The Story Collider

This week, we present two stories about young scientists setting off on their own. Part 1: As an undergrad, Frank Stabile lands an exciting summer research position in D.C., but soon he starts to notice something’s not right. Part 2: As a teenager, Deena Walker dreams of being a scientist, but her controlling boyfriend, and her own attitude toward her gender, get in the way. Frank A. Stabile is an evolutionary biologist in training at Yale University. He is currently a PhD student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, where he studies the evolution of feathers. In particular, he wants to understand how birds evolved to develop feathers and scales at the same time. Before Yale, Frank earned an undergraduate degree in biology at The College of New Jersey, where he spent several years in the woods catching birds to study feather replacement. He has several other interests that probably take up too much of his time, like history, politics, literature, and birding. Deena Walker is a postdoctoral fellow at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine where she studies the molecular mechanisms of addiction and depression. She recently moved to New York after finishing her PhD at The University of Texas at Austin in December 2012. When she's not in lab she enjoys practicing yoga and playing fetch with her dog in Central Park. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, we bring you two stories from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, one from a native Louisianian scientist and the other from a fourth-generation Louisiana fisherman.  Part 1: Louisianan scientist Estelle Robichaux struggles to deal with the massive oil spill affecting her state while also balancing personal problems. Part 2: When Lousiana fisherman Robert Campo receives news of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, he knows his life is about to change. Estelle Robichaux, a native Louisianian, is a senior restoration project analyst at Environmental Defense Fund. A broadly-trained scientist with a passion for wetlands conservation and restoration, Estelle has a background in natural and social sciences as well as extensive experience in science education. Her field and research background spans wetlands, marine environments and wildlife, from Costa Rica to South Africa to South Caicos. Estelle advocates for the implementation of science-based restoration projects and leads project-related efforts for Restore the Mississippi River Delta. Estelle also works on science communication and tracking the development of scientific and research programs in the wake of the Gulf oil disaster. Robert Campo is the owner of Campo's Marina located in Shell Beach, Louisiana.  He's a fourth generation commercial fisherman and the great-grandson of the late Celestino Campo, the founder of Campo's Marina started in 1903.  He's the grandson of the late Frank Blackie Campo (a true legend) and the son of Frank J. Campo Jr.  Campo's Marina is the oldest family-owned business in St.Bernard parish and it's one of the top ten oldest family owned businesses that still exists today in Louisiana.  He owns and operates his oyster business with two oyster boats and a farm of nearly 1500 acres of oyster grounds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, we present stories of science and fatherhood. Part 1: As a teenager, comedian Gastor Almonte seeks answers about some of the scientific terms he hears around school. Part 2: Medical student Usman Hameedi struggles to live up to his father’s expectations while also pursuing his art. Gastor Almonte is a storyteller and stand up comedian based out of Brooklyn, NY. Gastor will be appearing on season 3 of "This Is Not Happening" on Comedy Central. He is the founder and host of Stoops2Stages, a weekly interview series featuring many talented independent artist from the worlds of music and comedy. He performs throughout the east coast, and has been a regular guest at QED Astoria, UCB and the NY Times featured Liar Show. GastorAlmonte.com Usman Hameedi received his MS in Biomedical Sciences from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His research focused on cancer biology, specifically on how cells determine their fate and sometimes write their own destinies. He is also a poet with experience performing and coaching at both collegiate and national poetry slams.  Usman was highlighted on the Huffington Post and Upworthy, was featured at multiple venues, and was invited to speak at the Harvard Kennedy School and The White House. As an aspiring physician, he hopes to dovetail his scientific and artistic passions in a career focused on illuminating the rich narratives in health care. Despite some impressive credentials, he still can’t drive a car or ride a bike. Feel free to make fun of him about this. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, we present two stories about working together, whether it's to accomplish a scientific mission or save a life. Part 1: Yael Fitzpatrick and her theater technician friends attempt to save a sea turtle. Part 2: As the only black woman on a two-month voyage, oceanographer Dawn Wright tries to find her place aboard a scientific drill vessel. Yael Fitzpatrick is an art director, publications designer, sometimes writer, and science communicator. She spent the first part of her life concentrating on math and the sciences, and then took an unexpected detour into the arts. She has since managed to come somewhat full circle. Currently she is the Manager of Design and Branding for the American Geophysical Union, and previously was Art Director for the Science family of journals. She has almost accepted the fact that she will never be a backup singer or dancer. Follow her at @GazelleInDminor. Dawn Wright is chief scientist of the Environmental Systems Research Institute (aka Esri), a world-leading geographic information system (GIS) software, research and development company, as well as a professor of geography and oceanography at Oregon State University. Among her research specialties are seafloor mapping and tectonics, ocean exploration and conservation, environmental informatics, and ethics in information technology. Dawn is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Geological Society of America and of Stanford University's Aldo Leopold Leadership Program, as well as an American Geophysical Union Leptoukh Awardee and board member of COMPASS Science Communication, Inc. She is also currently into road cycling, apricot green tea gummy bears, 18th-century pirates, her dog Sally, and SpongeBob Squarepants. Follow her on Twitter @deepseadawn Dawn Wright's story was produced as part of a partnership with Springer Storytellers. Find out more at beforetheabstract.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, we present two stories of learning experiences connected to early childhood, from an expert in maternal and infant health discovering the reality behind her research to a first-grader striving to be one of the "smart kids." Part 1: Psychologist Amy Brown researches maternal and infant health, but when she has a child of her own, she’s confronted with the reality behind the research. Part 2: As a first-grader, Cassie Soliday finds her coveted spot in the gifted class is at risk. Dr. Amy Brown is an Associate Professor in Child Public Health at Swansea University where she researches experiences of becoming a mother, particularly around how babies are fed. She has published widely in how social, cultural and psychological barriers can damage breastfeeding and subsequently maternal wellbeing. Amy is fascinated by how culture defines motherhood, through pressurising mothers to have it all and enjoy ‘every precious moment’, whilst simultaneously devaluing their role. She also has three children of her own and switches between hearing women’s tales about becoming a mother and experiencing it first hand herself. Sometimes life feels like one long never ending ethnographic research project but offers her insight into these complex issues. Cassie Soliday is The Story Collider's LA-based producer. In addition to being a producer, she is a writer, comic artist, and the love child of a poet and a parrot head.  She's an advocate for women in the arts and produces two podcasts, 'Ink and Paint Girls' and 'Jammiest Bits of Jam'. Afflicted with wanderlust and the desire to run away with the cat circus, she has three great and terrible ideas that could get her fired so she could do so.  She lives and works in California making cartoons. She is @cassiesoli and cassie@storycollider.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, we present two stories of how memory impacts our lives, our families, and the way we see ourselves. Part 1: When Jirard Khalil is twelve years old, his mother suddenly starts to change. Part 2: A teacher’s social experiment lands fifth-grade Ben Lillie in an ethical dilemma. Jirard Khalil is a YouTuber, actor, writer, and performer. You can find him online at @JKCompletesIt on Twitter, and That One Video Gamer on YouTube. Ben Lillie, co-founder of The Story Collider, is a high-energy particle physicist who left the ivory tower for the wilds of New York's theater district. His current project is Caveat, an event space for entertaining talks and conversations opening September 5th on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He is also is a Moth StorySLAM champion, and was a writer and contributing editor for TED.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Part 1: Late one night in the ER, doctor Bess Stillman treats a patient with an interesting dilemma. Part 2: As a teenager, science writer Brendan Bane becomes obsessed with collecting poisonous pets. Bess Stillman is an emergency physician and writer living in NYC. She has appeared on The Moth Radio Hour. Find her at http://www.bessstillman.com. Brendan Bane is a freelance science communicator and recent graduate of the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program. His interest in biology blossomed when he first laid his eyes upon a giant, hairy tarantula. He later followed his passion to the cloud forests of Costa Rica, where he studied how tarantulas communicate their romantic intentions. (Basically, they twerk). Though he loved tromping through forests and spying on spiders in their roadside burrows, his greatest thrill did not come from the field or laboratory. Instead, he was happiest onstage, bringing audiences face to fang with spiders through visual storytelling. Now, through science reporting, he immerses readers in the lives of all flora and fauna, whether wondrous or weird. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this week's episode, we present two stories of science and motherhood, just in time for Mother's Day. Part 1: Developmental biologist Pam Feliciano tries to understand her autistic son. Part 2: Science writer Katharine Gammon thinks she’s gone into labor, but her doctor says she hasn’t. As Scientific Director of SPARKforAutism.org, Pamela Feliciano leads the effort to build the largest autism research cohort in the United States, to speed up research and improve lives. SPARK aims to build a partnership between 50,000 individuals with autism and their families and autism researchers. Feliciano has also been a senior scientist at SFARI, the largest private funder of autism research in the United States, since 2013. At SFARI, she has been involved in  efforts to develop objective and reliable outcome measures for autism clinical trials. Previously, Feliciano was a senior editor at Nature Genetics, where she was responsible for managing the peer review process of research publications in all areas of genetics. While at Nature Genetics, Feliciano was engaged with the scientific community, attending conferences and giving talks and workshops on editorial decision-making at academic institutes worldwide. Katharine Gammon is an award-winning freelance science writer based in Santa Monica, California. She has written about a wide range of topics, from childhood memory to sexually-transmitted diseases in koalas to designing cities on Mars for publications like Wired, Popular Science, Newsweek and Scientific American. Katharine grew up in Seattle as the child of two scientists, attended Princeton University and received a master’s degree from MIT. She taught English in the Peace Corps in Bulgaria before discovering science writing. With two little boys under age 4, she has endless fodder for her blog Kinderlab about child development, and in her miniscule free time she rides horses and wants to spend more time under sail. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Part 1: When Sarah Demers gets a work-study job working on a particle detector, she has no idea what she's in for. Part 2: After being discouraged from pursuing science, Katy Rodriguez Wimberly searches for her place in the military and as an actor. Sarah Demers is the Horace D. Taft Associate Professor of Physics at Yale University.  She is a particle physicist and a member of the ATLAS and Mu2e Collaborations, studying fundamental particles and the forces with which they interact. Sarah graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in physics in 1999.  She received her Ph.D. from the University of Rochester as a member of the CDF Collaboration in 2005. She was a postdoc with Stanford's Linear Accelerator Center, based at CERN as a member of the ATLAS experiment before beginning her faculty position at Yale in 2009.  She has been recognized for her research with an Early Career Award from the Department of Energy and has won awards for teaching and service at Yale. When she isn't doing physics she can be found spending time with her husband and two kids exploring in the woods behind their house, baking, reading and, recently, shoveling snow. M. Katy Rodriguez Wimberly is a first year graduate student at University of California, Irvine (UCI) in their Physics Department. She is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and the first Junior Board Fellow of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. She earned her Bachelor’s of Science degree, with a math minor, from California State University, Long Beach in May 2015. At UCI she is working with Dr. Michael Cooper on galaxy evolution research, which studies the coming together of satellite galaxies onto massive clusters of galaxies by comparing large cosmological simulations to observational data. Katy’s research interests lie in galaxy evolution and observational cosmology. Additionally, she loves and conducts astronomy outreach with underrepresented minorities, focusing primarily on K-12 Special Needs students (including children on the Autism Spectrum and those with Down’s Syndrome). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Part 1: Bryony Tilsley and her husband are planning a local astronomy event when their family undergoes a big change. Part 2: Eclipse chaser David Baron discovers the real magic behind a total solar eclipse. Bryony Tilsley, along with her husband Rob, is a founder of Dartmoor Skies, a U.K. charity that shares the beauty of astronomy with anyone who wants to experience it. She studied writing and choreography at Dartington College of Arts so she loves to bring art and science together. She finds stargazing therapeutic and would like to build an observatory on Dartmoor. She has lots of books, two cats and a dog. David Baron is a science journalist, broadcaster, and the author of American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World. An avid eclipse chaser, David has witnessed five total solar eclipses in such disparate locales as Indonesia, Australia, and the Faroe Islands. He has spent most of his career in public radio, as science correspondent for NPR, science reporter for Boston’s WBUR, and science editor for PRI’s The World. You can find him online at www.american-eclipse.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Part 1: Environmental engineer Siddhartha Roy is baffled when the state of Michigan insists the water in Flint is safe to drink despite his scientific evidence. Part 2: Sociologist Ada Cheng learns a surprising lesson about resistance while studying human rights violations in Hong Kong. Siddhartha Roy is an Environmental Engineer and PhD candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. He works with Dr. Marc Edwards researching corrosion failures in potable water infrastructure. Sid also serves as the student leader and communications director for the Virginia Tech “Flint Water Study” research team that helped uncover the Flint Water Crisis. Ada Cheng is a professor-turned storyteller, improviser, and stand-up comic. She was a tenured professor in sociology at DePaul University for 15 years. She resigned from her position to pursue theater and performance full time in 2016. She is a one-time Moth storyslam winner, a presenter at the National Storytelling Conference, and a runner-up at Chicago’s Bughouse Square Debates. She has been featured at storytelling shows in Chicago and Atlanta. She has also told stories at The Moth in Chicago, New York, Denver, and Detroit. Her book, Standing Up: From Renegade Professor to Middle-Aged Comic, published in December 2016 by Difference Press, aims at encouraging people, particularly mid-lifers, to embrace fear about uncertainty and to pursue their passion and dream. Her motto: Make your life the best story you tell. Check out her website www.renegadeadacheng.com for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Part 1: Geneticist Sebastian Alvarado reconnects with his love of comic books by attempting to shrink ants. Part 2: Inspired by his favorite novel, third-grade Danny Artese attempts to turn himself into a plant. Sebastian Gaston Alvarado went into science so he could make the X-men. During his Ph.D., he studied the molecular switches that regulate gene function. As a result, his work has shed light on chronic pain, size variation in ants, and metabolism in hibernating squirrels. He is also co-founder of Thwacke, a science consulting firm for the entertainment sector. As a consultant, he has rationalized the science behind Captain America's Super Soldier Serum and the reversible nature of the Incredible Hulk's transformations . Sebastian is currently an A.P. Giannini Fellow at Stanford University where he studies how social environment can shape the way genes change behavior in a fish. Danny Artese is a NY-based storyteller who has won multiple Moth StorySLAMs and performed at Q.E.D., UCB, The Magnet Theater, and Ripley's Believe It Or Not! While not a scientist by trade, one of the proudest moments of Danny's life was when his high school Biology teacher (Hi Mrs. Beamer!) told his 15-year-old self that he'd be a great gynecologist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Part 1: Blind athlete Simon Wheatcroft finds a way to run marathons by himself. Part 2: Worried she won't ever be able to commit to one field of study, Dale Markowitz decides to go all in on a neuroscience project. Simon Wheatcroft’s utilization of technology has enabled him to achieve incredible goals. From learning to train solo outdoors as a blind runner, to crossing deserts alone. It is his ability to adapt technology and engage those who create it, to redefine possibilities. His vast experience in the world of technology and psychology give him a fantastic base for his talks on diversity, inclusion and technology. Simon continues to push boundaries and motivate others to: reimagine what is possible through changes in thought processes; and believe that anything is possible. Dale Markowitz is an engineer and data scientist at OkCupid, where she spends endless hours contemplating the mechanics of romance and attraction. She graduated from Princeton University, where she bounced from physics to math to neuroscience before landing on a major in Computer Science. When she's not bugging people for stories about their online love lives, she can be found pondering math riddles or blogging on Medium @unquarked. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Part 1: Neuroscientist Qi Lin struggles to connect with friends and colleagues when she can’t escape her scientific mindset. Part 2: When defense attorney Michael Perlin interviews individuals who were not competent to stand trial, he makes a startling discovery. Hailing from Guangzhou (with the best dim sum!), China, Qi Lin is currently working in Dr. Daniela Schiller's lab as a lab manager and investigate the flexibility of emotional memory and the neural basis of social cognition. Qi graduated from New York University with a bachelor degree in psychology in 2015 December. She has a picture of her brain (sagittal) attached on her refrigerator door. Michael Perlin is a Professor of Law Emeritus at New York Law School (NYLS), founding director of NYLS’s Online Mental Disability Law Program, and founding director of NYLS’s International Mental Disability Law Reform Project in its Justice Action Center. He is also the co-founder of Mental Disability Law and Policy Associates. His hobbies include fishing, birding, playing the clarinet, opera, and the music of Bob Dylan. Michael Perlin's story was produced as part of a partnership with Springer Storytellers. Find out more at www.beforetheabstract.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Part 1: On an expedition to Antarctica, journalist Alok Jha ends up trapped on the ice for days. Part 2: Neuroscientist Rita Tavares attempts to analyze her romantic problems with science. Alok Jha is a journalist, author and broadcaster, focusing on stories about science. He is the science correspondent at ITV News. Before that, he spent a decade at the Guardian and made programmes for the BBC. You can find him on Twitter and Facebook. Rita Tavares is a pirate born in the country of Portugal. She crossed the Atlantic ocean to make it to America, where she anchored her ship in New York City after a period in the Pacific waters off of San Francisco. She has a day cover working as a neuroscientist and a poet. In both these activities she keeps a facade of solving the mysteries of the mind scientifically and artfully. In her science job, she discovered that the human brain "sees" our social environment in ways similar to how it encodes physical space. She is now investigating how these processes go awry in patients with psychiatric disorders. In her poetry, she uses her pirate persona to write about her travels and her love of lunatics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices