Welcome back to this person I met! My name is Kayla, and I'm the host of this podcast. The voice you just heard is professor Allen Liu from the University of Michigan. As you may have heard from the news, the scientific pipeline is facing a major crisis. Since January, the federal government has terminated over 1600 active research grants, worth roughly 1.5 billion, proposing a 37% cut to the National institute of health and a 56% cut to the National Science Foundation.

But, what do these numbers mean? To professor Liu, whose life has been built upon science, the numbers spell out a massive change for STEM. The future of research, determined by Liu, is uncertain. In this episode, he explains the numbers and their potential impact on generations of scientists to come, and raises the question of what really is at stake when you neglect the scientific pipeline.

Welcome back to this person I met! My name is Kayla, and this is the second part of Johnny Walker's story. As you may remember from the last episode, Johnny served 46 years and 13 days in jail for armed robbery, and a second charge, murder. Now, as the reentry specialist for A Brighter Way, he helps former inmates, who just like he did, struggle to find their place in the world after incarceration. In this episode, Johnny will share his struggles readjusting to a quickly progressing society and his search for human connection and humanity in our technology driven world.

Johnny’s episode, for me, was truly eye opening. Hearing how long his sentencing was, longer than my parents have been alive, is something that I can’t even fathom. Still, I can’t imagine the time that incarceration took from him, time he cannot get back and he can only heal from.

And yet, Johnny has one piece of advice for this young generation.

Welcome back to this person I met. My name is Kayla, and the voice you just heard is Johnny walker. He's the community engagement specialist from A Brighter Way, an organization serving formerly incarcerated people, assisting them in the tedious process of reentering society. Johnny and I sat down in the downtown library on a cold february afternoon, where he generously shared his story and new life after not mere years, but decades of incarceration.

Johnny, like many of us, grew up surrounded by a large community of family and friends, the most important to him being his mother. Despite her passing, her love still stays with him, a reminder that love knows no bounds even in death.

In this episode, Johnny shares his battle with trauma and his emergence on the other side. Taking it one day at a time, Johnny says, is the most important step to healing and finding yourself again, no matter how impossible it may feel.