Dr. Jessica Hebert is a placentologist and nerdy musician with the PDX Broadsides, a Portland, Oregon-based pop-folk trio. Their recent, debut East Coast tour featured songs about Nathan Fillion, Settlers of Catan, and mental health. Jessica is now back home, where she continues her work studying the role of the placenta (the human body’s only temporary organ!) on gestational diabetes.
In this podcast interview, Jessica and I chat about the PDX Broadsides’ piratical origin, their creative songwriting process, why so many nerd musicians sing about Rosalind Franklin, and how to request vacation time from your day job to sing in a nerd band. We also dive into myths about the placenta, the value of communication in the sciences, and scientific role models.
Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Dr. Jessica Hebert on Twitter
- PDX Broadsides
- PDXYAR — The Home Port of the Swashbucklers of Stumptown
- PostSecret
- Pack O Game (games the size of a pack of bubblegum)
- Lorem Ipsum & Riker Ipsum
- Filk musician & Computerworld columnist Frank Hayes
- OryCon — Oregon’s premier, fan-run, annual science fiction/fantasy convention
- #TeamPlacenta on Twitter
- Scientific role models:
- Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
- Other nerd musicians:
Full disclosure: I backed the Kickstarter for the PDX Broadsides’ latest album, Relatable Content, and have hosted Christian Lipski in my graduate class as a guest speaker.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04:55 — 30.6MB) | Embed
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