In the lead up to our special Story Collider All-Star Slam on December 6, 2022, we’re featuring two past stories from our challengers on this week’s episode. If their old stories are this good, we can only imagine how awesome they’re gonna be competing for the title of Ultimate Science Storyteller. You won’t want to miss this online event! Register for free here.
Part 1: A college course forces John Rennie to confront a furious rat, and himself.
John has worked as a science editor, writer and lecturer for more than 30 years. Currently, he is deputy editor at Quanta Magazine. During his time as editor in chief at Scientific American, between 1994 and 2009, the magazine received two National Magazine Awards. He co-created and hosted the 2013 series Hacking the Planet on The Weather Channel. Since 2009, he has been on the faculty of the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program in New York University’s graduate journalism school. John is @tvjrennie and john@johnrennie.net.
This story originally aired in August 2011.
Part 2: As a kid, comedian Gastor Almonte seeks answers about some of the scientific terms he hears around school.
Gastor Almonte is a stand-up comedian and storyteller from Brooklyn, NY. He's appeared on Comedy Central's This Is Not Happening, Risk! podcast and the Story Collider Podcast. Timeout magazine named him one of your "New Comedy Obsessions." He's been featured on the New York Comedy Festival, The People's Impov Theater's SoloCom and Cinderblock Comedy Festival. His new album, Immigrant Made, was released in March 2019.
This story originally aired on June 16, 2017.
Episode Transcript
Part 1
History will remember the year 1979 formany different reasons: the death ofdisco, the start of the Iranian hostagecrisis. But for me, 1979 will always bethe year that I remember as the yearthat a rat almost castrated me.
Here's how that happened.
In the fall of 1979, I was a 20-year-old college junior. I was majoring in biology. And I was taking a lab practical course in neuropsychology. Now, neuropsychology meant that what we were studying was how various brain structures and hormones influence behavior. It was a lab practical because that meant that we studied this by doing unpleasant things to rats.
I don't want to get into or try to defend the ethics of this beyond saying that this is just what we did back in those days. And as this story will illustrate, I was very much a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. And if it makes you feel any better about this, bear in mind that, as I've said, at the end of this story a rat almost castrates me.
I had a lab partner in this class, apre-med named Randy. Now, Randy was a tall, athletic, good-looking guy with a girlfriend. He was functionally the opposite of me in pretty much every possible way.
He had a very, very busy social life that he would constantly be having to go off and see the girlfriend or he would have to be practicing with the sports teams that he was on.
And he would get back to me sometime and he would sometimes then point out that he didn't really have the time to work with me outside of class when we needed to take care of the animals or write up our results the way that we should. And he would say to mewith this kind of teenage lothario charmthat would wander sometimesbetween genuinely suave to just sort ofgreasy.
He would say things like, “Ah, hey, John, listen.I know we haven't really finishedsewing up this rat butI've got apractice this afternoon. Do you think maybe you could just finish this up for us?”And I would say yes. I would go along with him on this, because this was the sort of person that I was, as I had been from birth. All of my life, I had been a guy who would avoid conflict by putting other people's interests ahead of my own.
For example, I was the roommate who would get up at the crack of dawn so everybody else could take showers at a more convenient hour. In my freshman year, I actually took a worse final grade in a class because I could not bring myself to point out to the professor that he had not given me credit for work that I had done. I don't know where this all came from. I'm assuming it was some sort of issue of countless generations of Irish Catholic guilt bearing down on me. Just this voice in my head that was saying, “You'll let them have the last piece of cake. You're their big brother. You should watch out for them.” I don't know. But whatever it was, it was something like that.
So when these problems would come up, when Randy would ask these things, I would go along with him. And I have to point out, he wasn't being malicious or unethical in any way. It's simply that he had a very full life and so it just naturally expanded into the void of mine.
Around Halloween of that year, we were learning about the structure in the brain known as the hypothalamus. Now, as you may know, the hypothalamus is apart of the brain deep down at the bottom that is very much involved with many of our basic drives and our ability to regulate how much food we eat and water we drink and how much sleep we need.
We were studying this that week by doing a certain classic experiment in neuropsychology, which it was well-known at this time that if you took a rat and if you use electricity to zap one particular tiny part of its hypothalamus, the eventual medial nucleus of the hypothalamus, the rat would change its behavior and it would lose all of its ability to regulate how much it ate.It would eat uncontrollably. It was seemingly insatiably hungry. In fact, if you gave it an unlimited amount of food, it would eat and eat and eat until it swelled up like a little white furry football.
So in this experiment, the way things were supposed to be on Thursday, Randy and I were supposed to zap the rat, and we did. Then we would give it a couple of days to recuperate and then, starting on Saturday, Randy would come to the lab and begin weighing the rat as we would then take turns doing that for two weeks to document what would be its amazing increase in weight.
So we did the experiment. The first part of it we waited and on Saturday night, the phone rang. It was of course Randy. Randy is saying, “Ah, John, hi. Listen, I'm sorry.You know, I was studying all afternoon and I promised my girlfriend that I was going to take her out tonight, so do you think maybe you could get over to the lab and take care of the rat for us?”
As it worked out, I actually had plans for that evening. This particular evening was one of the very rare times I had actually steeled up my courage enough that I was going to take myself off to a dance party so that I could stand in a dark room and not meet girls.
I had already dressed, in fact, by this time and I had put on my nicest looking polyester shirt and these amazing white flare-bottom pants, which I I'm pretty sure even by the dubious standards of the late ‘70s was not a good look.
But Randy asked this and I said yes, I would go do it. Because I rationalized it to myself that getting over the lab and weighing the rat, that won't take very much time. And when I get to the dance, all the girls I wasn't going to meet will still not be there for me anyway, so what’s the harm?
So I hung up the phone and I headed off to the laboratory which was in a building that was quite dark and empty there on a nearly-Halloween night, because of course it was also a Saturday night.
The room where we kept the rats was a painted cinder block room about 15 or 20 feet on a side. There was really nothing in it except for a couple of big shelving units on wheels that were filled with the wire basket cages in which the rats lived.
I arrived at the room and I approached the cage that held our rat. And let me just say, by the way, that the breed of rat known as the Sprague Dawly CD provided by Charles River Associates is a wonderful animal. It is really. It's a very charming, cute little creature. It's friendly and it's clean and it's really quite adorable. Hundreds of generations of breeding have made them really quite, quite docile.
But not this one. No. As I drew closer to that cage, the rat threw itself against the wire mesh at the front of the cage and wrapped it's little rat fingers around the mesh and took its great big two chisel incisor teeth and started frantically biting, biting, biting at the wire mesh, trying to cut its way free. For a rat, this is the equivalent of a prisoner in a jail taking his metal cup and banging it against the bars of the cell.
I was so taken by this that I actually took a wooden pencil and I stuck it into the cage just to see what would happen. And the rat threw itself on the cage, onto the pencil and immediately just started chomping down through the wood of this.
Now, this is not a good thing because, you see, I have to reach into that cage to pick up the rat so that I can take it out and weigh it.
But, fortunately, a big, thick, leatherwork glove has been provided for precisely this purpose. So I put on the heavy leather work glove, I pull open the cage, I reach in and the rat furiously throws itself onto the glove and uses its two giant incisor teeth to bite through the thick leather and directly into the thin webbing of skin between my thumb and index finger.
At this point simply on reflex and in pain, I draw my hand out of the cage withthe rat still dangling from it by its teeth. Where upon the rat, realizing that it has basically gotten over the prison wall, lets go and drops to the floor and runs for safety underneath one of the shelving units.
Well, I have to get this rat back because this is our experiment, but there is no one there I can turn to for help. And I can't even open that door to go any place because I'm afraid that, if I do, the rat will immediately bolt for the door and run out into the darkened building.
So I jump down and I reach under the shelving unit and the rat immediately runs to the other side. I go down and I reach for the other end and it runs back to the other side. I start to push the shelving unit aside, because it is on wheels, and the rat just runs to the other shelving unit. We do this for more than 25 minutes with me constantly chasing the rat through this small cement room and the rat constantly evading everything I can do until the rat finally miscalculates.
Yes, I outsmarted the rat.
At one point, the rat, in trying to getaway from me, should have turned left and run for the other shelving unit. But instead, it turned right and ran off into a corner of the room that was completely empty. It was nothing but painted cinderblock. Nothing for it to run into or hide behind or do anything to evade me. And I had it.
So with the leather glove on one hand and a metal bucket I was holding in the other that I could then weigh the rat in, I closed in to now catch the rat.
The rat, realizing it had no place to hide, changed tactics and charged directly at me. And before I knew what was happening, the rat had climbed up over my foot and grabbed my sock and begun to climb up inside my white flare-bottomed pants.
So, there I stood with an insanely vicious, insatiably hungry rat climbing up my thigh. In that moment, I actually remember two distinct trains of thought. One part of me was sort of remarkably removed and it said, “This is just getting comical, because, really, this should be happening to Randy.”And the other part of me is beyond words and is just screaming incoherent, “Daah!”
And that's the part that grabs control of my body. I'm now hopping up and down on one leg and thrashing the other leg around as hard as I can, desperately trying to shake the rat loose. And I'm batting at my leg with both hands. The little metal can that I was holding, that flies across the room, clatters against the shelves.
I'm jumping around the room, screaming and yelling, batting at my legs, shaking my leg for I don't know how long. It was probably a good minute and a half.
Then, finally, I got lucky in that, after all of this jostling around, the rat finally lost its purchase on theinside of my pants and suddenly came cannonballing out of the flare-bottom pant leg, flew across the room, bounced not too hard against one of the other walls and fell to the floor dazed. Sufficiently dazed that I could run backover there with the metal basket, slamthat over the top of the rat and pick itupand weigh it. Because that is why I was there.
Footnote: the rat, over the next two weeks, didn't gain an ounce. We had failed to make a hungry rat. We had simply made an angry rat.
And when I put the angry rat, which had quickly recovered from this whole ordeal far better than I had, when I put it back into its cage and it threw itself back up against the front again and was just giving me this look, like, “You win this round but I'll never give up. I'll escape yet.”
As I stared at it, I had two revelations. Two thoughts that really should have occurred to me much sooner in life. The first one was that if this rat, this simple little animal could stand up for itself against me and try to escape against impossible odds then, surely, I ought to be able to stand up for myself against the Randy’s of this world.And the other realization I came to was that there's just never any excuse for white flare-bottomed pants. There just isn't.
Thank you.
Part 2
I was putting my son into bed recently, right, and he's like, “Dad, is Uncle Gabriel a scientist?”
My brother Gabriel is a sixteen-year-old kid who just cheated on his Spanish test. We’re Dominican so that’s extra bad, by the way.
“No, he's not a scientist. Why do you ask me that, Aidan?”
He said, “Well, you told me that scientists discover stuff.”
I’m like, “Okay.”
He said, “Well, when I was at grandma‘s house, Uncle Gabriel came home and he was like, ‘Yo, I just discovered the new Jordans.’”
“That’s not the same thing, little man.” And I put him to bed and I stepped out, but I realized they're kind of similar, right? Research scientists and teens. They got the same goal. They want to know the information first. That’s what it comes down to. They want to know the cool shit first.
The only thing different is when a research scientist discovers some cool shit first, they want to tell you how they discovered that shit for twenty pages. They want to talk about their shit. They care about the process. I don't care, but they want you to know.
Teenagers are different. They want to be the process. They don’t want to tell you how they discovered it. They just want to tell you the day and the reason, you know.
Gastor Almonte shares his story at Under St Marks Theater in New York City in January 2017. Photo by Nicholas Santasier
And the other thing is scientists, they want everyone to know. They'll put it out there. They want to share the good news. Teenagers are picky as fuck when they discover some new things. Like if a teenager discovers the cure for cancer, you're aware that only their friends are getting saved, right? Like we’re just fucked. That’s just not in the cards for us.
I'll give you an example. See, when I was thirteen, I was coming home from school. I was going to be thirteen in Brooklyn, junior high school, eighth grade, comin’ home with my whole class. We’re all on the bus.
And I see all the girls in the back of the bus. They're all giggling. “Ha-ha-ha. I can’t believe that shit happened. Why, it’s crazy.”
I want to know. I’m cool. I want to know what’s going on.
I walk over to the back and like, “Yo, what happened?”
They're like, “Oh, you know… nah, we can’t tell you.” They all, they start laughing again. Now, I really want to know.
So I started playing Guess Who. You know, that cool game? I played that in person because that’s… see, that’s what teenagers do when they want to know shit. They pretend that they know, but then they start asking questions to give them hints to what the real thing is. I won’t front like I don’t do that shit. I do that shit all the time. You know?
“Oh, you know such-and-such?” “Oh, hell, yeah. What’d they look like, though?” That’s not just me. I know.
So I’m in the back of the bus, I’m like, “Yo, for real, though. What happened?”
They're like, “Yo, you didn’t see who had an erection today in class?”
And I’m like, “Oh, nah, nah. Who was it?” And they start giggling again. And then they're like, “Yo, it happens to them all the time. Ha-ha. That’s the third time this week.”
So now I’m really curious.
Now, up until this point I didn’t know what an erection was. So I discovered what an erection was this week, but I had to do recon. I didn’t want them to know that I didn’t know what an erection was. But let me be clear, by the way. I had erections at this point. I knew what an erection was. I didn’t know what “erection” meant. Like I didn’t know that thing that was happening to me every morning was called an erection.
Gastor Almonte shares his story at Under St Marks Theater in New York City in January 2017. Photo by Nicholas Santasier.
I’m watching you all being like, “Damn, I’m really sorry for this guy.” Yeah.
So yeah, I had erections, I knew what erection was, I didn’t know that “erection” meant what was happening. Cool. We’re on board. Hi.
So I’m like, “How do I figure this shit out?” So when you play Guess Who, most people -- I know I’m not the only one -- you try to eliminate half of the people up front. So I asked the wrong question, you know?
I said, “Yo, so was it a boy or a girl?” Funny enough, the same thing happened there. They started laughing too. They start cracking up.
The thing is, I played it off. I was like, “Yeah, it’s crazy.”
They're like, “Yo, Gastor, you're so funny. That’s funny.”
I’m like, Hell, yeah. I killed it. I walked away. On a high note. Whole class thought I made this funny ass joke -- I still don’t know shit. Someone in class got an erection. I don't know what it is. It’s either a boy or a girl. And whichever one it is, it’s ridiculous that it’s not the other.
I live this shit. You know?
So I go home, I get changed. You know, I’m Dominican, I play baseball all the time. That’s what we do. Had a game that day. I go to the game. I was pitching. It’s hot. It was about to be summertime. It’s almost the end of school year. And I fainted during the game.
So my mom rushes, she sees me on the floor. She picks me up with the coach and they're like, “Yo, are you okay?” And I’m like, “I’m not feeling too well.” They take me to the doctor.
I go to the doctor and I’m explaining to him how I felt. And Dr. Harvey is like, “Hey, yo, how you feeling?”
I’m like, “I’m not feeling too well. I’m a little dizzy. I didn’t really have anything to eat earlier. I’m not feeling too well.”
And he's like, “Were you feeling like that all day?”
I’m like, “Nah, just during the game.”
My mom is standing there she's like, “Yeah, he's fine. He's fine. I gave him food this morning. I don't know what happened.”
And Dr. Harvey looks at her and he looks at me and he's like, “You mind stepping out for me, Ms. Almonte?”
She's like, “Sure.” She walks out the room and he turns into a cop.
