About — Straight to the Brain

Welcome to, Straight to the Brain!

My name is Xavier Fajardo, and I’ve always had a passion for science. As a child, I assumed that this passion could only ever lead me into the medical field. Thinking this, I perused and received my EMT-Basic certification in 2015. The same year, I also started my undergraduate program at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). At the time, my only goal was to complete all of my prerequisites for physician assistant (PA) school. However, I quickly fell in love with laboratory work, and decided that I would pursue a career in scientific research. In 2019, I received my bachelor’s degree in microbiology and immunology from UTSA. The thing that kept me sane while juggling university and part time jobs, podcasts. I consumed, and continue to consume, so many podcasts. I legitimately could not imagine my life without them. Podcasts are the perfect medium for an ever increasingly fast paced world. Unfortunately, many of our lives came to screeching halt in the spring of 2019 when the Covid-19 pandemic started. With the extra time granted to me by the pandemic, I decided to finally flex my atrophied creative muscles, and give something back to the podcast community. After considering what I’m even somewhat qualified to talk about, I decided to try my hand at being a science communicator. I want to make science more digestible for the masses. Not only because I feel like its important for people to have a certain level of scientific literacy, but also because I feel like science is legitimately interesting. Who knows, maybe some of you will too.

While Straight to the Brain has fallen into a sort of flagship position, there are other podcasts in the works.

This project would not have been possible without the help of Mia Ramos and Isaac Tovar. See Below.

Mia Ramos is responsible for all the art you see associated with the podcasts and website. She also helped with composing the music, and accompanies me on Straight to the Brain. Mia is a woman of STEM, graduating alongside me with her bachelor’s degree in microbiology and immunology as well. Unlike me (luckily), she is also a talented artist and musician. It is thanks to her, that my podcasts have an air of legitimacy. Thank you.

This is Isaac Tovar. As you can tell by the photo HE chose, Isaac cares about people. He wanted his picture to be us. Isaac is my cousin, roommate, and friend. It is thanks to his entrepreneurial spirit, that we are now producing podcasts. I always wanted to try to create something, and Isaac finally pushed me to do it. Isaac is very passionate about politics and government, so he and I collectively host Primo News.