The Story Collider

Every family has secrets. But some secrets have the power to completely reshape who you think you are. In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers uncover revelations that change everything they thought they knew about themselves.

Part 1: When Ryan Jones receives a DNA test from his mom for Christmas, he expects to learn a little more about his family history and heritage.

Part 2: After years of unexplained headaches, Alicia Silver is finally diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Ryan Jones is an award-winning spoken word artist, an environmental engineer, lawyer, and a lemon pepper wing connoisseur. In October 2025, Ryan founded the non-profit organization, Black Empowerment for Environmental Sustainability (BEES), that seeks to create culture and conversation around the pursuit of social and environmental justice by using the performing arts. Ryan was a participant in the Round 11 Reiser Atlanta Artists Lab with the Alliance Theater, where he began development of his debut stage play, "in spite of years of silence," a choreopoem about love, forgiveness, and healing in Black parent-child relationships. Ryan was born and raised in the Metro Atlanta area, where he currently resides. You can find out more about Ryan and his work at gohomeryan.com.

Alicia Silver is the Founder and Chief Experience Officer (CXO) of The Silver Lining Experience, a wellness and personal‑development platform rooted in Rest, Clarity, and Alignment. Her work spans restorative hospitality, storytelling, and community experiences designed to help people regulate, reflect, and reconnect with themselves. She spent 30 years in global financial services, building a career defined by precision, pressure, and performance — all while her body was quietly signaling that something was changing. That disconnect between what she projected and what she was actually experiencing became the turning point of her story. Alicia is now writing her debut memoir, drawing from her lived experience navigating invisible illness while rising through global financial services to the role of Director in 2019. She uses storytelling and health‑literacy advocacy to help people recognize the early clues their bodies offer, communicate more clearly with their providers, and move through major transitions without shame. Alicia lives in New Jersey and is a partial empty nester who believes in the power of pausing long enough to hear yourself again. Her mission is to make conversations about health and identity easier, earlier, and more human — one story at a time.

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This week we present two classic stories of people struggling with what the “right” thing to do is.

Part 1: Catherine Macdonald always wanted to study sharks, but her first time tagging them in the field doesn't go as planned.

Part 2: When Michelle Tong visits home after her first semester of medical school, a stranger presents an ethical dilemma.

Dr. Catherine Macdonald is co-founder and Director of Field School (www.getintothefield.com), a marine science training and education company dedicated to improving field research practices while teaching students to perform hands-on research with sharks. She is also the Director of the University of Miami's Shark Research and Conservation Program and an Associate Professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science.

Michelle Tong is a second-year medical student from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She has been published in the Margins and Glass, among other literary journals, and reads for the Bellevue Literary Review. This past summer, she won first prize in the Michael E. DeBakey Medical Student Poetry Awards and received a fellowship from Brooklyn Poets. She teaches poetry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and lives in East Harlem.

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This week’s episode — produced in partnership with Boise State University’s “AWESOME” Center — features two stories from The AWESOME Center’s research team.

Part 1: Physicist Leslie Atkins has spent her life trusting evidence over intuition.

Part 2: Eric Jankowski is determined to beat his math-genius dad at the game Go.

Leslie Atkins is a professor at Boise State University whose work moves across physics, science studies, and education. Trained as a physicist, she studies how scientific concepts—light, time, energy, information—take shape, how those concepts are made legible to nonscientists, and how they transform how people notice, interpret, and inhabit their everyday lives. Her work has included collaboration with the Dalai Lama's Emory-Tibet Science Initiative, the North Carolina Governor's School, and the Matthew Strother Center for the Examined Life. She lives in Boise with her daughter and her dogs, Newton and Emmy Noether.

Eric's first Story Collider show was in the basement of the Ann Arbor District Library in 2011. Since then, he's published over 40 papers on molecular simulations and engineering education and he now leads the Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering at Boise State University. His collaborations with The Story Collider have led to three NSF-funded projects and been recognized by the American Society for Engineering Education and the Anthem Awards. He still likes bicycles and playing a board game called go, and still thinks sharing stories is the best way to improve big, complex systems.

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While many believe striving for perfection is a fool's errand, in this week's episode both of our storytellers chase it anyway.

Part 1: Weiji Ma grapples with the pressure of living up to his child prodigy reputation as he grows older.

Part 2: Chia Lin's meticulously structured life is upended by a chance encounter with a swarm of bees outside her lab.

Weiji Ma received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, but ended up strongly disliking working in Physics. He did postdocs in computational neuroscience at Caltech and the University of Rochester, but then realized he cared much more about measuring human behavior. He became faculty in 2008 (in Houston, TX) and moved to New York University in 2013, where he is now professor of neuroscience and psychology. His research has covered many areas, including visual decision-making, multisensory perception, visual working memory, metacognition, multi-step planning, problem-solving, mindsets, and procrastination. Nevertheless, it hasn't helped him make better decisions or reduce his own procrastination.

