X-Ray Vision: A Chat With Radiological Sciences

Dave LaGuardia: Oh, hello, how are you doing? 

Douglas Pearlstein: Her boss said, you’re not coming to work on Monday or something like that, and then the last boss would be the governor. But I never heard from him.

Dave LaGuardia: I think that the hardest part is the isolation.

Douglas Pearlstein: Be an X-ray tech. That’s it. 

Kendall Pongon: And photons go from the tube, they kind of explode everywhere, scatter everywhere.

Douglas Pearlstein: Was it closer to the AC joint or the…? 

Sam Butler: I haven’t taken that class yet. 

Dave LaGuardia: We never expose each other to radiation. It’s like the cardinal paramount rules. 

Sam Butler: Welcome back to BroncoTales, Season 2, Episode 3. I’d like to welcome you all here. Our first guest, Laura, is currently in the Diagnostic Radiology program, planning to graduate in May of 2026, and planning to explore advanced modalities after graduation. 

Our second guest on the show, Kendall. Kendall grew up in Vancouver, Washington, before moving to Boise State. Originally, Kendall wanted to play a sport in college, but after an injury decided to switch to healthcare, along with some experiences she had. She is also on track to graduate in May of 2026. She’s looking forward to pursuing further education or expanding her knowledge in Radiologic Science. 

I’d like to welcome our third guest, Douglas, to the show. Douglas has a vast background in academic spaces, from museums to prisons. He holds a bachelor’s in history from the University of Pittsburgh, a master’s in teaching from the University of Southern California, is currently an adjunct professor here at Boise State, and is a student in the Radiologic Science Department.

Douglas Pearlstein: And impeccably dressed. For those who can’t see us right now. 

Dave LaGuardia: We’re not worthy. Major accolades and credentials. 

Sam Butler: And our last guest, Dave. Originally from Denver, Dave moved here to pursue an opportunity to teach in this past July.

Dave LaGuardia: I did. 

Sam Butler: As well as an online imaging science baccalaureate, and looking forward to starting his master’s next year. 

Dave LaGuardia: Correct. We’ll be starting a master’s in education over the summer semester. And, yeah. 

Sam Butler: Welcome, everyone. 

Dave LaGuardia: Thank you. 

Douglas Pearlstein: Thank you. 

Kendall Pongon: Thank you for having us. 

Dave LaGuardia: We’re happy to be here. So I teach these guys. So I’m one of the professors for the Radiologic Sciences program. And so these are some of the first-year cohort. And we all decided to get together and give this a shot. So I think everybody’s history is super interesting. And I kind of want to talk about how we all got on this path. Like, we’re all here, all walks of life. Let’s start with you. Like, what brought you to Boise State? And how did you end up on the path to Radiologic Sciences? 

Laura Kovaleski: Yeah, so I actually grew up here in Boise, and then I went to–or I guess let’s start back when I knew I wanted to pursue health care. In high school, I took an elective class. I think it was medical terminology or just some basic health class. Before then, I didn’t really love school all that much. But then, after taking this health class, I just found it super interesting, and I wanted to learn and find out why the human body works the way it does. I just found it super interesting, and then I started taking more health care classes.

I took a CNA class, and quickly learned I didn’t want to be a CNA. But I liked how–like the skills aspect and hands-on part of health care. And then I explored the radiology program at Boise State, probably about two years ago.  Kathy Masters, the program director, gave me a tour, and she told me about everything that is amazing about the program. And, I just found it super interesting. 

Dave LaGuardia: She’s all right. I’m gonna listen to her. 

Laura Kovaleski: I’ve also had a bunch of X-rays and MRIs, and stuff, and I found that the medical imaging team is super nice and not as scary as nurses and stuff. They’re not gonna make you get like blood draws or anything like that. It’s just there to help you, which I liked.

Dave LaGuardia: So I want to go one step further. In your intro, it was mentioned that you’re interested in advanced modalities. Could you tell us, A, what a modality is, and then which advanced modality are you interested in? 

Laura Kovaleski: Yeah, so a modality is–so where are all three of us starting in diagnostic radiology, which is kind of like the baseline. And so there’s a bunch of room to grow from there. So I want to do the CT modality. And a modality is kind of like…a way to get an extra certificate so that you can have more job responsibilities at work. You can just learn extra things, extra machines. So I want to be able to operate CT machines. And then I also think functional medicine is interesting. 

Dave LaGuardia: That’s cool. 

Sam Butler: And what’s a CT machine? Which scan is that? Not what it is, but which scan for anyone who doesn’t know. 

Laura Kovaleski: I’m not super educated on it. I haven’t…

Dave LaGuardia: I was just gonna do it. 

Laura Kovaleski: Yeah, okay.

Dave LaGuardia: I’m happy to jump in. So CT stands for computer tomography, and the CT looks at the body in cross-sections. So we can take slices of the body in different planes. We can look at it sideways. We can look at it from the side, or we can look at it from the top. There are all different–there are three different planes that we can look at for CT, and it’s highly diagnostic. We get a lot of information, a lot of diagnostic information from one scan.

Theoretically, you could go from head to toe and do a full body scan, but very commonly, we’ll do like a chest, abdomen, or something along those lines. We can look at disease processes; we can look at functionality. We can administer contrasts; we see soft tissue detail that we wouldn’t normally see. CT is very fast-paced. It is high volume, super fast-paced, and doctors rely on it heavily for all types of diagnoses. So when you go to an emergency department for some type of injury or sickness, you’re probably going to get a CT scan. It’s a lot of bang for the buck. 

Douglas Pearlstein: When I had my appendix out, I had a CT scan. They didn’t tell me about the contrast they’re going to shoot into me, but that will be a story for another day, though. 

Dave LaGuardia: Some interesting side effects there. 

Douglas Pearlstein: Oh, yes. 

Dave LaGuardia: All right, so take over here. What put you on this path? 

Douglas Pearlstein: What put me on this path? 

Dave LaGuardia: We got a little bit about your background from the introduction. You have a very interesting, wide range of things you’ve done. 

Douglas Pearlstein: Yeah, so I’m a child of the ’80s and ’90s, and I feel like the heroes we grew up with in movies and in books were these multifaceted people. Probably the best example is Indiana Jones. He can speak 20 different languages. I’ll get close to the mic. He can speak 20 different languages. He’s an archaeologist. He can fly a plane, but can’t land it. He can do a whole bunch of things. So that was a big inspiration for me. 

Dave LaGuardia: Yeah, he can fly, but he can’t land it. 