He said, “Yo, Gastor. You done drugs? You been drinking?”
I’m like, “Yo, we had a good rapport going, Mr. Harvey. I've been coming here for years. You would know if I was doing something like that. Why would you ask me that?”
He's like, “I just wanted to make sure you felt comfortable sharing. I asked your mom to leave the room. Do you drink? Do you take drugs? Do you take pills?”
Gastor Almonte shares his story at Under St Marks Theater in New York City in January 2017. Photo by Nicholas Santasier.
I’m like, “No, I don't do any of these things, sir. I play baseball. I crack jokes. That’s what I do. I go to class.”
He said, “Okay.”
“But why would you ask me that, sir?”
He said, “Because people that drink and take pills and they do drugs, on occasion, they feel lightheaded. They fall down. They faint.”
I was like, “Oh. Interesting.”
So I go home, I get some Gatorade, you know, hydrate. I go to school. I go to school that week. Then final week on Monday.
Now, this is towards the end of the school year so we had a little party. This was eighth grade. We’re graduating so everybody wants to kind of throw their getaway graduating party kind of thing. And this is also the first time I'd been at parties with alcohol.
I didn’t want to drink. I refuse to drink. Alcohol kept being spilt on me, though, so everybody assumed that I was drinking. Now, people thought I was drinking, I wasn’t drinking, but I liked the fact that people thought I was drinking because now I’m cool. So I ran with that shit.
So we’re in school on Monday, they're like, “Yo, Gastor, you were drinking with us too?”
“Man, I was feeling great.”
They're like, “Yo, what’d it feel like? That was the first time I was drinking. How about you, Gastor?”
“I drink all the time.”
“So what‘d you feel like? I didn’t get a chance to have one.”
So I was starting to say what the doctor said. Like, “Yo, I felt lightheaded, you know. Felt like I wasn’t all there.”
And they're like, “Yo, that sounds great.”
I’m like, “Yeah, yeah. It does, it does.” And I pulled that shit off.
So then we’re hanging out, we’re talking about the party, and they're like, “Yo, did you see Crystal’s home girl? Her cousin came to the party too? Yo, she had her period.”
I’m like, “How did you know?”
They're like, “Yo, she had a stain on her pants.” And in my head I’m trying to figure out what a period is, and why having a stain on your pants is a giveaway for this situation.
So I’m trying to figure out is this a situation where I could ask Crystal, or would she get mad if I asked Crystal about her friend having a period? I don't know how to play this one out.
So I start hanging out with the girls at lunch that day to see what they talk about, and I wait for Crystal to leave the crowd. And I’m like, “Yo, did her friend have a period? Is she okay? Is she good?”
And they're like, “Yo, Gastor, that’s real sweet of you to ask.”
Period sounds scary as hell. They're scary now and I know what they are. But imagine, at the time, like you're hearing that shit. That’s traumatizing. They were legit concerned. And they were impressed that I was concerned.
So I’m like, “So what happened?”
They're like, “Yo, you know, like she was getting cramps, her stomach started hurting, and I think it was her first one so she wasn’t ready. It was embarrassing.”
So I’m like, “Oh, that’s crazy,” but I still don’t know what a period is.
So I go home, I get ready for the baseball game and I’m like, Yo, I actually faint again and go to the doctor’s office asking questions about periods. And I could learn what this is that I apparently was real nice to know and care about happening to this young lady.
So I listened to what they were telling me happen to her, so I fall down the floor again. I didn’t do a good job. I’m not a good actor.
So my mom rushes over. She like, “Do you feel lightheaded again?”
I’m like, “Yeah, plus my stomach’s hurting. It’s cramping, Ma. I think I’m spotting too.”
“What?”
We go to the doctor’s office again, and Harvey’s like, “What’s going on, man?”
I’m like, “Yo, my stomach’s cramping. It’s really hurting me. I think I have a period.”
And Dr. Harvey looks at me and he’s like, “Gastor, I think you know how this works. Do you have some questions?”
