Love Story: Stories with a happily ever after

In honor of Valentine’s Day, this week’s episode features two stories where love finds a way.

Part 1: Scientist Bruce Hungate yearns to find someone who cares about the tiny details as much as he does.

Bruce Hungate conducts research on microbial ecology of global change from the cell to the planet. His research examines the imprint of the diversity of life on the cycling of elements, how ecosystems respond to and shape environmental change, and microbial ecology of the biosphere, from soils to hot springs to humans. Bruce is Director of the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society at Northern Arizona University, where he holds the Frances B McAllister Chair in Community, Culture, and the Environment, and is Regents Professor of Biological Sciences. He is an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and member of the American Academy of Microbiology. Bruce plays classical piano and writes narrative non-fiction at the intersection of science, the environment, family, and people. He hopes to share ideas about ecology and to find humor, connection, and solutions in the face of global environmental change.

Part 2: Science reporter Ari Daniel and his wife are at odds when it comes to moving their family to Lebanon, but the pandemic changes things.

Ari Daniel is a freelance contributor to NPR’s Science desk and other outlets. He has always been drawn to science and the natural world. As a graduate student, he trained gray seal pups (Halichoerus grypus) for his Master’s degree in animal behavior at the University of St. Andrews, and helped tag wild Norwegian killer whales (Orcinus orca) for his Ph.D. in biological oceanography at MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. For more than a decade, as a science reporter and multimedia producer, Ari has interviewed a species he’s better equipped to understand — Homo sapiens. Over the years, Ari has reported across six continents on science topics ranging from astronomy to zooxanthellae. His radio pieces have aired on NPR, The World, Radiolab, Here & Now, and Living on Earth. Ari is also a Senior Producer at Story Collider. He formerly worked as a reporter for NPR’s Science desk where he covered global health and development. Before that, he was the Senior Digital Producer at NOVA where he helped oversee the production of the show’s digital video content. He is a co-recipient of the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Gold Award for his radio stories on glaciers and climate change in Greenland and Iceland. In the fifth grade, he won the “Most Contagious Smile” award.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

The summer after my junior year in college, I worked in a microbiology lab. I was studying tiny bacteria that live on rocks in the Negev desert. They oxidize manganese and, over thousands of years, they turn the rocks black. A desert varnish.

I loved how tiny details of science could tell a story about nature. But I wasn't sure microbiology was the career for me. I was deep into musicology. In the lab, I listened to Ludwig von Beethoven's 6th Symphony, the Pastoral, a symphony that tells a story about nature with music.

Bruce Hungate shares his story at Kitt Recital Hall in Flagstaff, AZ in September 2023. Photo by Joshua Biggs.

I was obsessed with the second movement called Scene by a River or Szene am Bach in the original German, that it opens with the strings in this lilting descending line that sounds like flowing water, “Da-rum-dum, da-rum-dum, da-rum-dum, da-ra-da-da-da-da.” That little turn at the end like an eddy in a river. I loved how music could tell a story about nature too.

We studied that piece in Music Theory class, which is also where I met Carissa. Carissa played the violin. She wore cut‑off jeans and torn t‑shirts. I wore cut‑off jeans and torn t‑shirts too. I proposed we play chamber music together and she said yes.

A few hours after theory class one day, we met to rehearse. We'd been assigned to analyze Scene by a Riverby Beethoven and I asked her if she'd looked at the assignment.

She looked at me, "That assignment isn't due for a month."

I looked back at her, ignoring her, pulling out the score from my backpack because I was really excited to show her what I had discovered by analyzing the harmony since class the three hours ago.

And I showed her this one passage that I thought was great and I said, “Don't you love how the deceptive cadence extends the line?”

She looks at me.

“No, no, no. We're set up to resolve to the tonic. It's the dominance. It's this big long tension, right? But we don't resolve to the tonic. We go to the dominant of the submediate, and it keeps going.”

She said, “We're not in theory class, Bruce. Stop it.”

But I kept going, “Because it's like we're in the river, and when we think the river is gonna end and we're getting there and we think it's gonna end, but it's not the end. It's a bend and there's more glorious river music ahead.”

She looked at me again and said, “Can we go play music now?”

If I couldn't connect to Carissa with music theory, how could I connect with the world?

I thought about my job in the microbiology lab and in biology class how I'd learned that microbes affect the climate. Everyone's interested in climate, right? Yeah.

