Ushma Neill and Richard White are cohosts of the science interview series The Wild Types. Here we hope to introduce you to creative and interesting people who happen to be scientists.

Science. Why does that word seem to fill a lot of us with an odd combination of boredom and fascination? As children, most of us thought science was incredible, and helped us to understand the world around us. Yet somehow our education and society has taught us that science isn’t fun, easy, or worth really learning.

Step into the Wild-Types, a new series that wants to show you why science is just as fun as you remember from when you were a kid. We are going to talk to scientists who are living out their dreams of experimenting and researching the natural world. People who never lost the sense of wonder that drove them to watch ant colonies for hours, to dissect frogs, to make volcanoes, and watch worms regrow their entire body. We’re going to show you that science is actually an amazing way to spend a life, by simply letting you hear it from the scientists themselves. Why they do the things they do, how they got there, and where they think they are going.

In science, a wild-type is the control group, the ones we want to study in their natural environment before we experiment on them. The wild-type is how we understand what went wrong, or right, when we do experiments. Each of the scientists here isn’t necessarily a wild and crazy party type, but is just someone who spends every minute of their day, and most nights, trying to understand the way the world works.

We hope that you’ll join us in this project, and help us to figure out how we can make science fun. Who do you want to hear from, and what topics do you think would be worth it? Let us know and we’ll make it happen!