0:04

There are no girls on the Internet. As a production of I Heart

0:06

Radio and unbost Creative, I'm

0:12

Bridget Todd, and this is there are no girls on the

0:14

Internet. Worldwide,

0:18

we've lost over a million people from COVID, and

0:21

here in the United States, we've lost

0:23

over two hundred thousand people to COVID

0:25

according to the A p M Research Lab.

0:28

One and every one thousand and twenty

0:30

Black Americans is now dead from

0:32

COVID. Let

0:35

that sink in. It's an

0:37

absolutely staggering figure. Yet

0:40

we've had no national, large scale

0:42

mourning of these deaths. Earlier

0:44

this fall, Trump even said that COVID

0:46

impacted quote, virtually

0:48

nobody. Mickey

0:53

mckella, a professor of history at the University

0:55

of Connecticut and author of the Politics of

0:57

Mourning, told CNN that instead

0:59

of more ing, Americans have been fed a kind

1:01

of wartime attitude about how he must

1:03

defeat the virus and must not let the virus

1:06

win, and that that response has

1:08

largely been about not marking death, not

1:11

marking tragedy, and not marking

1:13

the horror of the ongoing lack of meaningful

1:15

response, but instead focusing

1:17

on that this is what Americans do, but

1:20

that's now what we should do. Collective

1:22

mourning is important, and mourning

1:24

is an important step of dealing with grief. We

1:27

can't just pretend these people never existed. They

1:30

did, and they're more than just data

1:32

points on some chart about COVID. There

1:35

are mothers and daughters, and friends and family

1:37

and colleagues. This week,

1:39

faith leaders from all over the country held visuals

1:42

in person and online to mourn

1:44

those we've lost to COVID. And

1:46

I wanted to tell you about someone we lost to. Lunika

1:50

Stroser was just thirty five, and she died from

1:52

complications of COVID. She was a gifted

1:54

scientist and a researcher in the DNA

1:56

lab at the Field Museum of Natural History

1:58

in Chicago, one of the largest in

2:01

the world. She didn't have an easy life.

2:03

Her mother struggled with drugs, and Lenika

2:06

lived with her grandmother. A learning disability

2:08

made math and reading a challenge, but she

2:10

found creative solutions to manage these challenges.

2:14

Rather than working out complicated math equations

2:16

on a calculator, she did them on paper

2:18

by hand, which helped her visualize the numbers.

2:20

She worked with a visual

2:22

learner, drawing pictures and diagrams

2:25

helped her map out her lessons.

2:27

She went on to successfully earn two master's

2:29

degrees. She wasn't really

2:31

sure what she wanted to study until

2:33

in college, her mentor, Yvon Harris,

2:36

suggested she think about exploring the sciences.

2:39

My philosophy is that we're born scientists

2:41

and mathematicians, and we experiment

2:43

and observe the world around us all the time. Harris

2:46

explained. Having the a student is

2:48

nice, but we want people who have tenacity

2:50

and determination and of refusal to fail.

2:53

Harris told the Chicago Tribune in a profile

2:56

of Lenika's academic success. When

2:58

Lenka got involved in the science is it

3:01

just clicked and she loved it. One

3:03

of her professors even nicknamed her Golden

3:06

Hands because she was able to get DNA

3:08

from very small samples, a difficult

3:11

task. Everyone who talks about Linika

3:13

was struck by her determination. You

3:15

get knocked down so many times. You

3:17

have to learn to pick yourself back up, and

3:19

sometimes it's about hard work and faith

3:22

and having people who can help you push forward.

3:25

Sometimes that's all you have to go on, she

3:27

explained to the Chicago Tribune. Field

3:30

Museum president Richard Lavier calls

3:33

Linika's death a devastating loss,

3:35

both to her own family and to her museum

3:37

family and all who knew Linika.

3:40

Her life goal was to be in front of a classroom

3:43

teaching the sciences to others, and

3:45

right before she died, that goal had

3:47

actually become a reality. Who

3:49

knows how many more lives Lenika could have touched?