Dr. Chia Lin is a Research Scientist at the Rothenbuhler Honey Bee Research Lab in Columbus, Ohio. Originally from Taiwan, she moved to the United States in 2003 to study pollination ecology. Her beekeeping journey began in 2013 when she joined the Department of Entomology at The Ohio State University as a postdoctoral researcher. Her current research focuses on developing farm management strategies to enhance pollinator health and improve crop productivity. During the summer months, she manages over 100 honey bee colonies to support various research projects across Ohio. In addition to her scientific work, Chia is a kindergarten teacher at the Columbus Chinese Academy. Outside of her professional life, she enjoys crocheting, building with Legos, and spending time with her family and two cats.

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In this week's episode, two storytellers reclaim their power—one by challenging a broken system, the other by confronting the ways trauma continues to shape her life.

Part 1: Kimberly Babiarz sets out to fight human trafficking, only to discover that one of the biggest obstacles is the lack of reliable data.

Part 2: After years of therapy, Denise Cai believes she's moved beyond her trauma—until her family notices patterns she can't yet see.

This story does include mentions of sexual assault and rape. In case you’d find them helpful, now or at any point in the future, we have some resources available on our website.

Kimberly Babiarz is Research Director of the Stanford Human Trafficking Data Lab. A founding member of the lab, she works on the development and evaluation of new technologies to support anti-trafficking interventions and survivor support, quantitative research on trafficking markets and the protective role of public policy, and several direct collaborations with frontline anti-trafficking agencies. She specializes in large scale quantitative studies to evaluate the impact of public programs and interventions on health and well-being. Babiarz has conducted primary research on labor and sex trafficking, as well as large scale studies on global health initiatives in China, India, Malaysia, and Brazil. Her work has also included studies on fertility and family planning programs, infant and maternal health, and the gender dynamics of global health.

Denise Cai, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai, which is ironic since her last science class was high school biology. Her two biggest regrets are not trying out for the cheerleading team and not starting antidepressants sooner. Both helped shape her path toward understanding how our past experiences guide who we become. She studies how the brain organizes and integrates experiences so memories can inform future choices and how this process changes with trauma or aging. Denise co-developed open source Miniscopes (tiny head-mounted microscopes) that let researchers watch neurons interact in real time. Using these tools, her lab has shown that memory systems are not tidy photo albums. They are more like chaotic group chats that constantly link, relink, and reshape our identities. Denise is passionate about fostering curiosity, creativity, and community. She believes that real scientific breakthroughs arise when diverse perspectives are welcomed and empowered. She still suspects she would have made a great cheerleader.

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This week we present two stories from our archive of people who learned something about their childhood later in life.

Part 1: Growing up in the fifties and sixties, Jenice Matias senses there's more to her mother's occupation than she understands.

Part 2: D.B. Firstman has always known their body is different, but at the age of thirty, they make a discovery that changes everything.

Jenice Matias is a multifaceted artist—a dancer, singer, actress, comedy jenice matias is writer, dancer. Singer, comedian, improviser actress and storyteller. She has garnered recognition for her bold, fearless personal stories featured on popular podcasts. She has performed across various renowned storytelling platforms such as The Moth Risk. The Monti and The Story Collider. In addition to storytelling, she has written and performed in several solo comedy shows receiving accolades for her performance. You can learn more about her background and upcoming projects by visiting her official Jenice Matias Website.

Now going by David Firstman and using he/him pronouns, he is a lifelong New Yorker born and raised in Queens. A career-long civil servant, he is a data analyst for the City of New York, crunching numbers in Excel and SPSS. A lifelong baseball fan, he had his work published on ESPN.COM and BaseballProspectus.com, as well as in the SABR Baseball Research Journal. His first book, “Hall of Name" was published in 2020 and his second book "Chasing 56" will be coming out early 2027.

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While we often like to think we're in control of our own lives, both of our storytellers learn that some things remain beyond our grasp, no matter how hard we try to steer the outcome.

Part 1: After years of helping others safely navigate glaciers, Monte Montepare suddenly finds himself at the mercy of one.

Part 2: Jessica Lee Williamson's OCD fixates on a single question: how will she die?

Monte is a comedian, storyteller and adventure guide originally from Colorado. He’s been Keynote Speaker at The Ouray Ice Festival, is on the cover of The Alaska Packraft Guidebook, and is part owner of Kennicott Wilderness Guides in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska (all real things and places). Monte is a Moth GrandSLAM Champion, has been featured on The Moth Radio Hour and has a story published in The Moth's most recent book "A Point of Beauty: True Stories of Holding on and Letting Go." He lives in a little house on a hill with his partner Jillian, their kiddo Rocky and chiweenie Sage.

