Hello everyone and welcome to talk nerdy. Today is Monday, February 3rd, 2025, and I'm the host of the show, Dr. Kara Santa Maria. And as always, before I dive into

this week's episode, I want to thank those of you who make Talk Nerdy possible.

This episode is a labor of love. This episode, this whole show is a labor of love. And I don't

charge to listen to it.

So for those of you who can afford to throw a little this way, you're offsetting the cost so that everybody has the opportunity to have unfettered access and listen wherever they download their podcasts.

If you're interested in pledging your support for the time being on an episodic basis, all you've got to do is visit patreon.com slash talk nerdy.

And once again, if you are utilizing the app, especially on Apple, I urge you to actually unsubscribe and then resubscribe through the browser-based website because

Apple is taking a huge cut and Patreon has had to change a lot of things because of that.

Let's give a shout out to this week's top patrons.

They include Anu Badawaj, Daniel Lang, David J.E. Smith, Mary Neva, Brian Holden, David Compton, Gabrielle F. Harmeo,

Joe Wilkinson, Joseph Lemore, Pascuali Jalati, Rika Maharaj, and Ulrika Hagman.

Thank you all so, so much. It's dark times right now. I took a vacation to iceland during inauguration week and like really really

unplugged and detached a little bit uh you'll notice that last week's episode went up i had pre-recorded it

before i left um prior to that we skipped a week because of the fires in Los Angeles. We had intermittent power, you know, definitely on sort of evacuation watch. A lot of people that I know were really devastated by these fires. The sort of conventional wisdom right now is that everybody in L.A. know somebody who lost everything,

and the city is still reeling from that. And now we're also dealing with so many unknowns,

so much uncertainty at the federal level. This week, I feel like it's an interesting episode

because on the one hand,

we grapple sort of with some of these issues.

On the other hand,

it's a bit of a departure

and maybe a bit of an escape for you.

So I am really pleased

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