The Story Collider

In this week’s episode, both our storytellers are seeking what all scientists are looking for: validity. If you want to check the reliability of this episode though, we suggest listening to it more than once. Part 1: Adrian Demeritte struggles to find a reason to stay in science after he loses his biggest inspiration. Part 2: After years of a chronic disorder make Becky Feldman feel like she’ll be single forever, she finds acceptance from an unusual source. Adrian Demeritte is a fourth year PhD graduate student at Emory University from Nassau, Bahamas. His research focuses on combatting fungal and antibiotic resistance, and he hopes to continue his work to help bolster the chemical industry in the Caribbean one day. In his free time he enjoys writing, hiking and experiencing whatever hidden gems Atlanta's melting pot of cultures has to offer. Becky Feldman is a writer, performer, and podcast host. Originally from New Jersey, she is an alum of the UCB Theatre and the Ruby LA. In addition to being a staff writer on children's animated shows, her TV appearances include "Community", "Broad City", and "Brooklyn 99". This story is an excerpt from her solo storytelling show "Tight: Sexy Stories About Pelvic Pain", which debuted in January 2020. 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 experience something that irrevocably alters their lives. Part 1: Carl Zimmer learns he has a lot in common with bats hibernating in an abandoned mine. Part 2: In the midst of a big move, a global pandemic, and social unrest, neuroscientist Aya Osman finds her purpose. Carl Zimmer is a columnist for the New York Times, where he has been covering Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic. He is also the author of 14 books about science, including Life's Edge: The Search For What It Means To Be Alive. Aya Osman is a UK trained neuroscientist currently studying the connection between the gut and the brain (the gut-brain axis) in a range of neuropsychiatric conditions including addiction and autism at Icahn School of Medicine in New York. Before embarking on her PhD and subsequent postdoctoral research Journey, she completed an MSc in Toxicology and worked for the governmental body Public Health England. Dr. Osman is also an international fashion model who harnesses her unique skill set gained from a public facing role as a model as well as extensive scientific training to communicate important scientific findings to the public in a manageable and understandable format across multiple media platforms, with a particular focus on scientific topics relevant to the Black community. 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 had to deal with some minibeasts, AKA insects, and surprisingly neither of them moved or burned the whole house down to vanquish them. (Sorry, spoilers!)Part 1: While doing field work in the Belize jungle, Rachel Mann Smith learns how to handle an Alien-style bug.Part 2: A case of lice makes Rachel Mans McKenny question her competence as a mother.Rachel Mann Smith is a doctor, epidemiologist, poet and parent trying to make it all work in the middle of the chaos. A Californian by nature and birth, she thinks Atlanta is both too hot and too cold, but she has learned to love the fall foliage.Rachel Mans McKenny is a writer and mom from the Midwest. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and other outlets, and her debut novel, The Butterfly Effect, is the 2022 All- Iowa Reads selection (and is very buggy). You can find her on twitter @rmmckenny. A version of her story appeared in the Washington Post in 2020: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/09/29/head-lice-parenting/ 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.

