We are officially in 2020, but still getting our latest episode -- recorded December 26, y'all -- much faster than any other of our previous two episodes.

Progress, not perfection, kids.

In keeping with the fluid nature of this podcast, we spent some time on recent STEM superheroes in the news -- Miss Virginia, who made a science experiment her talent and won the title Miss America as a result.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu-PSaIomn4 Camille Schrier wants to inspire young girls in STEM during her reign as Miss America. Her experiment begins around the 20-second mark. Because I am obsessed with our rescue dog, Casey, we also covered Stella the talking dog and Christina Hunger of Hungerforwords.com. If you haven't seen the footage of what happened when Christina left Catahoula Blue Heeler mix Stella out of her crate with a camera rolling, it is both heartbreaking and also completely amazing.

Casey Blake poses with the blanket that bears her image. BEST. CHRISTMAS. EVER! But the star of Episode 3 was definitely black holes and our fascination with them. Jamee also shared her black hole STEM superhero -- the very much alive Jocelyn Bell Burnell -- and her discoveries of neutron stars and pulsars. Burnell also had a great way of sending the ladder back down for success. More on that momentarily.

We did, of course, also touch on science fiction's fascination with black holes. Now that the episode is wrapped, of course, I am surprised we failed to mention that 2019 was the year we all saw the first-ever image of a black hole (and the unfortunate misogyny that resulted over Dr. Katie Bouman's visibility as a member of the team that developed the algorithm that made that image possible).

Please note, I was suffering from a terrible gunky head cold, which definitely affected my sniffly, congested delivery as well as my ease in getting distracted by Baby Yoda discussions.

I mean, really... Who isn't in love with Baby Yoda? We closed with a quick discussion of the recent Tech Crunch editorial on making 2020 the year of a tipping point for women in STEM, with brief segues into my DISC assessment (Correction! The I in DISC is for Influential, not Inspiration. I blame the head cold.) and our own struggles with softening or not softening or language.

So, we may have juuuust missed our self-imposed deadline to get an episode out at the end of 2019, but 2020 lies ahead with oodles of great STEM stories in front of us and 12 months to tell as many of them as we can.

How do you plan to help make 2020 that tipping point? What are the great STEM superheroes you are talking about and interested in? Is 2020 the beginning of a new decade or does that start in 2021?

We want to hear from you.

Until next time, progress, not perfection.