I said, “Dr. Harvey, I’m gonna be real with you. I don't know what a period is, but I need to know.”
He said, “Why do you need to know what a period is?”
I said, “Because I didn’t know what alcohol made you feel like, so I came in last time. I didn’t need to know that either. But knowing that made me the man. I want to know what periods are because I could keep being the man and being involved in these conversations.”
He said, “You could just ask me that over the phone without pretending to faint.”
I was like, “Dr. Harvey, if I asked my mom to give me the phone so I could call the doctor so I could figure out what these things are, she’s gonna be suspicious.”
“Okay, I hear you. I hear you.” So he explains to me what a period it. That shit is incredible.
Kudos to you all by the way. That’s just wild. You don’t get credit enough for that shit because that shit… see, like everyone here is an adult, so I’m assuming it’s been happening for at least half your life or more. For those of you that aren’t aware, it’s crazy what happens there every month. You see that shit’s wild.
Like if they're happening for anything else in your life, you would just be like so impressed. Like imagine if some new television came out and once a month that television, if you rubbed it next to the refrigerator, would make a new appliance. And if it didn’t need to make a new appliance, it would just discard said ability and do it again. Every month it just gives you this option. That’s incredible. I would pay so much for that TV.
And we have people right next to you all that do this shit all the time and we just dismiss, won’t even think about that shit. It’s an aisle at Rite-Aid that just stops it from happening. That’s crazy. It’s a super power, I’m convinced.
So he explains this shit to me. I was like, “Cool. Thank you, Dr. Harvey.” I walk out. My mom asks me if I’m okay. I said, “I’m feeling better, Ma.”
We get to the counter. She's about to pay the co-pay and I’m like, Oh, shit. I forgot to ask him about erections.
So I’m, “Oh, Ma, I feel lightheaded again. Give me one second.” I run into the room.
And Dr. Harvey’s like, “What’s going on?”
I’m in his room, I say, “Sir, I forgot to ask you one thing.”
He said, “What’s that, Gastor?”
I said, “What’s an erection?” And he starts laughing.
He's like, “That’s the other end of the combo that we just had about the periods.”
I said, “What you talking about?”
He's like, “That starts happening to girls when they're becoming women, and that starts happening to guys when they start becoming men.”
I said, “Okay.” And he walks me through that whole process. I learned what an erection was from Dr. Harvey. And now I knew how ridiculous my question sounded to those girls. And I was thinking over my head to make sure I played it right, that I pulled that shit off, but I felt good, you know?
So I go home, I relax for the day. I go to sleep. I wake up the next morning and my dad is sitting in my room.
He's like, “Yo, you okay?”
I’m like, “What’s going on?”
He's like, “I don't know, but I paid three co-pays this week. And every time something was wrong with you, the doctor kept asking your mother to leave. She wants to make you’re fine.”
I’m like, “I don't know what you're talking about.”
He's like, “You've been fainting at the games -- she wants to know what’s going on. What’s going on? Why are you at the doctor’s? You're fainting all the time. Talk to me.”
“It’s like it starts with erections, Dad.”
He's like, “Erections? You've been fainting cause of erections? How big do you think your penis is that it’s causing you to faint?”
And I’m like, “No, Dad, I had a question about erections. I asked Dr. Harvey. He schooled me to the questions.”
And he’s like, “Why’d you need to ask Dr. Harvey about erections? I would’ve answered those questions for you.”
I was like, “Dad, this is the most awkward conversation I've ever had in my life. I did not want to have this with you ever.”
He's like, “Well, next time you have these questions, you got to ask me.”
I said, “Why?”
He said, “I’m here to answer those things, A, and B, you ain’t here to cost me ninety dollars in co-pays over these erections.”
So going forward now, I've got my own son. He's six, he's going to be seven this year in March, and I tell you all, if you have a boy, when he's a pre-teen, a teen, and you see him fainting, ask him if he has questions about erections. He's either really blessed or he's really confused. But either way, he's going to appreciate your concern.
Thank you.