This week, both of our storytellers are sharing stories about something that is pretty relatable at the moment — the challenges of leaving the house.Part 1: As she goes blind due to a progressive eye disease, M. Leona Godin must learn how to navigate the world with a cane.Part 2: A frightening encounter with police that leaves teenage Roque Rodriguez traumatized.M. Leona Godin is a writer, performer, educator, and the author of There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural history of Blindness (Pantheon, 2021). Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Electric Literature, Playboy, O Magazine, Catapult, and other print and online publications. She produced two plays: “The Star of Happiness” about Helen Keller’s time performing in vaudeville, and “The Spectator and the Blind Man,” about the invention of braille. Godin holds a PhD in English, and besides her many years teaching literature and humanities courses at NYU, she has lectured on art, accessibility, technology, and disability at such places as Tandon School of Engineering, Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine, and the American Printing House for the Blind. Her online magazine exploring the arts and sciences of smell and taste, Aromatica Poetica, publishes writing and art from around the world.Roque (Pronounced: ROW-Keh), the son of Dominican-American immigrants is a 500-hour trained Yoga teacher. Roque is a proud co-founder of Suryaside Yoga in Queens, NY. When he’s not teaching the Suryaside community and mentoring his new teacher trainees, he is dedicated to spreading love and yoga to underserved and under-resourced communities through programs and partnerships such as, Liberation Prison Yoga which provides yoga and meditation to incarcerated people and his I Can Breathe Yoga program which offers teacher training scholarships to BIPOCs who want to bring yoga to their community. He is an advocate for prison abolition and community organizing. 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 experience a magical night that changes everything. Here’s hoping that we all have a similarly magical night tonight, on New Year’s Eve!Part 1: Growing up in Pakistan, Salman Hameed falls in love with the mysteries of the universe when he stumbles upon Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.Part 2: As Zuri pursues her dream of becoming an immunologist at Harvard, she begins to worry that she’s being “weeded out.”Salman Hameed is Charles Taylor Chair and Associate Professor of Integrated Science and Humanities at Hampshire College, Amherst, MA. He holds a Ph.D. in astronomy from New Mexico State University at Las Cruces and a B.S. in physics and astronomy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His research interests have now moved in a sociological direction, and today his primary research focuses on understanding the reception of science in Muslim societies and how Muslims view the relationship between science & religion. He is also actively engaged in science communication and is the founder and CEO of Kainaat Studios that produces astronomy content in Urdu for audience in Pakistan. He has a YouTube channel for Urdu videos and a weekly astronomy segment in English for a radio station in Western Massachusetts. His classes focus on issues related to science, religion & society, and his favorite class is titled, “Aliens: Close Encounters of a Multidisciplinary Kind”.Zuri is an immunologist and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, where she studies how the immune system influences animal behavior. She hails from the DMV (DC, Maryland, and Virginia) and is fascinated by how the immune system helps animals adapt to different environments. Outside the lab, Zuri is passionate about increasing access to STEM careers for folks of all genders and ethnic backgrounds and sharing her science with the public. She loves spin class, sparkling rosé, and bragging about the fact that she shares a birthday with Beyoncé. 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 are looking for a little help.Part 1: Jitesh Jaggi keeps his struggle with trichotillomania a secret, until one day his wife catches him in the act.Part 2: When Devan Sandiford finally decides to seek therapy, he finds it more difficult than expected.Jitesh Jaggi is a recent immigrant from India, currently living in Chicago. He ended his career in Finance one day when he lost all his data that he forgot to save on an Excel sheet, and realized that he just didn't care. That tipping point led to him becoming a writer and he is currently working on a book of essays. He is a two-time Moth StorySlam winner and a producer for the Story Collider. He loves writing bios because he can refer to himself in the third person. Jitesh can be easily bribed with books and chocolates.Devan Sandiford is the Program Manager of Community Engagement at The Moth. Born and raised in a small town in Southern California, Devan spent his childhood and young adult years keeping his personal stories hidden from almost everyone. Then feeling a voice within him longing to be heard, he moved to Brooklyn, New York to push himself out of his comfort zone and find his voice. Devan is now a published writer and award-winning storyteller. His stories have been featured in the Washington Post, The Moth Podcast, Writing Class Radio, Speak Up Storytelling, The Womanity Project, and many other outlets. Devan is also the founder of Unreeling Storytelling—a Brooklyn-based organization dedicated to finding people who are quietly waiting to speak and yet urgently needing to be heard. To experience more of Devan’s unfolding collection of stories visit his website at devansandiford.com and keep an eye out for his upcoming memoir—currently titled—Human, Like You. 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.

