The Story Collider

Writer Blaise Allysen Kearsley asks the question: how do you learn about sexuality when no one tells you anything useful, and everyone else seems to know what they're doing?

In 2007, Matt Danzico engages in a massive project to show that strangers on the internet can be trusted -- and finds himself in the middle of nowhere with a broken-down bus and a stranger with a gun.

At ten years old, David Gelles finds himself abandoned and swimming in an ocean with a storm coming. Alone. Except for the pod of dolphins. “I had this little disposable plastic camera and I’d put it up to my eye and look through the lens, and a whole dolphin head would fill the frame.”

A young social worker, working with a military vet, discovers that part of his own shame is one of the most powerful tools in therapy. “I wanted to know why? Why am I having this autonomic response to a man’s tragedy?”

As a college student majoring in Chemistry, Eric Feldman becomes obsessed with a single idea: molecules aren’t real. “We would eat handfuls of gummy bears, play Contra, and talk about the alienation of man in an industrialized society.”

Meghan Groome encounters a young science teachers rite of passage: teaching sex-ed. But it’s not until her honors class that the full reality hits her. (explicit) “These kids, they’ve been kept deliberately ignorant about the reproductive system. The area between here and here is like one of those blurry boxes in the movies.”

New York Times reporter Amy Harmon is making no progress on her story about an autistic man trying to live and work independently — until she finds a way to reconnect with her subject matter. “Did I mention I’d been working on it for 18 months? My family was going to disown me if I didn’t finish the story.”

When Dawn Fraser’s twin is diagnosed with Down syndrome, their parents decide to raise them as equals — a task that produced a new twist on the racetrack. “If there is anything my family’s really good at, it’s surprises.”

Adam Becker’s communications with Neil deGrasse Tyson about an error at the Hayden Planetarium lead to an unexpected correction. “I go storming off to the front desk. I’m going to fight for truth and justice in the universe! …I’m going to sound like a crazy person.”

As a teenager, Daily Show writer Hallie Haglund had a complicated relationship with her English teacher — one that became even more complicated when they ventured into the wild. “I could never understand the bizarre signals she was sending me, but the fact that she was sending them at all made me feel so visible.”

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/

Guy Schaffer wanted to understand the brain, but the only job he could find was in a monkey lab– a lab where a monkey attack leads to deeper set of crises. “The verbiage that was used in the video was ‘melting your brain,’ so that’s exactly what I was worried about as I scrubbed my cut with an iodine solution.”

What do you do if you’re a trans woman about to transition, and you might someday want children? Elana Lancaster tells the story of a partner’s quest to freeze her sperm. (explicit) “Change is kinda tricky. Even when it’s something that’s really welcome, and that you’re looking forward to, it’s also scary as shit.”

In high school, speechwriter Mark Katz made a mockery of the political process when he ran for president of Mu Alpha Theta. “In the context of mathematic achievement my name is a stand-alone punchline.”

Logan Smalley and his friends took a trip across the country that was everything the classic American road trip should be — except one of them was dying. “I looked over at Darius — he’s got a walker now with little tennis balls on it — and he’s got a smile on his face I’ll never be able to describe.”