3:52

Who knows how this loss will reverberate

3:54

for generations. A gifted scientist

3:56

who overcame so much to accomplish so

3:58

much, a teacher, and a black woman

4:01

excelling in a field not traditionally known

4:03

for its diversity. How many lives

4:05

because she have gone into shape? And how can you

4:07

even begin to measure such a loss? Like

4:10

she really just had this fire

4:13

in her that she always

4:15

wanted to to succeed. Lenka's

4:18

scientific research involved bugs and plants

4:20

and other kinds of organisms. It's

4:22

a pretty particular subject matter and

4:24

that's something that her colleague, Corey Morous has

4:27

really brought them together. How

4:29

did you get involved in

4:31

being a scientist? I wouldn't have predicted

4:33

it from being a child. I grew up in New

4:35

Orleans, Louisiana, and um, neither

4:37

of my parents went to university or graduated

4:40

college. So despite the fact that

4:42

I knew that I wanted to go to college, I didn't necessarily

4:44

know what I could do with that degree

4:46

when I got out. And I always

4:49

loved nature and I always loved UM

4:51

science, and so I knew that I wanted to study

4:53

biology when I went to the university,

4:55

and and insects were always my favorite. UM

4:58

but I thought that, you know, the

5:00

options for me probably were limited in the

5:02

sense that the only people I knew with college

5:05

degrees UM that I interacted with personally

5:07

were my high school teachers. So I thought maybe I could

5:09

teach biology, or since I liked

5:11

insects, maybe I could work for a pest extermination

5:14

company, because those were the only people I knew who had jobs

5:16

to play with bugs. UM But

5:19

I loved PBS, and I sort of always

5:21

wished that I could be one of the explorers

5:23

on you know, the television shows

5:26

growing up, And essentially my dreams

5:28

come true when I got to university. The world was

5:30

opened up to me in the sense that there's so many ways

5:33

you can use a science degree, UM.

5:35

And now I get to run

5:38

around jungles all over the world, collecting bugs

5:40

and it's I have the dream job. What

5:43

was it about bugs for you? Why did you like bugs so much?

5:46

I think because I grew up in a city and

5:49

I loved nature. I you know, there wasn't a

5:51

lot of it outside. I also

5:53

liked that there was just so much diversity

5:55

with insects. You know, you could go outside

5:57

and catch dragonflies or beatles, or

6:00

or flies, or watched the ants on the sidewalk.

6:02

And I just think it was that there was

6:05

so much wonder out there that I could

6:07

sort of take advantage of no matter where

6:09

I live, and that's true anywhere. So

6:11

how did you wind up at the Field Museum?

6:14

Yeah? So I've always been associated

6:16

with natural history UM collections throughout

6:18

my entire career. So I started as an undergrad

6:20

working in the um entomological

6:23

collection at San Francisco State University.

6:25

I then did my master's UM, also at

6:27

San Francisco State, but in collaboration with the California

6:30

Academy and the Sciences, again using their

6:32

scientific research collections for

6:34

you know, my master's thesis. I then went

6:36

away to Harvard and I was UM using

6:39

the collections at the Museum of Comparative Zoology

6:41

on a daily basis, and so I've always

6:43

had this connection with um natural

6:46

history museums and the cool science

6:48

you can do by using them. So UM,

6:51

when I finally, you know, finished

6:53

all my schooling and did a post docet at Berkeley,

6:56

I started a position at the Film Museum in Chicago.

6:58

And and although most people think

7:00

of natural history museums as places

7:03

to sort of go and you know, have educational

7:06

and entertainment um,

7:08

what most people don't realize is that almost all natural

7:10

history collections have scientists working

7:12

behind the scenes, using the vast

7:15

collections to ask scientific questions.

7:18

It was during this time playing

7:20

with bugs and answering questions behind the

7:22

scenes at the Field Museum that

7:24

Corey met Lnika and right

7:26

away they clicked. So is

7:28

that the first time that you met Nika?

7:31

That's absolutely true. So I met Lnika

7:33

in two thousand eleven. She had

7:36

done an internship with a colleague and was

7:38

looking for another internship and he

7:41

knew that I was looking to hire someone, and

7:43

so um he introduced us in Linique

7:45

and I hit it off right away. What

7:48

was it about her that that made

7:50

you hit it off? I think it

7:52

was her openness, her honesty,

7:55

and her tenacity. Like she really

7:57

just had this fire in

7:59

her that she always wanted

8:02

to to succeed. And I don't

8:04

just mean be a successful scientist,

8:06

but like even with an experiment, if she couldn't get

8:08

it to work, it would really like kind of

8:11

not away at her and she had to figure out not

8:13

just how to make it work, but why it wasn't working.

