To kick off our big 15 year anniversary celebration, we’re re-sharing two stories from the storytellers you, the fans, voted as your favorite stories. And the best part? You can see these storytellers, along with the other fan favorites, take the stage live on June 3, 2025, at Caveat in New York City during our special anniversary show and fundraiser. Learn more and grab your tickets here.
Part 1: Maryam Zaringhalam's scheme to cheat her way into the smart class makes clear a huge flaw in the education system.
Maryam is a molecular biologist by training who traded in her pipettes for the world of science policy and advocacy. She’s on a mission to make science more open and inclusive through her work both as a science communicator and policymaker. She’s a Senior Producer for the Story Collider in DC and previously served as the Assistant Director for Public Access and Research Policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2023 to 2024. She has a cat named Tesla, named after the scientist and not the car. You can learn more about her at https://webmz.nyc.
Part 2: On the first day of grad school for her PhD, a fellow student tells Bianca Jones Marlin that she doesn't really belong there.
Dr. Bianca Jones Marlin is a neuroscientist and postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Dr. Richard Axel, where she investigates transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, or how traumatic experiences in parents affect the brain structure of their offspring. She holds a PhD in neuroscience from New York University, and dual bachelor degrees from St. John’s University, in biology and adolescent education. As a graduate student, her research focused on the vital bond between parent and child, and studied the use of neurochemicals, such as the “love drug” oxytocin, as a treatment to strengthen fragile and broken parent-child relationships. Dr. Marlin’s research has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Scientific American, and Discover Magazine’s “100 Top Stories of 2015.” Dr. Marlin aims to utilize neurobiology and the science of learning to better inform both the scientific and educational community on how positive experiences dictate brain health, academic performance, and social well being.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Part 1
My mom remembers coming in during Parent Observation Day and watching me from the back of the class picking my nose and daydreaming. This was me on my best behavior for Mom and Dad.
Coming home from school instead of going straight for my homework, I'd beeline for the fridge to pop it open, cut up some slabs of butter, stick them in the microwave to melt them down. Then I'd open a pack of Polly‑O string cheese to dip the cheese into the butter for what I swear to you is the tastiest snack that you will ever taste.
On days I was feeling a little more ambitious, I would stuff a pita with tortilla chips, stick in some Polly‑O string cheese and hot sauce for what I called a nacho pita sandwich.
Obviously, I've been innovating from a young age. But, still, no homework got done. When I was caught without my homework, I'd make up excuses like, “Oh, I had to take a bath.” Yes, it just so happens to be the longest bath in the history of the universe.
In the event of a pop quiz, I’d dart out of the room, pretending like I had to desperately barf, then I'd go to the nurse's office and call up my doctor mom and get the all clear to hang out with the nurse, coloring until the test was over.
If I knew a test was coming, I would go in the morning to my mom, clutching my stomach and just whine, “Tummy…” like the child that I was. Instant sick note.
Now, cut to the first day of fourth grade. I walk into Mrs. T's homeroom class and the desks are clustered in groups of four. On each desk, there's a name tag and a manila folder. So, all of us young ‘uns come in, scrambling around the room, trying to find the name tags that match our appropriate names. We sit down and once the dust is settled, Mrs. T goes through her, “Welcome to the fourth grade, the beginning of your new academic journey.”
Once she's done with her introductory spiel, she tells us to prop up our manila folders, and instantly, I know what's up, test time on the first damn day.
Now, fortunately, at this point, I'm a seasoned get‑out‑of‑test taker. So what I do is I raise my hand a little shakily for effect and go through my tummy woes. But this wizened fourth grade teacher is just not buying it. She sends me straight back to my desk because we have a math placement test to take, mandatory.
Now, I should tell you that despite the fact that I was chronically lazy, I never thought of myself as being particularly dumb. But I never really thought of myself as being smart either. I just didn't really think about it. It didn't factor into my identities at all.
But Mrs. T told us that this placement test would split us up into two levels. Looking back at it in retrospect, it was Level 1 or Level 2. This was kind of designed to bamboozle our young minds into not really knowing what was going on, because, sure, we all knew that because it was levels, one had to be better than the other, but at that age, first is still the worst and second is the best.
But one comes before two, so maybe that's the one that I want. But two comes after one, so maybe that's more advanced. Then at some point, you're just wondering, “Where the hell are my fruit snacks?”
The point is, I wanted to be in the better one. Level 1, Level 2 didn't matter at all. The only problem is that, as it turns out, homework and tests are actually good for something. They help actually make sure that you're learning the things that you're supposed to be learning in school. So, no homework, no practice, no learning for young me.
Mrs. T tells us to open up our test booklets and begin. I take one look at that test and think, “Shit,” or whatever eight‑year‑old appropriate version of the word shit. I don't know what my vocabulary was at that time.
I look at the first page and there's just a bunch of triangles and squares and circles that I'm supposed to do something with. Then I'm supposed to crunch some numbers. Then I flip to the back of the booklet and there's just a bunch of clocks, taunting me, reminding me that time is running out.
Fortunately, though, it turns out that manila folders are not the greatest blocking devices. While I couldn't see the kid directly across from me, I could sneak some peaks at the girl sitting next to me. Allison was her name. Even more fortunately, it turns out that Allison had her shit together.
So, I sneak a peek over and she's writing some numbers under the shapes, and so I follow suit. I peek over again and she's scribbling some numbers in the margins, and so I do the same. I peek over again and she's drawing some hands on the clock, because, of course, that's what they're there for, and so I copy that.
I peeked my way through the whole test, which is really just a nice way of saying that I cheated.
The next week, the results were in and I was placed in the Level 1. All of the Level 2 kids had to pack up their Trapper Keepers and mosey on over to the classroom next door. Once they'd all cleared out, I took a look around the room and I breathed a sigh of relief. I was surrounded by nerds, including my good friend, Allison.
So, cheating worked, except that Level 1 math is actually super hard if you didn't learn all of the things that you're supposed to learn in order to get into Level 1 math in the first place. And, boy, had I not.
But every time I complained to my Level 2 friends about being super confused and behind, they'd just brush me off and say, “Whatever. You're in the smart class. You're a smart kid.”
This was the first time that I can really remember this smart‑dumb distinction. I mean, sure, there were the kids that really liked books, and then you had the kids that were really good at sports inexplicably, and then the ones like myself that would just rather watch TV all day.
But smart or dumb? No, we were all in the same class since day one.
So, I was left with a choice. And what I decided was that I would kick my butt through Level 1 math because I'd be damned before I dropped down to dumb.
The first thing I learned was this thing called multitasking. I could still come home and cut up my butter slabs and pop them in the microwave and dip my cheese into them, but I could eat those delicious delicacies while I was doing my homework. This was a total revelation to my young mind.
And slowly but surely, I started doing better, because, surprise, I knew what was going on in class. And this studiousness crept into my other classes. So, for the first time in the history of me, I actually read a school‑assigned book. It was the biography of the famed conservationist Rachel Carson, who I totally fell in love with.
Slowly, I started spending my recesses in the library, filing away books in exchange for ice cream sandwiches, so no Child Labor laws were broken in the making of this story. And I even asked my parents to enroll me in this program called Kumon, which assigned extra homework so that I could actually get ahead. Over the course of that year, I lived up to my smart kid label.
A year after, I sailed through fifth grade Level 1 math. And a year after that, I got placed in the gifted and talented math program. The next year, I graduated up to junior high school. And here, they split the science class into Level 1 and Level 2.
Now, the Level 1 math kids were automatically placed into Level 1 science. And the Level 1 science was a full year ahead of the Level 2. Except this time, there were no placement tests that you could take. There was no chance to cheat and leapfrog your way forward. It was only at this time that I started telling my friends, the few that I had at the time, what I had done all those years ago. I would go off on impassioned rants about the failed system and how our fates had been sealed at the smooth old age of eight.
Of course, no one really took me seriously because, you know, I was only 12. Still, I knew that I hadn't always deserved my “smart kid” label. But, eventually, I did live up to it, and only because by cheating, I created a choice for myself to either sink or swim.
Now, almost 20 years after that fateful fourth grade test, I'm getting my PhD in biology. I'm getting that PhD because, once upon a time, I made a choice to cheat.
Thank you.
Part 2
I graduated with a dual bachelor's degree in biology and adolescent education. I was on a full academic scholarship and, when I graduated, I got the Distinguished Student Leader award for my service as the president of the student government. In between that time, I did research at MIT and Harvard and I presented that work at Yale and at Vanderbilt University. Let's see what else. I play the clarinet.
When I started applying to graduate schools, I sent my application to a few schools. I was asked for interviews at that Ivy Leagues and there were financial incentives from schools on the West Coast. I chose to start my PhD at New York University School of Medicine studying neurobiology and physiology.
I remember the first day of graduate school. We all came in, all the first years, just as equally proud I think as I was and excited to finally be here. After the applications, after the summers and late hours and after being pre‑med, we're finally here, until we're here for six years. We're still finally here.
We gathered around the bar and we started chatting, just as colleagues, learning about the other individuals, figuring out where they came from, what their story was. So we're surrounded by the bar and I'm there, just as equally excited to hear about my new friends, see who you're going to date, who you're going to be friends with, just doing that whole circle. I married one of them.
As we're talking and it came to my turn to talk about my past and how I got here at NYU, a student interjected and he said, “I mean it's obvious why Bianca's here at NYU. It's because she's black.”
Here we go. Okay. So what do I say next, because this is a slightly awkward situation? If my mind was quick, I had seven or eight things, but as I walked out, “I wish I would have said this. I should have said that.”
But what I did say is something along the lines of, “Private universities don't have affirmative action.” I have no clue if that's true, by the way. Just, it's the first thing that came to my mind and I moonwalked out of that conversation before my face started to sting and before I looked a little bit too frazzled.
On my way out, as I walked out past the bar and past the door, I took a survey of the room. There were six generations of graduate students, six. And I was one of two black people in the room. That quota was about to be cut in half because I was going home.
So, just looking at that, observing that, I started to think, “After all the things I've done, maybe in this situation, they become null and void. Maybe I am just filling a quota, because there's obviously a lack.”
My love for science doesn't really have a birthday. As far as what my family tells me, I was always like that dirty kid. My bifocals are squished up against the tree trunk trying to see what's going on inside. I was always picking up stones, collecting the bugs from underneath the stones.
My mom's here. That's her laughing, because she knows it's true. Digging for toads and snakes in her garden and I'd bring them back to my laboratory. My laboratory was my bedroom, yeah, to my mom's chagrin.
My brother did show choir, my sisters studied art and they were in beauty pageants. I, however, I volunteered to swab the marching band floor for fungal spores in both the brass section and the woodwind section to see if fungal spores were accumulating in the spit when the spit dripped out. If it's nature versus nurture, my genes were straight on the road for nerd‑dom.
My nature definitely did play a role as well and that's for my love of neurobiology. I grew up one of roughly, let's give or take, 50 children. My parents, two of the most noblest people you'll ever meet, if you ever do get to meet them, are foster parents. They're my biological parents but I have many foster brothers and sisters.
I think my definition of sibling was different from the world's definition of sibling at the time, because my definition of sibling was anyone who calls my mom and dad ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ are my sibling.
So when my brother would go out and introduce me to his friends and he'd say, “Oh, this is my sister Bianca.” They'd look at me and then they'd look at him. They'd look at his blonde hair, blue eyes, and look back at me. And they'd wait for us to say we're kidding, but we weren't.
One of my sisters, there was one time where we said we were going to go to Burger King. We were going to collect $3 and change. There's a lot of kids in the house. There's a lot of change running around. We were able to collect $3, get on our bike, and we were going to go to Burger King and treat ourselves to a nice treat.
So we get on the bike, and on the way there, immediately, we're stopped by this beautiful new opening. “Grand opening,” the banner said. "Pet Shop." So instead of going to Burger King, we diverted in there, into the pet shop and walked out with a pet mouse, and still enough change to get French fries.
So we snuck back in. We MacGyvered our way back into the bedroom, because with seven kids at one time in the house, it's really easy to get in and out undetected. And we put the mouse underneath our bed in a shoebox.
The next morning, we woke up, opened up the cage, and we realized that the mouse had a family that was just as big as ours. The week went by, and we were able to maintain this small colony.
Towards the end of the week, when we went back to check out the mouse, we saw that the mom was missing. It could have been the fact that we couldn't find the mouse. It may have chewed through, or a series of other things. But this caused something to break in my sister's behavior. Through a series of loud noises and stuff, by the time my mom came in, she was able to pull her off of me, but I took the hits. I took the hits because I knew the hits that she took.
I mean, my siblings, both foster siblings and biological siblings get it, because I grew up in Long Island. So, throughout the day, the Long Island Suburban Paradise is lovely. We went to Splish Splash on the weekends. We had a trampoline. We had a pool. We lived life to the fullest. We would spend nights outside on the trampoline and say we're going to build a tent and we're going to stay out here. Then we would look up at the stars and it was beautiful, until you started to see that thing circling. That thing was a bat and then you went back inside, and you decided you're not brave enough to spend the night outside.
But at night, when I would hang over my bunk bed and speak to my siblings, I would hear the other stories. I would hear the stories of their life before they came into our home. I would hear the stories that strip them of self‑respect, that strip them of a future, and that crush their souls based on someone else's actions.
A few of my colleagues now in lab, we joke that my mom induces cortical plasticity, because my mom took people who potentially would have been broken. And through love and through motivation and through respect, made them into individuals who could go out and do the same for other people.
I study right now the neuromodulator oxytocin. It's known as love hormone in caregivers. So, mothers who don't treat their pups well, I've added oxytocin to their brain and I've seen two things. It changes the brain's signature from a bad mom to that of a good mom. It also changes the behavior, so the animal starts to care for her pups better.
I know that my foster siblings brought me to neuroscience in two ways. Yes, I study social care and, yes, I study maternal behavior, and I'm assuming that based on the security nature of my life that that's probably why I got here, but they've also taught me another thing. They taught me that I can surround myself with positivity and I can surround myself with people who believe in me, and I can surround myself with scientists who respect my scientific prowess and cannot help but to put their biases aside based on the data that I collect.
So, now, I'm a sixth year in the program. I defend my thesis in two‑and‑a‑half weeks. Thank you. And after a series of happy hours and classes and papers accepted, papers not accepted, passed tests and not‑so‑passed tests, my group, my cohort from six years ago, we met up for drinks, actually to welcome the new first years in. And that same student, who is now my colleague and I would call her friend, came.
We started chatting about what he's doing next in life and he started sharing with me some of his insecurities. He went to a state school. His mom was a single mom, couldn't afford to send him to a more expensive school. Now that he's going out on the job market, he's a little bit nervous about the fact that his resume doesn't read as well as others.
It was in this situation that I was able to share my feelings with him. I was able to say, “You know, I actually have my own insecurities as well.” Insecurities that he didn't even know, probably, that he had catalyzed, that sometimes I feel like I'm thrown into a whole different family.
And I sit with that paranoia that if I'm presenting my data, the first thought that's coming out is, well, I'm giving you a free pass and you're here because you're black, not because you deserved it.
And just as much as the words that he spoke to me six years ago changed the way I approached graduate school, the words that he spoke to me then and there also did.
And what he said to me is, "Bianca, come on. Everyone knows you're smart and you deserve to be here."
Thank you.