SIO30: America Last, with Zachary Kiser

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:27 Thomas: Episode 30, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Alright, well, normally, since it's Thursday, you're expecting commentary and, you know, news, reaction, that kind of thing. Well, I am currently in Europe, as you're hearing this. Maybe I've met some of you at the London and Paris meetups. I hope I have. So since I knew I wasn't gonna be able to record there and I didn't want to do a stale two week old news thing that wouldn't make any sense, I recorded an extra interview, so we've got an interview today. I spoke with Zachary Kiser, and he has particular insight about the potential harms of the Trump budget, exactly the cheeriest of topics, but it's a call for action and it's a chance to learn more about what exactly the impacts of these bottom line numbers are that we hear about of these cuts. So with that said, I bring you my interview with Zack Kiser.

0:01:34 Thomas: Joining me right now is Zach Kiser. How are you doing, Zach?

0:01:38 Zachary: Good, Thomas. How are you?

0:01:39 Thomas: Doing great. Well, maybe put a little bit of a, I don't know, a real face in the audio sense on what Trump's new budget possibly could look like. And I'm so glad you're here today to help illustrate stuff like that. But before we get into it, though, would you mind giving a little about your background and the kind of work you do? Wow.

0:02:03 Zachary: Yeah, no problem. So I'm Zachary Kiser and I, overall, I'm a grad student at Morehouse School of Medicine. I'm doctoral student in biomedical science, but on the side and in my spare time, I am the director of policy and communications for the National Science Policy Group. We're a group of graduate students. We have almost two to three hundred members worldwide of grad students who are doctoral and master's students in science, and we advocate for science. We go around and we teach other graduate students how to advocate in their local government, state government, and federal government to advocate for increased science funding, increased science awareness, and especially in the Trump era now, just general acceptance and understanding of science and why it's important that we continue to fund this.

0:02:26 Thomas: It's So sad, but it really does sound like you have to, you know, step, take a step back with the Trump, okay, okay, uh, the dictionary defines science like before. You could Advocate.

0:03:03 Zachary: Exactly. It's so crazy.

0:03:06 Thomas: But yeah, yeah, you really do have to take a steps back, uh, and that's unfortunate. I, I can't help but laugh, but it is kind of sad, uh, what's going on. I'm sure you've seen it firsthand. Yeah.

0:03:16 Zachary: Definitely, definitely. And it's sad because when I talk to students, Thomas, and I do these trainings and I go around and I talk to these students at these schools, I say, or I used to say, you know, science isn't a partisan issue, guys, especially biological science, especially medical science, physics. This is nobody's team cancer. Nobody's on team heart disease. But now it's I have students who email me and ask me, oh, how am I supposed to do this? There's giant budget cuts. This doesn't make any sense anymore. And I'm at a loss to tell them what to do either, because the paradigm we've been working on since I've been in this is not what we're operating on anymore. More.

0:03:56 Thomas: Well Maybe, uh, first. First, a total lay person like me, no experience in this, could you tell me about the, maybe the previous paradigm first and how things had been working up to now?

0:04:06 Zachary: Yeah, definitely. So prior to this, we would tell, when we would take students to Washington and we would write letters to Congress or to our local representatives, or when we do marches or demonstrations or education set ends, it was very much a, a bipartisan lesson plan where, you know, Republicans, Democrats, everybody is willing to support science because everyone has a grandmother that had breast cancer. Everyone has a grandfather who had heart disease. And for example, in natural sciences, everybody had experienced, knows someone who's experienced a natural disaster, or everybody knows someone Who has been the victim of maybe bad air quality, bad water quality science is something that's very relatable.

0:04:52 Zachary: If you put it in the perspective of the human and experience. Perfect example, Senator from Oklahoma, Jen Imhoff. He's a very super conservative member of the Senate. I don't know if you, you might, you're listeners and you, yeah, yeah. He was the guy who brought the snowball onto Congress's floor to prove that global warming didn't exist. It's a fun fact about him. He actually, in a backwards way, pushed for more climate change research funding because he's from Oklahoma. And Oklahoma has a lot of tornadoes. And whether you want to try to figure out if it's climate change, what causes them or whatever they think causes it, more tornadoes are happening. So he has a vested interest

0:05:06 Thomas: I recognize the name, but yeah, yeah,

0:05:42 Zachary: To funnel money to this research to protect his constituents. So again, that was the old paradigm of everybody benefits from when we heartily fund science.

0:05:54 Thomas: And you were able to, despite the fact that I think climate change denial on the right is pretty old. It's not, it doesn't go back, you know, too far all the way to forever, but it's that You were able to still work within that and find ways to appeal to a bipartisan audience, sounds like.