8:15

And that is something And as a scientist,

8:17

you can't teach that sort of drive

8:20

or that creativity to someone. She just already

8:22

possessed it. Yeah, and

8:24

reading about her life, it seems like that kind

8:26

of drive was a defined I think that really defined

8:29

her. You know, she was someone who

8:31

based a lot of limitations growing up

8:33

and still managed to get to where she was

8:36

at the end of her life. Absolutely. I

8:38

mean, she was really a very

8:40

thoughtful person. She was incredibly

8:42

hard working, and she was such a loving

8:45

person. She you know,

8:47

anyone she came across in her life,

8:49

she really wanted to connect with them.

8:51

And I mean, I think one of the things I always

8:54

respected the most about her is her

8:57

her openness and honesty

8:59

about both the things she's experienced

9:01

in the past. But you know, you

9:04

know, some people would have shame over things

9:06

that they can't control. She didn't

9:08

have that at all. But the flip

9:10

side of it was she also loved

9:12

to share her successes. And so I think

9:14

when you have someone who is willing to

9:17

let you see when they're down but also

9:19

let you see when they're succeeding, they're an

9:21

inspiration. Can you tell us a little bit more

9:23

about her research. Yeah, So

9:26

you know, when she was at the Field Museum, she did lots

9:28

of different projects, um, because

9:30

we have, you know, dozens of

9:32

scientists working on pretty much every kind of organism

9:35

you can imagine. So I know she did a bunch

9:37

of work on early land plants and on fungi.

9:39

And for me, she of course was sequencing DNA

9:41

of ants. And in that project, essentially

9:44

what we were trying to understand is the

9:46

diversity, um, both genetic diversity,

9:48

but also the host associated microbiome

9:51

or the microbes living in ants from

9:53

the Florida Keys. So for me, she

9:55

did a lot of sequencing of DNA of ants.

9:59

But you know, she went on to do a master's

10:01

degree, um, a research

10:03

master's degree as well as an educational master's

10:05

degree, and I was on her master's committee,

10:08

uh, where she was studying the philo geography

10:10

of these birds from Madagascar, and she did a bunch

10:12

of beautiful work on that and even published that

10:14

research. Let's

10:18

take a quick break

10:27

and we're back. Women

10:29

being in community with one another is a

10:32

powerful force. Not only did

10:34

their shared interest in science unite

10:36

Corey and Linika, but it also

10:38

created the conditions to bring more underrepresented

10:41

women into the field. And the more

10:43

Linika came into her own as a scientist, the

10:45

more focus she became on bringing

10:47

others with her. As a teacher and a mentor. Linika

10:51

didn't have the picture perfect a student

10:53

story. Her openness around

10:55

her background and her struggles allowed

10:58

others to see science as something they could

11:00

do too. I just can't get

11:02

over how interesting this body

11:05

of work is. You don't even like, I'm not a scientist,

11:07

but you don't. You never think of like someone

11:09

studying birds and aunts and you

11:11

know, these very specific types of organisms.

11:14

It's so interesting, how I mean, I guess

11:16

I can imagine you finding another

11:19

woman who is captivated

11:21

by all of these things that you're captivated by and really

11:23

just sort of clicking absolutely.

11:26

And and that's the thing is that, I mean, what

11:28

I loved about Lenika is not just that she had

11:30

this general awe of the natural world and

11:32

wanted to learn everything she could about it. But

11:35

one of her other passions was she loved

11:38

sharing it. So you know, if

11:40

I ever needed people to be trained in the lab,

11:42

she was my go to person. And not that other

11:44

people didn't have the skills, is that Lenika had

11:47

joy and showing people how to do

11:49

science and helping them succeed

11:51

and overcome hurdles. And you know,

11:53

she was just spectacular, and

11:56

you know, there's not a lot of people like her in

11:58

the sense that you know, she could pursue

12:01

a scientific question, but she could also

12:03

talk about it to the public and she could share

12:05

her enthusiasm and get other people to

12:08

essentially want to do the same things she's doing.

12:12

Was she did she have a like a

12:14

position as a role model for other students,

12:16

other students from marginalized backgrounds. Absolutely,

12:19

And that was one thing she was very vocal about and I

12:21

absolutely loved about her, is that she

12:23

wanted to make sure that we had opportunities

12:25

to engage other underrepresented,

12:28

you know, students in research.

