The Story Collider

Growing up in Pakistan, Salman Hameed falls in love with the mysteries of the universe when he stumbles upon Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and as Zuri Sullivan pursues her dream of becoming an immunologist at Harvard, she begins to worry that she’s being “weeded out.”

Jitesh Jaggi keeps his struggle with trichotillomania a secret, until one day his wife catches him in the act, when Devan Sandiford finally decides to seek therapy, he finds it more difficult than expected.

Meisa Salaita’s brand-new PhD in chemistry isn’t much help as she prepares to teach ninth-grade physics, and early in her career, astronomer Jackie Faherty’s work is stunned when a senior researcher eviscerates her work at a conference

Kate Willet is frustrated by the gaps of information in her abstinence-based sex ed class, and sex ed instructor Charlie Blake fields an unexpected question from a student.

After switching majors to anthropology, Edith Gonzalez struggles to dress like an archaeologist, and at seven years old, Brianna A. Baker gets confronted with some uncomfortable realities of being the only Black girl in her class.

Andrea Jones-Rooy quits her job as a scientist in order to become a scientist, and while studying flying foxes in Indonesia, Susan Tsang gets caught in a rainstorm that changes her relationship to field work.

After her child is finally diagnosed with Hermansky Pudlock Syndome, Donna Appell set off on a mission to make sure other parents have the information she didn’t, and feeling unmoored after she’s diagnosed with LFS, Jenn Perry attends a patient conference that changes her life.

On her first day as a music therapist, Jude Treder-Wolff realizes the job isn’t what she expected, and after witnessing tragedy as a child, Mani-Jade Garcia stops speaking

Fresh out of college, Stephanie Keep is hired to be the assistant to legendary evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, and at age fourteen, Fabrizzio Subia begins assisting a local dentist in treating undocumented patients.

Lawrence Green wakes up in a hospital room to find that he’s sustained devastating injuries in a motorcycle accident, and after tragedy strikes her family, Camille Adams Jones must find a way to confront her own trauma.

In his early twenties, Jonathan Feakins goes above and beyond for his job as a West Nile virus mosquito technician, and while working as a coral reef biologist in Panama in 1989, Nancy Knowlton and her young daughter are taken into the custody of the Panamanian military when the U.S. invades.

Months after Howard Lieberman contracts COVID-19 on a business trip in March 2020, he continues to suffer, and when Monica Hickson drops off her fiancé at the hospital, she doesn’t know it’s the last time she’ll see him alive.

Psychiatrist Xiaosi Gu studies COVID-19’s impact on mental health, just as her own begins to deteriorate, and Stacey Bader Curry’s family and career are thriving — until the pandemic throws it all into chaos.

Having planned to tie the knot in April 2020, Jared Waters finds himself separated from his fiancée by COVID lockdown instead, and the pandemic prompts Jamie Brickhouse and his partner to consider getting married.

When Gail Thomas moves in with her family during the pandemic, tensions brew between sisters, and the pandemic brings Wendy Bredhold and her ex-husband back together under the same roof for Thanksgiving.

A disagreement about COVID-19 precautions drives a wedge between Archy Jamjun and his partner, and Julie Grace Immink tries to hide her fear from her young son when her husband is hospitalized for COVID-19.

Harvey, a brand-new nurse, is thrust into the hectic environment of a Brooklyn ICU at the onset of the pandemic, and in spring 2021, he begins to reckon with the trauma he’s experienced in the past year.

After a dangerous incident, Kalā Holiday begins to question his work as a tour guide in his ancestral land of Hawai’i, and Jeremy Richardson must reconcile his roots in coal country with his identity as a climate scientist.