Just over a week ago, I stepped out onto a stage in New York City to join a show, in front of a live audience of 130 people. Tickets to the event had sold out almost as soon as they’d gone on sale. It was, of course, a massive ego boost, though the audience wasn’t there just to see me. They were there for the whole cast of “This Week in Virology,” the podcast I’ve been co-hosting for fifteen years.

As a member of Generation X who spent his early adult years in New York City, I tend to be pretty cynical. That’s why my reaction to news of some new scam is usually along the lines of “Oh. Of course.” I don’t often get that feeling from science news, but a piece last week in Nature certainly did the job. To be clear, this is not a criticism of the news article by Holly Else, which was well reported and written.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had the privilege of speaking to a big group of K-12 science teachers recently. One of the many interesting conversations I had at that meeting was with Kelly Melendez-Loaiza, who teaches at Mansfield High School in the southeastern part of Massachusetts. She’s one of a few teachers who have decided to tackle our current misinformation pandemic head-on, by inoculating kids against the threat.