0:06:15 Zachary: Exactly. I mean, last, this is maybe a little bit over a year ago, you had Newt Gingrich had a, I believe it was in the New York Times, an op-ed in the New York times talking about doubling the National Institute of Health's budget, doubling the budget. And now we're looking at an 18% cut in its funding a year later. And

0:06:35 Thomas: Yeah, and I was going to say, prior to Trump, it seems as though, despite the fact that they've been kicking and screaming on it, liberals have been moving everyone as a whole, including Republicans, to the—well, I almost said left, but it shouldn't really be left—but toward wanting to do something about global warming. If you look back 15 years ago, it was staunch denialism. Now it's like, well, there is a problem, but I'm not sure what we can do about it. It seems like there's been some growth there. And then all of a sudden, Trump takes power and now he appoints people who are, it feels like they're all the way back to the starting point on climate change denial. It feels like that to me. Is that what you found as well?

0:07:23 Zachary: What's funny about that, Thomas, is that he has people in his own cabinet who are on the the record in saying that climate change is real, and it's man-made. Rex Tillerson, his secretary of state, X, the The Exxon Mobil guy says that climate change's real, but it's like, he has a, he has people on his team who individually you would say, "Oh, I might politically disagree with this guy, but he seems to be competent." And it just, all it all takes a back seat to what they say. Nothing matters anymore.

0:07:31 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I was just going to say, yeah, Tillerson said that.

0:07:54 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. There's a weird dynamic going on where the oil companies actually knew quite a bit before other people on climate change because they were doing research into it, how it would affect their business. Anyway, I saw a Vice program on that. It was really fascinating, but we'll leave that for another day. So talk about the kinds of funding and projects that you are talking about here. Or maybe we need to talk about what the budget does. You just mentioned a figure. It was going down by 12%. What was that you were talking about? Oh,

0:08:32 Zachary: At the National Institutes of Health, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, it is the main driver of all biomedical research in the country. This is the powerhouse of biological medical science, and it's getting cut by 18% in the new presidential budget.

0:08:50 Thomas: 18%. Wow. Wow.

0:08:54 Zachary: That's a $15 billion decrease.

0:08:54 Thomas: You know what's Yeah, how man, how do you even explain that? Because it's not as though, uh, you know, people don't know that heart disease is like one of the biggest killers of humans, right? I mean, how, I, I don't, I don't understand how anyone could justify that kind of thing. It's NOT like this is some left-wing climate, you know, research center. You're talking about just the National Institute to do with health, right? Yeah.

0:09:19 Zachary: Right, exactly. And the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, when they asked him what was up with these cuts to the NIH, a pretty nonpartisan department, he said, well, there's been some drift away from their core responsibility and messages. No one knows what that means. There's no follow-up. I mean, I mean, when I read that, I read over the NIH, I guess, quote unquote, charter, and they're still doing what they were doing when they were set up.

0:09:39 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:09:53 Zachary: And so the

0:09:53 Thomas: Well, let's talk about that. What kind of projects are, uh, are those funds funding that are now in jeopardy?

0:10:00 Zachary: Projects, the NIH has their hand in a lot of different things. They have a lot different directorates. So you have within the NIH for example, you have like the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. You have the National Cancer Institute. So you've broken down a lot into a bunch of different subsections that fund the gamut of medical science research.

0:10:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:10:22 Thomas: I cannot imagine just those names, looking at those and wanting to take money away from them. Gosh, wow.

0:10:23 Zachary: No, it makes no sense. Like one of the things they want to cut is they want to eliminate what's called the Fogarty International Center. And what the Fogarty International Center does is it takes graduate students. It takes physicians. It takes tenured professors, and it sends them to institutions in different countries. So for my school, Morehouse School of Medicine, we send a lot of students through Fogarty to Ghana, and they do a lotof malaria, HIV, AIDS research with Ghana in different Ghanaian hospitals. And what that does is that allows us to form a certain synergy. Everybody admits HIV is a problem, And we know that HIV and malaria are major problems in sub-Saharan Africa. So we go to these places, we collaborate with the physicians there, we get great data on the ground that we can take back stateside and sample stateside we can do research on, and we're teaching over there and upgrading facilities in those countries.

0:10:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:11:26 Zachary: But for some reason, the Trump administration doesn't think cooperation in global health is something that's worth funding. So if

0:11:33 Thomas: Is So do you think it comes from the America First, uh, point of view? Maybe is he trying to, are they, are they targeting things like that where it's a world collaborative effort? I mean, because certainly a lot of his policies and his attitudes echo that kind of sentiment.

