The Story Collider

Political scientist Ethan Hollander interviews a Nazi war criminal as part of his research, and as a graduate student, Cather Simpson is excited to present her work -- but then her adviser lies about it.

Beatriz Perez’s parents want her to use her first pay check to gamble on the slot machines, and Dave Piontkowski is on a winning streak in Vegas when his severe ulcerative colitis rears its ugly head.

Paula Croxson uses her neuroscience background to get rid of the pigeon family that has taken up residence on her window sill, and as a new urban park ranger, Tim Lopez gets a call to capture a swan on the loose.

Deandra Anjahlee decides to study psychology to try to understand what is happening with her mind, and after all other treatments fail to treat Nick Caruso’s 25-year long depression, he gives transcranial magnetic stimulation a shot.

Paleontologist David Evans and his team start to feel defeated after three days of searching fruitlessly for fossils, and after cave geologist Gabriela Serrato Marks develops fibromyalgia, exploring caves becomes a challenge.

After getting accepted to a PhD program, Max Departee can’t help but feel like he’s not good enough to be there, and Han Arbach is worried coming out as nonbinary will ruin their scientific career.

In an attempt to be seen as “cool” by his friends, Azhar Bande-Ali reaches out to the Steve Wozniak and invites him for coffee, and Don Picard can’t stop using technology to keep tabs on his son.

Zoe Wisnoski takes matters into her own hands when her son has months of ongoing fevers, and during the pandemic, epidemiologist Bryon Backenson becomes disheartened when the public stops cooperating with public health authorities.

When Yves Jeffcoat is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she isn’t sure how to manage this new normal, and Jameer Pond keeps ending up in relationships he doesn’t want to be in, so his therapist suggests he take a sex sabbatical.

Kate Marvel's dream of being a genius takes her to Cambridge to study astrophysics, and when Joe Normandin begins to question his sexuality as a teenager, he turns to neuroscience for help.

After debunking Bella Hadid’s treatment for chronic lyme disease, Fola Olusanya finds herself in a heated debate with another TikToker, and during the pandemic, infectious disease researcher and science communicator Laurel Bristow receives a flood of hate mail.

After giving birth to her second child, Julie Raskin doesn’t know how to handle his constant crying and need to nurse, and as a new immigrant and surprise cancer patient, Emmanuel Paul navigates the complexities of the US healthcare system.

Eva Chebishev gets voted “Most Organized” in first grade and struggles to fit in with her peers, and Morgan Roberts is worried about how people will see her if she enters a high school math competition.

When Evelyn Valdez-Ward discovers that she's undocumented, she fears her dreams of becoming a scientist are over, and Samuel Achilefu's experiences growing up during the Nigerian Civil War inspire his passion for science. 

As a zoo volunteer, Lisa Yeager adores sharing her love of the wild, but one zoo patron is ruining that for her, and Anna yearns to be a scientist, but her strict mormon family doesn’t want her to become one.

When Saloni Singh’s mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Saloni is unexpectedly shoved into the role of caregiver and matriarch, and after her deaf mother has several strokes and begins experiencing hallucinations, Michelle Antonucci struggles to get her mom the care she needs.

When Julie Carrick Dalton goes to check on her bees one day, she notices something isn’t right, and Jon Schulz thinks rescuing a neglected apiary is the perfect opportunity to expand his beekeeping business.

When Cailin Gallinger struggles with her gender identity in college, her volunteer position in a plant lab becomes a lifeline, and in the midst of homelessness and abuse, Rose DF dreams of a life in science. 

When Sanjana Murthy misses her grandfather’s funeral, she struggles with the lack of closure, and Paul Barach impulsively decides to walk the Pacific Coast Trail to escape the grief of his girlfriend’s suicide.

When Milly McDermott is 15, she finds a grapefruit-sized tumor growing out of her vagina, and after a guy she was dating tells Dawn Harris she has two vaginas, she can’t help but wonder what is going on down there.

After Fernando Cuevas flunks out of college, he’s worried he’s destined to be stuck at his dead end Best Buy job forever, and when Sonia Rehal’s sister passes from complications caused by the rare disease lipodystrophy, she doesn’t know how to define herself in the absence of her other half.

Months into her fly experiment Michaela Agapiou still can’t catch flies efficiently and now she’s faced with the challenge of scaling up her experiment, and in order to get a good grade in her biology class, Ashely McKelvy designs her own experiment that requires her friends to drink a cup of coffee every 20 minutes.

When Mackenzie Brown’s adoptive father passes away suddenly from a heart condition, she is determined to find out what genes she did inherit, and Martha Buford Reiskind thought the case of her mom’s murder was closed when no DNA match came up for the single piece of hair left at the scene.

Danielle Meinert struggles to eat anything other than cheese pizza, Easy Mac and toast with butter, and Ellis Ballard has life-threatening food allergies, which makes eating, drinking and living life challenging.

Asthma had always held Tara Turner back, but when the doctor tells her she’s officially “obese,” she decides to make a change, and Paul Aflalo struggles with the decision to get gastric bypass surgery.

As a deaf person, Alma Schrage doesn’t see a place for herself in the traditional academic world of science, and after a fall leaves Jennifer Piatek paralyzed, she must rethink how she defines herself as a scientist.

Pamela Toh is dead set on being the “bad kid” at school, and on a family vacation to Disney, Matthew Dicks becomes more and more frustrated by his daughter’s strange behavior.

When Christine Gentry moves across the country to California, she struggles to find community, and after moving to Beirut, Lebanon from the U.S., Mary Ann Perkins doesn’t understand why everyone keeps staring at her.

As the team principal of the autonomous racing team, Madhur Behl is determined to win, and Engineer Mate King searches for a plane that crashed in the remote mountains of Idaho.

After fully embracing their asexuality, Katherine Holmes begins questioning the necessity of a romantic relationship, and Julie Tomé is thrown for a loop when her child announces they’re “not a girl”.

Growing up in sexually conservative Ireland, Connor O’Donoghue is completely in the dark about sex, sexuality, and anatomy, and Justina Assaad thinks the nausea she’s feeling while waiting to go parasailing is just a fluke.

As someone who values language, Jerzy Gwiazdowski is thrown into turmoil when his partner says “suposably,” and no one can ever say Casie Caldwell’s name correctly and it makes her furious.

As a student, Emily Pitts was never a fan of science, but now, as a middle school teacher, she’s not feeling confident in her skills to teach the subject, and despite his deep desire to study science, Andrew Barnes is constantly told he can’t.

Silvana Clark finds a bat in her newborn’s room and thinks it may have bitten her baby, and Leah Moore navigates the challenges of raising a daughter with cri-du-chat syndrome alongside her other children with their own special needs.

A new baby and a new job make Edith Gonzalez feel distant from her husband, so she decides to spice things up, and while working at the zoo, Lee Osorio learns a lot about zoo animal sex and himself.

Sarah Demers has this nagging feeling she’s not a real physicist, and after dropping out of college, Kevin Smiley can’t seem to shake his feelings of inadequacy.

On a flight to St. Louis, the plane Brad Lawrence is on, needs to make an emergency landing, and while Keven Griffen is doing field work in Sierra Nevada a wildfire breaks out.

Gregor Posadas joins the army to pursue his dreams of becoming an engineer and fulfill his father’s wish of “fixing” their home country of the Philippines, and after losing his father as a young child, Nanduh Balakrishnan feels compelled to use his school savings to buy a life saving drug for a patient at the hospital he’s working at.

While constantly staring at Mercury’s craters for NASA's MESSENGER mission, a picture of the Galapagos Islands captures Paul Byrne’s attention, and while serving in the navy to get his engineering degree, David Estrada is struck by the level of poverty he witnesses on the tiny island of East Timor.

While on a school trip in Russia, Cassandra Hartblay’s vegetarian dietary restrictions keep getting tested, and as a meat lover, Jenny Kleeman has high hopes for the world’s first lab-grown chicken nugget.

After constantly living in the shadow of her older sister, RJ Millena isn’t sure how to carve her own path, and when Jasmine Anenberg finds out her high school friend overdoses while she’s working in the field, she starts to see the world differently.

Dave Kalema keeps lying to his sick mother about how bad his knee injury is, and Dionne C. Monsanto doesn’t know how to help her daughter with her mental illness.

After her colleagues make fun of the pie she brings on Pi Day, Desiré Whitmore decides she will never again celebrate Pi Day, and math teacher Theodore Chao goes all out for Pi Day at his school.

In college, Nick Link almost burns down the entire neighborhood when he and his friends set some Christmas trees on fire, and after moving to America from Mumbai, Urvi Talaty feels like she has finally escaped the heavily polluted air that choked her as a kid.

When Riley Blevin’s son gets diagnosed with a rare disease, it changes his life, and Heidi Wallis becomes completely obsessed with trying to fix her daughter.

Scientist Bruce Hungate yearns to find someone who cares about the tiny details as much as he does, and science reporter Ari Daniel and his wife are at odds when it comes to moving their family to Lebanon, but the pandemic changes things.

At her NASA summer internship, Kirsten Siebach feels completely out of place among the Mars mission scientists, and Alison Spodek’s need to be seen as smart takes over her life.

With a new kid and her husband moving to Iowa for a job, Angie Chatman’s mental health begins to suffer, and Anna Bushlack’s romantic notions of married life with a child are broken when her husband relapses and her son is born with a cleft palate.

When Shannon Turner’s high school friend passes away from a rare virus from a monkey, she contemplates her sense of purpose, and after a traumatizing experience with a dead body leaves journalist Erica Buist agoraphobic, she embarks on a journey to understand how other cultures handle death in hopes of healing.