I'm a big proponent of telling fun stories, particularly about science (and sometimes baseball), and in just plain having fun, which I think is a good way to go through a life that is all too short on the geological scale. I also like staying in touch with my friends and making new friends, because a life well lived includes all the fine folks we've met along the way. As you may have seen in our other communications, we are getting set to launch a new podcast series we have named "BioChat," because we are going to be talking with a lot of folks who are associated with bioscience research and work in service of promoting better health, stronger research and clinical outcomes, and ensuring improved quality of life.
I did ask my friend this once upon a time when we were ramping up a fun little website (now defunct) we used to talk about the Cubs just before they overhauled the entire system en route to their first World Series championship since the Ottoman Empire was a thing. If you wanted to start one, the startup cost is actually quite minimal but the potential to reach tens (and in our case, hundreds, haha) of fellow fans and curious onlookers is quite tangible, since everyone these days has a smartphone and the capability to download the appropriate applications or to listen via their browser. Plus it's fun to set aside some time once or twice a week to commit to talking about something we were interested in.
For BioChat, the ulterior motive is to get back in touch with many of my very talented and intelligent friends, who mostly have advanced degrees and have found creative and rewarding ways to apply those degrees in the service of the greater good (and of course, to make money). As we age and have different commitments, it gets more difficult to keep in touch and get together for even the occasional cocktail or other event, so I have this new podcast as a convenient excuse to ring them up and ask what they're up to these days with career, family, and other interests, as well as how they stay sane.
Our primary motivation is to reach out to all of you in a different way, because we recognize that you don't always have time to read as you go due to laboratory work, having to write grants and/or manuscripts, and the other tasks that you undertake to add to our knowledge base while advancing your career. A podcast medium helps those who enjoy having the ear buds in while they pipette or perform other experiments, or who just like having background noise while they work or commute. I used to listen to podcasts about sports, television, and science while preparing for lessons when I was still teaching, and also during long days in the clean lab or production floor as I worked in industry to help the day pass by. Hopefully BioChat is more than just background noise and will entertain and educate you!
For those of you who have been checking out our blogs over the past year since I joined ABclonal, our mission is to provide meaningful content to help the scientific community in multiple ways, from better stress management and seeking out good mentorship to improving your PCR workflow. As you will hear over the next several months and beyond, our guests and I are huge on collaboration and accessibility in science, and we believe that is the best course to keep science moving forward for the coming generations.
In my experiences, I didn't always have the best preparation moving forward with my own career, although I had good mentors who tried their best to point me in the right direction. The old adage of multiple heads being better than one is true, and the BioChat series will compile a great many stories of how many of my friends and I, all with either a scientific background or advanced degrees in the subject, journeyed toward our current careers and research interests. These include the more "standard" bioscience work in academia or industry, branching off into marketing and sales for biological reagents and services, and even unconventional careers such as working with the law. A science degree, and even a PhD, is just one of many keys to open doors for you, and I hope you enjoy the stories that we tell.
In addition to our personal stories, we also want to highlight advances in bioscience research and technologies, which includes what our guests have worked on in their own fields, whether it is computational science or traditional biochemistry, and also highlights of what ABclonal's custom reagent services can bring to your own research. The cool thing about having smart friends and colleagues who are immersed in science every day is that you can learn something new from them in each conversation!
We have registered BioChat with most of the common podcast applications and distribution services. You can check out our podcast biweekly starting in May, with episodes embedded in blog posts just like the one below where Hannah and I introduce you all to BioChat! You can also bookmark our BioChat page, which has the various subscription links and an embedded player that will fill up with our episode archive as they are released. You can also copy and paste the URL for our RSS feed into your podcast application of choice.
But since you're here already, check out our various pages across the podcast services and be sure to hit that subscribe button wherever you end up!
If you're interested in sharing your research with us on a future BioChat episode, we would love to hear from you! Please reach out via service@abclonal.com.
Thank you for having us in your eardrums, and stay tuned for the next episode! In the meantime, click below to see what Hannah and I have in store for you coming up.