Douglas Pearlstein: So my last big career was working in museums, and that’s what landed me out here in Idaho to work at the Idaho State Museum. And that was coincidentally right when COVID hit. In fact, I remember my conversation on Friday with my boss, you’re not coming to work on Monday. Then her boss said, you are coming to work on Monday. Then her boss said, you’re not coming to work on Monday or something like that. And then the last boss would have been the governor, but I never heard from him. 

Dave LaGuardia: That would have been really cool, though. 

Douglas Pearlstein: That would have been cool, yeah. So museums are fantastic places to work and to go to, but they’re very vulnerable to shifts in the economy. And so the future of museums still is a bit tenuous. And I was talking to a friend of mine. She’s a doctor. She works up in Spokane. And she said, be an X-ray tech. And that’s it. 

Dave LaGuardia: And you said, what’s that? 

Douglas Pearlstein: The rest is basically history after that. So, no, I did research into it. And then I saw there’s a bunch of modalities. Radiation therapy was probably what I was interested in the most. But I learned that there are pathways to get there. So I explored opportunities all around the country, all the way to Florida. And things led me back here to Boise. And here I am in the X-ray tech program.

Dave LaGuardia: It’s a highly rated program. It’s probably in the top five in the country if I had to hazard a guess. 

Douglas Pearlstein: That’s what Google told me.

Dave LaGuardia: We have one of the best programs in the country. So we hold our students to very high standards. And they always meet them. You guys are amazing. Kendall. 

Kendall Pongon: Okay, so I originally wanted to go into business and play a sport in college. I played volleyball, but I fractured my spine when I was like 15. And I actually had a really bad experience with like my X-ray techs and my nurses. They weren’t very nice, and then from there I went, and I got to help our–like a school trainer with the athletes. I got to like learn more about that, and I found it really interesting and so that made me want to go into health care. And, also like having such a bad experience like I realized how much that little interaction can make or break someone’s day, or like someone’s injury.

So that also really made me want to go into health care and like be someone that’ll make someone happy and not sad when they’re already injured. And then I kind of just ended up in Boise. I’m from Washington so not too far and there’s not a lot of schools that do radiology. And, I really wanted to do imaging over nursing because it’s like a lot more like critical thinking–like we talk about in lab it’s like a trauma situation comes in and it’s like oh how do I position them. It’s a lot more like–you’re always thinking always problem solving and so I found that really cool. 

Dave LaGuardia: Really appealing. Yeah, we’re big critical thinkers. We have to think on our feet and make decisions quickly because things are rarely perfect, right? So we’re always trying to problem-solve and figure things out, but one thing that I find very interesting about you, Kendall is that–I’m from Denver originally. And then I moved–I trained–I did my X-ray training in Denver in Colorado. I’ve been a tech for 15 years. I moved to Portland in 2013, and then I lived in the Pacific Northwest for 11 years. And then the opportunity to teach at Boise State came up, and the department had somebody as knowledgeable and highly regarded as ours. She literally wrote our positioning textbook. She wrote the book on positioning like–Leslie wrote our textbook.

Kendall Pongon: I didn’t know that. 

Dave LaGuardia: She did. 

Kendall Pongon: That’s crazy. 

Dave LaGuardia: Yeah, next time you have your positioning book out, her name’s right on the front. She’s been contributing to textbooks for years. Since I was in X-ray school, I’ve seen her name as far back as 2009 when I was in X-ray school. So when an opportunity like this came up, and someone of that caliber is like, we want you to come and work for us, I couldn’t say no, I couldn’t. I mean, I was doing well in X-ray with a reputable employer, but I was ready for a change. Like, I think I can do this.

So we pulled up stakes and moved from Washington to Boise. And the funny thing is that going back to what’s interesting about you and me is that we lived just in the next town north. You lived just in the next town north. So we grew up like in each other’s backyards, kind of. And another fun fact, like for those of you who have seen Napoleon Dynamite, I’m sure everybody knows that movie. He lives, John Heater, the actor, lives in that town, in the town that Kendall lives in. 

Kendall Pongon: I’m not kidding. Like, probably less than a quarter mile away from me. Did you ever meet him? No, but people we see him at, like Safeway, but I don’t shop at Safeway. So, but I guess that’s where he shops 

Dave LaGuardia: Sorry, I missed out. I bet he gets it all the time, like people come up and do impressions. 

Kendall Pongon: Yeah, he likes to go to the churches in our town, so a lot of people who go to church will see him. 

Dave LaGuardia: Yeah, that’s a really cool fun fact 

Kendall Pongon: He’s like the only famous person close to where I live. That’s it. 

Dave LaGuardia: So, yeah, what else can we talk about? 

Sam Butler: What has been your favorite class so far?

Kendall Pongon: I like the labs because I feel like we get to know each other and get to be hands-on, because we talk about some of our lecture classes and the things you need to know for our registration exam. It’s a little bit different when you’re actually working and positioning someone, so it’s fun to be in the labs and have hands-on experience and see how it’s a little bit different than what the textbook says. 

Dave LaGuardia: Yeah, the labs are–it’s really great that–the way the program is structured, you get the information, like the initial textbook information upstairs in lecture, and then you have the opportunity a day or two later to come down into our positioning lab. We have full labs with energized X-ray tubes. We can take images. And we can manipulate the equipment. We position each other, although we never expose each other to radiation. That’s like the cardinal paramount rule is we never expose one another or ourselves. But we’re able to put those principles directly into practice in the lab. We have positioning labs, so you guys are able to get hands-on with positioning each other, which is great.

And then we have principles labs, too, where you’re able to take all that physics knowledge and then put it into practice. Like whatever–like we were working on grids this week, so we had a couple of labs on how radiographic grids work and some of the problems that can arise when they’re not used properly or all that kind of stuff. So I love the way that this program is structured in that we reinforce the theoretical knowledge almost immediately, and then you’ll get to do the same thing when you go out to clinicals.

So they get to start clinical rotations in the spring. I’m also the clinical coordinator for the program, which is, that’s a pretty big job, and I’m still figuring that out, being new to faculty and then the administrative role. It’s a lot to learn, but that’s really where the rubber meets the road for radiography students or any allied health science student. You learn everything in the clinic; you learn the job being hands-on with actual patients in a real setting, in a real hospital, in a real clinic, with real equipment. You guys are going to learn so much.

I’m really excited for you. I told the cohorts earlier today that I’m really excited for you to get started in clinic, and I’m anxious to hear what your experiences are, like from the get-go. So I remember in my own training, we started clinicals two weeks into our program, like almost immediately, and that’s really where I was like, okay, I think I can make sense of this stuff. I think I can do this. So I’m really excited for you. 

Laura Kovaleski: I like how for clinicals we have–we will work at like a smaller location and a big hospital and somewhere that’s a commute. And so it’s really cool that you kind of get the full picture of everything you could be doing. 

