AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
A warning to our listeners. This next story is rated M - M for marmot. What would you do if your 64-year-old research project was suddenly threatened by government funding cuts? Professor Dan Blumstein turned to OnlyFans. Most people associate the paid content-creation site with pornography, and there is plenty there. But now there are also yellow-bellied marmots - furry cat-sized alpine rodents. Blumstein joins us now. He's a professor at UCLA and runs the Marmot Project at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Crested Butte, Colorado. Welcome to the show.
DAN BLUMSTEIN: Thanks for having me.
RASCOE: Where did the idea to turn to OnlyFans come from?
BLUMSTEIN: I spend way too much time sitting in the meadow, waiting for marmots to do things. And this spring, I'm in the meadows, looking, censusing a location for marmots. And I've been mulling over, you know, funding for this project. The cuts at the universities are reducing the number of TAs we have. And my wife and I had just recently watched the Apple TV show "Margo's Got Money Troubles," and I said, you know, Marmot's got money troubles.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
BLUMSTEIN: And I said, huh. So I come back to the lab, and I say, I think we should start an OnlyFans website and, you know, post some of our content. Emily (ph), one of my graduate students, is like, yes. And Katie (ph), one of my graduate students, is like, uh. And someone in the lab screamed out, OnlyMarms. And so Emily went and set it up for me and said, OK, Dan. You need to put your Social Security number and banking details in it. So I waited a day or so, and then I sort of put my Social Security and banking details. I took the picture of my license 'cause they age-verify everybody.
RASCOE: Yeah.
BLUMSTEIN: And I got turned down.
RASCOE: Oh.
BLUMSTEIN: And I got...
RASCOE: Really?
BLUMSTEIN: ...Turned down because I don't look like a marmot.
RASCOE: Oh.
BLUMSTEIN: So...
RASCOE: (Laughter).
BLUMSTEIN: I wrote them and explained what we were doing, and they said, OK. And we started posting content.
RASCOE: And so the account promises uncensored marmot content.
BLUMSTEIN: It's almost exclusively videos. We also have an Instagram account that we are putting some videos on, but mostly photos. We're running a Fat Marmot Week contest now through our Instagram account.
RASCOE: (Laughter) Oh my goodness.
BLUMSTEIN: And, you know, we're having fun with this.
RASCOE: Yeah.
BLUMSTEIN: But - and I was - you know, one of the things I was mulling over is, you know, we're not influencers. We're not going to get money from our Instagram account. And ultimately, I need, you know, $75,000 to $100,000 to be able to support graduate students to keep this thing going. And that, unfortunately, is what the federal government used to do.
RASCOE: OK. So how dire is the funding situation right now?
BLUMSTEIN: For long-term research, these long-term studies provide us the insights to understand how organisms, plants, animals, whatever, respond to a changing environment. It's only these long-term studies that give us the long view. This is a good one. This is an old one. This is a productive one. We have some funding for next year, but after that, it's looking very dire. And part of that is because the universities are being cut. Our department lost a third of our support for graduate students, so we're accepting fewer graduate students. And it's the graduate students who are out here for the five-month field season that it takes to keep this thing going.
RASCOE: Well, how has the response been on OnlyFans? Have you guys gotten a lot of money from that?
BLUMSTEIN: You know, we've made about $4,000 on OnlyFans, and people are looking at the content and enjoying it. We're also using this as a science communication opportunity. Maybe this is a different audience than, you know, most of our science communication reaches. That's great. Turns out, it's even bigger than this. People have independently created a meme coin and told us to grab the transaction - to register it, and then we get the transaction fees. And that is blowing up. Apparently, this is a meme coin for good that people like.
RASCOE: Well, you know, what does all of this say about funding science in the United States in 2026? Because I'm sure this is not how you did it back when you were in grad school - how you were raising money.
BLUMSTEIN: No. It's appalling. I mean, what we're doing, in my opinion, is destroying the very scientific structure and the university-federal partnerships that made us great, made us rich, made us the scientific leaders of the world. And it's being, you know, taken apart, and that's really sad.
RASCOE: That's Dan Blumstein, who runs the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory's marmot program. Thank you so much for joining us.
BLUMSTEIN: Thanks a lot. It's been a pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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