The Story Collider

Adam Rogers gets an exciting opportunity to work in a marine biology lab, and see if he really wants to be a biologist. Adam Rogers is articles editor at WIRED, where he edits features about miscellaneous geekery and runs the science desk. His features for the print magazine have included stories about the astrophysics of the movie Interstellar, a fan cruise for apex nerds, and a mysterious fungus that lives on whisky fumes. That last one won the 2011 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award for magazine writing and lead to Rogers' New York Times bestselling book Proof: The Science of Booze. Rogers was a presenter and writer for the television show WIRED Science, which aired on PBS in 2007. Prior to joining WIRED, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and before that Rogers was a writer and reporter at Newsweek. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Facing an incredibly important decision, April Salazar is infuriated by way scientific information about reproduction is distorted. April Salazar is a writer and storyteller. She's written for The New York Times and has shared stories on The Moth podcast and NPR's Latino USA. In her spare time she works in technology at an educational non-profit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As a musician and writer Jimmy Wohl thought he was the ultimate creative, then he encounters a pharmaceutical marketing campaign. Jimmy Wohl is a writer and musician from New York City. He performs in many shows throughout the region, is the host of a travel storytelling show in Brooklyn called Get Outta Here!, and has published nonfiction in the New York Press (RIP). He's also a saxophonist who spent several years as a musical director on cruise ships, and has studied percussion in India. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Erik Vance searches for the real meaning of biology while chasing porcupines. Erik Vance is a native Bay Area writer replanted in Mexico as a non-native species. Before becoming a writer he was, at turns, a biologist, a rock climbing guide, an environmental consultant, and an environmental educator. 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. He is currently working on his first book, under contract with National Geographic Press about how the mind and body continually twist and shape our realities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With her truck stuck in the mud in the Serengeti, Aerin Jacob learns three important lessons. This story was produced as part of the Springer Storytellers series. Hear and read more at www.beforetheabstract.com/ Aerin Jacob is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Victoria and a Wilburforce Fellow in Conservation Science Fellow. Trained as an ecologist, she works to develop management strategies that incorporate local, Indigenous, and scientific knowledge to achieve conservation objectives while maintaining human well-being. She works with First Nations communities in British Columbia to study the environmental and socioeconomic outcomes of marine management in the Great Bear Rainforest. Aerin is also a member of the Sustainable Canada Dialogues, a network of scholars developing viable, science-based policy options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and guide sustainable development in Canada. Her previous work includes studies of land-use change, restoration ecology, and animal behaviour in East Africa and western North America. Aerin earned her PhD at McGill University and her BSc at the University of British Columbia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A remote disease comes very close to home for Queens resident Nicole Ferraro. Nicole Ferraro is a writer, editor, and storyteller living in NYC. Her personal essays have been published in The New York Times, Story Collider Magazine, The Frisky, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, and elsewhere. Nicole is also the cohost of New York Story Exchange, a monthly storytelling series at Cornelia Street Cafe. For more information, visit: https://www.facebook.com/NewYorkStoryExchange. By day she earns her keep as the editor in chief of Netted by the Webbys. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A Japanese particle physicist struggles to find his place (and learn English) in the American midwest. Teppei Katori is an experimental particle physicist and a lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. His major interest is neutrino physics, especially neutrino interaction measurements on nuclear targets, and tests of space-time symmetry with neutrinos. Currently he works on two neutrino projects: the T2K experiment in Japan, and the IceCube experiment in Antarctica. He is native Japanese, and went to Indiana University for his PhD, then worked as an MIT scientist at Fermilab, near Chicago, USA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

John Rennie finds it’s great to be editor in chief of Scientific American, but not when all the ingredients of sarin gas are in his office. John Rennie is a science writer, editor, and lecturer based in New York. Viewers of The Weather Channel know him as the host of the original series Hacking The Planet and co-host of the hit special The Truth About Twisters. He is also the editorial director of science for McGraw-Hill Education, overseeing its highly respected AccessScience online reference and the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology. Rennie served as editor in chief of Scientific American (including the monthly magazine, Scientific American Mind, ScientificAmerican.com and other publications) between 1994 and 2009. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As a mathematician, Adriana Salerno is used to solving problems, but depression is something else entirely. Adriana Salerno is originally from Caracas, Venezuela, where she received her undergraduate degree in mathematics from the Universidad Simon Bolivar in 2001. The following year she started graduate school in the Mathematics Department at the University of Texas, where she received her Ph.D. in 2009. In the summer of 2007, Adriana was the AMS-AAAS Mass Media Fellow. She worked at Voice of America for ten weeks under the sponsorship of the AMS and filed several stories about mathematics. She joined Bates College in 2009. Her research interests are number theory and arithmetic geometry and she is also interested in communicating mathematics to the general public. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Just after beginning a graduate program in neuroscience, Brittany Bushnell gets an unexpected look at her own brain. Brittany Bushnell has a BS in psychology from the University of Washington, and is currently working on her PhD in neuroscience at New York University. She is currently studying the neural basis of amblyopia -- a developmental disorder of the visual system. Outside of work, she takes aerial circus classes and grew up racing BMX bikes with her family. She lives in NYC with her husband Maurice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.