0:11:50 Zachary: The only thing they were going to cut was the Fogarty Center, I would completely agree. But this is not a targeted cut. This is a we're just going to slash it with a knife. Perfect example. I do research on sickle cell disease. Sickle cell diseases is a illness that's genetic. It affects around 100,000 people within the country, at any given time it's a lifelong disease, it's very nasty, and the problem with that is is that pharmaceutical industries, free, the free market people don't want to fund sickle cell research because it's not cost effective, the people mostly with sickle cell disease are those from African, African Americans, African Caribbeans, and historically those people are from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

0:12:39 Zachary: So the pharmaceutical industry has no real incentive to put a prescription to research a drug. And that takes around 10 years and over a billion dollars to bring a drug from discovery to market. They have no incentive to do that when the people that they're making the drug for can't afford it to begin with. So that's where the NIH steps in. The NIH says, okay, we're going to fund sickle cell disease research because no one else is doing doing it, and it's in the public good. So we're fighting, so that sickle cell research funding comes in what's under the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. So you take a small sliver of the 2017 NIH budget set at around $31 billion. So, you're taking out an even small slipper of that to research heart, lung, and blood stuff.

0:13:26 Zachary: Then you take out a super, super, super small sliver of that, and that's what we give the sickle-cell researchers, when you cut, these cuts are going to grind research like mine to a halt. Research that's already getting by on pennies is going to be forced to get by on, I guess, half pennies, quarter of pennies. And it's, it's this is going to affect people, this is gonna lead to poor outcomes. And I don't want to play like, Oh, Mr. hyperbolic, or the sky's falling. But this is is going to kill people over the long term.

0:13:59 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:00 Zachary: Lack of health innovation leads to people dying.

0:14:03 Thomas: Yeah, it's not exactly like it's it's pretty straight line to me. You know, that doesn't sound too far fetched.

0:14:11 Zachary: No.

0:14:11 Thomas: Yeah. Is this an example? I mean, maybe you could talk for a second. Do you think that there's a a conservative point of view or a Trump point of view that there's waste going on here, like too much money not being spent the right ways? I mean, talk about the fact that you mentioned you're already on pennies, what does that look like?

0:14:33 Zachary: Trump administration or Secretary Price, who's the incoming Secretary of Health and Human Services, could tell the researchers, could tells the community what we're wasting money on, I personally would love to know because grant money is at an all-time low. People are fighting, there's less academic jobs than ever before. If somebody would give us a clue, I don't think, I mean, obviously it's a bureaucratic organization in the strictest term, there is going to be quote-unquote waste, but this isn't, but I don't look at this budget and see, oh, there's 15 billion dollars worth of waste at the NIH, that's ridiculous, it's

0:14:50 Thomas: Yeah.

0:15:14 Thomas: Especially when, you know, you could look at something like a useless wall and think, like, well, that's a clear area for waste, that might be a better place to find some waste.

0:15:25 Zachary: Going, going to keep all our sick people in from going to better healthcare systems.

0:15:26 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And what about, I wonder, is, do you think this will sort of, you just mentioned there's less grant money than ever. There's, you know, fewer academic positions. I mean, is that killing the next generation of grad students? Is that something where people are going to look at opportunities and they're going to say, geez, I just, there's nothing to do here. Here. Like I would love to go into this field. I would love to become a researcher, become whatever it is, but the resources just aren't there. I'm going to have to go to, you know, business school or some crap. What do you think about that?

0:16:08 Zachary: Issues happening now. There are very few, I could quote the percentage, but I don't want to be wrong. There's a super small sliver of PhDs that are graduating in America that actually end up in tenured academic physicians. The rest of us are going into policy like myself. Some people are going on to medical school, law school. Some people are working for industry, and then some people are going abroad, but there's a problem with that that contradicts The quote-unquote America first slogan That's been thrown around. The NIH, EPA, the National Science Foundation funds a lot of stuff, but one of the things they do fund is they fund graduate students.

So my stipend, which is I get paid, my tuition gets paid, and and most of us get a stipend of a varying degree. That's what pays us to have living expenses and to be able to study these things and to get through grad school. So the federal government is making an investment in these doctorate students. They're making an investment that we're going to provide the money to train you and give you quality training in the hopes that after you graduate, you're going to put back into the economy. So,

0:16:24 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:41 Thomas: Mentality. Yeah.

