The Story Collider

This week we present two stories from our back catalog of people having to handle previous epidemics.

Part 1: As a pediatrician in the 1980s, Ken Haller comes across a disturbing X-ray.

Part 2: On her first day working in the White House under President Obama, microbiologist Jo Handelsman receives some bad news.

Ken is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine and Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital. He serves on the boards of the Arts & Education Council of Greater St. Louis, the Saint Louis University Library Associates, and the Gateway Media Literacy Project. He has also served on the board of the Missouri Foundation for Health and as President of the St. Louis Pediatric Society; the Missouri Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics; PROMO, Missouri’s statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization; the Gateway Men’s Chorus, St. Louis’s gay men’s chorus: and GLMA, the national organization of LGBT health care professionals. He is a frequent spokesperson in local and national media on the health care needs of children and adolescents. Ken is also an accomplished actor, produced playwright, and acclaimed cabaret performer. In 2015 he was named Best St. Louis Cabaret Performer by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and he has taken his one-person shows to New York, Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco. His special interests include cultural competency, health literacy, the relationship of medicine to the arts, the effects of media on children, and the special health needs of LGBT youth. His personal mission is Healing.

Dr. Jo Handelsman is currently the Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as a Vilas Research Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. Previously, she served President Obama for three years as the Associate Director for Science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). She received her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Molecular Biology and has served on the faculties of UW-Madison and Yale University. Dr. Handelsman has authored over 200 papers, 30 editorials and 5 books. She is responsible for groundbreaking studies in microbiology and gender in science.

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This week we present two stories of people who spiraled out of control in their minds.

Part 1: Computer vision researcher Virginie Uhlmann struggles to send an important email.

Part 2: After a panic attack, Shane Saunderson questions the role of technology in his life.

Virginie Uhlmann is fascinated by life sciences but feels more comfortable surrounded by equations and code than by pipettes. With her research group at the EMBL-EBI, she thus develops mathematical tools and algorithms to analyse biological images. Besides science, her true loves are mountains and birds.

Shane Saunderson received a B.Eng. in mechanical engineering from McGill University in 2005 and a M.B.A. in technology and innovation from Ryerson University in 2011. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate studying social Human-Robot Interaction under Prof. Goldie Nejat within the Autonomous Systems and Biomechatronics Laboratory (ASBLab) in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. Shane holds a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship and is a Junior Fellow with Massey College. His research focuses on psychological influence caused by robots during social interactions with particular interest in topics such as persuasion, trust, and leadership.

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This week we present two stories from people who had encounters with ocean animals.

Part 1: Stuck in the lab with buckets of jellyfish, Shreya Yadav must rethink why she's studying what she's studying in the first place.

Part 2: Underwater photographer Keith Ellenbogen comes face to face with an animal he wasn't expecting.

Shreya Yadav is a PhD candidate at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, at the University of Hawaii. She studies how corals recover from major climatic disturbances. She is also interested in marine historical ecology and the socio-cultural aspects of fishing.

Keith Ellenbogen is a celebrated photographer working with conservation-based organizations to showcase the visual complexity of underwater environments. He is an Assistant Professor of Photography at SUNY/FIT; Visiting Artist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Sr. Fellow, International League of Conservation; Fellow, The Explorers Club; Affiliate Partner, Mission Blue - A Sylvia Earle Alliance; the recipient of Hollings Ocean Awareness Award and a TED Residency.

See Keith’s work at www.keithellenbogen.com

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This week we present two stories from people who had experiences with strangers.

Part 1: Even though he's an excellent student, and later a doctor, Dale Okorodudu finds that strangers perceive him differently.

Part 2: Laura Bulk, who has been partially blind since she was a baby, struggles with strangers' attempts to "help."

Dr. Dale Okorodudu was raised in League City, Texas just outside of Houston. He completed both his undergraduate and medical training at the University of Missouri then relocated to Durham, North Carolina were he did his Internal Medicine residency training at Duke University Medical Center. Following his time at Duke, Dr. Okorodudu returned to Texas and completed his Pulmonary & Critical Care Fellowship here at UT Southwestern Medical Center. His clinical practice is at the Dallas VA Medical Center. Dr. Okorodudu has a passion addressing healthcare disparities which he has done via promoting diversity in the medical workforce. He is the founder of DiverseMedicine Inc. and Black Men In White Coats. Dr. Okorodudu is also the author of multiple books including How to Raise a Doctor and the Doc 2 Doc children series. What he enjoys most is spending time with his wife, 3 children, and church family.

