The Story Collider

Elna Baker's grade school reputation faces it's greatest threat: her engineer father's enthusiasm for homework. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more here: http://storycollider.org/ Elna Baker is a writer and comedic storyteller. She's appeared on The Moth Radio Hour, This American Life, BBC Radio 4, All Things Considered, WTF with Marc Maron, Studio 360, The Sound of Young America, The Joy Behar Show and at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. She's written for ELLE, Glamour, Men's Journal, O Magazine, More Magazine, Five Dials Literary Journal and xoJane.com. Her memoir The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance was published by Penguin, earning four stars in People Magazine and the 2010 AML award for best humor writing. She's also the co-host and co-creator of The Talent Show, recently named best variety show by New York Magazine. Her upcoming novel You Are My Revenge, co-written with Kevin Townley, will be published by Scholastic in 2014. 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.

A physicist decides that the best way to make progress on his robotics project is to go to Namibia to study termites. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more here: http://storycollider.org/ Justin Werfel is a research scientist at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. He received his PhD at MIT and did postdoctoral work at Harvard and the New England Complex Systems Institute. He works on topics including swarm robotics, evolutionary theory, DNA self-assembly, and cancer modeling, and recently published an invited book chapter about the ecology of Fraggle Rock. He's a two-time MassMouth Big Mouth Off finalist and Audience Choice winner. 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.

Science writer Seth Mnookin set out to write a book on whether vaccines were dangerous, but discovered the issue was more complex than he'd thought. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more here: http://storycollider.org/ Seth Mnookin teaches in MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing. His most recent book, The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy, was one of The Wall Street Journal's Top Five Health and Medicine books for 2011 and is a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is also the author of the 2006 New York Times-bestseller Feeding the Monster and 2004's Hard News, which was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. He's a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and blogs at the Public Library of Science. 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.

As grad school for neuroscience wears on, Michael Nitabach feels the pull of law school, and goes. But he had another surprise coming. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more here: storycollider.org/ Mike Nitabach is Associate Professor of Cellular & Molecular Physiology and of Genetics at Yale School of Medicine, where he directs a research program aimed at understanding how neural circuits process information and control behavior. He received his PhD at Columbia University and post-doctoral training at NYU. He also made a detour between graduate school and post-doctoral training to law school at NYU, and practiced law for five years at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, where he focused on biotech and pharmaceutical patent prosecution and litigation. 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.

Esther Perel's career gets an unexpected boost from the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more here: http://storycollider.org/ Or subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-story-collider/id396452781?mt=2 Psychologist Esther Perel is recognized as one of the world's most original and insightful voices on couples and sexuality across cultures. Fluent in nine languages, the Belgian native is a celebrated speaker sought around the globe for her expertise in emotional and erotic intelligence, work-life balance, cross-cultural relations, conflict resolution and identity of modern marriage and family. Her best-selling and award-winning book, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic, has been translated into 24 languages. 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.

As a kid, Mara Wilson is decidedly uninterested in science, but as she grows up she starts to look for answers in new places. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more here: http://storycollider.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.

When Meehan Crist was a child, her mother hit her head. It was only as an adult that she discovered that her mother was covering up something far more serious: something called rather ironically a "mild traumatic brain injury." Find more from The Story Collider here: http://storycollider.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.

Neuroscientist Daniela Schiller studies the emotional components of memory. In her previous story her research helped her begin to understand her father, a holocaust survivor. But that story led to a whole new chapter in their relationship, and her understanding of memories. Hear Daniela's first story here: http://storycollider.org/podcast/2011-10-09 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.

Moran Cerf's life is spun around when a computer glitch declares him dead -- but that's nothing compared to what happens when a real funeral comes around. 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.

When he begins showing strange symptoms on a jog though the mountains, science writer Andrew Revkin discovers just how close to death he is. 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.