0:17:25 Thomas: Yeah,

0:17:26 Zachary: For example, $1 of NIH funding locally gives that local economic region, at last I looked, almost $2.12 of economic growth. So you have the federal government, the NIH, the NSF, EPA, making these investments, and then these students are getting picked up by private industry or foreign governments. So basically, the government, the America First government, is subsidizing the training of scientists for private industry and even other countries to swoop up. I have a colleague that I work with who does inhaled particulate research, which is basically clean air or dirty air makes people sick. Her funding is getting cut completely because the EPA is taking a major budget cut.

0:17:26 Thomas: Sure.

0:18:15 Zachary: But she just got a job offer from a university in China that's run by the Chinese government. And she's going to take that job and get paid very well to go do it. So the federal government, the NIH, has just subsidized the training of a quality scientist for China to swoop up and use. Explain to me how that's America first.

0:18:25 Thomas: Yeah yeah, Absolutely. I just heard a podcast where someone was talking about soft power and it refers to this kind of thing. I in, I don't know, research and science and technology. It's something that, it's not military power. It's not, we're not, you know, exactly going to use it as some sort of weapon. But even if you're Trump, even if your conservative who just believes in some sort of strong America, it seems like this would be a solid component. I mean, you would want to be, I would love for one, I for one think it's a nonpartisan or bipartisan issue to have pride in what we're doing in this country and have pride in the minds that we're creating and stuff. So this is really sad to me. I guess I didn't, I hadn't even put it all in perspective, but, you know, I actually have a question.

0:19:27 Thomas: This budget, Trump's budget hasn't gone into effect yet, right? I mean, they still have to run it through Congress. Is it just the kind of thing where people are already prepping for it? Are they already kind of flinching and thinking like, oh, geez, we need to be ready for these cuts?

0:19:33 Zachary: Right. Right.

0:19:43 Zachary: So we're very lucky that for the last, far as I can remember, presidential budgets are pretty much dead on arrival when they hit the Senate, when they get Congress. It's basically the White House saying these are our priorities that we want to have in our budget. Most presidential budgets are very long documents. I believe last that the Trump budget proposal, I think was around 50 pages, 54 pages. So it's very vague. And it's more of I think it's more of them saying, "Oh, this is what we want." Now, I fully expect for major cuts to happen in all of these departments that have been handled or that have been indicated in the presidential budget, just maybe not to the degree of what we're seeing. But any cuts to our science infrastructure is going to be devastating in the long term, we're giving up ground if we're all, we as a nation, and putting ourselves first and, like you said, being proud in the minds we produce and the technology and the research we put out, we are voluntarily seating our position as number one in the world on the base

0:19:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:50 Thomas: Do you know how our funding of these kind of things, of science and health and all that, do you know how it compares to other countries?

0:20:51 Zachary: Um, Not off the top of my head, no. I do know that we used to – I believe we used to spend more capita, or per our GDP, on science and technological research. But starting in the mid-2000s, right after Obama took office, we had what was called the sequester happen. And the sequestering basically put a cap on spending and budget increases across the federal government. So, while the NIH budget did not fluctuate too much during the Obama administration, it lost purchasing power. So even though the budget didn't sink because of inflation, our money was worth less.

0:21:30 Thomas: Okay. Because of inflation. So is that the kind of thing you're talking about already? Because as you said, the budget's dead on arrival, but who knows what the sort of Republican compromise version of it may be. But where are these cuts, or I'm, I guess I'm curious, it's, you've been talking as though cuts are already happening and these effects are already happening. Is that because of this sequester? What's, what's the story there? Sure.

0:22:02 Zachary: The sequester really hurt us in terms of having to work on a shoestring budget. And so every year Congress will re-head it because we don't have a budget and have not had a past budget for quite some time. It's basically Congress takes the kick the can down the road approach. You have certain appropriations, you have continuing resolutions. And so basically now we're in, we've moved on from the Obama administration where we all had a pretty good idea that, you know, we had a Republican Congress and things weren't going to be awesome, but we knew we had somebody in the White House who would keep things on the level or at least stable. Now everybody's, the federal hiring freeze was the first big sort of signal to everybody that, uh-oh, this is going to be different.

0:22:50 Thomas: Was This an executive order? Okay, yeah.

0:22:54 Zachary: The National Science Foundation, they're moving offices soon. And they're going to need to fill around 2,000 new positions, the Washington Post indicated, in their new setting. Well, they can't fill those 2,000 positions because there's a federal hiring freeze. So you're literally going to have the NIH, or not the NIH, the National Science Foundation, running at half capacity. That's what I call waste. That's wasting money.

