The Story Collider

Many factors can lead to a failed experiment -- human errors, errors in measurement, and sometimes just random errors. In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers share tales of when their experiments didn’t go as planned. Part 1: As a new science teacher, Zeke Kossover is determined to capture the attention of his students. Part 2: While on a field expedition in Kenya, Evan Wilson is tasked with the seemingly impossible job of figuring out the role of dust in wearing down herbivore teeth. Marc “Zeke” Kossover has been presenting stories as part of his physics circus shows all over the country in venues from coffee shops and music halls to the National Science Foundation and Capitol Hill. He thinks of them as magic shows, but in reverse—the secret to a magic trick is to make something simple intentionally confusing, while Zeke tries to make confusing things easy to understand. Zeke was a physics and environmental science teacher before dying and going to teacher heaven and getting a job at the Explorator