaller. So this raises some questions. Could a fish stuck inside a manta ray's nether region actually cause physical harm? The study suggests it might. The authors warn that cloacal diving could potentially interfere with the ray's ability to mate, give birth, or even defecate if the fish stays in there for too long. Plus, they weren't able to observe the remora exiting, so they really can't say how long it typically overstays its welcome. For years scientists have thought of remoras and manta rays as having a mostly harmless relationship and sometimes beneficial. Remoras are also called suckerfish because they use specialized suction cups on top of their heads to attach themselves to amanta's body, and once there they feed on parasites and scraps from the ray's meal. So the remora gets a free meal and a safe ride. The ray gets a cleanup crew. But now with this cloacal diving situation, the dynamic might be a little more parasitic than we realized.
Mark Bittman
Then I thought, what if I've scaled businesses? What if I scaled my philanthropy? What if I did as much in one year as I've done in my whole life? See how your wealth could have even Greater meaning@creativeplanning.com impact hi, it's Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman. It's grilling season and Whole Foods Market has everything you need from their 365 brand ground meat to the New York strips and ribeyes. There are also grill ready beef and chicken kebabs and house made sausages. Yum. All the meat at Whole Foods Market is no antibiotics ever and all of the seafood is either responsibly farmed or sustainable wild caught. So fire up that grill and get all of this and more at your local Whole Foods Market for in store shopping as well as pickup and delivery.
Liv Perez
As a woman entrepreneur you know that every connection counts. Whether it's with your customers, your team or your community. Spectrum Business is here to help you build those connections stronger and faster. Imagine running your business with fast reliable fiber powered Internet so you can stay connected to customers, employees and vendors without having to worry. We know flexibility matters. That's why select Spectrum Business packages come with a three year price guarantee so you can focus on running your business plus enjoy savings on Internet, phone, TV and mobile services. When you can bundle with Spectrum Business you get more than just Internet. You get support with 100% US based customer service. Real people who understand small business. Ready 247 to help you stay up and running. Join millions of business owners like you across America who trust Spectrum Business for reliability, speed and Support. Visit specific Spectrum.com business today to get started. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas.
Podcast Host / Narrator
What is that?
Mark Bittman
Oh yeah It's a World cup holder.
Liv Perez
Like the soccer tournament.
Mark Bittman
World cup holder for the world. Fits every car, holds every cup.
Podcast Host / Narrator
It has a Carvana logo.
Mark Bittman
Carvana made it. They buy and sell cars, so they made a car cup holder.
Podcast Host / Narrator
So.
Mark Bittman
Got any good cups lately?
Kendra Crick
I used to.
Liv Perez
Just couldn't figure out where in the
Podcast Host / Narrator
world to put them.
Mark Bittman
The World Cup Holder brought to you by Carvana. Proud sponsors of the World cup holder, sign up today to win yours@cup-holder2026.com not authorized or endorsed by FIFA. Not a real product for parody and fair use purposes only.
Podcast Host / Narrator
Science and art go hand in hand now and always. Art has a wonderful way of making abstract scientific concepts not just understandable, but also emotionally engaging for everyone. And at the same time, science inspires artists by providing endless themes to explore. We're going to talk with someone who brings those two worlds together beautifully, Interdisciplinary artist Kendra Crick. She trained in molecular biology at Princeton University and studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Welcome to the show, Kendra.
Kendra Crick
Hi there. I'm excited to be here.
Podcast Host / Narrator
So I wanted to ask you what it is about science that made you want to focus on your artwork, on it or vice versa? What about art made it seem like the best way to express your love of science? I actually don't know which one pulled you first.
