The Story Collider

After watching a documentary about the moon landing, Kate Downey comes away with a love of all things Buzz Aldrin, and Richard French gets the call to work for NASA, fulfilling a dream that started with his professor Carl Sagan.

When online dating isn't working out for him, Tristan Attwood decides to analyze the data himself, and in search of a deal, Gastor Almonte ends up with an unmanageable number of condoms.

As a 16-year-old, Lily Be gets an unexpected education on the reproductive system, and Xavier Jordan discovers the party side of science at his first scientific conference.

After a car crash alters Emily Winn's life forever, she must relive the trauma when she testifies in a deposition, and black geneticist C. Brandon Ogbunu contemplates the role race has played in his academic career after he gets confronted by the police.

A chance meeting with a stranger on an airplane has a huge impact on Melanie Knight's life, and Joshua Adams-Miller has never seen college in his future, until he receives encouragement from an unexpected source.

After getting hit by a car, Ph.D. student Reyhaneh Maktoufi must navigate the recovery and paperwork as an immigrant from Iran, and when scientist Danielle Lee travels to Tanzania to study pouched rats, she finds she's more of an outsider than she'd expected.

Adam Selbst competes with tigers for the attention of his mother, and weighed down by the burden of leadership as she supervises the construction of a telescope, Erika Hamden finds comfort in an unlikely spot.

As a child, TC Waisman is told that she is on the autism spectrum, but her mother refuses to accept the diagnosis, and growing up, Craig Fay develops strategies to hide how terrible he is at math.

Zoology student Devon Kodzis's strategy of attracting boys with fun animal facts proves difficult, and away from her boyfriend for grad school, Meisa Salaita starts to fall for a chemistry classmate who's her complete opposite.

Science journalist Erik Vance decides to get cursed by a witch doctor for science, and after taking a rock from Mauna Loa, volcanologist Jess Phoenix starts to worry that her offering to the volcano goddess Pele was not enough.

Kambri Crews attempts to smuggle a gift into prison for her father, who is deaf, and as Kristine Lycke enters kindergarten, her mother starts treatment for a mysterious illness.

In the third grade, Lylianna Allala finds out that her partner on the class solar system project isn't allowed to come over to her house, and after surviving leukemia in her childhood and becoming a cancer research scientist, Vicky Forster finds herself working alongside the same doctor who saved her life.

Journalist Sarah Kaplan normally covers the science beat, but when tragedy strikes in Las Vegas, she takes on an assignment unlike any she's had before, and while covering the devastating impact of an earthquake in Thailand, journalist Maryn McKenna reflects on tragedy in her own life.

As a marine biology student, Liz Neeley loves the order of science, but when a research expedition takes an unexpected turn, she must deal with the messy reality, and when Erin Barker is diagnosed with two chronic illnesses, she has to say goodbye to four of her favorite things.

When his students keep having “accidents" during nap time, kindergarten teacher Alvin Irby investigates, and in Aida Rosenbaum’s first month as a high-school science teacher, a fight breaks out between her students.

At 22 years old, Jenn Montooth is accepted to graduate school just as she discovers she's pregnant, and studying addiction as a neuroscientist gives Anna Miller a new perspective on her past.

When there's an explosion in the chemistry lab, graduate student Chanté Summers springs into action, and when Adriana Briscoe's professor accuses her of cheating, she scrambles to save her reputation and her spot on the biology lab's field trip.

After finally getting together in their forties, Chris Wade and his wife are determined to have a baby -- even if it means following some unconventional advice, and struggling to conceive, Sara Sweet makes her third attempt at intrauterine insemination just before her family's Christmas gathering.

A routine procedure with one of the primates in her lab becomes much more complicated when neuroscientist Paula Croxson cuts herself with the scalpel, and when surgeon Bhuvanesh Singh sees his patient back in the hospital months after what he thought was a successful surgery, he grapples with feelings of failure.

Luke Rosen signs his daughter up for a research study to find out what's causing her seizures and ends up having to fight to find the answers, and after doctors are unable to prevent her daughter's daily seizures, Tracy Dixon-Salazar decides to take matters into her own hands.

After Kenny Kinds begins lying to his parents about his grades, he has to question why he is in engineering school in the first place, and after a tragedy, Brianna Shaughnessy discovers a different way to heal at the Great Barrier Reef.

As the scientist in the family, Steve Scott takes on a new role when his dad must undergo heart surgery, and Tajana Schneiderman struggles to live up to the expectations and sacrifices of her brilliant scientist mother.

When pharmacy professor Lindsay Acree volunteers at a local needle exchange, her beliefs about addiction are challenged, and engineering PhD student Jeannie Purchase sets out to help a couple in rural South Carolina who have endured dirty tap water for a decade.

Veterinarian Rodrigo Solis thinks he's found the perfect job -- taking care of horses in the Mexican Army -- until a new commander takes over, and weeks before an important performance, opera singer Laura Crocco notices there's something wrong with her voice.

Lonely after her move to New York City, Adrien Behn finds a friend in her copper IUD, and while recovering from prostate cancer surgery, Dana Strout finds a creative solution to his incontinence.

When biologist Andrew Holding's new baby stops feeding, his scientific instincts are put to the test, and after finding out her mother has breast cancer, high school teacher Nakeysha Roberts Washington gets hit with the news that one of her students has a brain tumor.

After turning down a tenure position, Sarah Brady struggles to adapt to her new life as the spouse of a physician, and as he grows up, Ed Greco's two great loves -- his high school sweetheart, and physics -- come into conflict.