Jessica Lee Williamson is a Los Angeles based television writer and comedian known for her work on I’m Dying Up Here, F is for Family, and The Big Leap. A first-generation American, she was raised by her Cuban mother in a small town on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. After moving out west, Jessica graduated from The Second City Conservatory. In addition to developing shows for Netflix, F/X, and Amazon, her stories have been featured on This American Life, The Moth Radio Hour, and Lena Dunham's Women of the Hour.

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In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers uncover cracks in the education system that prove harder to ignore than they expected.

Part 1: While teaching a summer school math class in Texas, Justine Ang Fonte realizes that many of her students have never received even the most basic sex education.

Part 2: Guilherme Lichand uncovers a flaw in Brazil’s education system that leaves thousands of children with invisible disabilities unidentified and unsupported.

Justine Ang Fonte, M.Ed, MPH is the child of Philippine immigrants and an award-winning sex educator, international keynote speaker, and professor based in New York City. She received her Master’s in Education in Teaching from the University of Hawai’i and her Master’s in Public Health in Sexuality from Columbia University. She has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, Glamour, and the BBC and Hulu docuseries, Planet Sex. Justine is the author and voice of the Audible Original, How to Talk to Your Kids About Sex and is the co-editor of the award-winning book, Fundamental Concepts and Critical Developments in Sex Education.

Guilherme is proudly Brazilian. His research focuses on the sources of educational inequities in the global South and on solutions with the potential to overturn them. He is co-director at the Stanford Lemann Center and a faculty affiliate at the Stanford King Center on Global Development and at the Stanford Center on Early Childhood. He holds a PhD in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University. He was previously the UNICEF Professor of Child Well-being and Development at the University of Zurich. Guilherme is also a co-founder of Brazilian EdTech Movva, a student success management system supporting vulnerable students graduate college. He was acknowledged by the Schwab Foundation as top-10 Brazilian social entrepreneur in 2020 (post-Covid legacy) and by MIT Technology Review as the top under-35 Brazilian innovator in 2014. His research has been published in numerous scientific journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and Nature Human Behavior, and campaigns featuring his work won multiple awards, including two lions at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

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In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers explore the challenges, opportunities, and unexpected lessons they encountered as immigrant scientists in the United States.

Part 1: Michelle Lanuza has her sights set on a career designing communication systems for airplanes, yet each new opportunity comes with the same obstacle: her immigration status.

Part 2: For Saba Banaian, the opportunity to study biomedical engineering in the United States comes with a painful cost: she can't return home to Iran for five years.

Michelle Lanuza is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Boise State, originally from Guatemala. Growing up surrounded by breathtaking landscapes, she developed a love for nature, often spending my free time hiking volcanoes and backpacking. She enjoys reading, playing the piano, cooking with friends, and watching and playing soccer. Michelle’s passion for understanding how machines work and solving problems began in high school, inspiring her to pursue a career in engineering and, ultimately, to continue her studies in materials science.

Saba Banaian, 25 years old, from Iran. She is a Ph.D. student at Boise State University and a professional violinist with the Boise State Symphony Orchestra. It has been a year since she moved to the United States to continue her graduate studies in biomedical engineering.

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This week, we're re-airing two classic stories about finding friends. Science can be a lonely job -- but it can also connect us to others in ways we'd never imagine.

Part 1: Feeling isolated in her new job as a particle accelerator operator at Fermilab, Cindy Joe finds comfort in the friendship of her unconventional pet.

Part 2: Patrick Honner starts to doubt his lifelong love of math when graduate school becomes a lonely experience.

Cindy Joe is an engineering physicist working with several of Fermilab’s experiments studying neutrinos, tiny particles that might hold the answers to some of the universe’s biggest mysteries. A first-generation college student, she grew up dreaming big in the back of her family’s Chinese restaurant in a small town in Arkansas. While obtaining her bachelor’s degree in physics, she also became a licensed senior reactor operator at Reed College’s nuclear research reactor. She then moved to even bigger machines, working as a particle accelerator operator in Fermilab’s Main Control Room for seven years. Cindy is deeply passionate about science outreach, and has spoken to audiences from elementary school to members of Congress. A 2-time presenter at Fermilab’s Physics Slam and a contributor to PechaKucha Night Batavia, she currently lectures in Fermilab’s Saturday Morning Physics program for high school students.

Patrick Honner is an award-winning mathematics teacher who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He has taught everything from introductory algebra to multivariable calculus, and currently teaches calculus, linear algebra, and mathematical computing at Brooklyn Technical High School, where he also serves as instructional coach. Patrick is in his fourth Math for America Master Teacher Fellowship; he is a New York State Master Teacher; a Sloan award winner; and a Rosenthal Prize honoree. And in 2013 he received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. Patrick writes about math and teaching for Quanta Magazine, the New York Times, and on his blog.

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