The Story Collider

Erin Barker's attempt to save a college relationship leads her to a plant biology class where the professor brought an ax to class. Erin Barker is senior producer of The Story Collider and a host of its live show in New York. She is the first woman to win The Moth's GrandSLAM storytelling competition twice and has appeared in its Mainstage and shows in cities across the country, as well as on its Peabody Award-winning show on PRX, The Moth Radio Hour. One of her stories was included in The Moth's New York Times-bestselling book, The Moth: 50 True Stories. She considers herself a Gryffindor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Obehi Janice's family struggles to understand a death their doctors can't explain. Obehi Janice is a writer, actress, and comedian. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and has trained with Shakespeare & Company and ImprovBoston. Her essays include "To Sasha, Malia, and Bo," which appeared in Kinfolks: a journal of Black expression. She is a performer of stage and screen and can also be heard as a voice actress on radio, TV, and video games. Obehi was recently named "Boston's Best Actress" by The Improper Bostonian. Her one-woman show, FUFU & OREOS, will receive a production in February 2015 with Bridge Rep Theater of Boston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Neuroscientist Indre Viskontas and her friends turn to science to find the right way to date. Indre Viskontas is a neuroscientist and opera singer. She is also the host of Inquiring Minds, an in-depth exploration of the place where science, politics, and society collide. http://www.motherjones.com/inquiringminds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sports writer David Epstein tracks down some surprising health claims circulating in the football world. David Epstein is author of the recent New York Times bestseller The Sports Gene, an exploration of the genetic basis of athleticism. He is currently an investigative reporter at the non-profit ProPublica. Up until September, he was a senior writer at Sports Illustrated. He has been a crime reporter at the New York Daily News, and an education reporter at Inside Higher Ed. In his past life, David was a geology grad student. He has lived in the Sonoran Desert, on a ship in the Pacific Ocean, in the Arctic in Alaska, and -- like every other writer -- in Brooklyn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The joys and dangers of getting pregnant for Tara Clancy and her wife. Tara Clancy is a writer and performer. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review and The Rumpus. She is also a winner of The Moth GrandSlam storytelling competition and was recently featured on their podcast. Originally from Queens, Tara now lives in Manhattan with her wife and two sons. More at www.taraclancy.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Suze Kundu is forced to abandon dancing for materials science, until materials science comes to the rescue. Suze Kundu is a Teaching Fellow at Imperial College London, where she shares her love of Materials Science and Engineering with anyone that will stand still for long enough. In addition she presents many Outreach and Public Engagement workshops and demo lectures, and pops up on TV fairly regularly, getting excited about everything from aerogel to zirconia. She is also fresh off the stage from Irreverent Dance's annual Showcase, where she danced as a zombie scientist, a Time Lord and a girl obsessed with the glitz and glamour of Strictly Come Dancing - #typecasting? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lost after arriving at grad school, Bethany Brookshire is happy to finally find a perfect mentor. Bethany Brookshire has a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in Philosophy from The College of William and Mary, a Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She is the guest Editor of the Open Laboratory Anthology of Science Blogging, 2009, and the winner of the Society for Neuroscience Next Generation Award and the Three Quarks Daily Science Writing Award, among others. She is currently the Science Education Writer for Science News for Students. She blogs at Eureka!Lab and at Scicurious. You can follow her on Twitter as @scicurious. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sword swallower Justin Cameron gets an unexpected lesson in anatomy and medicine. Justin is a product manager and mobile app designer who works on search engines and secure email products. Before that, he was an itinerant technical writer, hacker, and, very briefly, a sideshow performer. He lives in Brooklyn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Bellos is surprised that people ask him what his favorite number is, so he decides to ask everyone what theirs is. Alex Bellos is the author of the popular science bestsellers The Grapes of Math and Here's Looking at Euclid. In a previous life he was the Guardian's South America correspondent, based in Rio, where he wrote Futebol: the Brazilian Way of Life, a book on Brazilian football. He also ghost-wrote Pele's autobiography. Alex blogs on maths for the Guardian and presents maths documentaries for BBC Radio 4. His YouTube clip on how to cut a cake has had more than 6.5 million views. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ed Yong is ecstatic to get an interview with his hero, Sir David Attenborough, but he's not prepared for a lesson in what having a science hero really means. Ed Yong is an award-winning science writer. His blog Not Exactly Rocket Science is hosted by National Geographic, and his work has also appeared in Wired, Nature, the BBC, New Scientist and more. His first book I CONTAIN MULTITUDES--about how microbes influence the lives of every animal, from humans to squid to wasps--will be published in 2016. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Annalee Newitz comes to terms with grief while exploring the remains of a mysterious ancient city. Annalee Newitz is the editor of io9, and author most recently of Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Against the odds, animal-loving kid Steve Zimmer attempts to rescue tadpoles in jeopardy. An aging yuppie from the midwest, Steve Zimmer was originally an academic economist and is currently a programmer, but not before working 5 years in an NYU immunology lab. Steve began attending the Moth in 2004 and telling stories in 2006. He is a past Grandslam winner. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Marine biologist Shayle Matsuda adapts to his new identity as a transgender man while on assignment in the Philippines. Shayle Matsuda researches sea slugs as an MSc candidate at the California Academy of Sciences and San Francisco State University. When not in the lab, he hosts the interactive science happy hour series “Science, Neat” in San Francisco. He uses watercolors and digital media to make science more accessible to wider audiences, and creates and facilitates unique research experiences for high school students underrepresented in STEM. Shayle’s science communication footprint includes the California Academy of Sciences, Nerd Nite SF, Ignite at AGU, and regional winner of NASA/Nat Geographic’s FameLab competition Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alone in the African rainforest and on the brink of death, entomologist Brian Fisher finds help from an unexpected source. Dr. Brian Fisher is a modern day explorer who has devoted his life to the study and conservation of ants and biodiversity around the world. His research sends him through the last remote rainforests and deserts of Madagascar and Africa in search of ants. By documenting the species diversity and distribution of this "invisible majority," Dr. Fisher is helping to establish conservation priorities for Madagascar, identifying areas that should be set aside to protect the highest number of species. Along the way, he has discovered hundreds of new species of ants. He created the annual Ant Course in 2001, AntWeb in 2002, and the Madagascar Biodiversity Center in 2004. Every year, Dr. Fisher trains dozens of international graduate students in the taxonomy and natural history of ants, providing them with skills to use ants as an important indicator of biodiversity across the globe. He is currently Curator of Entomology at the California Academy of Sciences and adjunct professor of biology at both the University of California at Berkeley and at San Francisco State University. He has appeared in a number of BBC, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic films and has been profiled in Newsweek and Discover magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Married young and used to giving up her own dreams, Iranian student Matineh Eybpoosh moves to the U.S. to study civil engineering—and a whole new world opens up. Matineh Eybpoosh was born in Oroumieh, a town that carries the scent of apples and the generosity of grapes, and shelters happy flamingos. She holds a masters in Construction Engineering and Management from the Middle East Technical University in Turkey, and a B.A. in civil engineering from Tabriz University in Iran. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, a city that's treated her like a good friend: challenging her, battling her, and ultimately understanding her better than before. She writes Farsi poetry, leads the Persian Student Organization, and has performed Persian dance at Pittsburgh festivals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices