The Story Collider

There is one rule more important than any other in an fMRI experiment: no metal. But a stuck piercing makes aspiring neuroscientist Anna Wexler make a crucial choice -- end her career, or face possible serious injury?

Pakistan-born physicist Saad Sarwana gets a visit from the FBI.

When tragedy strikes his high school friend, David Epstein vows to find out what happened.

As a woman of color working in science, Danielle N. Lee has always encountered challenges. But she doesn't expect the email she receives one morning, or the events it sets in motion

Psychologist Pete Etchells' father inspired him -- to hate neurons.

While studying bioengineering, Craig Lehocky discovers he's different from the other students.

A wrong number to a friend in Sri Lanka leads Saswato Das to the final interview with a famous science fiction writer.

Jim O'Grady's attempts to woo his housemate are stymied by the monkey she's training to help quadriplegics.

At age 7, Deborah Blum starts a mystery when she interrupts her parent's dinner party. So their guest, famed biologist E.O. Wilson, investigates.

What's the worst that can happen when you let a recent college grad command a $330 million spacecraft?

Science writer Eliza Strickland discovers that in the race to the bottom of the Mariana Trench the most important thing is what they leave behind.

How does a landscape artist become the host of a popular science show on YouTube? For Emily Graslie it started with pictures of a wolf head on Facebook.

From a (mostly) successful model rocket launch to a missed opportunity by Richard Feynman, Alan Lightman learns that the equations aren't the whole story.

When two residents of her nursing home fell in love, sexual rights advocate Robin Dessel had to decide how the staff would handle their rendezvous.

Stephanie Nothelle loves volunteering at her local nursing home, but she doesn't know what to do when one of the residents says, "I die today" and asks for a last cup of coffee -- against doctor's orders.

For her masters thesis in science writing, Aviva Hope Rutkin starts writing about sensory substitution -- a way of swapping in one sense for another. But her work leads to a mysterious Dr. Bach-y-Rita and a whole new way of knowing someone.

Richard Pollack finds himself moderating an uneasy negotiation between Israelis and Jordanians, as part of an international effort to stem a scourge of houseflies.

After he's named lab safety officer, John Rennie must recover a precious sample from the bottom of a vat of liquid nitrogen. So he reaches in.

Darcy Burke's mother gave her a book on mountain lions, and it had the effect that every science writer wishes their book will have. Kind of.

As a new, super competitive, graduate student Aditi Nadkarni thinks she has the perfect way to impress her advisor and labmates ... until one night it spirals a tiny bit out of control.

Kimberly Rae Miller's family had a secret: her dad was a hoarder. But when she begins digging into the research on hoarding, she finds it's not nearly as simple to fix as she'd hoped.

Sara Peters has epilepsy, but no drugs seem to help. So she agrees to be hooked up to a machine at the hospital for days, in hopes of inducing the one thing she and her husband, Peter Aguero, dread the most: a seizure. Recorded at TEDMED 2013. Video: tedmed.com/talks/show?id=189377

When Ben Moskowitz gets to take special classes in elementary school, he's excited at first, but then he starts to realize there might be something different about him.

Science writer Alex Brown's philosophical education becomes very practical when he is diagnosed with meningitis.

Three years after a mysterious illness nearly drove her insane and took her life, Susannah Cahalan visits a patient with the same rare, dangerous condition.

Elna Baker's grade school reputation faces it's greatest threat: her engineer father's enthusiasm for homework.

A physicist decides that the best way to make progress on his robotics project is to go to Namibia to study termites.

Science writer Seth Mnookin set out to write a book on whether vaccines were dangerous, but discovered the issue was more complex than he'd thought.

As grad school for neuroscience wears on, Michael Nitabach feels the pull of law school, and goes. But he had another surprise coming.

Esther Perel's career gets an unexpected boost from the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal.

As a kid, Mara Wilson is decidedly uninterested in science, but as she grows up she starts to look for answers in new places.

When Meehan Crist was a child, her mother hit her head. It was only as an adult that she discovered that her mother was covering up something far more serious: something called rather ironically a "mild traumatic brain injury."

Neuroscientist Daniela Schiller studies the emotional components of memory. In her previous story her research helped her begin to understand her father, a holocaust survivor. But that story led to a whole new chapter in their relationship, and her understanding of memories.

Moran Cerf's life is spun around when a computer glitch declares him dead -- but that's nothing compared to what happens when a real funeral comes around.

When he begins showing strange symptoms on a jog though the mountains, science writer Andrew Revkin discovers just how close to death he is.

While visiting Guatemala Sarah Everts is bitten by a dog, so she goes looking for a rabies shot. But coming home to Canada is when the real problem started.

After a career as a theater manager, Stuart Firestein takes a biology class, which leads him to a completely new life, and a lot of salamander noses.

When Paula Croxson began to study memory as a neuroscientist, she also learned a new way of thinking about her grandmother's failing memory.

Writer Jess Zimmerman discovers the dangers of dating a philosopher of neuroscience who thinks he knows what's really happening in her head.

Journalist Jon Ronson is excited when he hears about some 'sentient' robots, but when he goes to interview them he finds both less and more than he ever expected.

André Fenton always wanted to do research at the most fundamental level -- to uncover basic truths about memory and how it works, never mind how useful. But a friend's accident unexpectedly leads to him inventing a spectacularly useful, and lifesaving, device.

Robin Marantz Henig and her daughter, Samantha, decided to write a book together about life as a twentysomthing. There was just one problem -- how to handle the bits you don't want to talk about with your mother?

Colin Jerolmack was floundering in grad school until he found deep insights into human nature... from pigeons.

Biologist Kelly Smith and comic artist Zach Weiner were having trouble dating, until they met online and realized what they each needed was another nerd.

Anica Rissi realizes the true purpose of her science project: to increase her popularity. But how far is she willing to go?

Tara Clancy's worry over making bad life choices leads her to think about all the things she doesn't know -- and from there, obviously, to theoretical physics.

Her grandmother's death forces neuroscientist Heather Berlin to think hard about what she believes, and why.

Anna Rothschild tells the most adorably gross love story you'll ever hear.