0:23:21 Thomas: Yeah. You know, it's funny, I've heard The same thing, it's, it's not going to be your area, I don't think, but I mean, I've think heard the same thing with the State Department. I have heard that there is no leadership happening. They haven't filled these positions that they forced to resign who were under Obama. And so not only do you have, you know, not the positions filled that you would think are pretty vital and the State Department would be a good ingredient in your national defense, but the people who are there have no leadership. So they're just doing nothing. Like, I've heard these tales from these, on a podcast about someone who works there. Is that, is that something we could see for the Natural Science Foundation as well, where if you can't fill positions of leadership, the people who are there aren't going to be able to do their job as well.

0:23:23 Zachary: National right, you're hamstringing people. You're having people at the bottom or in the middle sit around and twiddle their thumbs because they have no one giving them direction. I mean, but if you look at, to go back and answer your question as to whether these, whether these cuts are happening, we're, everybody across the community, the scientific community, even those in just who receive federal funding for their research or for their activities, are preparing for the worst because The Cuts are going to come, especially if guys like Paul Ryan have their way in Congress, who, he wakes up every morning dreaming about how he can take health care away from people and cut the federal budget. These are guys that you, do not, they do not have the the nation's interest at heart when it comes to research development and just the overall education of the population.

0:24:20 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's So sad, because even if I wanted to take the most kind man approach to Republicans in their arguments. I mean, even if I wanted to say, okay, maybe there's a lot of waste, maybe there's lot of stuff in the government we don't need. I just can't imagine how this would make that list. You know, I can't, how health and medical research, that is stuff you would want the government working on even if you're Ayn Rand. It seems like, I, what do you think's going on? Do you, do you think it's the case that they, they think there's some private market, uh, solution to this, maybe? Right?

0:25:36 Zachary: I think it's, especially if you look from the conservative sides of things, I think It's more of an amalgamation of ideology. So like you said, you have the Ayn Rand people who think that the federal government, your Freedom Caucus people, the federal department has no interest or has no business or it's unconstitutional to fund these programs. It's not in the Constitution. It is not their responsibility. That's fine. Those people are always going to be the hardliners or the ones who sunk the healthcare bill today. They're always going be the way they are. They stand on their principles. But then you have people, so more moderate Republicans, who see these things as an opportunity to who say, oh, well, I cut the federal budget by X dollars, or I say cut the deficit, or I decrease taxes.

0:26:25 Zachary: And so those are really where I think a lot of Republicans fall, is they use these opportunities as, oh. Instead of saying, I caught $400 million away from cancer research, they can go home and say, I got $400,000,000 in government waste, which they're not going to elaborate and no one's going to ask them, where did that $400M come from? From. And usually the people who vote Republican for these things are the people that are going to get hurt the most.

0:26:40 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:53 Zachary: The people that rely on government assistance and who directly benefit from government research. Those are the People who are going get hurt by all of this.

0:27:01 Thomas: It's You know, I was going to ask you about, uh, you said you do research on sickle cell disease. Is that something where, when you talk about the fact that pharmaceutical companies didn't necessarily have incentive for that, was that something that Obamacare might have fixed? I mean, I know, it's it hasn't technically been repealed yet. But if we had policy like Obamacare that gives people access to health coverage and helps pay for these prescriptions, is that the kind of thing that would have been able to reverse this disincentive and make it so that it would make sense for pharmaceutical companies to research any product, any medication, whatever it is, that would help anyone because there's funds there to pay for it.

0:27:49 Zachary: Preface this with, I've not a healthcare policy analyst, but what I can tell you is that when federal government, especially when you have Medicare, Medicare and Medicaid are only going to pay so much money for a drug. They're only going to reimburse the pharmaceutical companies. They are only gonna reimburse doctors so much for a service. So there's not enough of financial incentive because it's not so much the cost of the drug, it's the massive amount of research and development and the capital that goes into that research and develop to do that. So it would take a lot of money. It's not cost-effective to pump up reimbursement for a drug that only under 150,000 people in the United States are going to use.

0:27:51 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm.

0:28:33 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. So it's, it's just not a big enough population, uh, to justify that initial investment. That would be a ton of money. Is that what it is?

0:28:41 Zachary: Right. And That's what the NIH is for. The NIH goes through and funds a lot of basic research that lays the foundations for these drug companies to swoop in and take that basic research and translate it into an actionable medication.

0:28:42 Thomas: Yeah.

