In science it’s completely normal to wonder what would happen if you altered one variable or another – that’s what you do when you test a hypothesis – but when it comes to the choices we make in our lives, there will always be unanswered questions. In this week’s episode, both our storytellers share stories about their lives' fork-in-the-road moments.

Part 1: As a child who loves biology and has Caribbean immigrant parents, Calvin Cato feels pressure to become a doctor.

Calvin S. Cato got his comedic start with the Wesleyan University stand-up comedy troupe Punchline and then transferred his unique brand of humor to New York City in 2006. He has performed all across the United States and has even crossed the border into Canada. His television appearances include the Game Show Network, Oxygen’s My Crazy Love, National Geographic’s Brain Games, and an unaired pilot for Vice Media called Emergency Black Meeting. In 2017, Calvin was named one of Time Out New York’s Queer Comics of Color to Watch Out For. His comedy has been featured in numerous festivals including San Francisco Sketchfest, Austin’s Out of Bounds Comedy Festival, Brooklyn Pride, Gotham Storytelling Festival, FlameCon, and the Women in Comedy Festival. In addition, you may have heard him overshare on popular podcasts including Keith and The Girl, The Beige Philip Show, RISK!, Guys We F*cked, Las Culturistas, Tinder Tales or the video game themed podcast he co-produced called the Playable Characters Podcast (featured in AV Club and Splitsider). Most recently, Calvin was published in Kweendom, an anthology of essays by queer comedians and entertainers. Published in early 2021, the book is available on Amazon and other online book retailers.

Part 2: Shane Hanlon can’t help but compare his life choices to those of his hometown best friend.

Shane M Hanlon, PhD, Executive Producer and co-host of the American Geophysical Union’s podcast Third Pod from the Sun. A conservation biologist turned science communicator, he is also Manager of AGU’s Sharing Science program where he teaches fellow scientists how to communicate effectively. He is also a Senior Producer with the The Story Collider. He is also a Senior Producer with the science storytelling organization The Story Collider and instructor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology and he takes a few weeks each summer to get back out in the field and catch frogs.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

Hello and bonjour. Bienvenidos. Hello, how are we doing? This is so lovely.

I have to start off by letting you guys know, I effing love biology. I'm a huge fan. I love biology. I love anatomy. My parents used to say that even when I was in the womb, I was probably just like swimming around in there, just pointing out different organs like, “That's a uterus. That's a cervix. Fallopian tubes.” Which if anyone knows anything about the human body, that's not possible because my eyes were not developed enough. But whatever. We got to give them credit for where it's due.

So I loved, loved, loved, loved anatomy. When I was growing up, I feel like most elementary school kids they would get Cat in the Hat or like GI Joes. If they were frisky, Goosebumps books. Ooh, reader beware. But I was growing up getting anatomy coloring books and medical dictionaries. For leisure, I read Call of the Wild. I was like that kind of kid.

Calvin Cato shares his story at Caveat in New York, NY in October 2022. Photo by LiAnn Grahm.

I was not really an outdoor kid. I was more of a scalpel‑let‑me‑hold‑it kind of kid. Because of that, my parents were so happy that I was so taken with biology and anatomy. They're like, “This is great. We have a son who is going to be a doctor. This is going to be amazing.”

What you need to understand is I have Caribbean parents. When you have Caribbean parents, when you're growing up, you only have three things that you can be, which is you can either be a doctor or a lawyer or disowned. Those are the only three. It's a very narrow flight plan.

And I didn't want to be a lawyer because I saw a Liar, Liar and Jim Carrey made it not look good, so didn't want that. Didn't want to be disowned and doctor was where I was headed.

My dad was super happy about this as well because he was a registered nurse and he worked in an emergency room. My dad would always say, “I'm just so happy. You're so great at this. You're gonna be a doctor and maybe one day I'll work for you.”

And I was like, “That's how sad American capitalism is that you think, by the time I'm growing up, you're still gonna be working in a hospital. We need to fix that.” But that was what my dad's dream was. He was always just pushing me towards that.

And for myself, I always felt like, “Yeah, I think that I would make a very good doctor,” just because I knew all of these things and I was able to retain these things.

I remember there was one time in fifth grade where our science teacher was not the best. Her name is Mrs. Johansen. I probably shouldn't use her name but she's passed away now so she can't really correct me anymore.

But, one time, she was saying, “Oh, you know, the urethra connects the kidneys to the bladder.”

I said, “No, those are actually the ureters that do that.”

And she was like, “Please leave the class.”

I was like, “I'm getting in trouble for knowing too much? What?”