Kendra Crick
That is a good question because I think I have always been creative and I've always been extremely curious. But in terms of formal education, I loved research. So I went in and formally studied molecular biology, which is actually looking under the microscope is extremely visual. And it wasn't until I actually went to art school did I realize that, oh, I could take some of this imagery that I had been looking at under the microscope, in that case, like fibroblast cells and kind of explode that so other people could enjoy what I was exploring. And then of course, art is so expansive, you don't have to narrow your focus. And so art was a way of asking similar questions that people ask in the scientific world. In some sense you can have a really open ended hypothesis when going into art. And it's a freeing opportunity. And so I just wanted to kind of continue on with that and see if I could take my skill set in research and then use that to kind of create something and engage with a larger audience, creating awe and wonder and inviting that same curiosity that I
Podcast Host / Narrator
started with using an example of one of your current pieces of work. I know currently you're really fascinated with sleep and you're exploring it through a project called Nocturnal Worlds. Now, I encourage folks to check out your Instagram where you post some of the Sleep simple paintings. You can find an example at Kindra Crick on Instagram. So can you tell us more about this project? Some of the details we may not be able to see until we get in front of some of the work and how it's blending real science with art.
Kendra Crick
So sleep is a stage that you go into one third of your life and you lose consciousness, but your mind remains remarkably active. So I wanted to explore that. I actually was interested in the stage of sleep that seems most mysterious to me, which is deep sleep, because you have these low frequency, high amplitude waves where you have all these neurons firing across the cortex in sync. And so I went on a journey of recording my sleep for over a year using this portable eeg. Again, it just has sensors across the, you know, the very surface, the, you know, prefrontal cortex, and enough to detect the stages of sleep. And then I also kept a sleep diary, which was new to me, where I'd record inputs, you know, things like, things I could consistently remember. Did I drink, did I, you know, do xyz, go for a hike, you know, things like that.
Podcast Host / Narrator
And then, so you're tracking your sleep, you're getting these recordings, and then somehow you're putting them into art.
Kendra Crick
Yes. Right. And I didn't know what it was going to look like because I kind of had to do most of the experiment first. Right. And so I recorded those. And then after the, you know, doing this for at least nine months, I started picking out nights that I wanted to represent visually this idea of these nocturnal worlds, like, what could we see, you know, from this experiment? So one of the most obvious ones is I picked a night where I had a very vivid dream, colorful dream, where I could sort of almost see, you know, these snakes, you know. And again, dreams kind of seem a little random, but I was like, okay, I'm just going to write them down. And what I decided to do was marry the sort of objective data. So I have the record recording of the stages of my sleep that sort of frames a figure. And the figure is a woman sort of descending from the top of the canvas, and she is backed by a night sky. And what you mainly see is actually her hair. And within the container of her hair are these sort of subjective bits of information. So I'll put a dream in there. In the ones that represent insomnia, I'll put actual looping writing, since for me, insomnia is very sort of internal, repeated Narrative and not actually colorful at all. And also with insomnia, I had sort of this. Sort of wanted to create a metaphor for what that felt like. And so I used to, you know, something that had actually come from a dream, you know, seeing a moth. And I thought, oh, that's the perfect thing. It's this nocturnal, beautiful entity that, you know, seems to be drawn to the light of my awakeness. And then specifically, if you look at the insomnia pieces that I have, I actually picked moths, specifically, that had these eye spots, these very characteristic eyes on the back. So, you know, so that you could see that they were awake. And again, this is where the art comes in, this idea that I'm going to be using a metaphor for. What does it feel like? So you can see in the data, you know, the white represents where I'm awake in the middle of the night, but that doesn't emote anything. So the art and the figure in the center is really what people can relate to and sort of enter into kind of this idea of, oh, I've had a very similar experience. I've had insomnia. Whereas the data on the side, although it's very objective, doesn't tell a story. Doesn't tell a story like you can with a figure.
Podcast Host / Narrator
So these are paintings, as you described, with this figure with all of these details from the dream in the hair. But then on the border of the painting on either side are the actual, like, what do they call. It's like a blocked hypnogram. Hypnogram, where it's like different blocks to show the stages of different phases of sleep which are categorized by. Or, sorry, which are. Each one has its own representative wavelength.
Kendra Crick
Yes.
Podcast Host / Narrator
What am I trying to say? There's different wavelengths for activity in each stage of sleep that are characteristic of each one.