0:28:58 Thomas: Interesting. Oh, I didn't know that's, that's what happened. So, it is kind of like sometimes the government gets the ball rolling on this stuff. Billy,

0:29:04 Zachary: This is a fun fact when I tell students and I have them go talk to people, I say most of the components you find in your iPhone, the basic technology to make those components possible all come from National Science Foundation grants or Department of Energy grants. The government funding basic science research is at the core of most technology we use on a daily basis. I mean, look at the internet. The basic foundation of our infrastructure was a government-funded endeavor, things that came from the space program. So there's a lot of – if you go through and pick a piece of technology out in your house and you really do some digging on it, I guarantee you that you'll find a lot lot of components, or at least the technology to underlies those components, at one point in time come from government-funded research.

0:29:31 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:30:01 Thomas: And as though there's always going to be a profit motive or a solid path to profit on every invention. So it makes sense that you would want certain things to be taken care of by the government, have taxpayer dollars perhaps fund these things that don't necessarily provide a clear path to profit, but might be an overall good for everybody.

0:30:24 Zachary: Exactly. And what's funny about that, Thomas, is that when we've gone to Congress and the Senate and we've talked to these offices, we've actually had, and I won't list the actual offices' names, but we've had very well-known Republicans in Congress who take a very much fiscal hard line, who have sat down at a table with me and told me, yes, we understand that it's the responsibility of the federal government to fund diseases that the free market won't pay for. And then six months later, they're espousing the exact opposite on stage during a Republican presidential primary debate.

0:30:25 Thomas: Yeah,

0:31:02 Zachary: I'm

0:31:03 Thomas: I sometimes wonder about that. I really wonder how much better these people might know. You know, like it's hard to do, you know, mind reading. And you aren't, I suppose, if you've actually talked to people. But from my perspective, I have to wonder, you know, actually, just as a funny aside, I do another show with a Harvard lawyer and he was two years behind Ted Cruz at Harvard Law. Law. And it's amazing how many things that he'll say, yeah, Ted Cruz knows this. Like he already knows that this isn't how the law works or this isn't how something should work, but it doesn't matter. I mean, they sell another thing to the public. And this is not to say that Democrats wouldn't do that somewhat too, of course, But with some of these hardcore right-wing issues of science, you've got to wonder, you know, cynically, like, what's, what's going on there? Oh,

0:31:59 Zachary: A big Opening Arguments fan, by the The way, so

0:32:00 Thomas: Okay. Well, There you go, uh, I didn't know, uh, so I don't need to explain that to you, but, you know, maybe any of my listeners who, who don't, haven't checked it out yet, go, uh, go check it out. Yeah.

0:32:01 Zachary: No. I Fully Believe that the majority of these, these politicians who want to make these cuts, fully, 100%, realize the impacts that these cuts will make. And I'm not, I'm not a mind reader, I'm not a psychic, I don't want to try to discern their motives, but if they're aware of the hurt that these cuts are going to cause, then their motives aren't good.

0:32:36 Thomas: It's re-election is their motives, I mean, it's what They think, yeah, what they thing will get them re-elected. So, I, I don't know, I suppose, do we transition here to maybe, what can we do? Like, what I, I mean, you've talked a little bit about what you're trying to do, but what's the solution to this? I would say that we really need to get the hell out and vote in 2018. It's driving me crazy, as I've learned from Andrew in a recent episode that I can't remember if it's out yet, but it will be out by the time anyone's hearing this, I'm sure, that it's not all liberals' faults for we're not voting. Gerrymandering has a lot to do with it. But we got to overcome that and get Democrats back in Congress, because it sounds to me like we're stuck for two years here. There's not going to be much any of us can do because of the makeup of Congress and Trump, of course.

0:32:38 Zachary: Exactly.

0:33:27 Thomas: But what are some of the things you're trying to do? What are some things that an average person might be able to do?"

0:33:33 Zachary: Well, I'll jump in there and say, we're going, once you said we have, there are, in certain states, there are gubernatorial elections at the end of this year. And those gubernatory elections, the governor in a lot of states and the state legislator is who redraws district lines for these midterms in these congressional districts. So, if I will say that if your state, if you live in a state that is either, you could have a Democratic, Democrat governor now, or you could have a Republican governor, get out there, vote, organize, knock on doors, make sure you elect, nine times out of 10 makes your time in regards to these kinds of issues, elect, make Make sure a Democrat gets elected in your state, in your state house, as your governor. Because these are the guys who are going to draw the congressional district lines that are going to make it easier for Republicans and the right wing to marginalize groups and to disenfranchise groups.

