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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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Against the odds, animal-loving kid Steve Zimmer attempts to rescue tadpoles in jeopardy. An aging yuppie from the midwest, Steve Zimmer was originally an academic economist and is currently a programmer, but not before working 5 years in an NYU immunology lab. Steve began attending the Moth in 2004 and telling stories in 2006. He is a past Grandslam winner.

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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

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Alone in the African rainforest and on the brink of death, entomologist Brian Fisher finds help from an unexpected source. Dr. Brian Fisher is a modern day explorer who has devoted his life to the study and conservation of ants and biodiversity around the world. His research sends him through the last remote rainforests and deserts of Madagascar and Africa in search of ants. By documenting the species diversity and distribution of this "invisible majority," Dr. Fisher is helping to establish conservation priorities for Madagascar, identifying areas that should be set aside to protect the highest number of species. Along the way, he has discovered hundreds of new species of ants. He created the annual Ant Course in 2001, AntWeb in 2002, and the Madagascar Biodiversity Center in 2004. Every year, Dr. Fisher trains dozens of international graduate students in the taxonomy and natural history of ants, providing them with skills to use ants as an important indicator of biodiversity across the globe. He is currently Curator of Entomology at the California Academy of Sciences and adjunct professor of biology at both the University of California at Berkeley and at San Francisco State University. He has appeared in a number of BBC, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic films and has been profiled in Newsweek and Discover magazine.

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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.

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Oceanographer Jeffrey Schell finds himself in a race against time when he encounters swimmers stuck in a dangerous rip current. Jeffrey M. Schell is an associate professor of oceanography with Sea Education Association, a renowned study abroad organization offering academic programs in marine environmental studies. Since 1994, Jeff has guided students through the challenges of oceanographic field research toward the thrill of discovery while teaching on more than 30 Sea Semester programs onboard the RV Westward, SSV Corwith Cramer and SSV Robert C. Seamans. Jeff's research interests include biogeography of zooplankton communities, ecology of the Sargasso Sea, and revealing the historic contexts of contemporary conservation issues. Other 'work' interests include snorkeling, hiking to remote waterfalls, and natural history illustration.

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While teaching a math class, Nisse Greenberg is troubled by his student's name, and his own. Nisse Greenberg is an educator and storyteller who eats mostly vegetarian. Sometimes he eats wings because wings are really good. When he applied for a visa to go to India he tried to type "atheist" into the proposed slot for religion, but he accidentally typed "matheist." He found it more appropriate anyway. He teaches high-school math to high-schoolers and math philosophy to adults. He creates art with spreadsheets and quantitative analysis. He also curates storytelling for The Tank, and hosts the shows Bad Feelings, VHS Presents, and Drawn Out Storytelling. Here is his playground: nissegreenberg.com

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