About Life in Cellville™

Life in Cellville™ didn’t actually begin with a plan to create a science curriculum. It started with me watching a lot of health podcasts.

I kept hearing people talk about mitochondria, especially while listening to people like Andrew Huberman, and I became fascinated. These tiny structures inside our cells help produce the energy our bodies use every day, and I wanted to understand more about how the choices we make can affect them.

That’s when I had an idea:

Actually, at first I called him Mike the Mighty Mitochondria until I learned that mitochondria is plural and one is a mitochondrion! That little discovery was probably my first lesson in what would eventually become a much bigger journey into cell biology.

I wanted Mike’s story to be about more than memorizing what a mitochondrion does. I wanted to explore how the choices we make can affect what’s happening inside our cells.

So before Mike’s story could even come out, I created Meet the Cellville Crew and began turning the different parts of the cell into characters kids could recognize and remember.

Then another real life inspiration came along.

My son and his wife were also paying attention to the kinds of fats they ate. That led me deeper into learning about cell membranes and eventually inspired Mindy Membrane and the Battle of the Oils, a story about the good, the bad, and the ugly fats.

And suddenly I realized what Life in Cellville™ could become.