Hi hello and welcome! Thank you for joining me today. I'm Swarna, and I'm thrilled to introduce my brand new podcast, Axon! This podcast will serve as a platform where we'll dive into a wide range of captivating topics, such as malpractice in medicine, intriguing medical cases, and the many injustices that exist within our healthcare system.

The inspiration behind starting this podcast stemmed from my deep-rooted passion for medicine and a desire to shine a light on subjects that often go unnoticed in the media. I believe it's crucial to provide an inclusive and comprehensive perspective on novel developments in science and medicine, allowing people to learn and engage in meaningful discussions.

I have loved diving into a variety of different topics that aren’t discussed as widely as they should be in the media. Like the psychology of addiction, plant neurobiology, organic methods of water purification, ethics behind CRISPR and the novel ways in which it is being used. I hope to discuss all of these topics with you and hopefully help you learn something new along the way!

Since this podcast is in its early stages, I am wholeheartedly open to ideas and suggestions from all of you. Feel free to reach out to me on the podcast's Instagram page, axon_pod, as I value your feedback and involvement. Together, we can make a difference.

I also wanted to really quickly talk about the next episode that I am working on because I am super excited about it and I want ygs to be excited about it too! So i dunno if yall have heard about this relatively new disease but i personally find it super super interesting. In humans, it is called Crueutzfeldt-jakob disease, or CJD for short, and is caused by a mutation in the prion protein. But its crazy because in some cases, we have no idea why it mutates, making it very difficult to control, assess, and cure it. A mutation in the same protein causes bovine spongiform encephelopathy or mad cow disease in, you guessed it, cows, as well as chronic wasting disease in deer. Speaking about chronic wasting disease, there was a new outbreak in Yellowstone and since there is no cure and a risk that it will be spread to humans, it is even more concerning. This is a really really intriguing disease because of how little we know about it and how insane its effects are. Like this disease kills all its victims in less than a year by essentially eating their brains from the inside. There’s also a whole different set of symptoms in animals!! Another interesting subtopic is transferance between species because if you look at the numbers bovine spongiform encephelopathy cases doesn’t correlate to CJD cases so its interesting to look at how this works. But, like i mentioned before theres not a ton of research on this so it’s difficult to get a clear picture on a lot of these things. But im going to stop myself there so I dont spoil too much but I have generalized a lot of this so definitely stay tuned for that so you can get all the juicy details.

But back to this episode, I'm incredibly excited about embarking on this project, and I plan to release a new podcast episode once a week. As I finalize the day I will be posting, I will make sure to keep you all informed about the release dates and topics, so make sure to follow along on instagram. I will also be promoting episodes, posting intriguing fun facts, keeping you updated on the latest developments in the healthcare field, and much much more

Thank you for joining me on this journey and I can’t wait to learn about fascinating topics in science together <3