The Story Collider

Geneticist Chris Gunter worries about passing on a rare condition to her son. Chris Gunter is a human geneticist by training, and a science communicator by choice. She earned her Ph.D. at Emory University and then moved up and down the east coast, ending up as a Senior Editor at the journal Nature. Currently she serves as the Associate Director for Research for the Marcus Autism Center, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, and as an Associate Professor in Pediatrics for the Emory University School of Medicine. If she had any spare time, she would probably garden or bake. 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.

Bradford Jordan finds there's more to the brain his dad brings to show his class than just how cool it is. Bradford Jordan is an actor, improviser, storyteller and facilitator. He is a lead teacher at the Peoples Improv Theatre in New York, where he has introduced hundreds of students to the art of improvisation. As an actor, director, and teacher with the national arts and literacy organization, The Story Pirates, Bradford teaches creative writing workshops to school kids and works with his creative team to adapt their stories into musical sketch comedy shows. Bradford is a Moth story slam winner and his stories can be heard on The Moth Radio Hour on NPR. In addition to his artistic pursuits, Bradford is a New York City Bike Ambassador with Transportation Alternatives, working to create safer streets and public places for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://

An offhand sexist comment enrages Renee Hlozek, and leads her to dig into how her colleagues really view people who aren't the stereotypical scientist. Dr. Renee Hlozek is the Lyman Spitzer Jr. Postdoctoral Fellow in Theoretical Astrophysics in at Princeton University; the Spitzer-Cotsen Fellow in the Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and is currently a Senior TED Fellow. Her research focuses on theoretical cosmology; as a member of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope she measures the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation to decipher the initial conditions of the universe. When not investigating the cosmos, she loves to sing (loudly), read and bake. She makes a mean Negroni. 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 simple interview about a bacon sandwich turns into a national, then international nightmare. Elin Roberts is Head of Public Engagement at the Centre for Life in Newcastle. She is a passionate science communicator producing activities and programs for visitors. She has worked with scientists, presenters and teachers helping them direct their messages. As a hands-on practitioner she still enjoys the sensation of dried PVA on her fingertips and the smell of freshly applied sticky back plastic. 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 Jon Ronson discovers a twitter account pretending to be him, he sets off to find it's creators. Jon Ronson is a British nonfiction author, documentary maker and screenwriter. His books, Them: Adventures with Extremists, The Men Who Stare At Goats, The Psychopath Test, and Lost At Sea, have all been international bestsellers. He's a regular contributor to the PRI show This American Life, and has appeared at TED, and on The Daily Show. His new book, “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” is available now. 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 summer job in Yellowstone National Park isn't quite what Molly Payne Wynne had been expecting. Molly is the Monitoring Coordinator for the Penobscot River Restoration Trust, an unprecedented collaborative effort to restore 11 species of sea-run fish in New England's second largest river, the Penobscot. Molly has pursued a variety of research topics in fisheries; most recently, river herring habitat use patterns through otolith chemistry at the University of Southern Maine and otolith growth and microchemistry as a research assistant at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) in Syracuse, NY. She loves the water and exploring Maine and awaits her next scientific adventure. 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.

On the first day of grad school for her PhD, a fellow student tells Bianca Jones Marlin that she doesn't really belong there. Bianca Jones Marlin is a neuroscientist and doctoral candidate at New York University, School of Medicine. She received dual bachelor degrees in biology and adolescent education from St. John's University. Her time as a high school biology teacher led her to the laboratory, where she now studies the neurochemicals that govern communication and dictate social memories. Bianca investigates how the brain changes in the presence of the "love hormone," oxytocin. Her research aims to understand the vital bond between mother and child, and uses oxytocin as a treatment in strengthening fragile and broken parental relationships. Bianca, a native New Yorker, lives in Manhattan with her scientist husband, Joe, and their cat Santiago Ramon y Cajal, who is named after the famed neuroanatomist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/priv

Hillary Rea enjoys her job as a "standard patient" helping to train medical students, until she's asked to sub in on a birth gone quite wrong. Hillary Rea is a Philadelphia dwelling comedian and storyteller, and the host of the storytelling shows Tell Me A Story and Fibber. She is a NYC Moth StorySLAM winner and was featured on The Soundtrack Series and How I Learned podcasts. She was a 2011 Artist-in-Residence for Elsewhere Artist Collaborative in Greensboro, NC. For more info, please visit: hillaryrea.com 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 Adam Becker realizes a visiting film crew is made up of geocentrists, he has to prevent them from exploiting his adviser's work. Adam Becker is a cosmologist, a journalist, a programmer, and a science publishing troublemaker. He hails from a tiny town in northern New Jersey, and he has a PhD in physics from the University of Michigan. He strongly believes that scientific research should be open, that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is nonsense, and that David Tennant was the best Doctor. He lives in Oakland, California, with his fiancee, Elisabeth, who is a writer, and their pet rabbit Copernicus, who is not. 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.

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 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 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 megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.