This week, we present two stories about respect in science — how we get it and how we keep it.Part 1: Meisa Salaita’s brand-new PhD in chemistry isn’t much help as she prepares to teach ninth-grade physics.Part 2: Early in her career, astronomer Jackie Faherty’s work is stunned when a senior researcher eviscerates her work at a conference.Meisa Salaita has made it her mission to help others see and appreciate the beauty of science by making it a part of everyday cultural experiences. Through her work founding and directing the non-profit Science ATL, she spends her days bringing people together through the wonder of science by creating public science events like the Atlanta Science Festival. Meisa also writes, has produced radio stories, and hosted TV shows — all in the name of science. In addition to her work with Science ATL, Meisa is a producer for The Story Collider, a science storytelling podcast. Meisa has a Ph.D. in chemistry from Northwestern, and has been named by the Atlanta Business Chronicle as one of their "Women Who Mean Business" and by Atlanta Magazine as one of their "Women Making a Mark".Jackie Faherty is a senior scientist and senior education manager at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Her research group entitled “Brown Dwarfs in New York City (BDNYC)” is at the forefront of low mass star, brown dwarf and giant exoplanet characterization studies. She is also co-founder of the successful citizen science project called “Backyard Worlds: Planet 9” which has involved over 150,000 volunteers in searches for previously missed cold components of the nearby solar neighborhood. Dr. Faherty has over 100 peer-reviewed papers in Astrophysical journals and has won numerous awards or grants from private and national foundations such as NASA and the NSF. She is also a regular science communicator having consulted on stories that ran in the NY Times, the Wall Street journal, NPR, and on national television. In her position at AMNH, Faherty strives to create more opportunities for underrepresented minorities to enter STEM through unique outreach endeavors.  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 share two stories about adventures in sex education.Part 1: Kate Willet is frustrated by the gaps of information in her abstinence-based sex ed class.Part 2: Sex ed instructor Charlie Blake fields an unexpected question from a student.Kate Willett is a comedian, actress, and writer whose raunchy feminist storytelling is both smart and relatable. Her 15 minute special premiered on Netflix’s “Comedy Lineup” in August 2018. She was recently a correspondent for the JIM JEFFERIES SHOW at Politicon 2017. She’s been featured on Viceland’s FLOPHOUSE and her appearance on Comedy Central’s THIS IS NOT HAPPENING was on Splitsider’s list of “2016’s Best Late Night Standup Sets.” In the past, she toured with Margaret Cho nationally and internationally and has featured with comedians like Kyle Kinane, Jen Kirkman, Ali Wong, Dana Gould, and Greg Behrendt. She has appeared in the Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Festival, Limestone Comedy Festival, High Plains, Big Sky Festival, Bridgetown Comedy Festival, San Francisco Sketchfest (5 years in a row), and most recently Laughing Skull. Earlier this year she was a “Comic to Watch” at the LA RIOT festival. 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.

This week we present two stories of people who struggled fitting in.Part 1: After switching majors to anthropology, Edith Gonzalez struggles to dress like an archaeologist.Part 2: At seven years old, Brianna A. Baker gets confronted with some uncomfortable realities of being the only Black girl in her class.Edith Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor of Archaeology at University of Buffalo, studying bio-prospecting and experimental agriculture in the 18th-century, English-speaking Caribbean. She, like many archaeologists, has a slight obsession with LotR, loves 70's disco-dancing, is committed to seeing LeVar Burton become the permanent host of Jeopardy!Brianna A. Baker (she/her/hers) is a second-year doctoral student in the Counseling Psychology Ph.D. program at Columbia University. Born and raised in North Carolina, she graduated from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with an undergraduate degree in Psychology and African American Community Health and Resilience. Currently, she is a Health Equity Strategist at Takeda Pharmaceuticals where she uses her expertise to promote community engagement and diversify clinical research. Her research interests include sociopolitical determinants of mental health, positive Black youth development, and ameliorating sociohistorical racial trauma through community-focused program development.  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.

This week, we present two stories about the path to becoming a scientist and what makes a scientist a scientist.Part 1: Andrea Jones-Rooy quits her job as a scientist in order to become a scientist.Part 2: While studying flying foxes in Indonesia, Susan Tsang gets caught in a rainstorm that changes her relationship to field work.Andrea Jones-Rooy is a scientist, comedian, and circus performer. She's a professor of data science at NYU, where she also directs their undergraduate program in data science. When she's not doing that, she's regaling audiences around NYC, the world, and the Internet with her Opinions in the form of standup comedy. When she's not doing either of those things, she's hanging from some kind of aerial apparatus (usually, but not exclusively, a trapeze) and/or holding something that is on fire. When she's not doing ANY of those things, she's either hosting her podcast Majoring in Everything, losing to her mother on Words with Friends, or eating Dr. Cow's raw vegan nut cheese.Dr. Susan Tsang works as a private consultant through her company Biodiversitas Global LLC, and continues to conduct research through her Research Associate affiliations with the American Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of the Philippines. She provides subject matter expertise on and creates programs and activities to address illegal wildlife trade, disease ecology, and other global sustainable development challenges. As a researcher, her primary interest is in the evolution and biogeography of Southeast Asian flying foxes, the world's largest bats, which has led her to working with some of the most threatened yet poorly known bat species in the world. Along with her Southeast Asian colleagues, she has carried out conservation work both at the community and transnational levels, with some of her ongoing projects in Indonesia focused on local empowerment for reducing bat hunting. She also serves on the steering committee of the Southeast Asian Bat Conservation Research Unit and the Global Union of Bat Diversity Networks to address larger capacity building and assessment/policy needs and has been appointed as a member of the IUCN Bat Specialist Group and the Global Bat Taxonomy Working Group. 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.