The Story Collider

This week, we present two stories about science intersecting with love -- in both fortunate and unfortunate ways. Part 1: Nothing can come between Lindzi Wessel and her new boyfriend, David -- except maybe herpes. Part 2: Marine biologist Skylar Bayer and first mate Thom Young find love on a boat. Lindzi Wessel is a science and health journalist who recently graduated from the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program. Before turning her sights on journalism, she studied the mind, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in psychology and master’s in neuroscience from UC Davis. She has covered topics ranging from wildfire management to Zika transmission for outlets including The San Jose Mercury News, Alzforum, and STAT. For the moment, she resides in DC where she is writing for Science. Lindzi is a traveler who enjoys spending time outdoors and in the presence of dogs, whenever possible. Thom and Skylar Young-Bayer live in Maine with their two adorable dogs, Millie and Misha. Thom Young-Bayer is a former marine biologist, former sailor and current farmer and produce specialist. Skylar Young-Bayer is a Ph.D. in marine biology. They are both veteran storytellers at The Story Collider and are regulars at the storytelling group, The Corner, in Lewiston, Maine. Together they co-host the sometimes monthly podcast, Strictlyfishwrap Science Radio Hour. Skylar and Thom believe that a couple that creates interpretive dance videos about scallop sex together, stays together.  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 bring you two stories of scientists experiencing radical change, whether at home or in 1980s Berlin. Part 1: Nadia Singh decides she doesn’t want children, believing it will detract from her scientific career, but then her husband issues an ultimatum. Part 2: Kinari Webb’s philosophy as a scientist is shaped by her experience of the fall of the Berlin Wall as a teenager. Nadia Singh is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University and an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Oregon. She earned her BA in Biology from Harvard University, her PhD in Biological Sciences at Stanford University, and did a postdoc at Cornell University. Her research focuses on the genetics of evolution, and she relies primarily on fruit flies as a model system. Outside of work, she enjoys running (ok, jogging), cooking (ok, eating), drinking IPAs (no caveat here, it’s a true story), and playing board games with her two daughters (but not Monopoly because that game is awful and she doesn’t want to raise a pair of mercenary capitalists). Kinari Webb first developed the vision for Health In Harmony when studying orangutans in 1993 at Gunung Palung National Park in Indonesia. There she encountered not only a beautiful and threatened natural environment but also the dire health needs of the people surrounding the National Park. After this experience, Kinari decided to become a physician and return to Indonesia to work together with local communities both to improve their health and to preserve the natural environment. She graduated from Yale University School of Medicine with honors and then completed her residency in Family Medicine at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center in Martinez, California. Kinari founded Health In Harmony in 2005 to support the combined human and environmental work that she planned in Indonesia. After a year of traveling around Indonesia looking for the best site for this program (unmet health care needs, forest that could still be saved and a responsive government), Kinari helped co-found the Alam Sehat Lestari (ASRI, which means “harmoniously balanced”) program in West Kalimantan with Hotlin Ompusunggu and Antonia Gorog. She is also an Ashoka Social Entrepreneur and Rainier Amhold Fellow. Kinari currently splits her time between Indonesia and the US. 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 exploring new territory, from communicating with chimpanzees to swimming in the Red Sea. Part 1: While working as a schoolteacher, Jeff Braden gets a phone call out of the blue from a renowned chimpanzee expert. Part 2: Biologist Latasha Wright is forced to confront her fear of the ocean when she visits the coral reef she's been studying. Episode transcript: http://www.storycollider.org/2017/8/25/exploration-stories-about-facing-new-challenges Jeff Braden is dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and professor of Psychology at NC State University. Prior to becoming dean, he was a professor and director of school psychology programs at NC State, University of Wisconsin—Madison, San Jose State University and the University of Florida. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, a member of the National Association of School Psychologists, and an elected member of the Society for the Study of School Psychology. He has presented more than 300 papers at state, national, and international meetings and published more than 175 articles, books, book chapters, and other products on assessment, school psychology, intelligence, and deafness. He recently completed a grant to evaluate adaptive courseware from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Latasha Wright received her Ph.D. from NYU Langone Medical Center in Cell and Molecular Biology. After her studies, she went on to continue her scientific training at Johns Hopkins University and Weill Cornell Medical Center. She has co­authored numerous publications and presented her work at international and national conferences. In 2011, she joined the crew of the BioBus, a mobile science lab dedicated to bringing hands­on science and inspiration to students from all socioeconomic backgrounds. The BioBus creates a setting that fosters innovation and creativity. Students are encouraged to ask questions, formulate hypotheses, and design experiments. Through the BioBus, Latasha was able to share her love of science with a new generation of potential scientists. Everyday that she spends teaching students about science in this transformative environment helps her remember that science is fun. She loves sharing the journey of discovery with students of all ages. In 2014, the BioBus team launched an immersive, un­intimidating laboratory space called the BioBase, a community laboratory model. At the BioBase students are encouraged to explore their scientific potential through in­-depth programming and hands­-on experimentation. Latasha has lead the efforts in establishing this community laboratory model, and hopes to build on its success in other communities. The efforts of the BioBus’ team to promote science education to all communities in New York City has been recognized by numerous news outlets, including the WNYC science radio program Hypothesis. Additionally, Latasha has been featured as NY1’s New Yorker of the Week. 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 bring you two stories of scientists reaching points of crisis. Part 1: Rashawn Ray’s trajectory as a sociologist is forever changed by the murder of Philando Castile. Part 2: Ecologist Marcelo Ardón Sayao turns to both science and religion when his wife is diagnosed with cancer. Episode transcript: http://www.storycollider.org/2017/8/17/boiling-point-stories-about-reaching-points-of-crisis _______________________________ Rashawn Ray is Associate Professor of Sociology, the Edward McK. Johnson, Jr. Endowed Faculty Fellow, and Co-Director of the Critical Race Initiative at the University of Maryland, College Park. Formerly, Ray was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Ray’s research addresses the mechanisms that manufacture and maintain racial and social inequality. His work also speaks to ways that inequality may be attenuated through racial uplift activism and social policy. Ray has published over 40 books, articles, book chapters, and op-eds. Currently, Ray is co-investigator of a study examining implicit bias, body-worn cameras, and police-citizen interactions with 1800 police officers with the Prince George’s County Police Department. Marcelo Ardón Sayao is really into swamps. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at NCSU. He obtained his BA in Biology and Environmental Science from Gettysburg College, his PhD from the University of Georgia, and did a postdoc at Duke University. His research focuses on how wetlands and streams transport and transform water and nutrients. He spends most of his time outside work with his wife and two kids. They enjoy dancing, building sandcastles, and spending time outside, though he hasn’t fully convinced his kids of the beauty of swamps. 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 encounters with wild animals, from a seal named Crystal in Antarctica to a flatulent rhino in South Africa. Part 1: Science writer Ed Yong is confronted by a flatulent rhino while on safari. Part 2: In Antarctica, scientist Gifford Wong attempts to save a seal that has gone into “dive mode.” Episode transcript at http://www.storycollider.org/2017/8/11/zoology-stories-about-wild-animals _______________________________ Ed Yong is a science journalist who reports for The Atlantic, and is based in Washington DC. His work appears several times a week on The Atlantic's website, and has also featured in National Geographic, the New Yorker, Wired, Nature, New Scientist, Scientific American, and many more. He has won a variety of awards, including the Michael E. DeBakey Journalism Award for biomedical reporting in 2016, the Byron H. Waksman Award for Excellence in the Public Communication of Life Sciences in 2016, and the National Academies Keck Science Communication Award in 2010 for his old blog Not Exactly Rocket Science. He regularly does talks and radio interviews; his TED talk on mind-controlling parasites has been watched by over 1.5 million people. I CONTAIN MULTITUDES, his first book, looks at the amazing partnerships between animals and microbes. Published in 2016, it became a New York Times bestseller, and was listed in best-of-2016 lists by the NYT, NPR, the Economist, the Guardian, and several others. Bill Gates called it "science journalism at its finest", and Jeopardy! turned it into a clue.   Gifford Wong is an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellow working at the Department of State. He previously served in the Senate as the American Geosciences Institute Congressional Geoscience Fellow. He received his Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from Dartmouth College, his Honours in Antarctic Studies from the University of Tasmania at Hobart, and his Bachelor’s degree in Asian American Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. He has done fieldwork in Greenland and Antarctica, co-developed and co-instructed a graduate-level science communication course at Dartmouth, and thinks penguins and unicorns are cool. Every now and again he is on Twitter as @giffordwong. 