Kendra Crick
And again, I can totally nerd out on what I find fascinating. For example, in dream sleep, the eeg, from an EEG perspective. So what you're looking at to kind of stage dream sleep, it's almost indistinguishable from awake state. And the greatest thing about this is that you've got these vivid, active, hallucinatory dreams going on that you may not remember, but your body's paralyzed, so you don't act those out. And then, of course, REM rabbit eye movement is what characterized that. But from an outside perspective of the tool that we're using, it's actually hard to distinguish REM sleep from awake state, which was really interesting. And again, just to be sort of technical, you theoretically can dream at any stage, but vivid dreams are most associated with this REM state. And the EEG is very characteristic. And you know, again, like, my knowledge of, and my sort of passion is that creating this artwork also gives me an excuse to kind of dive into the science. So I also will tell you that that's another reason why I enjoy this, because I get to learn and nerd out about all we do know and all we do not know about deep sleep and things like that.
Podcast Host / Narrator
See, art and science, you know, they, they go together, they make sense. But not everyone might agree. And so I'm wondering if you've ever experienced resistance when discussing the interdisciplinary nature of your work or are there people who, who don't feel like art has a place in science or vice versa?
Kendra Crick
I don't know. I've always, I guess I hang around people who are open minded and curious. I think the only thing which is a critique, it's a valid critique. So in art, you know, you can't necessarily focus on everything. You can sort of put something up on, you know, like a pedestal and examine that. And so I do remember when I kind of created this huge, you know, room that you could walk through, sort of a cross section of the brain, you know, there weren't any astrocytes in there. You know, it just. How dare you. And so, you know, and it allowed people to walk through and of course the density just would not allow that. So I think that there is this, this struggle a little bit is that when you allow for this kind of imaginative world where you're exploring, it isn't necessarily perfectly didactic and you don't want it to be. You want it to kind of open people's minds to possibilities. And if you sort of put too many things in there, it's hard for people to necessarily focus. And so I sort of see my role is highlighting one thing or multiple things or putting things out there that allow people to kind of have an entry point and not have it sort of too much information. Or in some sense you can sort of. People might tune out if they don't speak the language. So I try to have a more broad language to kind of invite more people in in terms of, you know, to ignite that curiosity about, you know, why, you know, why should we be thinking about this?
Podcast Host / Narrator
And to be fair, every depiction of a cell in a textbook is highly oversimplified.
Kendra Crick
Right, right, exactly. But it's interesting that when you picture something, it's that textbook image that actually might stay with you. That kind of creates that, and that can mislead people. You know, you have to update that. But it is interesting how strong visuals influence people's understanding.
Podcast Host / Narrator
I feel that now is a time when there is a lot of skepticism towards science. It is really important to find new inroads to bring people in and to help it be more relatable. Do you find any difference these days in how your work is received or maybe new need for where you sit at the intersection of both of these worlds?
Kendra Crick
Well, I think that there is something that maybe you've come across is that a lot of amazing science, regardless of how well the paper is written, it might be behind a paywall. So there's always this translation so people can't necessarily get to the source. So you need ways of people communicating what is exciting, what we should be paying attention to. I think that maybe that the only thing that can be communicated better is this idea that science is a method. And so we're sort of always getting closer to something. But what we believed 100 years ago isn't what we believe today. I'm sure something today that I said will have more depth or nuance in the future. For example, like what we do or do not understand about sleep and brain waves. And that is exciting to me. But I'm not sure everybody wants to have this idea of facts. The facts are this, and I think you have to have a certain curious mindset to understand that these are how things we understand today. And the paradigm may shift down the road. You know, someone put into my head the brain, different parts of the brain may not be in the same state of sleep. And I thought, oh no, that's a paradigm shift. That's something I haven't thought about, you know, or, you know, just learning little things like a dolphin, you know, sleeps one hemisphere at a time. You know, someone has told me that and you know, that just like occupies a part of my brain and I'm like, I wonder, does that mean that maybe there could be this possibility of, you know, sleeping a little bit lighter in one hemisphere than the other? You know, it's the idea that things are certain. I think the world would be a little boring if, you know, if things were too certain. So I do love this idea that we don't necessarily know everything yet.
Podcast Host / Narrator
Yeah, of course not. That would suck if we did. I wanted to mention for people they may recognize from your last name, but your grandfather, Francis Crick made monumental contributions to science. He co discovered the double helix structure of DNA. Lesser known is your grandmother, Odile Crick. Can you tell us her huge contribution to that same discovery?