On a dull night in Orlando, young Josh Flaum decides to experiment with drugs he can buy over the counter, and after Will Tran accidentally cheats his way to a high school math award, he has to grapple with whether or not to come clean.

Biologist Heather Hamlin leaves the safety of the lab for her first field assignment: tagging alligators, and as an unconsenting "face of diversity" at a statistics conference, Dan Simpson contemplates the role of his gay identity in his academic life.

In his last year of medical school in Colombia, Gabriel Duran Rehbein finds out his father has been kidnapped, and after seeing her dad lose control of his mind, art student Minerva Contreras decides to study the brain, in hopes of understanding him.

Barbara Abernathy has always felt at home in the ocean, but when she undergoes a bone marrow transplant, her doctor tells her she can't go into the water for a year, and with only two days to find and extract a sample from one of the oldest coral colonies in the world, Konrad Hughen finds himself at the bottom of the ocean with a broken drill bit.

When the local science museum looks to hire performers, David Nett believes he's the perfect man for the job, and after finding out her uterus never developed, scientist Chivonne Battle searches for an alternative way to become a mother.

Comedian Zack Stovall reevaluates his past battles with his mother in light of a new diagnosis, and Audrey Kearns' big opportunity to appear as a panelist at a "nerd-convention" turns disastrous when she has an unexpected reaction to a new antidepressant.

After passing out on the NYC subway, comedian Mike Brown is forced to take a deeper look at his mental health, and Emily Yarrison survives her suicide attempt and has to ask herself a whole new set of questions.

Heather Williams trades in her physicist labcoat for motherhood, and wonders if she can return, and Mary Garcia-Cazarin discovers she's pregnant just as she is offered a prestigious science policy fellowship, and worries about whether she can't cope with both.

A parent-teacher conference leads Eugenia Duodu to question whether she can be a scientist, and At 13 years old Misha Gajewski has to undergo a jaw surgery to fix a face she is just getting used to.

In a battle over her apartment's air quality, cat foster mom Tracy Rowland discovers how to use her kitten's parasite as a weapon, and Gianmarco Soresi learns more about cats than he ever wanted to when his girlfriend adopts five.

As a sixth grader, Anna Neu decides she's going to fall in love at science camp, and at age nine, Anicca Harriot plans to study both the heart and space, but as she gets older, that plan becomes more challenging than she expected.

When conservation scientist Laura Kehoe writes about a surprising chimp behavior, the media takes it wildly out of context and the situation spirals out of control, and when The Colbert Report calls about her research, marine biologist Skylar Bayer finds an unexpected collaborator and friend in the fisherman helping her get scallops.

Overwhelmed by setbacks as she pursues her academic ambitions, Tricia Hersey discovers an unexpected solution to her stress, and evolutionary biologist Sarah Hird's first pregnancy becomes a crisis in her scientific faith when doctors warn her that there may be something severely wrong with her baby.

After moving to a brand-new school in the seventh grade, Edith Gonzalez struggles to maintain her straight-A status with a new, scary biology teacher, and when social scientist Meltem Alemdar leaves her home in Turkey to pursue her education in the US, she struggles to find her identity.

As an irresponsible 17-year-old, Brian D. Bradley volunteers to spend two days living at the bottom of the ocean for a research study, and undergrad, Beryl Kahn takes a semester at sea after a bad breakup and gets rocked by the swells of the sea -- and her emotions.

A power outage on campus leads physics student Zoya Vallari to take a stand against her university's female-only curfew, and firefighter Nick Baskerville is eager to prove himself when he arrives on the scene of his first fire.

In the middle of a school day, science teacher Brittany Beck passes out in her classroom, leading her to reflect on what got her here, and inspired by her grandfather, Kitty Yang becomes a math teacher, but soon realizes she misses being a student.

As a brand-new professor of physiology, John Redden is eager to help students, but soon realizes it’s more complicated than he thought, and biologist Sarah Fankhauser’s relationship with her adviser changes when she joins her lab as a grad student.

Just before she leaves for her dream opportunity to teach marine science on the Red Sea, Latasha Wright gets a call that puts her plans in jeopardy, and growing up, Sheena Cruickshank's teenage older brother inspires her love of science, but then one summer he returns from university with a lump on his arm.

A question that Laura Spink asked her parents as a kid comes up again when her own child begins to ask similar questions, and after Denise Coberley brings up her doubt in the Bible to her adoptive religious parents, she finds herself on a journey of self-discovery.

Parmvir Bahia struggles to appease her parents’ desires for an Indian son-in-law while also satisfying her own desires to be a scientist, and Monica Dunford finds physics cold and boring until she gets a summer job in a lab that changes everything.

Ralph Bouquet goes off script during a psychology research study with uncomfortable and revealing consequences, and Ali Mustafa finds that the scars of war stay with him even at his new job in the lab.

The lessons that Margaret Rubega learns from her dad about fighting back are put to the test when he becomes the one she must stand up to, and in following her dream of studying chemistry, Charlotte Istance-Tamblin sees how to break the toxic patterns in her relationships.

Computer scientist LaShana Lewis’s childhood dream of attending Space Camp starts to feel far away — until she gets the Christmas surprise of a lifetime, and when Guizella Rocabado leaves her home in Bolivia to pursue her education in the United States, her plan hits an unexpected snag.

Due to stress in her personal life, TV writer Joey Slamon develops a cyst in an unfortunate place, and on the day of biochemistry PhD student Kellie Vinal’s qualifying exam, nothing goes according to plan.

Miserable at her corporate job, Michelle McCrackin begins to dream of a career in wildlife biology, and volcanologist Ben Kennedy’s attempts to be taken seriously as a scientist are undermined by his youthful appearance.