The Story Collider

Darcy Burke's mother gave her a book on mountain lions, and it had the effect that every science writer wishes their book will have. Kind of. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more and subscribe to our podcast (and see our celebration of a million downloads!) here: http://storycollider.org/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Maija Niemisto is a director of education on the Clearwater, America’s environmental flagship. But when a stranger comes to the side of the ship, it heralds a discovery about her city and herself. “He’s giving me a mission. I love missions. I’m so excited, it’s like CSI: Yonkers.” Maija was born to a family of musicians in the heartland, far from the sea. Minnesota was her first hailing port. School, university and adventures took her to Finland, Wisconsin and Lebanon. After receiving her B.A. in International Relations and Environmental studies, she followed the smell of sweet salt air and ran away to see the sea aboard her 28-foot sloop. In 2008, the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater appeared on the horizon and she jumped at the chance to combine her interests in music, sailing, teaching, science, water ecology, environmental advocacy and pumping the bilge. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more and subscribe to our podcast here: http://storycollider.org/

Actress Rachel Bitney Wecht describes the challenges of wooing a physicist: The Story Collider’s own co-founder, Brian Wecht. “I knew that with enough time and pressure you could take a dinosaur and make gasoline. So I figured with enough time I could take a physicist and make a boyfriend.” Rachel Bitney Wecht started acting and improvising at the Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis, MN. After moving to Boston she was cast as a Mainstage performer with the Improv Asylum, where she wrote and performed five shows a week for three years. In her spare time she enjoys watching videos of tiny animals, reading romance novels, and playing her ukulele. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more and subscribe to our podcast here: storycollider.org/.

David Morgan reaches out to his childhood hero, and connects with an unexpected medium. David Morgan holds a PhD in theoretical high-energy physics from The College of William and Mary. His currently the director of Innovation Lab @ross at the Ross School - a science and technology academy for high school students. He has been interviewed for several science stories on National Public Radio, and in 2005 he received a commission from the Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Sloan Foundation to write a play called "The Osiander Preface". He still can't believe he got away with that one. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more here: storycollider.org/.

As a new, super competitive, graduate student Aditi Nadkarni thinks she has the perfect way to impress her advisor and labmates ... until one night it spirals a tiny bit out of control. Aditi Nadkarni is a New York-based cancer researcher and a freelance science and creative writer; her occupations are a miscellany of creative pursuits. 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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kimberly Rae Miller's family had a secret: her dad was a hoarder. But when she begins digging into the research on hoarding, she finds it's not nearly as simple to fix as she'd hoped. Kimberly Rae Miller is a writer living in New York City. She haswritten for Yahoo!'s Shine, Figure magazine, and contributed to CBS Radio/CBS New York. In 2010, Kim was featured in Katharine Sise's career guide Creative Girl. She blogs at TheKimChallenge.com. Her memoir, Coming Clean, will be published by Amazon Publishing July 23rd. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more here: http://storycollider.org/. If you enjoy these stories, please consider donating, http://storycollider.org/donate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sara Peters has epilepsy, but no drugs seem to help. So she agrees to be hooked up to a machine at the hospital for days, in hopes of inducing the one thing she and her husband, Peter Aguero, dread the most: a seizure. Recorded at TEDMED 2013. Video: http://tedmed.com/talks/show?id=189377 Originally from New Jersey, Sara Peters now lives in Sunnyside, Queens with her charming, maddening husband. A tech writer whose work focuses on IT security, she is currently editor-in-chief of a Web publication for IT professionals. Sara is also a storyteller and actor. Onstage she's played a Texan housewife, an Oklahoman spinster, an Irish housekeeper, and an English android. She's been a rower, a ballerina, a track runner, a Hula Hoop instructor, and is an occasional and very poor surfer. Her favorite television show is Naruto, which is a Japanese cartoon about a teenage ninja. Peter Aguero was born and raised in the wilds of South Jersey. He is a Moth Grandslam Champion, host of Moth Storylams and an instructor for the Mothshop Community Program. He is also the lead singer of The BTK Band, NYC's Hardest-Drinking Improvised Storytelling Rock Band. Peter loves his Mom. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more here: http://storycollider.org/. If you enjoy these stories, please consider donating, http://storycollider.org/donate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Ben Moskowitz gets to take special classes in elementary school, he's excited at first, but then he starts to realize there might be something different about him. Ben Moskowitz is from Glen St. Mary, Florida. He works as an audiovisual preservationist at New York University. He is a Moth GrandSlam Champion and a pretty nice guy. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his two cats, Scotty and Viva. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more here: http://storycollider.org/. If you enjoy these stories, please consider donating, http://storycollider.org/donate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Science writer Alex Brown's philosophical education becomes very practical when he is diagnosed with meningitis. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more here: http://storycollider.org/ Alex Brown has a BSc Natural Sciences from the University of Bath and will soon graduate with an MSc Science Communication from the University of the West of England. He currently works in administration in a lab in Geneva, Switzerland. He is also fascinated by the interaction between languages and science, which he blogs about on "Do You Speak Science?" hosted by SciLogs.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Three years after a mysterious illness nearly drove her insane and took her life, Susannah Cahalan visits a patient with the same rare, dangerous condition. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more here: http://storycollider.org/ Susannah Cahalan is the New York Times bestselling author of "Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness." She began her investigative reporting career at The New York Post when she took an internship her senior year of high school. She has now been at The Post for ten years, three of which she worked full-time after graduating from Washington University in St. Louis. Her work has also been featured in The New York Times, Scientific American, and Glamour UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices