Heartwarming stories about science: Recent Episodes
The Story Collider
Newborn and premature baby specialist Nitin Ron learns a surprising lesson from one of his young patients.
Nitin Ron is a neonatologist (baby doctor) and loves high altitude trekking and mountaineering. He is an associate professor of pediatrics at New York Methodist Hospital, and loves to use innovative methods to teach medical students. He is leading a research project in the Himalayas, including the Mt. Everest region, involving ultrasound of the eye and the body to predict mountain sickness. He also volunteers as an art guide at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art in New York City, and this is a reminder that medicine is so much of an art as well as a science!
Brion Randolph's journey to becoming a doctor begins with a box full of kittens.
Dr. Brion Randolph is currently the Chief of Medical Oncology at Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) in Newnan, Georgia. He joined CTCA as a medical oncologist and hematologist when the hospital opened in August 2012 and is now Chief of Medical Oncology. He also serves as Medical Director of Hematologic Oncology at the Newnan hospital.
Dr. Randolph earned his medical degree from the University of South Carolina in Columbia, and he is board certified in medical oncology, hematology and internal medicine. Dr. Randolph also earned a Master of Science in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Tennessee (UT) in Knoxville. He completed residency training in internal medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, where he also completed his fellowship training in hematology and oncology.
While Dr. Randolph started his education in nuclear engineering, he switched to medicine when introduced to the field of hematology/oncology as a graduate student studying the physics of medical imaging and radiation therapy.
Dr. Randolph lives in Newnan with his wife and two children. He has a passion for music and the performing arts, and as a drum major he had the opportunity to lead the UT Band in the 1993 inaugural parade for President Bill Clinton. His hobbies also include tennis and running.
Growing up on a cattle ranch, Amanda Stockton dreams of searching for life elsewhere in the universe.
Dr. Amanda Stockton is an assistant professor in the Chemistry and Biochemistry department at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her work walks the line between engineering and science to develop instrumentation capable of looking for organic molecules elsewhere in the solar system. These molecules could be the feedstock for an emergence of life or the remnants of past life now extinct on places like Europa, Enceladus, and Mars. Dr. Stockton grew up on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma, where she graduated from the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she majored in Aerospace Engineering and Chemistry – seemingly unrelated topics but perfect for her “dream job,” i.e. the one she has now. After obtaining a masters at Brown in chemistry, she earned her PhD with Dr. Richard Mathies at the University of California, Berkeley working on increasing the analytical chemistry capabilities of the Mars Organic Analyzer microchip capillary electrophoresis instrument platform. She continued in this vein at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, by furthering the microfluidic engineering side of the technology as first a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow and then as a Technologist. At Georgia Tech, her group’s work seeks to do both the engineering and the science to synergistically promote instrument capabilities and robustness. Currently, the group’s main NASA-funded project is a version of the Mars Organic Analyzer that could fit on a kinetic impactor mission to an icy moon – a project for which testing involves a giant rail gun and a magnetic capture system to decelerate the instrument at 50,000 g or the equivalent of hitting a planet at 5 km/s.
Used to the controlled uncertainties of his work, science writer Tom Levenson is forced to confront the dramatic uncertainty of whether he’ll be able to adopt a son.
Tom Levenson writes books (most recently The Hunt for Vulcan) and makes films, about science, its history, and whatever else catches his magpie's love of shiny bits. His work has been honored by a Peabody, a National Academies Science Communication and an AAAS Science Journalism Award, among others. By day he professes at MIT, where he directs the Graduate Program in Science Writing.
Professor John Dimandja is confused when his class begins snickering on the first day -- until he realizes it's because they weren't expecting him to be black.
John Dimandja is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Spelman College. A native of Oxford, Ohio, John grew up in the US, Belgium and the Democratic Republic of Congo. His professional career includes work as an analytical chemist at the NASA/Ames Research Center and the CDC prior to joining Spelman in 2002. An internationally recognized leader in the field of multidimensional gas chromatography, John has given over 250 lectures around the world in the past 20 years. He enjoys cooking and travelling with his wife Ann, playing the piano (poorly) and golfing, now that his basketball days are over.
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.
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.
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
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.
As a science teacher, Marjorie Winther has both entertaining and troubling times with her students, but when she brings them to the South she discovers a whole new side of them.
Marjorie Winther has been performing stories and comedy for over ten years. She is the winner of the 2012 First Person Arts Grand Slam. Marjorie has been voted audience favorite at numerous First Person Arts story slams. She recently performed at the WHYY Connections Festival, The Women in Comedy Festival at Plays and Players and at the Risk! Show in the Free Library Author’s Event. She also performs stand-up comedy in clubs and at fund-raisers and corporate and community events. She was a finalist in Laff-A-Lot productions Philly’s Funniest contest. Veteran comic Paul Lyons calls here “warm, real and disarmingly astute.” When not performing, Marjorie designs and delivers corporate training programs and leads professional workshops. Before moving into the corporate world she taught middle and high school science in the Chicago Public Schools. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Beloit College and a Master’s Degree in English from Southern Illinois University.
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For years, chemist Nick Hud struggles to share his work with his Catholic mother, until he finds help from a surprising source.
Nicholas Hud was born in Los Angeles, California. He received his B.S. from Loyola Marymount University, his Ph.D. from UC Davis, and postdoctoral training at UCLA. Prof. Hud has studied the structure and function of DNA in various cells and viruses for over twenty-five years. Since joining the faculty of Georgia Tech in 1999, his laboratory has become increasingly involved in the search for the chemical origins of life, with a focus on the origin of RNA. Prof. Hud is currently Director of the NSF/NASA Center for Chemical Evolution and Associate Director of the Petit Institute of Bioengineering and Bioscience.
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Marine biologist Skylar Bayer faces her fears to go on a deep-ocean dive aboard the Alvin submersible, and ends up getting more than she expected.
Skylar Bayer is a native to the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. She has been pursuing a career in marine science since the age of eight and is currently working on her PhD in marine reproductive ecology at the Darling Marine Center in Walpole, Maine. She manages, edits and writes for the blog, Strictlyfishwrap (www.strictlyfishwrap.com), sharing anecdotal science stories, and writes for the National Shellfish Association newsletter. This past year she was featured on the Colbert Report in a field report piece on the epic case of the missing scallop gonads.
Help keep us going! If you love the podcast, please donate here: http://www.patreon.com/thestorycollider
Neuroscientist Daniela Schiller studies the emotional components of memory. In her previous story her research helped her begin to understand her father, a holocaust survivor. But that story led to a whole new chapter in their relationship, and her understanding of memories.
Hear Daniela's first story here: http://storycollider.org/podcast/2011-10-09
Biologist Kelly Smith and comic artist Zach Weiner were having trouble dating, until they met online and realized what they each needed was another nerd.
Christine Gentry's rural, Vietnam vet father rarely talked about important issues, but a series of remarkable moments with animals and nature teach her four lessons she'll never forget.
"Lesson number 2: Aint no use crying about things you can't do nothin' about."
As a six-year old, Tim Manley has to go to the hospital with a mysterious illness. Fortunately, he has his superpowers and his trusty sidekick -- his mom.
"We get to the hospital and I have my own room... like a King!"
Erin Barker struggles with a disease that only makes her give up four things; they just happen to be the four things worth living for.
Re-issued specially for our Women In Science magazine issue. Check it out at magazine.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 has been performing and teaching improv comedy in various venues around the globe since 1999. She currently lives in London where she spends her time correcting British people's pronunciation of American words.
Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more and subscribe to our podcast here: storycollider.org/.
Deborah Berebichez was told she couldn't study physics because it wasn't for girls -- until she got assistance for an unexpected reason.
(En Español: http://soundcloud.com/the-story-collider/deborah-berebichez)
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Single mother and aspiring scientist Nancy Parmalee takes the long route to her PhD.
“I just remember walking out of the grocery store and thinking, ‘I am living the wrong life. There is another life out there — surely there has to be.’”