Dave LaGuardia: Right? That’s a good point. We want to provide an equitable experience for all of our students. It might not be equal because that’s impossible. We can’t possibly give you all an equal experience, but we will make sure that you have a smaller clinic where you can get skills for patient care, like taking blood pressures and that kind of thing. And then we make sure that you get a big hospital experience because there are so many different facets of being a technologist in a hospital.

We have fluoroscopy, which is a live X-ray. We can watch people swallow things and then follow the contrast through their stomachs and whatever. Then we have portables. We have machines that we take around the hospital. We can drive it. It’s on wheels. The X-ray tube comes off. We can do our image. And we have surgery possibilities. So we’re in surgery as well, where we have a machine called a C-arm. And we help surgeons with orthopedic studies, with gallbladders, and with all kinds of things. Vascular studies. We’re in the OR. We have a presence there. We have a presence in emergency departments.

Let’s see what else we’ve got. I think I feel like I’m missing something. And then we have a main department, too, where we bring inpatients from the hospital down–do whatever imaging needs to be done, and then they get brought back up to their room. Or as I said, we can go upstairs or wherever we need to go with that portable machine. So we get this whole range of experience. And yeah, we make sure that it’s equitable, so you guys all get the same well-rounded experience in the clinic. 

Kendall Pongon: I feel like it’s nice too because I think when you’re doing those things, you have to try them to see what you like and see what you don’t like. Like I feel like I have an idea of what I will like and what I won’t like, but I won’t know until I’m there doing it. So I’m glad we get to do all the departments. 

Dave LaGuardia: Yeah, you get a variety, and you’ll figure out like, hey, I really like floro, or I really like ER, or I really like surgery. A lot of techs become designated surgery technologists where that’s all that’s mostly all they do. They just live in the OR. If they get comfortable there, it’s a whole different world. You guys are gonna love OR it’s wacky. I’ve seen some crazy stuff in OR.

Laura Kovaleski: What are your favorite departments from your experience? 

Dave LaGuardia: I really liked OR. It’s very challenging, and at first, you really are a fish out of water because that’s a surgeon’s world. Everything’s sterile; you can’t touch anything. You have to know what you can and can’t touch, where you can and can’t be with the machine. And then you’re dealing with a team of people that are trained specifically to deal with that environment. And imaging personnel are usually–we’re usually outsiders of that environment. We have to learn all these new skills and learn how to deal with all these new types of people, like sterile instruments, the sterile feel, the sterile gowns, like everything’s sterile when it comes to the immediate vicinity around the patient. And then there are sterile trays with all kinds of instruments that you can’t touch.

That’s why I liked OR a lot, is because it’s very challenging. But you get comfortable with it, like you become more comfortable, and then those people learn to trust you. Like, okay, he knows what he’s doing, or she knows what she’s doing, I can trust them now. So they might be a little bit wary at first, but you’ll build that rapport. And that’s why I liked it so much.

I actually remember when I was a student, there was this one technologist that I worked with, and she struggled with OR quite a bit. And she was actually kind of mean to me because I was a student. So she was like, you’re just a student, you don’t know anything. And there was this one surgery case where I came in, and I kind of saved her. She was like, I have no idea what this is, the CRM, I can’t find the setting or whatever. I got in there, and I did it. And she was super nice to me after that. Like, we actually became kind of buddies after that, like, because I saved her in that OR case, as I’ll never forget that.

And she was from Scotland. So you know how I love to do accents, right? So her and I would always do like a Scottish accent. I’d be like, oh, hello, how are you doing? Like I can’t help it. So it’s in my nature to do accents. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. 

Laura Kovaleski: They make lab fun. 

Dave LaGuardia: They do make lab fun, and we’ll continue to do accents, right? 

Laura Kovaleski: Yes. If there’s a lot of lecturing in the lab, it gets a little boring. 

Dave LaGuardia: It’s part of your–accents are part of your grade. 

Laura Kovaleski: And it just spices it up, I like it. 

Dave LaGuardia: So yeah. 

Sam Butler: Douglas, what about you–have you had a favorite class so far? 

Douglas Pearlstein: A favorite class so far. It’s been pretty wild going back to college, because I graduated from college with my undergrad a long time ago. And so there’s a different vibe, a different atmosphere, it’s tough to put my finger directly on it. But Dave and I have an interest that we share, and that’s cars. And so when I was living in Los Angeles, working at museums, I didn’t have like two dimes to rub between my fingers. When it’s time to fix the car, you go on YouTube, and YouTube teaches you how to fix the car. So working with–it would have been nicer for me to practice working on a car before I had to work on a car when it mattered.

And so a lot of the extra tech programs around the country start their techs off, and I think two weeks after they start the program, they’re in clinicals, and they’re doing their thing. And it’s kind of nice to be able to practice, make some mistakes within reason, before jumping in headfirst to an environment where it is really make it or break it, right? You can’t get a B grade if you’re a surgeon at a hospital.

So my favorite class would probably be the–I work in the lab, manipulating the equipment, working with each other, and getting ideas off of each other. One of the things I used to do was operate a movie theater projector. It was my very first career. And so this kind of reminds me of that, where there’s the right way to do it, and there are many wrong ways to do it. But when I worked in astronomy, I had the immense fortune of operating what’s called a Tesla coil. So for all of you out there in like TV land, just YouTube search Tesla coil–Griffith Observatory Tesla coil, and you might actually see me on one of those videos. 

Dave LaGuardia: Really? I will check that out. Tesla coils are cool, and we’re not talking about cars. 

Douglas Pearlstein: No, no, no. 

Dave LaGuardia: Make that distinction. It’s way different. 

Douglas Pearlstein: No, no, Tesla coils are–I won’t go into the description of what they are, but they’re super cool, but they use the electromagnetic spectrum. And we’re using some pretty gnarly X-rays to try to help some people out. So the short answer is the labs here on campus. 

Dave LaGuardia: Labs are fun. We have a good time. 

Kendall Pongon: It’s nice to get to know the other students because we’re in lecture all day. We get like 15-minute breaks. We don’t really get to talk to one another, so in labs it’s really nice to talk to everyone. Have like a support system because I know it can get pretty strenuous in school. 

Dave LaGuardia: And next semester in the spring, we’re gonna switch it all up, and you guys will all be in different sections, right? So you’ll get to be with classmates that you don’t normally, that you haven’t normally been able to interact with. So we’ll keep that mixture fresh and going, so you’ll have the opportunity all over again next semester to make new connections with other classmates that you don’t normally get to see now. And that’s one really cool thing about having a cohort system, that you guys will make lifelong friends from being in this program.

Like…I know of people–I myself, I had kind of a weird cohort when I trained and I didn’t really keep in touch with anybody. There are a couple of people–my wife actually keeps in touch with one of my classmates more than I do, but we all sort of went our separate ways. I know other cohorts have been really close and you will form, if you haven’t already, you’ll form bonds that will last the rest of your lives, which is really cool. 

Laura Kovaleski: Yeah, I like the size of our cohort a lot too because like I’ve had the experience to be able to like talk to everybody in it and It’s cool because we’re gonna be in all of the same classes for the rest of our like bachelors experience and so it kind of forces us to talk to each other and become friends and Like make study groups because we’re all in it together and we’re not gonna have any new students.

Dave LaGuardia: That’s right. Yeah, you’re locked into this group, for better or for worse. And that’s kind of your work groups, when you get out, when you pass your registries, and with extreme success, you’ll have no problem passing your registries. But when you get out into the real workspace, you’re going to be dealing with people that you really get along with and then people that you might not get along with so well. So there are valuable lessons there, too. You have to deal with all types of people. But I wanted to jump on interests for a second. You mentioned cars. I don’t want to nerd out too much about cars, but just to be like–what makes you tick outside of everything that we’ve talked about, the program and x-ray and all that stuff. But in your personal life, what kind of stirs your soul? 

Kendall Pongon: I feel like just like spending time with friends. I think that’s such a basic answer, but it’s so true. We do a lot of stuff together, just like small things, especially, I think it’s nice to lean on one another. We’ll do homework together or go to the grocery store together and make dinner together, stuff like that. I feel like quality time with friends is important. 

Dave LaGuardia: It’s a big deal. You guys, did you know–you didn’t know each other before the program? 

Laura Kovaleski: No, we met at an orientation. 

Dave LaGuardia: And here you are, that’s great. So yeah, you’re the exact type of relationship that I’m talking about. You guys will be buddies for a long, long time. That’s really cool. 

Kendall Pongon: We just went last night, almost our whole cohort went to the hockey game together. 

Dave LaGuardia: Really? 

Kendall Pongon: We got free tickets, yeah. We had like, what, 20 people there? 

Laura Kovaleski: I think there’s like 25 tickets.

Dave LaGuardia: Oh, that’s awesome 

Kendall Pongon: Yeah, it’s really fun. 

Dave LaGuardia: Douglas, how about you?

Douglas Pearlstein: I had a really good idea when I was a kid, and that is, I should really spend a lot of time thinking about what I want to do when I grow up. In fact, it was such a good idea. I still use that idea. What should I do when I grow up?

Dave LaGuardia: I was going to ask you about how that’s going. 

Douglas Pearlstein: But I’ve never really been able to sit still for very long, and I’m older than most of the cohort. So, hobby and work kind of blend together, I think, the older we get. I’ve always had a lot of fun working, whether it’s working on cars or working on dinosaur bones. So in the future, who knows? Maybe I’ll just be working PRN, sort of like part-time in a hospital, and then moonlighting at a museum. I’m not too sure, but outside of here, I try to keep that Indiana Jones Renaissance man thing going.

So…working out and being healthy is super important. I had asthma when I was a kid and had to fight through that. So that’s a bummer. But staying up on science news, whether it’s astronomy or paleontology–a lot of stuff in astronomy right now, particularly the James Webb Space Telescope. Big, big stuff is coming from that. So a lot of nerdy stuff, I guess, in other words. And one of my guilty pleasures is movies. That is definitely a guilty pleasure.

Dave LaGuardia: Do you have an example? What’s one that you watched recently? Because I’m, excuse me, I’m sort of on the hunt for a good movie. I have two kids and not a whole lot of free time. So if I’m gonna watch a movie, it’s gotta be worth the two hours that I’m gonna invest. 

Douglas Pearlstein: Sure. A film that I watched recently–so you can’t watch this with your kids. But I watched it in theaters. 

Dave LaGuardia: That would be the point. 

Douglas Pearlstein: I watched it in the theaters, and I thought, okay, this is a good movie, which my brain kept bringing back. So it finally came on Disney+. I watched it again, and I thought, there’s actually a kernel of a very interesting story right here. It was that Wolverine and Deadpool movie. It’s filled with like a lot of action and whatnot, but there’s actually a really tragic story in it. And that is this Wolverine character–so there’s like a good Wolverine who’s amazing, but he died, and there’s this horrible Wolverine who, like, let everybody down. It’s a journey of redemption. So answer your question. One, that’s a neat movie, but two, I like to find things in movies that I can sort of dissect and pick apart and find kernels of really good ideas. I had to work really hard with the Star Wars prequels. 

Dave LaGuardia: Oh boy, I haven’t seen any of those, but I heard they’re not great. 

Douglas Pearlstein: Yeah, yeah, I had to work really hard for those. But that Wolverine and Deadpool movie, I think, was quite good. There’s a moment in which this character has to accept who he is, and that is, he’s actually a great guy, and he has been running away from that his whole life. 

Dave LaGuardia: That’s a lot of us, isn’t it? That’s kind of a metaphor for life. Accepting who we are. Like that’s kind of a difficult thing. Something that might take some time for some of us. But I think once we do, like not to get too philosophical, but I think once we do, it opens us up to opportunities that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. I feel like that’s kind of been my journey getting here to being a professor at Boise State, which is being okay in my own skin. And you never know what doors might open up as a result of that. 

Douglas Pearlstein: We are never not where we are supposed to be. That’s something I’ve always kept in mind. You’re never not where we were supposed to be. 

Dave LaGuardia: Isn’t that from a movie? 

Douglas Pearlstein: I haven’t–I’m writing it right now. I haven’t directed it yet, but you’re never not where we’re supposed to be.

Dave LaGuardia: That’s next. You go from projectionist to director. 

Laura Kovaleski: I wouldn’t be surprised if you made a movie one day. I just saw director Douglas, I would believe it.

Douglas Pearlstein: So, outside of here, I had–when I lived in Los Angeles, I did stage work, and I acted on stage. And I know Dave, you have some stage work in your past as well. 

Dave LaGuardia: I mean nothing to–not acting.

Douglas Pearlstein: Well, being on stage, though performing and entertaining.

Dave LaGuardia: Before I became an X-ray tech, before I decided what I wanted to do when I grew up, which I still haven’t just asked my wife. Before I went into radiography. I was I played drums in bands for a number of years, and I still do to this day. Although I don’t have much time, as I said, with a career and two kids, a huge move, and a huge career change. Yeah, there’s not a whole lot of time. But yeah, back in the day, I played drums a lot. I was on stage with my favorite thing to do. My absolute favorite–still to this day. I loved performing. I think that that’s probably why this is a good fit for me, because in a way, it is performance-like, and you guys are a captive audience. You can’t leave.

So yeah, I still to this day love performing on stage, like I get little tidbits here and there, like to get on stage behind a drum set. But there is no greater joy in my life than performing. There’s nothing like it, and I miss it a lot. I hope to get back into it someday, but it’s something–it’s part of my identity. It’s part of who I am, and yeah. And the muscle memory never goes away, like I can go six months without playing and then I get behind a kit, and it’s just all back. It’s all right there, so it’s a gift. I consider myself lucky that I can do that.

Douglas Pearlstein: Performing and making people happy and then having that happiness sort of through osmosis come back to you. There’s nothing like it. 

Dave LaGuardia: It’s pretty great. 

Douglas Pearlstein: It is pretty great. 

Dave LaGuardia: Laura, how about you? 

Laura Kovaleski: Recently, I’ve been trying to like bake and get into baking and cooking just because I don’t have a whole lot of free time with being in the program. And so I’ve been trying to like like prioritize my free time and do something that’s beneficial with it. And so I’ve been having a lot of fun trying to make new recipes. I made soup like the other week, but it was a lot of fun because, like, I didn’t necessarily follow a recipe exactly to a T. It was kind of just like, oh, I want to add this seasoning, I think that would be good. I kind of just did whatever I wanted, and it turned out good. And so it was pretty rewarding, and it felt like a good way to spend my time.

Dave LaGuardia: It is a great way to spend time. 

Laura Kovaleski: I don’t–I’m actually a pescatarian, so I don’t eat like meat. I eat seafood, so I kind of eat a lot of the same things over and over again, but I like tacos. And, I did make the potato soup was really good, very fall.

Dave LaGuardia: Well, if you have any experiments that you want to bring in and share with us, feel free. 

Laura Kovaleski: I will. 

Dave LaGuardia: Any baked goods or whatever. 

Kendall Pongon: Friendsgiving time.  

Laura Kovaleski: There’s Radgiving coming up. But Kendall and I, one time in our 105 lab, made Rice Krispies Treats for our lab. 

Kendall Pongon: We handed it out to everyone. And Kathy, we saw her, too, with all the people in our lab. 

Dave LaGuardia: Aren’t Rice Krispies Treats vegan? I’ve heard, depends on the marshmallows you use. 

Kendall Pongon: We didn’t use vegan marshmallows. 

Dave LaGuardia: It could be, right? 

Douglas Pearlstein: It could be vegan, yeah.

Sam Butler: Do you guys want to try peanut butter and jelly M&Ms? Have you ever had those? 

Dave LaGuardia: I’ve had one…

Kendall Pongon: I want to try. 

Laura Kovaleski: Yeah, me too. I’m not afraid.

Dave LaGuardia: I’ve had the peanut butter M&Ms, but I haven’t had peanut butter and jelly. 

Sam Butler: I got you. Everyone there are friends. 

Kendall Pongon: Try them at the same time. 

Laura Kovaleski: Okay. 

Dave LaGuardia: Pass them around. Does this count as pescatarian? 

Laura Kovaleski: Yeah.

Dave LaGuardia: All right, we’re all down the hatch together.

Dave LaGuardia: Okay. One, two, three. Cheers. Let’s go, yeah. You can cry out. Peanut butter and jelly. Hopefully, the crunching is coming through. 

Kendall Pongon: Yeah, ASMR. 

Dave LaGuardia: I’m hooked. Where’s the rest? 

Kendall Pongon: I’d rate it like a 6 out of 10. 

Dave LaGuardia: You think? It was better than I expected. 

Laura Kovaleski: It reminds me of, like, Reese’s Pieces. 

Kendall Pongon: Oh, yeah. 

Dave LaGuardia: Yeah, a little bit. Reese’s Pieces with jelly. 

Douglas Pearlstein: I think it needs a little more jelly.

Kendall Pongon and Laura Kovaleski: Yeah. 

Sam Butler: So I’ve eaten quite a few of them, and I felt like each one had a slightly different taste. Like one of them was more jelly, one of them was more peanut butter, and one of them was more chocolate. So you might have to get a whole bag. 

Dave LaGuardia: I could probably be convinced. 

Sam Butler: Most of the other people didn’t like them so. 

Douglas Pearlstein: Oh yeah? 

Kendall Pongon: I would eat it. If that were in the food pantry, I would eat it. 

Dave LaGuardia: I’ve had worse, but…I don’t know, the aftertaste is a little weird. 

Kendall Pongon: Like I’d rather eat an Uncrustable if I wanted, like peanut butter and jelly. 

Dave LaGuardia: My kids love those; they have them every day. 

Douglas Pearlstein: Someone had a–I didn’t partake, but it was like a piece of bacon wrapped in caramel and then something like that. And it was split 50-50 for that as well. 

Dave LaGuardia: Bacon and caramel. I would try it. I’d try a houseplant with bacon. I don’t care. Bacon makes everything better. 

Sam Butler: It’s called Bacon, it’s in Boise, downtown. They have bacon samplers. Have you ever been there? 

Dave LaGuardia: No.

Kendall Pongon: You need to go there. 

Sam Butler: They’re like little test tubes, and there are pieces of bacon in them. And they have like–I think it rotates, but they have like…

Dave LaGuardia: Like flights of bacon?

Sam Butler: Yeah, I think it’s called bacon flight, actually. 

Dave LaGuardia: I gotta go. 

Sam Butler: Yeah, it’s pretty good.

Dave LaGuardia: I gotta go. I’m new to Boise. Again, like I’m just gonna blame my kids for everything. I never get out of the house. They’re wonderful. I would not trade it in a million years. They’re incredible people, but it takes a lot of time. When you become a parent, it ceases to be about you, and it becomes about them. I want to be a good parent. I like to spend time with my kids. I’m weird like that. But I don’t get out a lot as a result, so we’ve been in Boise for three and a half months. We haven’t been able to really adventure around a whole lot. I want to do Table Mountain–is that it? Table Rock? Thank you. I think the kids can handle that, it’s a bit of a hike, but I think they could–we could make that work.

Laura Kovaleski: I think they have–sometimes, like you can drive up halfway up the mountain and there’s a parking lot. 

Dave LaGuardia: We might need that for my eight-year-old.

Douglas Pearlstein: One of the first things I did when I came here was–I came from LA, which is everything you want whenever you want it. Mountain, snow, movie stars, the beach, whatever you want, and so I was missing the sand. So, I typed in something on Google like I want sand right now, where’s the nearest sand in Boise, Idaho. And then it came up Bruneau Dunes, and so I thought I’ve been to dunes before, like in North Carolina. So I drove out there, and you come around the corner, it’s like, oh, there’s this big dune. I’m like, that’s it, that’s the dune, and then way off in the distance of these gigantic mountains that are made of sand. So I don’t know if you’ve been to the Bruneau Dunes yet. 

Dave LaGuardia: I have not 

Douglas Pearlstein: But I highly recommend it, you don’t have to go all the way back and hike and all that, there’s this one big one you can walk up. They also have an observatory out there, and they do star parties. I think every Friday night.

Dave LaGuardia: Star parties.

Laura Kovaleski: I’ve been there when I was little, and I remember it was a lot of fun. My family and I brought sleds and sledded down the sand hills.

Dave LaGuardia: Really?

Douglas Pearlstein: What’s really cool is that the wind blows in opposite directions, so it keeps the dunes, like, in place. Because you imagine the wind is blowing in one direction, the dunes are just going to blow away, right? But the dunes have stayed there, like, since recorded history. They haven’t really moved. It’s super cool. And I think these are the largest sand dunes in North America, I think. 

Dave LaGuardia: I think I’ve heard the same thing.

Sam Butler: It’s cool. 

Dave LaGuardia: I know that there are dunes. There are dunes in Colorado, too, the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado, which I visited as a kid. I believe you’re correct. I’ve heard the same thing, that these dunes, the dunes here in Idaho, are bigger. 

Douglas Pearlstein: Yeah, the one you walk up is pretty big, but the ones off in the distance, they’re huge. So if anyone’s listening to this who is not from Boise, Idaho, check out the Bruneau Dunes. It’s a nice 45-minute drive out there. 

Dave LaGuardia: So you never know. That’s another thing, like, going back to radiology, and I know I’ve said this to you guys before, but for our listeners, you never know where a career in medical imaging will take you. You might just become a college professor; you never know. 

Douglas Pearlstein: That’s one of the things that attracted me to it. I have a–I love museums. I love working in museums, but they can be tenuous, and I know folks who have just been laid off; museums have closed. But with this, like, literally, I can find work anywhere in the world if I want, anywhere, literally anywhere in the world, in almost any city I choose to go to. 

Dave LaGuardia: That’s true. 

Douglas Pearlstein: And so having that as a backup and it pays a decent salary. No, you know, we’re not being paid as, like, radiologists, but… 

Dave LaGuardia: No, not quite.

Douglas Pearlstein: Not quite. 

Dave LaGuardia: They have a little bit more responsibility, though. 

Douglas Pearlstein: Just a bit. 

Dave LaGuardia: So I would like to make that distinction for our listeners as well. So radiologists, what do you know about what a radiologist is and does? What’s your… 

Kendall Pongon: They read the X-rays. 

Laura Kovaleski: They go to medical school. 

Dave LaGuardia: Right, they are doctors. They are medical doctors, and they read and interpret the images that we produce. They have tons of responsibility. If they miss something and misdiagnose, then that could redirect a whole patient’s trajectory for their future, their prognosis, and their potential treatment. So radiologists gotta get it right. The buck stops with radiologists. And there are two different sides of medicine. There’s the diagnostic side, and then there’s the therapeutic side. So most medical doctors are on the therapeutic side, the treatment side, right? Radiologists are on the diagnostic side. They are diagnosing. They’re figuring out what’s wrong with the patient so that the therapeutic or treatment doctors can do their thing. There’s a distinction. 

Douglas Pearlstein: And as I get older, I don’t want any more responsibility. I’ve had enough. So not exposing people to ionizing radiation too much is about as much responsibility as I want. 

Sam Butler: So I just have a question, kind of about that. Earlier this year, actually, my roommate broke his collarbone. 

Dave LaGuardia: What’s that called, you guys? 

Douglas Pearlstein: The clavicle. 

Dave LaGuardia: Very good. 

Douglas Pearlstein: Which clavicle? Right or left? Do we know? 

Sam Butler: It was his left. 

Douglas Pearlstein: Was it closer to the AC joint or the…? 

Sam Butler: I haven’t taken that class yet, so I couldn’t tell you. 

Dave LaGuardia: What’s our angling for axial clavicle? 

Sam Butler: We were in the ER. It was actually the first time I saw the mobile; he just wheeled the X-ray machine in. 

Dave LaGuardia: So you saw the portable? 

Sam Butler: I wasn’t expecting that. And he–so one, the plate that they put behind or like under you, what is that for? 

Laura Kovaleski: It’s called an image receptor. 

Dave LaGuardia: Oh, dang, right in there. You take it. Go for it. 

Laura Kovaleski: It’s the plate that actually receives the image. And so the X-ray beam, X-ray photons, yeah. 

Sam Butler: Okay, and I will kind of always wonder this, especially like in the dentist’s office when you get X-rays. So he was getting his X-ray done, and the X-ray tech made me step out, which, for obvious reasons, was to not get exposed, but what–like that’s only one extra X-ray that I have been exposed to. What’s the reason for doing that, if that makes sense? Like, how dangerous, because you go to the dentist all the time, you get X-rays once every other year, whatever. Like, what is the one extra X-ray gonna do to you, or is it just a safety precaution? 

Kendall Pongon: Well, the collimation for like a little tooth is about this big, probably, versus a body part. There’s a lot more. Basically, when the photons go from the tube, they kind of explode everywhere, scatter everywhere. So your bigger collimation, there’s going to be a lot more radiation just going about, versus like a little tooth. 

Sam Butler: So when we were at the dentist’s, only this part was being exposed, basically? 

Laura Kovaleski: Yeah, and so it takes a lot fewer X-rays and radiation. 

Kendall Pongon: We call it dose. So if your patient dose is how much radiation they’re receiving. 

Dave LaGuardia: Also, I would like to draw another very important distinction is that when you’re at the dentist or like your friend, he was prescribed those X-rays, right? So, X-rays you can think of as a type of medication. They are known carcinogens, so that’s why we have to be very careful with X-rays. When you’re at the dentist’s office, you consent to and you’re prescribed those X-rays, just like a medication would be. You weren’t prescribed your friend’s X-rays and the scatter that accompanies that X-ray. So that’s why you were asked to leave the room is so that you are not exposed unnecessarily. When you’re exposed necessarily, there’s a medical reason for it, but not when you’re a bystander.

Sam Butler: And are those recorded? Is that like taken into account? You know, let’s say you break your arm 20 times, and you have to get a hundred X-rays, right? Is that ever going to have an effect?

Dave LaGuardia: So it will be recorded in one’s medical record. In modern times, we call them EMRs or electronic medical records. A lot of times, there will be a dose component to any X-ray or CT, or any other ionizing modality, that would be dispensed; those doses are recorded in the EMR. So it’s not gonna be perfect, but it will be an estimation of the dose received. So I’ve broken my forearm 20 times; I just can’t stop falling off buildings. I never learned my lesson. I’ve had all these X-rays, and then I’ve had the CR, might have been in surgery, and then you know I’ve had this–the CR, and they put plates and screws in there. All those doses are recorded in your EMR. So yes, there is a way to keep track. 

And then for us as…workers–employees that are around radiation. We actually wear what’s called a dosimeter. So it’s a device that stores X-ray photon energy. It goes through this process and goes through a machine, and then it’s released as energy. And it can be measured, so you can be you can tell exactly how much dose you’ve been exposed to occupationally. So we record–it’s called a TLD, right? You’ve learned all about those in the lab. When we’re in lab and making exposures any time in the lab, we’re wearing our TLDs. That’s yeah, so we as–like anybody that’s occupationally exposed, we have specific dosimeters, and then an electronic record is kept with basically the company that administers those devices. So you can go in like we could go in right now and look at oh, you know, what exactly our dose is so far.

And it’s considered a very safe occupation. Like, we’re generally not exposed to it, and we go to great lengths to not be exposed. We don’t hold patients. We have devices that do that for us. In like a CT room or something like that, there are leaded walls, and the glass is leaded. We take a lot of precautions to make sure that our doses are minimal. In an environment such as an operating room an OR we cannot shield ourselves from the scatter that comes off the patient. So we wear lead aprons. We can wear leaded glasses. We have thyroid shields that go around our necks to protect our thyroids because they are more radio-sensitive organs.

So we take precautions, but we do get a dose if we are around fluoroscopy. We can’t still–we can’t help that. But that’s why we wear the lead aprons and the dosimeters, so we can keep an eye on our dose. And there’s an allowable amount for occupationally exposed individuals. There’s a there’s a certain amount of radiation that you can receive annually.

Sam Butler: Okay.

Dave LaGuardia: It’s more than the general public, but not much more. And believe it or not, there’s background radiation around us all the time. We’re exposed to radiation all the time from concrete in the building, because there are radioactive isotopes in the concrete around us. And in the soil, there’s radiation all around us all the time–from the sun. So we’re exposed to radiation all the time, we just don’t realize it. We’re all okay, I’m totally normal. 

Sam Butler: Fun fact question, if any of you know, when some of the X-rays were first created, do you know what the X stood for? 

Dave LaGuardia: Heck yes, we do. 

Kendall Pongon: It was like unknown. Is that right? Wilhelm Röntgen? 

Dave LaGuardia: Yep, Wilhelm Röntgen. 

Dave LaGuardia: Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen because the rays that he discovered were unknown. Nobody knew what they were, so that’s what he dubbed them, because they had–the X is the mathematical symbol for the unknown.

Douglas Pearlstein: Planet X. Which is not really out there, but Planet X. 

Dave LaGuardia: There’s a band called Planet X; they’re obscure. Don’t get me started. If you want to know obscure music, I’m your guy. Do you have any other fun facts or questions for you guys? 

Sam Butler: Yeah, I have one, it’s completely off topic. It was–I was gonna start off with it, but we kind of just got started. So it’s…kind of–I’ll just read it for you guys. 

Dave LaGuardia: Yeah, do it, we’re ready. 

Sam Butler: Alien ship comes down and beams you up and asks–an alien–they’re friendly, asks come explore the universe with us, we will show you thousands of worlds and countless new forms of life and technology. But one, you can never return to earth, and two, now that you’re in this ship, you can’t ever–or like you’re leaving right then, you can’t tell anyone you’re leaving. You can’t tell anyone where you’re going. Would you guys ask to be put back down to earth or just take off? 

Dave LaGuardia: So you’d never get to see–so you just disappear essentially.

Sam Butler: You’re just missing.

Dave LaGuardia: Your friends and family, nobody knows where you went. You just went away, but you get to discover basically everything.

Sam Butler: Yeah.

Dave LaGuardia: Do they speak English?

Sam Butler: Yeah, you can communicate. 

Dave LaGuardia: Okay, or maybe telepathy. 

Sam Butler: Somehow. 

Dave LaGuardia: Can you have cookies? 

Kendall Pongon: Yeah. 

Laura Kovaleski: Yeah. 

Dave LaGuardia: Butter and jelly-can you have food? 

Douglas Pearlstein: You’d have to.  

Sam Butler: Yeah, you have to survive. 

Kendall Pongon: You have to leave your kids. 

Dave LaGuardia: That would be tough. I think that the hardest part is the isolation. Like you’d have all these amazing discoveries and see worlds that were unimaginable. But like we as humans, in my opinion, we are very social creatures. We need each other. That’s a tough one. Yeah. When you put it that way, I’d never see my kids again. Holy moly. 

Douglas Pearlstein: When I was lecturing in astronomy in LA, parents would often ask, you know, how’s my kid get into this field, etc, etc. Then kids would ask similar questions. Do you want to be an astronaut? Do you want to go into space, etc? Have you ever gone? And I said, no, I’ve never gone. I’m sorry. But I stole a line from a film, I think it was Jurassic Park 3, of all places, in which the characters do a thought experiment.

Would you rather be an astronaut? Would you rather be an astronomer? Both study the stars, but they do it in different ways. And so the astronaut gets this very, you know, self-indulgent experience, very dangerous as well. But the astronomer gets to hang back and, you know, if they’re doing it down in Florida, nice temperate environment, hopefully clear skies, and they get to hang out with their kids, their families, and have a delicious dinner, maybe soup or fish. But that was a question I would pose to the kids. Do you want to be an astronaut or do you want to be an astronomer? Now, most of these kids are astronauts; they’re kids. But still, it’s a–I would choose astronomer, so I’d stay here on Earth. 

Kendall Pongon: I don’t know, I feel like I would do it, and then I think about like my mom. And I would be sad, she’s like my best friend. 

Laura Kovaleski: I think if I could bring like some people with me, I would go, but I wouldn’t want to just be alone for–I mean, like maybe–there’s aliens but…

Kendall Pongon: Aliens are like cool, though.

Dave LaGuardia: Yeah, do it. 

Laura Kovaleski: I don’t know. 

Dave LaGuardia: Do the aliens have good social skills? 

Sam Butler: I think the idea is that…

Dave LaGuardia: Like they’re pretty hip?

Sam Butler: Somewhat.

Dave LaGuardia: We can listen to music, maybe have a beer every now and then. Do they even drink beer? I have so many questions. 

Laura Kovaleski: I’d want to get to know them for a little bit. 

Kendall Pongon: Yeah, are they chill or…?

Laura Kovaleski: Hang out with them and see if I want to be with them forever. 

Dave LaGuardia: Are they snoddy because they’re so smart, like you know they have big egos? I don’t know, there are so many questions you’ve raised–that my brain is gonna be tied in pretzels for days now. I can’t…

Kendall Pongon: Yeah, I think if I could bring my phone, then yeah. 

Sam Butler: Bring your phone to talk…

Kendall Pongon: Well, okay, if I could, like, call my mom and, like, go on TikTok. 

Dave LaGuardia: I don’t think you get reception in another galaxy. 

Kendall Pongon: Yeah, what would you do?

Sam Butler: I don’t know.

Dave LaGuardia: It’s really the best 5G network, yeah, it’s like 400G. 

Laura Kovaleski: Aliens are smart. They probably could figure out how to give you cell phone reception. We can do that here on Earth. 

Dave LaGuardia: They look at your phone, and they think it’s like an Atari 2600. I knew you were the only one who was gonna get that joke. 

Sam Butler: Yeah, I don’t know, I think it’d be really cool, but also kinda weird. 

Kendall Pongon: I get motion sick, so that’s also…

Dave LaGuardia: That would be a consideration. 

Kendall Pongon: If I could teleport, then maybe, but if I had to ride in the spaceship. 

Dave LaGuardia: What if you could–that’s a good theoretical question too, like if you could. If like a teleporter existed, but say it was only 90% effective, meaning like 10% of the time you wouldn’t get put back together the way that you were supposed to. So you might show up on the other end with like an arm coming out of your head or something like that, but you could go anywhere on the planet instantly, but there’s like a 10% chance you might not. 

Kendall Pongon and Laura Kovaleski: I would do it.

Kendall Pongon: I think about teleportation every day.

Laura Kovaleski: No, same. If I could have a superpower, it would a hundred percent be teleportation. 

Kendall Pongon: Yeah, I think about that every day. 

Dave LaGuardia: Really? That’s a good one, too. 

Douglas Pearlstein: We have teleported very simple particles from…

Dave LaGuardia: What?

Douglas Pearlstein: …one location to the–yes 

Laura Kovaleski: How do you know that? 

Dave LaGuardia: Well, it’s Douglas, of course. 

Douglas Pearlstein: We have them, but you’re only talking about like literally one particle of like energy.

Sam Butler: Like one molecule?

Kendall Pongon: Like a billion particles in a cell?

Douglas Pearlstein: No, no, no, like a particle of energy like…

Dave LaGuardia: Like a photon?

Douglas Pearlstein: Like a photon. Yeah, so something like that. 

Dave LaGuardia: Yeah, was this done in the LHC?

Douglas Pearlstein: No, no, I can’t remember where it was done. LHC stands for Large Hadron Collider. I can’t remember where it was done, but it’s been replicated.

Sam Butler: The what?

Douglas Pearlstein: The Large Hadron Collider. It’s a gigantic ring in which they accelerate particles and then slam them into something, which we do too, actually. 

Dave LaGuardia: It’s a linear accelerator. 

Douglas Pearlstein: Yes, which we do too. 

Dave LaGuardia: That’s exactly what it is. Yeah, that’s right. That’s an X-ray production, right? The LHC, isn’t it? It’s in Belgium, I think. 

Sam Butler: ‘Cause my town does something…

Douglas Pearlstein: So there are multiple ones around the world, some bigger, some smaller.

Dave LaGuardia: The LHC, I think, is the biggest one in the world, right? But there are other particle accelerators elsewhere on the planet. The LHC is the biggest one. So, yeah, you’re right. I hadn’t thought of that before. That’s how X-ray production works. We accelerate electrons to almost the speed of light, and then they slam into a target. They slam into a target, then they change energy and become X-rays, and then that’s how we get our X-ray photons. We’ve learned all about that, too. 

Douglas Pearlstein: So I teach some classes at a prison where I work. One of them is astronomy. And the guys there, it’s a tough crowd. The guys there often scoff at, well, how do we know X, Y, and Z? And I say, well, because it’s based on these theories. Oh, well, it’s just a theory. And what I’ve been able to share with them is we have these theories in X-ray that produce tangible, positive results. And so I’ve been able to share that with them.

That–what’s a good example? The theory about how scatter works, right? I mean, we don’t have a camera that can go close to the nucleus of an atom and see this X-ray kind of loop around. But the theory that we work with describes that, and then we can see the repercussions of it, and then we can tailor that by using grids or something else to make the experience healthier for the patient. So it’s always useful in the sciences to deal with the topic of, well, it’s just a theory, with some that’s very tangible and some that’s relatable to people. Have you ever had an X-ray? Yeah, I’ve had an X-ray. Well, guess what? We’re making you healthier based on these nebulous theories that we’re working on. So anyway, that was a tangent. Thanks for indulging me. 

Dave LaGuardia: We’re good at that. What else? Anything else to cover? 

Sam Butler: I think that’s all that I wrote down. 

Dave LaGuardia: That’s all I got. 

Sam Butler: Yeah. 

Dave LaGuardia: You guys good? 

Sam Butler: Well, thank you for being here. 

Douglas Pearlstein: Any parting words of wisdom? 

Dave LaGuardia: Do your homework. Study hard.

Douglas Pearlstein: Laura, what about you? What’s a good parting piece of wisdom that you can share? 

Laura Kovaleski: Just make sure that you’re doing things for you. Like, yeah, school’s important. And focusing on your future is important. But you have to make sure that you’re happy and doing things that you enjoy in order to succeed.

Kendall Pongon: The quality of life.  

Dave LaGuardia: That’s good. 

Douglas Pearlstein: Kendall, any words of advice, wisdom? 

Kendall Pongon: I think what Laura said is like quality of life. I feel like a lot of people, too, in our program that work and do school, it’s really easy to burn out when you aren’t taking care of yourself and making sure you’re having fun. Have fun at school, that’s what we do. Always laughing.

Laura Kovaleski: Yeah, in class, like sharing that with everyone. 

Kendall Pongon: We’re always laughing. 

Sam Butler: Well, I’d like to thank all of you for being here. I think it was a great episode. 

Dave LaGuardia: I had fun. 

Kendall Pongon: Me too. 

Dave LaGuardia: How about you guys? We know how to party, don’t we? 

Laura Kovaleski: Yeah. I learned a lot about you guys. 

Dave LaGuardia: Yeah, it’s nice to sit down and chat, too. Despite the microphones, you kind of get used to that. But it’s nice to get to know you guys a little bit. 

Kendall Pongon: Thank you for having us on. 

Sam Butler: Yeah, of course.

Douglas Pearlstein: Thanks, everybody. 

Laura Kovaleski: Thank you. 

Dave LaGuardia: Thank you.