Kendra Crick
Yes. So my grandmother, Odile Crick, she's an artist and she mostly focused on the figure, just gorgeous draftsmanship. And so my grandfather gave her a really crude sketch of DNA and she drew the first diagram of DNA. That was in the 1953 paper. There's a trio of papers. And in that first paper is her image. And it's so iconic that I come across it all the time. But it really was this idea that you could have, you know, that paper describing. But then the image lended itself to this idea of being able to see these two ribbons of DNA and how they might separate and be, you know, the main copying mechanism. And then the other thing that I mentioned, which is also not as well known, is that when I knew my grandfather, he was a neuroscientist, so he was at the Salk Institute, I didn't know that. Studying consciousness with Christophe Koch. And I got to live with them for a summer and I was working at the Salk, so I got to spend my days working in the laboratory and then my weekends actually doing art. And then my grandmother would have models in the studio and things like that. But a lot of my interest in sleep, because he actually wrote a paper on sleep and perception, actually came from these sort of lunchtime conversations that he would have with people like V S Ramachandran and Patricia Churchland and things like that. So that was a huge influence in terms of my interest in neuroscience was that I had this early exposure to questions like what is the blueness of blue? And things like that.
Podcast Host / Narrator
Yeah, that's fascinating. And the coolest part for me will be to get people to properly draw
Kendra Crick
DNA helices I have corrected in very detailed, high profile ways where I'll just be like, I think this person should have known that. But again, artists, I think we had a conversation about this because my grandfather has a tie from an artist and it was the wrong handedness. And he says, well, I just look in a mirror and it looks right.
Podcast Host / Narrator
That's fair. That's fair. Yeah. And for folks at home wondering, as far as I know, the DNA emojis are accurate.
Kendra Crick
Yes, yes. But the interesting thing is the human brain can perceive that it's DNA regardless of which way it's turning, because we just sort of see that and just sort of allow that to kind of stand in.
Podcast Host / Narrator
Thank you so much, Kendra, for being on our show. What a delight to have you.
Kendra Crick
Thank you.
Podcast Host / Narrator
Kendra Crick is an interdisciplinary artist sharing the marvels of neuroscience through art. You can find more from for work at Kindra Crick
Mark Bittman
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Podcast Host / Narrator
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Kendra Crick
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Liv Perez
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Podcast Host / Narrator
As much as we hear about the Big C, you don't often hear about cancers of the heart. And that's because they're incredibly rare. Only about 0.02% of autopsies show a tumor originating in the heart, and most of them aren't malignant. When you consider that the heart's main job is to pump blood, which could very easily be carrying cancer cells in it, that rarity becomes even more surprising. A new study led by researchers at the International center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Italy sheds light on how the heart resists cancer. Muscle cancers in general are also pretty rare, and the heart is mostly made of muscle, after all. So to test whether this is just like a muscle phenomenon, they looked at liver muscle and heart tissue in a model of cancer in mice. Now, there were plenty of tumors showing up in the liver and muscle, but they didn't see any in the heart. Knowing it isn't just this general trait of muscles, they wanted to focus on what makes the heart so special. They did an Experiment in mice that had two hearts, One that beats like normal, and one that they transplanted. Let's call it an accessory heart, because it doesn't need to beat, it's just there. When they injected cancer cells into both hearts, the cancer cells were able to colonize and take over the non beating hearts, but not the regular beating hearts. Now, here's a cool thing about the heartbeat. If you put heart muscle cells in a dish in a lab, they'll start beating on their own. It looks very cool. Whenever someone was growing some up in the lab, it was like this unwritten rule that we had to call everyone over to take a peek through the microscope and just watch them contracting on their own. It's one of those views that, like, just doesn't get old. So these researchers Took advantage Of those cells Beading in the dish. They grew the beating heart cells into tiny strips of heart tissue Anchored between two flexible posts. By stiffening or relaxing those posts, they could dial the mechanical load up or down, Basically making the tissue have to work harder or less hard for each beat. The more load, the harder the tissue had to work, and the fewer cancer cells could grow. So that physical force, the squeezing