0:34:28 Zachary: Or we're going to get guys in there and girls in there who can draw the lines to make it show everybody gets fair representation. So that's the first step, is to become involved on your local level and don't just show up, we have, to the problem with Democrats is that we've showed up every four years and then we forget about politics, so we've got The presidency, oh, we're all good, and then Republicans wipe the floor with us in the midterms. Well, we've gotta focus on the midterm, we've to focus on the off-midterm years, where it's small local races that nobody Cares about, but the seven people in your town So

0:34:48 Thomas: Yep. Yeah. Yeah, there really is no excuse. I mean, ashamed to say I wasn't politically active. Now, I live in California, so I can take a lot for granted, but I'm no longer even going to rely on that excuse. I don't care anymore. The Trump presidency has really shown me how important this is, you know, and I think that anything that I can do to try to encourage anyone to vote at any time, like you said, I mean it's more than you think. It's more than just every four years or even every two years. There's more involved in it than that. And there's so little cost to it, really. I mean, there's so little cost to just paying enough attention to vote on measures and on elections when they come up. It seems like it's not that hard, and we ought to be doing it.

0:35:50 Thomas: And I, for one, I'm the first to say, I'm ashamed to say that I wasn't, I didn't vote for many years of my life that I was eligible. And I regret it now. So that's step one, I suppose. What are some of the things that your group is doing for this?

0:36:06 Zachary: Our group is empowering, and we're connecting and networking graduate students from across the country, and even we have made contact with some groups in Europe, some graduate students over there. So basically, we're just looking to connect graduate students across the county to encourage them to network each other, to share advocacy tools. Us as a central organization are trying to train these graduate students to be able to take the science that they do in the lab every day and has great importance, and be able, able to turn around and actually communicate the importance of that science and how it affects people on a personal level, and do that communication in a way that makes people receptive to what you hear. Scientists suffer from sitting in their labs all day, and we talk in jargon, and we talking our little linguistic code that only other scientists understand, and we wall ourselves off from society.

0:37:01 Zachary: And that has gotten us nowhere. That has alienated the people that we are trying to help.

0:37:07 Thomas: Man, this is the second time I've heard this in short order. And I totally agree. I think that who can help too, this is something that I want to try to do in what little way I can, but communicating the benefits of science, I think is a real, that's a real opportunity, I think, because it does seem like that hasn't happened enough. And the kinds of people who have, maybe in the past, the ways that scientists have been communicating, maybe they haven't been as effective as they could be. I don't know. But for one reason or another, or maybe it's just hard to compete with a lot of, you know, oil company dollars, whatever it is, is, um, there'd been a real cost to that, you know, there has been a cost to not having a scientifically literate populace and, uh yeah, I'm glad that your organization is doing what it can to, uh to, to mend that.

0:38:02 Zachary: Even if you're not a scientist, go do your own research, not research in the lab, but look up what these bills are doing. Look at how there, I guarantee a lot of the listeners out there, there's NIH dollars, National Science Foundation dollars, government research dollars at work in your district supplying jobs. I live in Atlanta, Georgia. The CDC is here. It employs a massive amount of people and pumps a lot of economic bacteria into our metro area. And cuts like that are going to hurt us.

0:38:31 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:32 Zachary: If you could also, if you're not, if you're interested there, the umbrella organization for all scientists is called the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Donate money to them. If you have a little bit of extra and you're in the mood to donate to a good cause, they are the ones who are really laying the groundwork in Congress, doing the lobbying, doing advocacy to fight for these things.

0:38:56 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:56 Zachary: The CEO of AAAS is a guy named Rush Holt. Rush Hult was in the House. He was a congressman from New Jersey, and he was the only member of Congress with a PhD.

0:38:57 Thomas: Yeah.

0:39:07 Thomas: It's not a lot of competition there. Yeah. Yeah, man, you know, you just remind me, I was going to say earlier, when you talk about, you know, we're talking about Republicans not having any idea. I mean, when Rick Perry had no idea what the Department of Energy even did. It's stuff like that, like, that's what we're battling against here. And the fact that Trump, I think Trump had no idea either. So he appointed two people who were involved that didn't know what the department did. And that's where we are right now. Rick frigging Perry is in charge of something that I outlined in a previous episode. I don't know if you heard it, but the two past incumbents of the secretaries of energy and very impressive people, incredibly impressive. And now we've got Rick Perry, everybody. So that's what we're up against.

0:39:09 Zachary: No, but yeah.

0:39:58 Thomas: Then maybe that'll be inspiration to check out organization the you just talked about. Can you give that again? And I'll put the link in the show notes as well as maybe a link to your group. Because yeah, that sounds like a very worthwhile thing to donate to.

0:40:12 Zachary: Yeah, it's the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They're a non-profit group, and they publish one of the big journals in science that people like to publish, and it's It's called, ironically, it's called science. So they do a lot for the research community and a lot of the outreach as a whole for the community.

0:40:16 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:31 Thomas: Yeah, sound like a good place to go in terms of trying to make a difference if you're somebody with extra funds. So anything else? Else? What else should we cover before we call it an interview here?

0:40:42 Zachary: Just that this is, again, I want to stress, this is not, this should not be a partisan issue. This should not Be, it used to not be, for the most part, a partisan issue. And when we, as advocates or as researchers, even as you're, as the listeners, if you, When you go and talk about these things and stress the importance of these issues, it's amazingly important not to couch it in Republicans versus Democrats or conservatives versus liberals and progressives. This is about money in a common-sense manner that's going to benefit the majority, if not all, of Americans.

These dollars don't benefit just Democrats or Republicans. Republicans, an advancement in cancer care is going to help everybody. An advancement in heart disease is goingto help everybody, so that's really what, when people go out to advocate, you have to couch it in those terms, because it becomes very easy to say, oh, right wing and dumb Republicans and blah blah blah, and I fall victim to that myself, because they're the opposition, or they're the party in charge, they are, they're the ones screwing things things up for right now. When we communicate, it does not have to be couched in those terms, because you're just going to turn off everybody you talk to who's not, uh, a flag waving progressive. Exactly.

0:40:48 Thomas: Yeah.

0:42:02 Thomas: Yeah, I agree with that. I think that, it's one thing now because I'm trying to motivate my liberal audience currently. But yeah, when you're speaking to conservatives, I would encourage that as well. These are, I think these are issues that it's, I wouldn't, I'd be amazed if someone's going to stand there across from you and say, no, I don't want to fund cancer research. I don't want to fund heart research. Like, I would be amazed at how many people, if there's that many, that truly would go full Ayn Rand on you in that way. I think that it, if one talks about it from a neutral perspective, like you're suggesting, I imagine you could find common Even if you're arguing with your Republican family or something.

0:42:50 Thomas: I'm curious. I think that this Trump budget is just a disaster. I don't think it's well thought out. And there's a reason why you mentioned it's dead on arrival, which it is. There's a reason why it's dead on arrival in a Republican Congress. The reason is even most Republicans don't like this nonsense. So I like that. I like the idea of trying to approach it from a bipartisan perspective and maybe find common ground. And we can certainly, the minute there's uh, any indication of, of something like this happening in Congress, we can try to do what we've done for healthcare, I think to a decent effect, which is, you know, fax, call, do all the things, the old-fashioned things that for some reason are the only way that Congress men and women, uh, get any information from the public. But yeah, that I, I, uh I echo that sentiment and, uh absolutely. I can't remedy this because it's, it's really really sad, to be honest. It's incredibly sad.

0:43:13 Zachary: I'm Optimistic, even in all the darkness that we're experiencing now, uh, science benefits us all, research benefits us, and once we get past this rough time, to where, where everybody's caught up in the emotions and Donald Trump is out, so and dissent among everybody, I think cooler heads will prevail and we can get back as a country to being the best in science and the best research, and continuing to not only do that research for the benefit of our country, but benefiting the world, because a more enriched, educated, healthy world only helps us at home.

0:44:30 Thomas: Absolutely. Well, I think that's a good way to end it. Zach, is there anything else you wanted to point people to?

0:44:36 Zachary: If you're a grad student out there or even if you're just an undergrad student, a high school student, anybody who's interested in science and science advocacy, please email me. Thomas, will you put my email in the description or the show notes?

0:44:49 Thomas: Absolutely. Yeah, I'll make sure I have the right one after this. But yeah, email if you're interested.

0:44:50 Zachary: Yeah. Yeah, so just email me if you'RE interested. Even if you have questions, if I can't answer them, I know a bunch of people who are much smarter than me and know this a lot better than me, and we can get you hooked up and connected. It's a group effort. We've got to fight all together.

0:44:55 Thomas: Yeah sure.

0:45:08 Thomas: I love it. Okay, thanks so much Zach Kiser for coming on the show and really putting some of this stuff into perspective. Thank you.

0:45:15 Zachary: Thanks, Thomas.

0:45:31 Thomas: All right, that's it for today's show. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to my new patrons and my top patrons. I'll resume the thanks in person when I get back from my trip. But in the meantime, thank you all for making the show happen. I really appreciate it. And again, I'm offering a lot of early content to patrons because, you I am away. So they're already... the episodes are done ahead of time so I can offer them way early. So that's another benefit. Of it. I hope you've enjoyed that, patrons. That being said, I will see you. I'll be back and I'll see you on Monday. Next week's Thursday episode will be current. I will catch up with everything that's happened and offer some commentary. So, I'll have to see you on Monday!