Again, that was the kind of person I was. This is how I was always conditioned. Whenever my dad had a chance to bring me in to work, I would love to go with him. I wasn't able to go through all the rounds with him but I would sit in the room and my dad would tell me about like, “Oh, I had to draw someone's blood today,” or, “I had to handle this,” or, “someone has had a hemorrhage.”

I was like, “This is so fascinating,” and I really was into it.

Then I remembered this was a week before I was supposed to go to college, my dad, I remember, came home one day and looked very defeated and sad. I said, “Is everything okay?”

Then my dad said, “Yeah, it's fine. It's just that we lost someone today and it really feels like it's unfair.”

That was the first time it really started to sink in that being a doctor is more than just knowing stuff. It's about actually saving lives. You're not just a mechanic of a human body. You're it's caretaker. Your job is to make sure that it can live and fight another day.

It started making me feel a little bit nervous. Then I went to college.

When I went to college, I was super gung‑ho. I was like, “I'm gonna be pre‑med. I'm gonna be a bio major.” I was very into it.

But I went to a college that was charitably described as a very hippie school. It was very hippie, super‑ultra liberal. It was one of those places where like you had to have acoustic guitar in order to graduate. Like all the white kids are dreadlocks, whether they should or not. You know what I mean?

It's like, “Just wash your hair.” Like, “What are we doing, Chad?” Like, “Why are you doing this? I don’t need to smell your patchouli.” Like, “What are we doing? Wash your goddamn hair. I don't need to smell the tree branch of neem oil in your fucking scalp. What are we doing? Please do better.”

I went to one of the schools.

At that school, I realized that, because people were so creative and as much as I was super focused on being pre‑med, I was like, “Oh, there are creative things that I like.” And I was able to discover stand‑up comedy, which I was like, “This is really cool and nice.”

I really got into music shows. I was like, “This is great.” And then I discovered acapella and I was like, “This is terrible.” You know, they don't know no better. They’re no one's Rockapella. No one's Where in the World is Carmen San Diego enough for me, but I am tolerant of other people's lifestyles.

So I was discovering all this stuff and I was just so fascinated and so into it. As I got more into it, I realized I was doing worse and worse in my classes. So, if you're pre‑med, there are five main things you need to take, which is you need to take chemistry, you need to take physics, you need to take biology, you need to take a calculus class and you need to take organic chemistry.

Now, chemistry and physics, easy. I got that. I know how to balance equations. I know the difference between an acid and a base. Physics, easy. What comes up must come down. Newton, joules, calories, kilocalories, which are in your nutritional facts, by the way. Nailed all of that.

But then it got to biology. And in biology, it was not just about learning. It was about learning so much stuff at once. I realized that my brain had a capacity to learn. I could learn parts of the cell. I can't learn such granular parts of the cell that I need to know, “Okay, this part does this. This part does that. This part does this.”

And I realized I got to a point where I just stopped caring. I didn't want to know what a Golgi body was. I wanted to know who Golgi was and why he discovered it. Which, by the way, he did in 1897. And I was like, “That's a great year.” Not really. Not for my people. But none of them are.

Anyway, sidebar, racism.

So, I was like, “I just don't really feel that interested.” As I got more and more into the creative side, I was talking to friends about how I can't believe that like my whole thing was pre‑med and my dad was so expectant of this and my mom was so like happy about this and I don't know what's happening.

And my friend said, “You know, if you like stand‑up comedy so much, I'm part of a group called Punchline. Would you want to like just be a part of this group where we sit around, we meet once a week, we write jokes and, at some point, we'll put on a show?”

And I said, “Yeah, sure. I'll do that.”

So I joined the group and, within two weeks, they're like, “Okay, we booked a show. It's gonna be in a month at the student lounge.”

And I was like, “Oh, this is happening so fast. I don't know. I don't have enough life experience for this.”

A young Calvin Cato at school. Picture courtesy of Calvin Cato.

A young Calvin Cato. Picture courtesy of Calvin Cato.

But I was like, “You know what? Nevertheless, he persisted.” So I decided I'm going to sit, I'm going to write an act and I'm going to perform this act in front of 85 students. The thing is like what was helpful was that because I was so used to my science stuff, I was like, “I can probably apply that to stand‑up.”

So I had all my colored pencils and I had my index cards and I made a flow chart. It was kind of like a bit of chemistry as well because it was like balancing an equation. It was like I had to figure out what joke I could say that would lead to this, that would lead to this. How do I set this up? How do I get a positive reaction instead of a negative Oh‑my‑God‑you're‑a‑nutcase reaction.

So I'm working on this. I'm getting everything set up. Then it gets to the point where I have to do the show and I am very, very nervous. It's college so it's hard to be nervous when alcohol is omnipresent.

So I was like, “Okay, maybe I'll just have like one or two drinks. It'll help me calm down and then I can figure it out.”

