Most people assume the answer is simple: greed. But the real story is far more complicated — and far more surprising.

In this episode, I sit down with Sam Kazer, PhD, a scientist who has worked across academia, global health, and the pharmaceutical industry, to break down what it actually takes to turn an idea into a real medicine. We talk about why drug development takes 10+ years, why clinical trials are so expensive, and why most drug ideas fail long before they ever reach patients.

We also explore:

1. Why “Big Pharma” isn’t a single villain
2. How academic research and industry depend on each other
3. Why biologic drugs cost more than small-molecule drugs
4. How public funding quietly enables many of the medicines we rely on
5. What people misunderstand most about drug pricing and regulation

This isn’t a defense of the pharmaceutical industry — it’s an explanation of the system we all rely on, and why simple answers don’t capture the full picture.

Is the medical system broken? And what does plastic surgery really do?

In this episode of the Unknown Variables Podcast, Dr. Anthony Rojas speaks with Dr. Kianna Jackson, MD, Chief Resident in Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery at Vanderbilt University, MIT graduate, and founder who challenged the residency application system itself.

Most people think plastic surgery is about Botox, breast implants, or celebrity aesthetics. Dr. Jackson explains why that’s wrong—how plastic surgery is about form and function, restoring faces after trauma, burns, and cancer, and helping patients reclaim their identity when their ability to speak, smile, or be recognized has been taken from them.

Dr. Jackson also shares her experience as a Black woman in surgery, confronting imposter syndrome and the “DEI hire” narrative despite graduating first in her medical school class and becoming the first Black student to win Vanderbilt’s highest academic honor. She offers a nuanced, honest discussion of affirmative action, equity vs equality, and why diversity in medicine leads to better patient outcomes.

The conversation goes deeper into the broken medical training pipeline. Dr. Jackson recounts spending thousands of dollars applying to residency, uncovering a system that extracts over $100 million annually from medical students, and building CentralApp, a platform that disrupted the residency application process nationwide—forcing ERAS to lower its fees. She also shares hard-earned lessons from founding a startup while working 80-hour weeks as a surgical resident.

This episode explores:

1. What plastic surgery really is (beyond aesthetics)
2. Facial reconstruction and restoring identity
3. Burn, cancer, and trauma reconstruction
4. Being a Black woman in surgery
5. DEI, affirmative action, and imposter syndrome
6. Why residency and medical school admissions are broken
7. The true cost of becoming a doctor
8. Lessons from building (and losing) a medical startup
9. Mentorship, medicine, and choosing the right path

Whether you’re a premed student, medical trainee, physician, healthcare professional, or simply curious about how medicine actually works, this conversation will change how you see plastic surgery—and the system behind it.

🎧 Listen to the full episode on the Unknown Variables Podcast

🔔 Subscribe for conversations on science, medicine, entrepreneurship, and the unseen forces shaping success.

What is it actually like to work at the CDC?

In this episode of the Unknown Variables Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Erin Thomas — a sociologist at the CDC — to unpack the side of public health most people never see: systems, behavior, trust, and the human factors that determine whether good science turns into real-world outcomes.

We talk about:

1. Why “CDC work” is so much more than labs and vaccines
2. How bias and structural barriers show up in lactation support and breastfeeding care
3. What the U.S. Ebola response revealed (and why COVID exposed it at scale)
4. Why changing guidance can destabilize the public — even when it’s scientifically correct
5. How CDC work shifts across roles: research → evaluation → tuberculosis (TB) programs
6. Why TB still matters in the U.S. (and who it impacts most)
7. What it takes for evidence to actually change practice in a massive organization
8. And what still gives her hope about the future of public health

If this conversation helped you see public health differently, subscribe/follow — it tells me to keep making episodes like this.

Guest: Dr. Erin Thomas (CDC)

Note: Views expressed are the guest’s own and do not necessarily represent the CDC.

Host: Anthony J. Rojas, Ph.D.

How do you actually become a college professor — and who really makes it?

In this episode of Unknown Variables, I talk with four professors who recently landed faculty positions across a range of institutions — from teaching-focused universities to research-active campuses — to unpack what the path to academia really looks like.

You’ll hear from:

1. A first-generation scholar who didn’t even realize “professor” was a career option (Yale University)
2. A biologist who transitioned from the humanities into science (Georgia College)
3. A faculty member who bypassed the traditional postdoc route (Towson University)
4. A professor who applied to dozens of schools to land their position (Appalachian State University)

Together, we break down the real decisions that shape academic careers: choosing advisors, navigating impostor syndrome, R1 vs R2 vs teaching-focused roles, geographic constraints, mentorship, burnout, and the advice they wish they’d been given earlier.

If you’re an undergraduate, graduate student, postdoc, or early-career researcher wondering whether academia is for you — or how to survive the path if it is — this conversation pulls back the curtain on the many hidden routes to becoming a professor.