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 medical crises, from New York in the 1980s to the present-day opioid epidemic.Part 1: During his residency training, pediatrician Ken Haller comes across a disturbing X-ray.Part 2: Neuroscientist Maureen Boyle's relationship with her sister, who struggles with drug addiction, becomes even more complicated when she begins working on drug policy.Episode transcript at http://www.storycollider.org/2017/8/4/epidemic-stories-of-medical-crises_______________________________Ken Haller is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine and Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital. He is President of the Missouri Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and serves on the boards of the Missouri Foundation for Health and the Gateway Media Literacy Project. He has also served as President of the St. Louis Pediatric Society; PROMO, Missouri’s statewide LGBT civil rights organization’ and GLMA, the national organization of LGBT health care professionals. He is a frequent spokesperson in local and national media on the health care needs of children and adolescents. Ken is also an accomplished actor, produced playwright, and acclaimed cabaret performer. In 2015 he was named Best St. Louis Cabaret Performer by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and he has taken his one-person shows to New York, Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco. His special interests include cultural competency, health literacy, the relationship of medicine to the arts, the effects of media on children, and the special health needs of LGBT youth. His personal mission is Healing. Ken is also a member of The Story Collider's board.Maureen Boyle is the Chief of the Science Policy Branch at the National Institute on Drug Abuse or NIDA. She is a neuroscientist who has spent the last 7 years working on behavioral healthcare reform and drug policy. Prior to joining NIDA she was a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research. Before getting involved in policy she studied the biological basis of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. When she wants to get out of her brain she runs, does yoga, and tries to apply Pavlov's lessons to her bulldog puppy.  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 today's episode, we bring you two stories about attraction, from the neuroscience of prairie voles to a physics love story. Part 1: Neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki is surprised when an acting exercise challenges her beliefs about love and attaction. Part 2: Two physicists, Neer Asherie and Deborah Berebichez, find love after thirteen years. Wendy Suzuki, Ph.D. is a Professor of Neural Science and psychology at New York University.  She received her undergraduate degree from U.C. Berkeley and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from U.C. San Diego.  She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health before starting her faculty position in the Center for Neural Science at New York University in 1998.  Wendy is a recipient of numerous grants and awards for her research including the Lindsley Prize from the Society for Neuroscience, the prestigious Troland Research award from the National Academy of Sciences and NYU’s Golden Dozen Teaching award. Her research has focused on understanding the patterns of brain activity underlying long-term memory and understanding how aerobic exercise affects mood, learning, memory and cognitive abilities. Her first book “Healthy Brain Happy Life” came out in paperback in March of 2016 and is an international bestseller.  Neer Asherie is a professor of physics and biology at Yeshiva University. He received a B.A. and M.A. in natural sciences (physical) from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. He was awarded grants from the National Science Foundation to support his research on the self-assembly of globular proteins. His articles have appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Physical Review Letters, and Crystal Growth and Design. In addition to his scientific publications, Neer has authored a novel and several short plays. You can find his previous Story Collider story here. Deborah Berebichez is the Chief Data Scientist at Metis, a Ph.D. physicist and a Discovery Channel TV host. She is the first Mexican woman to graduate with a physics Ph.D. from Stanford University. Dr. Berebichez is the co-host of Discovery Channel’s Outrageous Acts of Science TV show (2012 – present) where she uses her physics background to explain the science behind extraordinary engineering feats. She also appears as an expert on the Travel Chanel, NOVA, CNN, FOX, MSNBC and numerous international media outlets. Deborah’s passion is to empower young people to learn science and to improve the state of STEM education in the world and her work in science outreach has been widely recognized. She is a John C. Whitehead Fellow at the Foreign Policy Association and a recipient of the Top Latina Tech Blogger award by the Association of Latinos in Social Media LATISM. Currently at Metis she leads the creation and growth of exceptional data science training opportunities. You can find Deborah's previous Story Collider story here. 