Dr. Kiki Sanford is a neurophysiologist with a Ph.D from U.C. Davis. She’s a popular science communicator and creator of This Week in Science podcast and radio show. This is her second appearance on Background Mode. For those who missed her first show, Kiki explained her upbringing and early interests in ecology, conservation and animals. Her Ph.D. work was on how finches store memories and navigate. In this encore appearance, Kiki and I get geeky with science: an in-depth discussion of epigenetics, the ecology of our kitchens, brain size (and language) in animals, probiotics, how wine protects the human brain, and her favorite subject: world domination by robots. We finished with a discussion about how you can support science research. After spending 40 minutes with Kiki, you’ll want to be a scientist too!