What do Americans consistently misunderstand about China — its people, its politics, and how it quietly became the world’s manufacturing powerhouse?

This week, I sit down with Joshua Woodward, a South Side Chicago native turned MIT mechanical engineer who spent four years inside Apple’s camera supply chain in Shenzhen before founding a manufacturing consultancy based in China.

Josh didn’t just visit China — he lived through three and a half years of COVID lockdown, worked daily on factory floors, spoke fluent Mandarin to stunned locals, and built relationships inside the manufacturing ecosystem that produces the world’s most complex consumer electronics.

In this conversation, he exposes:

• Why America has engineering talent — but China has the ecosystem

• What Americans get wrong about work culture, surveillance, and freedom

• How Apple accidentally accelerated China’s tech dominance

• Why tariffs don’t work and end up hurting Americans

• What it’s like to be Black in China, and how language breaks barriers

• Why China and the U.S. are more alike than we think

Josh’s story moves from surviving Chicago, to obsessing over MIT at age 12, to becoming an Apple insider shaping devices billions of people use — and shows how much of what we assume about China collapses under firsthand experience.

If you think you understand China — this episode will challenge you.

Joshua Charles Woodward

• MIT Mechanical Engineering

• Former Apple Engineering Project Manager in Shenzhen

• Founder, The Sparrows — a China-based manufacturing consultancy

This week on Unknown Variables, I sit down with Atlanta’s viral lawyer, Cody Randall — better known online as ATL Cody — whose mission is to democratize legal knowledge one sidewalk conversation at a time.

With more than 1,000,000 followers across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, Cody has become a nationally recognized voice for people who can’t afford traditional legal help. From giving free advice on the Atlanta BeltLine with his dog, Reba, to confronting the brutal reality that justice often depends on wealth, Cody is redefining what it means to serve the public.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why legal help is so expensive — and who pays the real price
• How social media can level the playing field for people in crisis
• The surprising questions people ask him on the streets
• When a lawyer should tell someone, “This might be a you problem”
• How socioeconomic status shapes legal outcomes in America
• The emotional labor of being both attorney and therapist
• Why he believes free information can shift the power dynamic
• His most meaningful BeltLine moments — and his biggest red flags

Cody’s honesty, humor, and pragmatism make this episode one of the most illuminating conversations we’ve had yet.

The full episode is streaming now on all platforms.

Watch the video version on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode, Anthony sits down with Dave Farina, better known as Professor Dave Explains, the science educator with over 4 million subscribers who has taught more chemistry students than any professor on Earth — literally.

Together, they dive deep into:

• How a touring rock drummer accidentally became one of the biggest science educators online
• Why passive income for a struggling band turned into a global teaching mission
• His “rock-star teacher” era and the unexpected aesthetic that shaped early O-Chem videos

• The moment Dave realized he was reaching millions
• Why students prefer YouTube to textbooks
• How he balances tutorial content with hiring PhDs to write 101-level scripts in new fields
• What makes a video engaging instead of just accurate

• The inside story of Dave’s multi-year saga with James Tour and the debate at Rice
• How Dave identifies charlatans, grifters, and bad actors
• His two-tiered strategy: immunize the public + neutralize misinformation at the source
• The toll of daily online vitriol — and the rewarding messages from people who changed their minds

• Anthony and Dave discuss navigating misinformation at family gatherings
• Dave’s advice for Thanksgiving dinner:
• Ask gentle but probing questions — go full Socratic.

• Why Dave is more pessimistic post-pandemic
• The rise of institutionalized pseudoscience
• A glimmer of hope: scientists finally stepping into the sci-comm arena
• Why the next decade may determine whether truth survives online

• Dave’s long-delayed plan for a music comeback
• The “Simulated Sun” project
• What he hopes will happen by 2026

Science is self-correcting — but that process can look messy from the outside. In this episode, Dr. Anthony Rojas sits down with Dr. Marshall Brennan, Editor-in-Chief of Device (Cell Press’s flagship applied science journal) and founding editor of ChemRxiv, to explore how scientific publishing really works.

They discuss what happens after a scientist hits “submit,” the role of peer review in maintaining integrity, and how the system handles mistakes, retractions, and even the rise of AI in research. From preprint servers to data falsification scandals, this is a behind-the-scenes look at how science polices itself — and why that’s a good thing.

• Why you shouldn’t blindly trust scientists
• How peer review protects the integrity of science
• The purpose (and limits) of preprint servers
• What actually happens when a paper gets retracted
• How editors decide which papers get published
• The impact of AI on research and peer review
• Why trust in science depends on communication

Dr. Marshall Brennan

Editor-in-Chief, Device (Cell Press)

Founding Editor, ChemRxiv

BlueSky: @organometallica

Hosted by Dr. Anthony Rojas, Unknown Variables explores the stories and ideas that shape science, innovation, and the people behind them.

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts — and watch the full video version on YouTube