I still loved music theory. I still do. But I needed a subject that could connect with other people, so I thought I should give the microbes another chance.

Two years later, I'm a PhD student at UC Berkeley in the Department of Biology, and so is my new love interest Jane. Jane wears torn t‑shirts, too. She is hot.

The summer after that first year, I am knee‑deep in Jane's riffle. Jane's riffle is a short stretch of the eel river where Jane does all her PhD research all about the algae. Jane adores the algae and she's working on what controls how much algae you get in a river. Is it the nutrients in the water? Is it the chemistry of the water, the pH of the water, the temperature of the water?

But her favorite idea is that it's a food chain. It's the fish that eat the insects that eat the algae. And if you have enough fish that eat the insects and mow them down, then you'll have lots of algae.

We waded through the water looking from plot to plot, and I got to a plot with no fish, looked in, and the insects had mowed down the algae. It was just a tiny thin. They'd mowed it down like grad students on pizza.

We got to a plot with the fish and there were algae everywhere. This is called a trophic cascade.

I love talking with Jane about trophic cascades and about the algae. And what's so great is that she loved talking with me about soil carbon and the microbes that live there, the topic of my PhD research.

I was looking at what happens with more CO2 in the air, what happens to soil carbon. The big idea at the time was with more CO2 in the air, that's like more plant food. The plants are going to grow more and they're going to put more carbon in the soil, which would slow climate change.

But my research showed that the extra carbon that got in the soil, the microbes there ate it up and sent it back to the atmosphere as CO2. We needed to know that. We need to know that to make good predictions about what's going to happen with climate change and to know what can we do in soil to make it take up more carbon and store it to slow climate change down.

And I discovered in my PhD that moments of discovery like that were just as thrilling as finding meaning in deceptive cadence in Beethoven.

But my qualifying exam was coming up, quals. This is a rite of passage in the PhD where you're in a dark basement room, no windows, and three intimidating overlords, I mean, professors, ask you question after question after question until you whimper, "I don't know." I had to prepare.

Jane had aced her quals and she knew a lot about ecology, so she asked me practice questions. “Could predators in soil promote soil carbon like fish promote algal growth? Could trophic cascades matter in soil?” My mind was blown.

Since then, for 30 years, we've been talking about science and theory and experiments, and Jane's work in the water and my work in soil, together making mud.

And we're testing that trophic idea in soil now. If we add predators to soil, will we get more soil carbon, slowing climate change? These experiments are happening right now. We're harvesting one next week. I'm so grateful to be collaborating with scientists here and around the country who care so deeply about soil carbon and the microbes that live there. We will keep refining the science to get it right and I will keep refining the story.

If you haven't noticed, this is a love story, because I found someone who cares about the tiny details and the stories they tell just as much as I do.

Part 2

It's mid‑November and I push open the door to the single‑room Airbnb and my five‑year‑old daughter Leila and I enter. There's a queen bed and a microwave and sink in a small bathroom, and Leila instantly starts setting up her makeshift bed on the floor, a raft of bows and bracelets and pillows. She is just so excited and I am psychologically nauseous.

We're not here on vacation. We've been evicted by COVID. Leila and I have tested negative but my wife, Ghinwa and three‑year‑old son, Raja, are on the other side of town in our condo battling the virus on their own, now with a couple hundred more square feet to roam around.

Ari Daniel shares his story at the MIT Amphitheatre in Boston, MA in May 2022. Photo by Kate Flock.

A week prior, Ghinwa had gotten back from a trip home to Lebanon, where she's from. She’d gone there to help take care of her mom who had been in the hospital with pneumonia, not COVID, but the writing is on the wall. Her parents are getting older and frailer and they're in increasing need of care.

All three of their daughters live here in the US, so the two of them are, in effect, alone, an ocean away. Ghinwa has talked to me for years about wanting to move to Lebanon and I have resisted and delayed. I haven't been this direct with Ghinwa, but I think about the port explosion a couple of years ago and the financial freefall that the country is in and the political instability and I think it's the worst decision for our family. Truth be told, I'm scared.

The day that Ghinwa got the call that her mom had been hospitalized, she had her tickets booked by evening and she went home for two weeks. It was the first time she'd ever chosen to be away from the kids.

