The Story Collider

To err is human, even if you’re a scientist. In this week’s episode, both storytellers share moments about a time when they got things a bit wrong.Part 1: As a newly minted postdoc, Eric Jankowski has the perfect solution for helping his mentees.Part 2: Science journalist Eric Boodman gets in a little too deep on an assignment about a senior care home.Eric Jankowski is an associate professor in the Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering at Boise State University, where he helps students use computers to engineer new materials. He loves bicycles and hates leaf blowers.Eric Boodman is a reporter for STAT whose work has also appeared in The Atlantic, Undark, and The New York Times Magazine. He's written about entomologists who specialize in fictional infestations, unscientific infant death investigations, and mysterious appearances of exotic arachnids in a Nazi air-raid shelter, and his features have won a number of awards, including the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for young science journalists, the American Society of Magazine Editors "Next" Award for journalists under 30, and the New America Award for public service coverage of immigrant communities. 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.

The new year is the time to try something new and in this week’s episode, both our storytellers approach their scientific problems in the most science-y way possible – through trial and error. It’s also how Story Collider is going to approach this year as we make a few small changes to the podcast. We can only hope to be as successful as our storytellers in our experiments. Happy New Year!Part 1: Computational biologist Francis Windram is determined to figure out how to make spider webs glow in the dark.Part 2: Avian ecologist Emily Williams refuses to be outwitted by a bird.Francis Windram is a PhD student and Imperial College London, working on computational approaches to extracting spider web traits. He is also a musician, poet, climber, and ex-chef, and generally spends his time being a little too enthusiastic about the minutia of life. His passion for education and outreach has led him to teach sciencey things both in the UK and USA, and he believes strongly that in sharing knowledge through humour and candid cautionary tales we can learn to treat ourselves with more kindness, love, and respect than we otherwise would.Emily Williams is a scientist and PhD student at Georgetown University, where she is studying the migration of a common but overlooked bird, the American Robin. Emily is passionate about outreach and the accessibility of science, and is a fierce defender of the small, underestimated, and undervalued. While she is a Florida native, Emily has done her best to dissociate herself from all Florida man tropes foremost by loving cold and dark places that have topography. Before moving to DC she lived the last five years in Alaska, where she worked as an avian ecologist for the National Park Service at Denali National Park and Preserve. When she isn’t dreaming of a winter wonderland, Emily can be found reading, baking, hiking, and finding new donut places to try.  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 our storytellers share stories about the science-y side of sports and physical recreation.Part 1: Daniel Engber risks derailing his PhD by constant daydreaming, until his neuroscience research gives him an idea that will revolutionize the NBA.Part 2: Doomed to be the waterboy after tearing his ACL, engineering student Baratunde Cola is determined to make it back to his college's football team.Daniel Engber is a columnist for Slate.com and Popular Science, and a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine. He has appeared on Radiolab, All Things Considered and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and received the National Academies of Science Communication Award in 2012 and the Sex-Positive Journalism Award in 2008. His work has been anthologized in The Best of Technology Writing and The Best of Slate.Bara Cola is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Georgia Tech, and founder and president of Carbice Nanotechnologies, Inc. He researches thermal transport and energy conversion in nanostructured materials, and is actively involved in the commercialization of his work, currently to cool electronics better. His work in nanotechnology, energy, and outreach to high school art and science teachers and students has been recognized with awards from President Obama and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He played college football when he was younger. 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.

The journey to science is rarely straightforward and clear cut. In this week’s episode, both our storytellers share their tales of how they came to science.Part 1: With her truck stuck in the mud in the Serengeti, Aerin Jacob learns three important lessons.Part 2: At four years old, Daniel Miller became one of the youngest people in the state of Texas ever to testify in court -- against his own mother, for sexual assault. As an adult, he struggles for stability, but finds hope in physics. (Warning: this story contains disturbing and potentially triggering events.)Aerin Jacob is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Victoria and a Wilburforce Fellow in Conservation Science Fellow. Trained as an ecologist, she works to develop management strategies that incorporate local, Indigenous, and scientific knowledge to achieve conservation objectives while maintaining human well-being. She works with First Nations communities in British Columbia to study the environmental and socioeconomic outcomes of marine management in the Great Bear Rainforest. Aerin is also a member of the Sustainable Canada Dialogues, a network of scholars developing viable, science-based policy options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and guide sustainable development in Canada. Her previous work includes studies of land-use change, restoration ecology, and animal behaviour in East Africa and western North America. Aerin earned her PhD at McGill University and her BSc at the University of British Columbia. Daniel R. Miller is a Ph.D. student and research assistant at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. Using large telescopes in the Chilean Andes to observe our Universe as it was 12 billion years ago along with state-of-the-art high performance computer simulations, he works at the intersection of observational and theoretical astrophysics on subjects including cosmology, cosmic structure, and reionization. He also spent several years doing research in plasma physics and controlled nuclear fusion on the MIT Alcator C-Mod experimental tokamak reactor. When not thinking strictly about physics, he may be found in the Future of Life Institute working on potential existential risks including climate change, nuclear proliferation, and artificial intelligence. 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.

Without plants, we wouldn’t have air to breathe, and we also wouldn’t have these great stories inspired by the leafy green vegetation. This week’s episode, produced in partnership with The Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, features two stories from scientists of the cutting-edge research institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who had plants impact their life and science.Part 1: While everyone around Anthony is impressed with his plant PhD research, he isn’t sure if he actually knows what he’s doing.Part 2: Scientist Jessica Brinkworth turns to gardening in the midst of a burnout.Anthony got his Ph.D. in Belgium where he studied the impact of the environment (such as high temperature and dry spells) on the vegetation in a grassland. He now works as a postdoc at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.Jessica Brinkworth is an assistant professor and evolutionary immunologist in the Department of Anthropology. She directs the Evolutionary Immunology and Genomics laboratory at UIUC. Her research program revolves around a basic question “why do we get sick?” Her work demonstrates profound differences between humans and closely related primates often used as medical models in power and specificity of immune responses to severe infections, and as well as how chronic social stress alters immune function. Since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 her lab has worked with Illinois agricultural workers, focusing on the effects of labour environment on immune function and disease susceptibility. Prior to and during part of her academic career, Brinkworth was a policy analyst in health risk management and later biologic drug regulations for Health Canada. 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 our stories are about how we see our bodies and the often complex relationship we have with them.Part 1: With the looming possibility of a double mastectomy, Connie Henderson considers her options for reconstruction.Part 2: Growing up Dhruti Shah struggles to accept her dark body hair.Connie Henderson lives in Vancouver, Washington where she practices law with her husband Paul and son Jordan. Her practice focuses on representing people who have been injured as a result of medical negligence, which is probably the only reason she is alive today. Dhruti Shah is an award-winning journalist and freelance wordsmith. She's been a local newspaper chief reporter, a BBC journalist, a social storytelling specialist and a lot more. She's worked and studied across the UK, in the US and in Thailand. Her debut book Bear Markets and Beyond: A Bestiary of Business Terms won Short Business Book of the Year at the 2021 Business Book Awards. She's had her poetry and short stories published in various collections. She is also an independent consultant, an accredited relational dynamics coach and has a background in OSINT investigations. She has four global fellowships, including an Ochberg Fellowship with the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma. She's a Trustee for the charity The John Schofield Trust and an Advisor to the Museum of Colour. 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 the lead up to our special Story Collider All-Star Slam on December 6, 2022, we’re featuring two past stories from our challengers on this week’s episode. If their old stories are this good, we can only imagine how awesome they’re gonna be competing for the title of Ultimate Science Storyteller. You won’t want to miss this online event! Register for free here.Part 1: A college course forces John Rennie to confront a furious rat, and himself.Part 2: As a kid, comedian Gastor Almonte seeks answers about some of the scientific terms he hears around school.John has worked as a science editor, writer and lecturer for more than 30 years. Currently, he is deputy editor at Quanta Magazine. During his time as editor in chief at Scientific American, between 1994 and 2009, the magazine received two National Magazine Awards. He co-created and hosted the 2013 series Hacking the Planet on The Weather Channel. Since 2009, he has been on the faculty of the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program in New York University’s graduate journalism school. John is @tvjrennie Gastor Almonte is a stand-up comedian and storyteller from Brooklyn, NY. He's appeared on Comedy Central's This Is Not Happening, Risk! podcast and the Story Collider Podcast. Timeout magazine named him one of your "New Comedy Obsessions." He's been featured on the New York Comedy Festival, The People's Impov Theater's SoloCom and Cinderblock Comedy Festival. His new album, Immigrant Made, was released in March 2019. 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.

