Category: Uncategorized

  • Closing the Comma on Period Poverty

    Sofia Perez There is a moment every female-bodied tween dreads- the day your sporadic, temperamental period comes early and you’ve forgotten your pad. You’re stuck in the bathroom stall on a muggy summer afternoon in the middle of French and you know your only option is to stuff toilet paper into your panties and say…

  • A Tale of Toxineering & Tarantulas

    Sofia Perez The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in Kings’ palaces. Proverbs 30:28 After defending the bad press snakes get in Western culture and highlighting the potential their venom offers the field of medicine, I was struck by a dagger of guilt. More than 220,000 species- or approximately 15% of all animal…

  • Life, Death & Drugs: Why We Need Venom In Medicine

    By Sofia Perez Once bitten by a snake, one is scared all his life at the mere sight of a rope. Chinese Proverb There is something deliciously poetic about using an agent of death to heal. I fell in love with the idea recently, a seductive tango between danger and relief. Venom- a killer and…

  • Sorry to Snakes: The Good, The Bad & The Truth 

    Sofia Perez I have always been in love with paradoxes, from simple ones like Jumbo Shrimp, to the deepest philosophical questions of human nature, to the poor life- or death, or both- of Schrödinger’s cat. Recently I have invited a new conundrum into my heart’s library of contradictions: ethnoherpetology, which is the study of the…

  • When Words Die

    Sofia Perez We are raised on a steady diet of acceptance when it comes to the circle of life. I wonder though, how often we think of the life cycles of cultures themselves. These seemingly eternal forces that dictate so much of life for so long and for so many people…can die? As chilling as…

  • Dirt, DNA & Declarations of Rights: Why is food so tricky?

    Sofia Perez The mouth is an underappreciated organ. It is the place where our voices leave our bodies, where food enters in. It allows us to give; it allows us to take. Think of all the interactions that happen there on a daily basis and how they influence your life. To narrow it down to…