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 death in science, from a university lab to a crime lab. Part 1: To make ends meet as a student, Cris Gray takes a high-paying job in a lab… and finds out why it’s so high-paying. Part 2: Chemist Raychelle Burks learns how to cope with death while working in a crime lab. Cris Gray is just a guy who can get bored with things very quickly and loves a good story. You can see him doing stuff and saying things in front of an audience or to just one person in intimate conversation. He's been sighted taking long walks around the city. He's also a really good sleeper. After a few years working in a crime lab, Raychelle Burks returned to academia, teaching, and forensic science research. An analytical chemist, Dr. Burks enjoys the challenge of developing detection methods for a wide-variety of analytes including regulated drugs and explosives. Her current research efforts are focused on the design, fabrication, and analysis of colorimetry sensors that are field portable. To maximize portability, Dr. Burks works on utilizing smart phones as scientific analytical devices. A chemistry enthusiast, Dr. Burks hopes to ignite her students' appreciation of chemistry through innovative projects, multi-media education tools, and probably far too many pop culture references. She help create and organize SciPop Talks! a popular talk series blending science and pop culture. Dr. Burks is a popular science communicator, appearing on the Science Channel's Outrageous Acts of Science, ACS Reactions videos, Royal Society of Chemistry podcasts, and at genre conventions such as DragonCon and GeekGirlCon. 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.

Part 1:  Adam Andis was raised as a creationist, but grows up to become an evolutionary biologist. Part 2: In grade school, Angel Yau excels at science -- because her mom does all her work. Adam Andis is a PhD student at Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies where he uses population genetics and landscape ecology of vernal pool amphibians to understand ecological and evolutionary dynamics…or to put in more succinctly, he plays with frogs in the woods. In addition to frog-science, Andis also loves designated Wilderness. He was a founding board member of the National Wilderness Stewardship Alliance and spends summers guiding wilderness expeditions in Alaska. He loves taking photos, too. You can check them out on Instagram @azandis Angel Yau is a storyteller, sketch comedian and filmmaker from Queens, New York. She began her comedy career (unintentionally) writing her high school student government speech. She's been featured on the Risk! and Mortified podcasts.  Her performances were apart of the Seattle Sketchfest, New York Sketchfest, North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival, Women in Comedy festival and more! Currently, she has a monthly show called, "VHS Present" where storytellers bring their home videos and childhood creations back to life.  She is working on an autobiographical, stop- motion animation series. She is also part of AzN PoP!, the first all Asian- American female sketch group to have a run at UCB Theater in NY. She finds humor in solitude, rejection and alienation. 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 bring you two stories of difficult professional relationships in science, whether in the field or in the lab. Part 1: As a young biology student, Margot Wohl is excited to spend a summer in the field, but her male colleague expects her to do all the work. Part 2: Physics major Stephanie Loeb travels to Singapore to study nanoparticles, but is intimidated by her enigmatic project leader. Margot Wohl hails from Bel Air, Maryland but found her spirit city is Philadelphia when she moved their to study biology at the University of Pennsylvania. Now she is pursuing a PhD in neuroscience at UC San Diego where she confirms daily that the sun sets in the West and then retreats to her science cave for the night. Her research centers on how brain cells and the molecules they exchange give rise to aggressive behaviors in fruit flies. She enjoys all experiences that make her feel as though she is not on the planet Earth. In her free time she can be found playing tennis, doting on her cat to which she has allergies and taking pictures of insects she finds [hashtag insectagrams]. Also, Margot produces a podcast called Salk Talk for which she weaves together character vignettes of up and coming scientists. Stephanie Loeb is a PhD candidate in Environmental Engineering at Yale University. She came to Yale with the support of a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Fellowship to study surface plasmon resonance and the photothermal properties of nanomaterials for solar water treatment. Prior to moving to the US, Stephanie completed an undergraduate degree in Physics and Nanoscience jointly with the University of Toronto and the National University of Singapore, as well as a Master's of Applied Science in Environmental Engineering at the University of Toronto. She is an avid story listener, and first-time story teller. 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.