There’s rarely an expected path in science. This week’s episode, produced in partnership with The Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, features two stories from scientists of their cutting-edge research institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who took unexpected journeys to get where they are today.Part 1: After a troubling personal experience with the health care system, Heng Ji decides to try to fix it.Part 2: When Brendan Harley is diagnosed with leukaemia in high school, it changes everything.Heng Ji is a professor at Computer Science Department, and an affiliated faculty member at Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is also an Amazon Scholar. She received her B.A. and M. A. in Computational Linguistics from Tsinghua University, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University. Her research interests focus on Natural Language Processing, especially on Multimedia Multilingual Information Extraction, Knowledge Base Population and Knowledge-driven Generation. She was selected as "Young Scientist" and a member of the Global Future Council on the Future of Computing by the World Economic Forum in 2016 and 2017. She was named as part of Women Leaders of Conversational AI (Class of 2023) by Project Voice. The awards she received include "AI's 10 to Watch" Award by IEEE Intelligent Systems in 2013, NSF CAREER award in 2009, PACLIC2012 Best paper runner-up, "Best of ICDM2013" paper award, "Best of SDM2013" paper award, ACL2018 Best Demo paper nomination, ACL2020 Best Demo Paper Award, NAACL2021 Best Demo Paper Award, Google Research Award in 2009 and 2014, IBM Watson Faculty Award in 2012 and 2014 and Bosch Research Award in 2014-2018. She was invited by the Secretary of the U.S. Air Force and AFRL to join Air Force Data Analytics Expert Panel to inform the Air Force Strategy 2030. She is the lead of many multi-institution projects and tasks, including the U.S. ARL projects on information fusion and knowledge networks construction, DARPA DEFT Tinker Bell team and DARPA KAIROS RESIN team. She has coordinated the NIST TAC Knowledge Base Population task since 2010. She was the associate editor for IEEE/ACM Transaction on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, and served as the Program Committee Co-Chair of many conferences including NAACL-HLT2018 and AACL-IJCNLP2022. She is elected as the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL) secretary 2020-2023. Her research has been widely supported by the U.S. government agencies (DARPA, ARL, IARPA, NSF, AFRL, DHS) and industry (Amazon, Google, Facebook, Bosch, IBM, Disney). Heng Ji is supported by NSF AI Institute on Molecule Synthesis, and collaborating with Prof. Marty Burke at Chemistry Department at UIUC and Prof. Kyunghyun Cho at New York University and Genetech on using AI for drug discovery. Dr. Brendan Harley is a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research group develops biomaterial that can be implanted in the body to regenerate musculoskeletal tissues or that can be used outside the body as tissue models to study biological events linked to endometrium, brain cancer, and stem cell behavior. He’s a distance runner who dreams of (eventually) running ultramarathons. Follow him @Prof_Harley and www.harleylab.org. 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 our storytellers explore the divisions and limits that influence how we understand and operate in the world and in science.Part 1: César Nufio's childhood experience as a Guatamalan immigrant shapes his life in science.Part 2: Seeking acceptance as a child of Kurdish immigrants in Denmark, Cansu Karabiyik decides to become a scientist.César Nufio is a scientist and educator who is passionate about understanding the natural world and working to increase diversity and inclusion in the sciences. He is currently a multimedia content developer at HHMI’s BioInteractive where he works with artists, educators, filmmakers, and scientists to help engage and inspire students. Previously, he taught tropical biology courses for the Organization for Tropical Studies and explored the effect of climate change on insects in the Rocky Mountains while working at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. Coming to this country as an undocumented child and experiencing the generosity given by so many during his journey has impacted his commitment to giving back and his Latin American identity. Cansu Karabiyik is a neuroscientist at Columbia University. She was born in Denmark to Kurdish immigrants. In 2013, she moved to California for her studies in Biomedical Science and decided to never go back. She moved instead to Portugal to conduct the research for her Master thesis focusing on neuroprotection during stroke. In 2021, she completed her PhD at University of Cambridge in the UK focusing on neurodegeneration and has since been in NYC, where she spends her days in the lab researching molecular mechanisms of neuropsychiatric diseases and her evenings doing comedy across the city. 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.

Pain is really weird, scientifically speaking. It’s not just a message from injured tissues to be accepted at face value, but a complex experience that can be influenced by your brain. In this week’s episode, both our storytellers explore the aches, pains, and discomfort that come with life.Part 1: While Renee Joshua-Porter is in labor, she starts feeling a horrible stabbing pain in her back.Part 2: Despite being in excruciating pain, Gretchen Douma worries getting a knee replacement will ruin her blossoming acting career.Renee Joshua-Porter is a multi faceted performing artist, Counselor and Chaplain. She is the Founder of The Burning Bush Family Foundation Inc., whose mission is to provide educational and recreational programs through the arts. A first generation American born to Panamanian parents, she grew up listening to and sharing stories. Renee is grateful for meeting Tracey Segarra who first showcased her storytelling on New York stages. Renee is married with three adult children and a dog named Beau.Gretchen Douma is a stage, screen, and voice actor who has been working in theater for more years than she’ll usually admit to. She has performed in Seattle, the Twin Cities, NYC, England, and, on Zoom (thank you, COVID). Also a playwright, Gretchen has several short works and two full-length plays under her belt. The most recent, Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down, is a dark comedy about the ghosts and memories that just won’t leave us alone. Her most terrifying out-of-body experience was doing stand-up at Seattle's Comedy Underground. For years a huge fan of storytelling, Gretchen has only recently jumped into this world as a storyteller herself. It has been thrilling so far. She loves dark chocolate, murder mysteries, and escaping to her backyard garden in North Seattle (where she lives with her wife, Nina, and their two miniature Australian Labradoodles). 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.