12:30

And so she was instrumental in making

12:32

sure that we always kept that as on

12:34

the forefront of our minds as we were thinking about,

12:37

you know, what programming we were creating or which

12:39

positions we were hiring. UM. You

12:41

know, she was heavily involved

12:44

in the field museums Women in Science program

12:46

Uh. You know, she often was the sort

12:48

of point person that was training the

12:51

interns we brought in for the summer. And

12:54

you know, she was a role model to many people

12:56

across the museum.

12:58

What is your I you don't have one

13:00

particular one, But if you had to think of one of your favorite

13:03

memories of her, or the most vivid

13:05

memory of her, does anything come to mind? I

13:09

think, of course I have many. Um.

13:12

I think that the thing I remember

13:14

most about Lenika is that even

13:17

after she had you know, not worked for

13:19

me for a while, she had gone on and done all these you

13:21

know, amazing things, gotten these two master's degrees,

13:24

she would always pop in my office just

13:27

come by to talk to me, either to share

13:29

some success she had or if she was struggling

13:31

with something, she would often want to come and like bounce

13:34

it off of me, just to sort of, you

13:36

know, have another perspective. And most of the

13:38

time she didn't need advice. It was

13:40

like she needed a sounding board. She would say it

13:42

out loud, and she would reach a conclusion

13:44

that she probably already knew herself, but she

13:47

felt like having someone else hear

13:49

it, you know, gave her the courage

13:51

to come to the right decision. And

13:54

I liked watching her go through that,

13:57

you know, essentially this vocal thought

14:00

experiment just right in my office.

14:02

And it was kind of you know, every

14:04

time she came in, I would kind of get a small

14:06

smile because I knew I was going to get to sort

14:09

of see her, you know, think

14:11

through a problem and reach a conclusion,

14:13

and that she didn't need me. It was

14:15

just she needed a space to do it. And I

14:17

just really loved that about her. Lenika's

14:20

friends and family raised almost eighty five dollars

14:23

on go fund me for funeral cost and

14:25

to establish a scholarship fund to help

14:27

support young black women with internship

14:29

opportunities at science and technology

14:31

institutions in Chicago. Because Linika

14:34

was so passionate about both

14:36

science but also in including

14:39

marginalized communities and science, it

14:41

only seemed absolutely the right decision to

14:43

do is to sort of create a scholarship and

14:45

you know, we're able to do that because we

14:48

had a very successful go fund me on

14:50

campaign um and the

14:52

you know, museums and the institutions she's

14:54

been involved with are all on board. And so

14:57

we're going to make sure that the next generation not

14:59

only knows about Linika, but they actually

15:01

continue to to you

15:04

know, benefit from her impact

15:06

in the world. More.

15:09

After this quick break, let's

15:19

get right back into it. And

15:21

this time of COVID is it's

15:24

been kind of heartbreaking to see the

15:26

amount of people who have lost their lives

15:28

to COVID and yet we have not had

15:30

any kind of official,

15:33

you know, large scale memorial

15:35

for these people. And sometimes it

15:38

can sort of feel like these

15:40

people weren't people. They were

15:42

sort of you know, numbers or you know, data

15:44

points. How can we get to a place

15:46

where we remember that these

15:49

were people. They were friends, colleagues,

15:52

daughters, sisters, loved ones, and not just

15:54

you know, another number on the news.

15:58

You know, I wish I knew the ant or to that.

16:00

I mean, I remember

16:03

early on in the pandemic, you

16:05

know, I didn't say it out loud to anyone, but to

16:08

myself, I had said, I really hope

16:10

that I get through this, not

16:12

knowing anyone who's personally been severely

16:15

affected, And that was like this weird

16:17

internal wish I had for myself, and

16:21

then when when Linika passed

16:23

away, I was absolutely

16:26

devastated for days. I mean I couldn't

16:28

stop crying, and even

16:31

now thinking about it, it's tremendously

16:34

sad. And to think

16:36

that we have hundreds of thousands of people

16:38

who are dying and we just sort

16:41

of chuck it up to like, well, at least

16:43

the infection rates low and the death

16:45

rates low. But if it's even one,

16:47

it's too many. I mean, these

16:49

are people and they're they're important

16:52

than they have contributions to give to the world,

16:54

and so I

16:56

just hope that we can control

16:59

this soon and we don't have to lose any more

17:01

beautiful, inspiring people like Lanika.