of every heartbeat, Seems to be what protects the heart. And they think it's thanks to this key protein called Nesprin 2. It sits on the surface of the cell's nucleus, Acting as a kind of sensor. When the heart squeezes, nesprint2 signals to the nucleus to pack it up. The DNA winds itself up tighter, and the genes a cancer cell would need to divide and grow a tumor Are suddenly out of reach. In fact, when they switched off nesprin 2 in cancer cells before implanting them into mouse hearts, the cancer cells divided and grew large tumors, Even in beating hearts that should have shut them down. And it's not just in mice. When they looked at those really rare human cases where cancer did manage to grow in the heart of those tumors, had figured out a workaround. Looking at their molecular signatures, it seemed like they had cranked up the machinery that prized DNA back open, Bringing those genes for cell division back into the open and letting a tumor grow. Now that they've figured out how the heart protects itself and the star player called NESprint2, they've laid the groundwork for some exciting follow up studies to see whether we can teach cells elsewhere in the body the heart's tricks. The same team's already working to test wearable devices that could sit on top of the skin and apply pressure to tumors near the surface, Basically trying to Mimic a heartbeat from the outside. Whether a device on the outside can do what a beating heart does from within. That's the next big question. For Warner Bros. Discovery. Curiosity Weekly is produced by the team at Wheelhouse DNA. The senior producer and editorial correspondent is Teresa Carey. Our producer is Chiara Noni. Our audio engineer is Nick Karisimi. And head of production for Wheelhouse DNA is Cassie berman. And I'm Dr. Samantha Yuin. Thanks for listening. It's very, very interesting to call a crawling into the butthole a party foul and the use of, frankly, party foul behavior. Frankly, I'm clutching my pearls up the butt.
Kendra Crick
And to be quite frank, it's a
Liv Perez
bit of a party pal.
Podcast Host / Narrator
Yara, you gotta watch the video now. I don't know if I want to. Are you not curious? This is literally the name of the show. We're curious every week. Yeah, but you know what they say about curiosity.
Kendra Crick
Killed my innocence.
Podcast Host / Narrator
Takes curious. Do I make you curious? Party fell. Wait, Kiara hasn't yet.
Kendra Crick
Oh. Oh.
Podcast Host / Narrator
Keep your video on. I want to see your face. Without further ado, let's dive in anyways. Okay, let's do it. Okay. You know that one house guest you
Kendra Crick
wanted me to keep my camera on?
Podcast Host / Narrator
No, he's like, you know that one
Kendra Crick
house desk that always wiggles up your
Podcast Host / Narrator
butt like this opening is hilarious.
Kendra Crick
It's.
Podcast Host / Narrator
It's good. It's making me laugh. It's good though. Okay, professional.
Mark Bittman
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Mark Bittman
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Kendra Crick
That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are, helping you move forward with confidence.
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Let's find your rich Edward Jones member sipc.
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Liv Perez
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Podcast: Curiosity Weekly
Host: Dr. Samantha Yammine
Episode: Science Needs Creativity
Date: June 10, 2026
This episode of Curiosity Weekly explores the vital relationship between science and creativity, celebrating the beauty and importance of art in scientific discovery. Dr. Samantha Yammine is joined by interdisciplinary artist and molecular biologist Kendra Crick, who discusses how she blends scientific research with artistic interpretation—focusing in particular on her work translating the mysteries of sleep into visual art. The episode also shares new research on why the heart rarely develops cancer and delves into surprising animal behavior among remora fish and manta rays.
Mutual Inspiration: Art makes abstract science accessible and emotionally resonant, while science provides endless inspiration for artists.
Host (08:52): "Science and art go hand in hand now and always. Art has a wonderful way of making abstract scientific concepts not just understandable, but also emotionally engaging for everyone."
Introduction to Guest: Kendra Crick is highlighted as an exemplary figure who bridges these fields, holding credentials from both Princeton University (molecular biology) and the Art Institute of Chicago (painting).
Origins of Interdisciplinary Passion
Kendra Crick (09:38): "I think I have always been creative and I've always been extremely curious... Looking under the microscope is extremely visual... Art was a way of asking similar questions that people ask in the scientific world."
Combining Data and Subjectivity:
Kendra Crick (12:49): "I decided to marry the objective data... recording of the stages of my sleep that frames a figure... Within the container of her hair are these subjective bits of information."
