The Story Collider

Many factors can lead to a failed experiment -- human errors, errors in measurement, and sometimes just random errors. In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers share tales of when their experiments didn’t go as planned.Part 1: As a new science teacher, Zeke Kossover is determined to capture the attention of his students.Part 2: While on a field expedition in Kenya, Evan Wilson is tasked with the seemingly impossible job of figuring out the role of dust in wearing down herbivore teeth.Marc “Zeke” Kossover has been presenting stories as part of his physics circus shows all over the country in venues from coffee shops and music halls to the National Science Foundation and Capitol Hill. He thinks of them as magic shows, but in reverse—the secret to a magic trick is to make something simple intentionally confusing, while Zeke tries to make confusing things easy to understand. Zeke was a physics and environmental science teacher before dying and going to teacher heaven and getting a job at the Exploratorium. His main work is helping science teachers have the resources they need to be the best teachers they can be, like designing novel hands-on activities for teachers to use in their classrooms and helping new teachers find their voices in their classrooms. He believes that science education starts when students construct their own understanding of the world.Evan Wilson is an archaeologist and paleoanthropologist focused on the dawn of technology and emergence of human culture. They study the interplay between technology/culture and biology via the Stone Age archaeological record of Eastern Africa. They have done fieldwork spanning the last 3.5 million years in Kenya and Ethiopia discovering both fossils and artifacts to better understand the deep human past and our evolutionary history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Whether it’s a new school or new job, there’s often some sort of “try out” to see if you cut the mustard. In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers share stories about their own inductions.Part 1: When Colleen McDermott signs up to be a forestry conservationist for the summer, they soon notice that none of their colleagues look like them.Part 2: On Pete McCorvey’s first deployment in the United States Navy, he is dreading the part of training where he gets pepper sprayed.Colleen McDermott, originally from Philadelphia, is a current undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis. Studying environmental analysis and writing, Colleen loves both conservation and communications. In their spare time, they enjoy hiking, reading, and playing whatever percussion instrument is nearby. A native of Moss Point, MS, Pete McCorvey has travel around the world as both a comedian and as a U.S. Navy Sailor. He has met many people and experience many things that has shaped and challenged his outlook on the world we live in. In his spare time, Pete enjoys reading, writing, podcasting and discovering new and historical locales in his immediate area. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this week’s episode, we are highlighting two storytellers from The Story Collider's Education Program and the stories they crafted as a result of the lessons they learned throughout their workshops.Part 1: As a teenager growing up in Iran Yasamin Jodat hears about a robotics competition at the local boys' school, and she is determined to do whatever it takes to be part of it.Part 2: A third cancer diagnosis threatens to ruin JulieAnn Villa's love of running.Yasamin Jodat is currently a Senior Automation Engineer at Ginkgo Bioworks where she designs robotic systems that can run biological laboratory operations at high scales. JulieAnn Villa is a health and science communicator. She honed her skills over 20-years as a public high school teacher. Her first Story Collider workshop in 2017, sparked a new, unknown artistic side, and she has been hooked ever since. She is a Chicago Moth Story slam regular and uses her storytelling skills for good in health care, giving voice to patient experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In honor of Mother’s Day, this week we’re sharing stories about the journey to becoming a mom.Part 1: Discouraged by the medical approach to pregnancy, Julia Whitehouse decides to have a home birth.Part 2: When Nessa Goldman splits with her husband, her dream of having children by age 35 is in jeopardy.Julia Whitehouse is a writer and comedian and mother and daughter. She has written for New Yorker Daily Shouts, McSweeney’s, Splitsider, Mutha Magazine, and POPSUGAR. She hosts Manhattan’s longest running weekly storytelling open mic at The Duplex every Monday at 7 pm. She enjoys figuring out how to build things without looking up tutorials but will always look up a recipe before deciding whether or not to follow it. Nessa Goldman is a middle school math and science teacher in Sequim, Washington. She grew up in Toronto, Canada, but prefers small towns closer to the ocean and mountains. She relocated to the Pacific Northwest as soon as she graduated college and now lives at the doorstep of the Olympic National Park. The wilderness is her church and she often spends the weekends hiking and surfing. When the sun goes down, she is the host of a bi-monthly local storytelling event, the Out Loud Story Slam. Her stories have been shared on the Risk! Podcast and Story Night. You can find her online at www.outloudstoryslam.com.