17:05

Yeah, I mean that was one of the reasons I was so

17:07

moved by her story, because I thought, you

17:10

know, and obviously one

17:12

life is too many to lose, but when

17:15

you look at people and you think all

17:17

the lives this person could have continued

17:20

to touch, all of the sort of you

17:22

know, generations of people

17:24

who are missing out on knowing

17:26

this person, getting mentorship from this person,

17:28

being inspired by this person, and

17:31

really taking a bird's eye look

17:34

of that. At that scale of the loss that

17:36

we can't even calculate, Like if you can't even

17:38

really fathom it to say, to say

17:40

how many people are going to, you know, could

17:42

have benefited from knowing her or working with

17:45

her, learning from her, seeing her. It's

17:47

it's just sort of we'll never know

17:49

that that the loss. That's

17:51

absolutely true, and I think that's why

17:53

we were all so moved to make

17:56

sure that there's going to be and

17:58

opportunities for other people to still

18:00

have some of those experiences at least to

18:02

have access to learning what sciences

18:05

and getting hands on experience

18:07

through these internships that we're creating,

18:10

because her legacy is just

18:12

so impactful, and we want to make sure

18:14

that even though she can't be there to inspire

18:16

them, they'll still know about what an

18:18

amazing woman she was. M

18:21

I'm so grateful that you all are doing this work.

18:24

Lineka touched so many people's lives

18:27

that it's such

18:29

a loss to have her not here anymore. I'm

18:34

so sorry. It's it's it's you

18:37

know. I think that's another thing

18:39

that really moved me about her

18:42

story is I was reading an

18:44

article that said that she always wanted to have

18:46

this classroom of her own and that she

18:48

was finally on track to make

18:50

that goal a reality and

18:53

then this happens, and it's just so yeah,

18:58

yeah,

19:01

yeah. It's somebody who had so many

19:03

hurdles and none of them stopped

19:05

her, and that is remarkable

19:08

and everything she

19:10

wanted to come true in her life, despite

19:13

the fact that when she first started dreaming of them

19:15

that was such a far like

19:17

reach. She reached every

19:19

one of them, and that to me just shows the

19:21

kind of amazing person she was. And she got

19:24

there not by like stepping on

19:26

others or you know, throwing other

19:28

people under the bus. She did it by being

19:30

a loving, caring, compassionate, dedicated

19:33

person. Through this scholarship,

19:36

Lineika's colleagues are using the tragedy

19:38

of her death to inspire the next generation

19:40

of girls to fall in love with science,

19:43

just like Lineka did. What

19:45

do you hope the scholarship achieves?

19:48

Like the like when the scholarship is

19:50

up and running, what kind of impact

19:52

do you hope that it has? In her name? I

19:57

know that the

20:00

young women who will receive

20:02

this scholarship will benefit immensely,

20:05

mostly because they'll have

20:08

an opportunity to continue

20:10

in her footsteps. Right, they will essentially

20:12

be the first in their family

20:15

to do research or to

20:17

learn how to educate and mentor others.

20:19

And and

20:22

the most important thing I think for

20:25

us is that we want to make sure

20:27

that the work Linika was

20:29

doing continues and it continues

20:31

to impact the next generation of scientists.

20:36

I'm I have no doubt that it will already

20:39

already. I think so many people are moved by

20:41

her story and her legacy and the

20:43

work that you and your colleagues and her family are

20:45

doing to keep that alive. So I'm I'm

20:47

so grateful that you all are doing

20:49

that work.

21:01

Linka isn't really gone, not

21:03

really. She'll live on in classrooms

21:06

wherever little black girls are getting excited

21:08

about science or bugs or any

21:10

other subject that she's realizing

21:12

could be hers to master. People

21:15

like Lenica mattered, we won't forget

21:17

about them or the way they shaped our

21:19

lives. Their names won't be forgotten.

21:22

We won't let them.

21:24

We hope you've enjoyed listening to season one

21:26

of There Are No Girls on the Internet. We're

21:29

taking a short hiatus, but we'll be back real

21:31

soon with more. In the meantime, keep

21:33

in Dutch, stay hi at Hello

21:35

at tangodi dot com and follow me

21:38

Bridget at Bridget Marie in DC

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on Instagram and at Bridget Marie on

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Twitter, and we'll see you real soon. Got

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a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want

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to say hi, you can be just at Hello at

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tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts

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for today's episode at tangodi dot com.

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There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me bridgetad.

21:59

It's a product iHeart Radio and Unboss creative

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Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry

22:04

Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael

22:07

Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your

22:09

host, Bridget DoD. If you want

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to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

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For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, check out the

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iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get

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your podcasts.