Laura Yvonne Bulk (@LYBOT) is a friend, learner, woman, teacher, disabled person, occupational therapist, Christian, artist, scholar, advocate, and activist. Her work focuses on enhancing understanding across and within diversity, and promoting human flourishing. As a public scholar, Laura aims to benefit the wider community and the academic and clinical communities, making purposeful social contributions and employing innovative forms of collaborative scholarship. She works in the areas of quality of life in palliative care; belonging in academia; being blind; inclusion of disabled people in healthcare professions; and the use of creative methods (including research-based theatre and audio theatre) and cross-sectoral partnerships to do research for the public good.

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This week we present two stories from people who needed a little luck to get by.

Part 1: Studying Marine Biology in Florida, Philadelphian Kory Evans feels like a fish out of water... while fishing.

Part 2: Carla Katz finds out she has a brain aneurysm while getting screened for a kidney transplant.

Kory Evans is an evolutionary biologist broadly interested in the development, evolution and ecology of phenotypic diversity. His research integrates developmental biology, biomechanics, phylogenetic comparative methods, and ecology to understand how phenotypes develop, evolve, and interact with their respective environments across multiple time scales and how intrinsic (development) and extrinsic (environment) mechanisms influence patterns of phenotypic diversity.

Carla Katz is a Jersey born and bred storyteller, comic, and actor living in Hoboken. Her solo show, ANGELINA, debuted at the SOLOCOM 2019 Comedy Festival at the Peoples Improv Theater. Her earlier solo show, BODY PARTS, sold out at the SOLOCOM 2017. She is a Moth StorySLAM Champion and has performed widely in New York, including at the Comedy Cellar, the Fat Black Pussycat, Story Collider, The Liar Show, The AWFNH Show at the Kraine Theatre, NYC's Secrets and Lies, Generation Women, and Funny Over Fifty at Caveat-NYC, The Barrow Group Restorative Stories, Sideshow Goshko and a wide a variety of shows at the Magnet Theater and the Tank. She has also performed across New Jersey, including in Hoboken's On The Waterfront Storytelling Series, Word of Mouth Storytelling by the Bucks Country Playhouse in Lambertville, and This Really Happened at the Hopewell Theatre. Carla is co-producer with Adam Wade of the Hoboken-based On the Waterfront Storytelling Series.

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This week we present two stories from people who decided to experiment with science when they were still teenagers.

Part 1: In high school, Saad Sarwana decides to go from nerd to bad boy with a prank that he learned in chemistry class.

Part 2: As a college student, Andrew Akira Hansen loves chemistry so much that he takes his experiments out of the lab and into the parking lot... and the shower... and anywhere else he could.

Saad Sarwana is a Physicist and Stand-up Comedian. As a physicist he works in superconductor electronics and is the author of over 40 peer reviewed publications and the inventor behind two US patents. As a comedian he has been doing standup and Improvisational comedy for over 20 years, and even won a Moth StorySlam. For 6 years and over 100 episodes Saad was on the Science Channel TV show “Outrageous Acts of Science”. He is also the creator and host of the 'Science Fiction and Fantasy Spelling Bee'. Previously he has told Physics and Math inspired stories for the StoryCollider. This chemistry inspired story completes the Trilogy! He lives in Westchester County, NY with his wife and kids.

Andrew Akira Hansen is an external chemist and a boy who finds himself falling more and more deeply in love with the natural world as he survives each day. Chemistry is the language he’s learned to love it with. After finishing his bachelor's degree at Knox College he messed around in Southern Illinois University Edwardsville's master's program for chemistry. From there, he’s worked a variety of chemistry-adjacent jobs he never imagined he’d find himself in, including space camp instructor, beer scientist and slime master (not all official titles). His path in chemistry has been winding, and he can't wait to see where it takes him.

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This week we present two stories from people who were confronted with what it means to lose family.

Part 1: After leaving class early, Sonia Zárate gets a startling phone call about her daughter.

Part 2: An indoor kid at heart, Sam Dingman goes on a hike anyways and ends up making a shocking discovery.

Sonia Zárate is a proud Chicanx from SoCal. She is a mother and grandmother, Dodger-fan, trained plant molecular biologist and champion for diversity, equity and inclusion in STEM. As President for the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) and a Program Officer for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute she is living the dream at the intersection of STEM and Culture. When she is not working to make the scientific enterprise excellent by making it more inclusive, she enjoys traveling, running, facetime calls with her family and playing crazy 8’s. You can reach her on Twitter @sonia__zarate.

Sam Dingman is the creator and host of Family Ghosts, a storytelling podcast about familial myths and legends which has been hailed as a critic's choice by The New York Times, The LA Times, and NPR. Sam is a winner of the Moth Grand Slam, and his stories have been featured on The Moth Radio Hour, Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything, and Risk!.

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This week we present stories from people who found themselves in sticky situations in the midst of doing research.

Part 1: Erik Vance's first job reporting on scientific research doesn't smell as much like success as it smells like manure.

Part 2: Liz Neeley observes hypnosis from the inside when she becomes the subject of the experiment.

Erik Vance is an award-winning science journalist based in Boulder, CO who works as an editor for the NY Times. Before becoming a writer he was, at turns, a biologist, a rock climbing guide, an environmental consultant, and an environmental educator. He graduated in 2006 from UC Santa Cruz science writing program and became a freelancer as soon as possible. His work focuses on the human element of science — the people who do it, those who benefit from it, and those who do not. He has written for The New York Times, Nature, Scientific American, Harper’s, National Geographic, and a number of other local and national outlets. His first book, Suggestible You, is about how the mind and body continually twist and shape our realities. While researching the book he was poked, prodded, burned, electrocuted, hypnotized and even cursed by a witchdoctor, all in the name of science.

Liz Neeley is the Executive Director of The Story Collider, and the cohost of our weekly podcast. She is not a naturally gifted storyteller, but came into the field the hard way: reading research papers on narrative and science communication. She started her career as a marine biologist, and her first job was to support community-based projects in Fiji and Papua New Guinea. Learning first-hand that science belongs to everyone changed everything. She misses the ocean these days, but loves getting to think about all different kinds of science now. Her biggest challenge is turning down new projects. Find her on twitter at @LizNeeley.

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This week we present two stories from people who found the improbable.

Part 1:

Part 2:

As a national park ranger, native South Floridian Gary Bremen has spent the past 33 years telling the stories of the places and people that have shaped this nation. He has visited 254 of the 419 national parks, and now recognizes how much his encounters with lightning storms, bears, drag queens and grieving parents in these magnificent places have helped shape the person he is. He lives in an urban oasis filled with native plants in the little town of Wilton Manors with his best friend, traveling buddy and husband Roger and their cats Oliver, Elliott, and Amelia.

Dawn J. Fraser is a storyteller, public speaker and a nationally acclaimed communications coach based out of San Jose, California. She is the Creator/ Host of ‘Barbershop Stories’, which features storytellers performing true tales in barbershops and salons around NYC, and the Founder/ CEO of Fraser’s Edge, LLC, which offers programs for businesses, nonprofits, and college students the opportunity to develop their leadership potential through storytelling. Dawn currently serves as a Lead Instructor with The Moth and was featured amongst some of the nation’s top change makers at TED@NYC. She loves being a twin, a Trinidadian, and tweetable @dawnjfraser.

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This week we present two stories from people who got called into action to save an animal they didn’t know they’d be called to save.

Part 1: While running an errand, Andrea Azarian happens upon a lost horse that needs her help.

Part 2: Left in charge of the farm for the first time, Gwynne Hogan panics when a goat goes into labor.

Andrea Azarian has an undergraduate degree in Public Administration and Political Science from UW-LaCrosse. She completed her teacher certification and Master’s degree in Education at Alverno College. Andrea taught English, Math, Reading, and Family and Consumer Education in grades 5-8 in Milwaukee Public Schools before coming to UWM. She has been at UWM as an Academic Advisor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction for twelve years.

Her time outside of work is spent traveling with her friends and family laughing and being present in the moment.

Gwynne Hogan is a reporter and producer in the WNYC newsroom who seems to keep ending up covering disease and communities from measles to COVID-19. She's also a proud assistant on Story Collider podcast production team and is excited to make her virtual storytelling debut with the show.

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