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Experts are a dime a dozen, but true expertise is hard to come by. In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers – who shared their stories at our annual Proton Prom fundraiser this week – struggle with finding the knowledge they seek. We’re especially grateful to the Burroughs Wellcome Fund for supporting the event and making this all possible.Part 1: When Zach Weinersmith agrees to create a trivia game, he doesn’t realize how hard it is to come up with facts that are both interesting and actually true.Part 2: Concerned about his eyesight, comedian Josh Johnson desperately searches for a good doctor.Zach Weinersmith is a cartoonist, best known for making the comic strip SMBC. He co-authored the NYT bestselling pop science book Soonish, illustrated the NYT bestselling Open Borders. His work has been featured in too many places and society is the worse for it.Josh Johnson is a stand-up, Emmy-nominated writer, performer, and NAACP award-winner from Louisiana by way of Chicago. He is currently a writer on The Daily Show, and is a former writer and performer on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where he made his late-night debut. Johnson is Comedy Central’s ‘most watched comedian ever’ with 40M+ views to date across their platforms. As a stand-up, Johnson performs at clubs, colleges, and festivals around the world. Johnson was named Comedy Central’s “Comic to Watch” in 2015, a “New Face” at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in 2016, and “New York's Funniest” in 2018. Comedy Central released Johnson’s first hour-long special #(Hashtag) in June 2021, and he taped his second hour-long special at The Bourbon Room in Los Angeles in May 2022, which is set to debut early 2023. Johnson’s self-released comedy and music mixtape album Elusive, was described by Vanyaland as “live stand-up observational humor with musical compositions. Both elements wade in and out of political and social waters between the two “arcs” of the multi-genre epic". Johnson also co-hosts two podcasts, The Josh Johnson Show (with fellow stand-up Logan Nielsen) and Hold Up (with The Daily Show colleague Dulcé Sloan). Johnson’s other credits include, CONAN (TBS), @Midnight, Kevin Hart's Hart of The City, The New Negroes, and This Week at The Comedy Cellar on Comedy Central. Johnson lives in New York and can be seen performing regularly at The Comedy Cellar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers share stories about the problems of finding representation of diverse skin tones in science and medicine.Part 1: While preparing for a lecture, Stacy Vasquez finds a racist term on a skin slide.Part 2: While learning about Lyme disease in medical school, LaShyra Nolen isn’t satisfied when the professor can’t tell her what the rash would look like on dark skin.As a first-generation Chicano in STEM, Stacy Vasquez recognizes the importance of addressing the STEM achievement gap and creating an inclusive space that will inspire students from marginalized groups. His dissertation researched and examined the impacts of a multicultural curriculum in a traditional microbiology course. With an academic background in microbiology, he was always interested in learning how the discrete, scientific information was related to issues impacting society. Traditional microbiology courses often place heavy emphasis on rote memorization of discrete facts and focus very little on how the content relates to societal issues. The multicultural curriculum aimed to teach students about various social issues while still managing to teach the objective, scientific content. The relevant topics were intended to spark student interest in efforts to strengthen their academic performance. He has continued implementing culturally responsive teaching practices in my other sciences courses, such as Human Anatomy & Physiology. Born and raised in Southern California, LaShyra “Lash” Nolen is a writer, activist, and third-year MD/MPP dual-degree student at Harvard Medical School and Kennedy School of Government, where she is serving as student council president of her medical school class, the first black woman documented to hold this leadership position. Her work has been featured in the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, and Teen Vogue, among others. She is the Founding Executive Director of “We Got Us,” a grassroots community empowerment project with the goal of bringing vaccine education and access to marginalized communities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a co-host of the Clinical Problem Solvers Anti-Racism in Medicine Podcast. Her work has earned her the honor of being named a Boston Celtics “Hero Among Us” and named on the Forbes “30 Under 30” in healthcare list. She is a fervent advocate for social justice and enjoys storytelling through spoken word poetry, rap, and writing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this week’s episode, both of our stories are from CZI's Rare As One Project. CZI’s Rare As One Project brings together rare disease patients and advocates in their quest for cures. Both of this week’s stories are from Rare As One grantees who are sharing their stories and experiences navigating diagnosis and organizing their communities to accelerate research, identify treatments, and change the course of their diseases.Part 1: After ending up in the ER for the third time, Rachel Alvarez struggles to understand what’s going on with her health.Part 2: As a young adult with muscular dystrophy, Monkol Lek refuses to give up on his ambitions.Rachel Alvarez was diagnosed at birth with an unspecified neuromuscular condition, finally confirmed in 2009 as congenital muscular dystrophy. After graduating from California Polytechnic University, she spent her early career working in healthcare finance and operations. She joined Cure CMD as a volunteer when it was founded in 2008, and then as its first employee in 2012. Rachel continues to work for and on behalf of families living with congenital muscular dystrophy, to not only support their current needs, but to help ensure treatments in the foreseeable future for this group of ultra-rare conditions. Monkol Lek is an Assistant Professor at Yale University and runs a research lab that is dedicated to the genetics of muscle diseases. He grew up in Sydney and in his 20s received a diagnosis of muscular dystrophy, which motivated him to re-train and receive a PhD at the University of Sydney. He then migrated to Boston to train in human genetics and genomic technologies before starting his own lab at Yale. During his free time he likes to randomly complain on twitter, play computer games and hang out with his three rescue dogs! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You can tell a lot about a person by how they react in the face of danger. In this week’s classic episode, both of our storytellers must find the courage to brave the perils of life and the lab.Part 1: Neuroscientist Rebecca Brachman is working late one night alone in the lab when she accidentally sticks herself with a needle full of deadly toxin.This story originally aired on December 16, 2016 in an episode titled “Deadly Mistake.”Part 2: Ali Mustafa finds that the scars of war stay with him even at his new job in the lab.This story originally aired on February 1, 2019 in an episode titled “Danger: Stories about life-threatening situations”.Rebecca Brachman is a neuroscientist, playwright, and screenwriter. She obtained her PhD at Columbia University, where she recently discovered the first drug that might prevent psychiatric disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. Prior to that, she was a fellow at the National Institutes of Health, where she did pioneering work on how the immune system influences cognition by showing that white blood cells can act as antidepressants. She has also served as the director of NeuWrite, a national network of science-writing groups that fosters ongoing collaboration between scientists, writers, and artists.Ali Mustafa is an undergrad student for a second degree at Boise State University, in the Material Science and Engineering program, expected graduation is spring 2020. He had earned honors from the dean in Materials Science & Engineering program for the spring 2018 semester. Ali’s first bachelor degree was in chemical engineering with emphasis in chemical industries from the technological university – Baghdad, Iraq. Ali has joined the magnetic shape memory alloys research team at Boise State University, in February 2018, and he had been assigned for the crystal growth research team using Bridgman method to grow Ni Mn Ga single crystal. Ali worked in technical business development, sales, management and engineering professional with 10+ years of experience with multinational companies like HITACHI heavy machinery, and he worked in the technical engineering support office for BASF chemicals in Dubai - UAE. Ali is also a volunteer at Community Trust Partnership Program - Boise Police Department, Boise, ID (2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Making insightful observations is a key component of being a good scientist, or journalist, or filmmaker. Come to think of it, many careers rely on the ability to notice the details. In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers are keen observers of human and animal nature.Part 1: Documentary filmmaker Caitlin Starowicz is so focused on making her movie about endangered Mountain Gorillas a success that she fails to see what’s in front of her.Part 2: For a story on escape rooms, journalist Danny Wicentowski studies the trials, triumphs, and strategies of the players.Caitlin Starowicz is a director/producer for film and television. Her work focuses on the climate crisis, animal rights, women in STEM, and intersectional feminism. Her films have twice nominated for Best Documentary in Canada at the Canadian Screen Awards, and once for Best Documentary Director in Canada. Danny Wicentowski is a journalist and storyteller in St. Louis. Now a producer at St. Louis Public Radio, Danny worked for more than eight years as a staff writer and investigative reporter for St. Louis’ alt-weekly the Riverfront Times. In 2020, he co-produced and hosted the podcast American Skyjacker, chronicling the life and crimes of plane hijacker Martin McNally. Danny lives in Bevo Mill with a black cat and many notebooks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this week’s episode, we get a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to film a wildlife conservation documentary.Part 1: Documentary producer Mariah Wilson is days into making her film about the endangered Forest Elephant and still hasn’t seen one.Part 2: Science Journalist Katherine J. Wu interviews Mariah Wilson to learn more about the stars of her documentary Silent Forests.Mariah Wilson is a documentary producer and director with a focus on wildlife conservation whose work has taken her to six continents. She has worked on series for PBS, Amazon, Netflix, National Geographic, Vice, A&E, Al Jazeera, History, Mongabay, Discovery, Animal Planet, and more. Her 2019 feature documentary SILENT FORESTS is about the fight to save forest elephants from ivory trafficking in Africa’s Congo Basin. It screened at Santa Barbara, Big Sky (Finalist – Feature Competition), Brooklyn Film Festival (Spirit Award), Jackson Wild WWD (Winner – Stories of Hope) and is a One World Media Award Winner. Mariah’s other producing credits include MADINA’S DREAM (SXSW, Telluride Mountainfilm), MARY JANES (Woodstock, Mill Valley), END OF THE LINE (DOC NYC), and most recently the Amazon Studios film WILDCAT (Sundance Doc Fund, Telluride, AFI, IDFA, National Board of Review Top 5 Documentaries of 2022) Mariah is passionate about illuminating the myriad intersections between humans and animals, and celebrating those dedicated to protecting wildlife. She is a proud Jackson Wild Summit Fellow (2021) and Explorer’s Club Fellow. More at: www.mariahewilson.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.