Now, this is November. This was back before the Omicron wave when everyone got hit, this was the era of Delta when I felt like I had to explain to people why two members of my family had COVID. Ghinwa got it in Lebanon, probably from her dad who didn't wear a mask to the barber.

She tested before she got on the plane, but was negative, but she got on the plane, traveled across the Atlantic, virus multiplying all the way, and when she got that positive result in our kitchen, she crumbled. That devil that we’d been running from for a year‑and‑a‑half had finally found us, found its way into our home.

We didn’t isolate Ghinwa soon enough and the virus snagged Raja soon thereafter. It knocked his little body flat. I was so angry at that imp of RNA.

Ghinwa and Raja locked themselves in our master bedroom and closed the door, and Leila and I were on the other side, bringing them food. We were FaceTiming them from the kitchen for one day, two days.

Now, in this Airbnb, everything is white and gray and there's nothing memorable about it except for a framed replica of a Roy Lichtenstein painting. It's a woman's face, her eyes closed, tears streaming from them, awash in a churning ocean with a speech bubble.

And she says, "I'd rather drown than call him for help." It's like my situation summed up in eight words.

You see, I didn't want to leave our home. Ghinwa had suggested that Leila and I go stay with my parents, who live an hour away. And my parents were concerned that what if Leila and I had COVID. I didn't blame them for being uneasy.

Ghinwa was angry at COVID, at being trapped in that little room, at her dad for giving it to her, at her parents for not being willing to visit us in the US every once in a while, at me for not being willing to uproot our family and move us to Lebanon. So, I suggested, “All right, what if Leila and I go across town, find an Airbnb and we’ll just give you guys a little bit of room?”

She said, “Fine.”

And I said, “Are you sure.”

And she said, “Fine.”

The morning that I left, she was silent behind that door. In normal times, I would look at her and read her face in an instant and know what to say to make everything okay, but the virus clouded the air. We weren’t seeing straight, and I left.

That night, there's just a microwave, but I brought along our camping stove from the basement. So I cooked Leila and me two sunny‑side up eggs for dinner. Afterwards, my parents, they Zoomed with Leila and read her a book.

My mom wrote me later and said, “I hope that the sound of our voices is comforting to you, Ari.” More than they could know.

I shut the lights off and Leila falls asleep in her raft, but I am wide awake in bed and I can't stop thinking. I start researching schools in Lebanon for the kids. I knew that when I dropped Ghinwa off at the airport a few weeks prior that that trip home for her was going to be significant. That it was going to decide something profound for our family, determine our center of mass between our world here, my parents, our community, nearly our entire dating and married life, and her parents there who had issued this silent cry for help.

But instead of paddling into the ocean together, facing that decision, she and I are in separate dinghies battling a gathering storm of hurt.

I text her and I know she's awake, but she doesn’t write me back. My phone doesn’t light up, the room stays dark, and I think my wife is sinking and not calling me for help.

Leila breathes softly on the floor beside me.

The next day, it feels like ten. I take Leila for a long walk in the woods and I call my parents and they tell me that I just need to give Ghinwa some space, and I do. We're kind of meandering. I take Leila to an outdoor festival and there's a guy making an ice sculpture in the shape of a snowflake and a table where they're giving out vast arrays of glow‑stick products. But mostly I'm in a fog.

I go back to the Airbnb, I cook Leila tomato soup in the microwave for dinner and I feel like a washed‑up dad with his kid on the run. I am despondent. I miss Ghinwa and I miss Raja so much.

After Leila goes to bed, I text Ghinwa and nothing.

And then she writes me back, “Why didn’t you stay here? I can’t believe you left us?”

In a flash, I understand. I write her and I tell her, “I never meant to abandon you.” We don’t solve it but we're communicating. The seas have calmed and I spot the shore.

The next morning, I FaceTime Ghinwa and she picks up. I tell her that Leila and I want to come home. She and Raja confer and they agree, and then Leila tests positive, so this whole isolation business has been a charade.

Later that day, we push open the door to our home and we dock at the harbor. The four of us are back under the same roof where we belong.

Ghinwa and I look at each other for the first time in days. She doesn't say anything, but it's all there in her eyes. I know something in that moment that is true. The worst thing is not moving to Lebanon. It's being apart.

So later that week, it's Thanksgiving. The four of us sit down around our little kitchen table and I look at their three faces and I know they are everything I need.

Thank you.