Metaphors for Experience:
Vivid dreams are depicted with imaginative elements, while insomnia is represented using repetitive writing and images of moths with eye spots (a metaphor for wakefulness in the night).
Kendra Crick (13:48): "In the ones that represent insomnia, I'll put actual looping writing, since for me, insomnia is very sort of internal, repeated narrative and not actually colorful at all. And... I had sort of this, sort of wanted to create a metaphor for what that felt like."
Science Deep-Dive:
Kendra Crick (16:23): "From an EEG perspective... dream sleep [is] almost indistinguishable from awake state... Creating this artwork also gives me an excuse to dive into the science... and nerd out about all we do and do not know about deep sleep."
Public Perception & Critique:
Kendra Crick (18:05): "When you allow for this kind of imaginative world where you're exploring, it isn't necessarily perfectly didactic and you don't want it to be... I try to have a more broad language to kind of invite more people in... to ignite that curiosity."
Power of Imagery:
Kendra Crick (19:52): "It's interesting that when you picture something, it's that textbook image that actually might stay with you... visuals influence people's understanding."
Contemporary Challenges:
Kendra Crick (20:38): "A lot of amazing science... might be behind a paywall... you need ways of people communicating what is exciting, what we should be paying attention to... Science is a method... always getting closer to something."
Uncertainty and Curiosity:
Kendra Crick (22:07): "The world would be a little boring if things were too certain. I love this idea that we don’t necessarily know everything yet."
Francis and Odile Crick:
Kendra Crick (23:10): "My grandmother... drew the first diagram of DNA... in the first paper, and it's so iconic that I come across it all the time... it allowed people to see these two ribbons of DNA and how they might separate and be the main copying mechanism."
Personal Anecdotes & Influence:
Kendra Crick (25:22): "I have corrected in very detailed, high profile ways where I'll just be like, I think this person should have known that. But... my grandfather has a tie from an artist and it was the wrong handedness. And he says, ‘Well, I just look in a mirror and it looks right.’"
Science News Share:
Host (03:07): "Remoras have been spotted diving head first into the rear ends of manta rays. Yeah, you heard that right... it happened really fast. And the manta ray was also visibly startled."
Potential Implications:
Host (05:43): "With this cloacal diving situation, the dynamic might be a little more parasitic than we realized."
Why Don’t Hearts Get Cancer?
Host (27:59): "Only about 0.02% of autopsies show a tumor originating in the heart... that rarity becomes even more surprising."
Recent Research:
Host (30:32): "The more load, the harder the tissue had to work, and the fewer cancer cells could grow. So that physical force, the squeezing of every heartbeat, seems to be what protects the heart."
Future Directions:
Memorable, Light Moments:
Emphasis on Curiosity:
Kendra Crick (32:27): "Killed my innocence."
"Art was a way of asking similar questions that people ask in the scientific world... it's a freeing opportunity."
— Kendra Crick (09:38)
"I decided to marry the objective data... recording of the stages of my sleep that frames a figure… Within the container of her hair are these subjective bits of information."
— Kendra Crick (12:49)
"Insomnia is very sort of internal, repeated narrative and not actually colorful at all... I used a moth... it seems to be drawn to the light of my awakeness."
— Kendra Crick (13:48)
"When you allow for this kind of imaginative world where you're exploring, it isn't necessarily perfectly didactic... I try to have a more broad language to kind of invite more people in."
— Kendra Crick (18:05)
"A lot of amazing science... might be behind a paywall... you need ways of people communicating what is exciting, what we should be paying attention to."
— Kendra Crick (20:38)
"The world would be a little boring if things were too certain. I love this idea that we don’t necessarily know everything yet."
— Kendra Crick (22:07)
"My grandmother... drew the first diagram of DNA... it's so iconic that I come across it all the time."
— Kendra Crick (23:10)
"The more load, the harder the tissue had to work, and the fewer cancer cells could grow. So that physical force, the squeezing of every heartbeat, seems to be what protects the heart."
— Host (30:32)
This episode celebrates the intersection of creativity and science as a powerful way to spark curiosity, deepen understanding, and make even the most complex ideas relatable. Through the lens of Kendra Crick’s art and scientific research, listeners are encouraged to embrace ambiguity, recognize the legacy of visual communication in science, and stay curious about the world around them.