I remember getting on stage and I say the first joke, which is something that is very stupid now, but it was, “Oh, I'm a pre‑med student. So instead of studying, I'm more like stu‑dying,” which, you know, it was 2004. The standards were very low.

But people actually laughed at that and I was like, “What?”

Then I went on to do jokes that were much better and much more coherent and people really liked it. It dawned on me that I realized there's a difference between knowing something or learning something and being good at it. I realized this is something that I actually want to do.

So I finished that set and then I went back to the Punchline people and they're like, “Okay, you did really well. Let's try to book more shows and do more shows.”

And as I got more and more into stand‑up comedy, I got more and more out of pre‑med. I started quietly dropping classes. I started taking more English classes. I started trying to learn ukulele, which, again, yuck. But you got to finish somewhere.

So I was trying to get more into these things. I stopped showing my parents my report cards, because they were like, “So, what are you doing?”

And I'd be like, “Oh, things are great. You know, lovely. Yay! Gallbladders.” And I would just be lying to them. They didn't know that I just had gotten to a point where I completely switched majors and I never even told them.

I remember I didn't tell them until it was a week before I was supposed to graduate. And my parents were like, “We have not seen a report card in two years. We don't even know what your status is.”

And I was like, “Okay, so just so you know, I actually switched to being an English major. I really want to do stand‑up and I want to do some creative stuff.”

I was waiting for the, “Okay, so now you're on the disowned track.” Great. But, to my surprise, my parents, although they were extremely upset, they said two things, which is, number one, “Okay, this is bad, but can you at least be a science editor,” which I did take them up on and I did become a science editor.

And then the second thing that they said was, “Okay, if you are gonna do this and then you're gonna have to get into acting, can you at least audition to be a doctor,” which I have not fulfilled yet but I plan to soon.

Thank you guys so much. Have a wonderful night.

Part 2

I met Alex in second grade and we were instant best friends. Over the years, we would bond over basically being idiots, from cruising up and down the local street and our friend’s Ford Escort that was lowered, 20‑inch rims with a subwoofer instead of a bad seat to the runs to Walmart where we would buy Airsoft rifles and then proceed to empty clips of tiny, little plastic pellets into each other, to the nights we spent at our local pizza shop Vito’s, just arguing about the dumbest shit, usually about who played what character in what show. This was pre‑Google.

“Shane…” by the way, I make him sound like Elizabeth Holmes. He doesn't sound like Elizabeth Holmes but in my head he does, so this is his voice now, forever. “Shane, what was the name of the character on Sliders?”

Sliders? What the hell was… “Oh, it was Jerry O'Connell.”

“It wasn't Jerry O'Connell. You're an idiot.”

It was in fact Jerry O'Connell.

And this was our relationship. This is just how we were. Our friends would actually joke to us in high school that we bickered so much and that we should have actually ended up getting Cutest Couple. We didn't. Side note, I actually did get Cutest Couple and he did not, so win for me.

Shane Hanlon shares his story at Smitty's Bar in Washington, DC in November 2022. Photo by Lisa Helfert.

When we went to college, our past diverged a little bit but we remained close. Alex went to a fancy private school. And this was not unexpected. Alex came from a pretty well‑off family and he was in the gifted program. I was not in the gifted program, but I will say I did graduate like a smidge ahead of him after high school, so another one for me.

I ended up going to a state school, a state school that I loved. A state school that I absolutely adore and am very proud of, but a state school nonetheless.

When Alex went to college, he turned into a bit of a disaster. He drank too much. He partied too hard. And his parents ended up plucking him from his fancy private school and putting him into a college much closer to home so they could keep a literal eye on him.

At the time, I didn't really think anything of this. Frankly, I thought it was hilarious. Instead of being kind of sensitive and thinking like, “Oh, man, I'm so sorry. That really sucks for you.” I was very immature and kind of, “Bro,” like, “ha‑ha, sucks for you.”

But also, I was selfish about it because I was really excited that he would be home when I would go visit my parents.

Now, on the other hand, I was on the path to enlightenment, to become a scientist. I had it all planned out. I was going to get my degree in four years, I was going to work in a lab for a year and then on to get my PhD in biology, and the first PhD among my friends, the only PhD among my family, and I was getting out of our Podunk small little town in rural Pennsylvania.

Now, I loved Alex. I really did. But, frankly, I was just doing better than he was. While he was literally flailing and failing, I was on this path to greatness.

Then reality checked me, like really hard. My first year of grad school was tough. I succeeded in all the technical ways on paper. I got good grades. My research went well. Teaching went well, all of that stuff, but I was failing personally. I was having a really tough time making friends. My long‑term relationship failed and I just missed home. I missed that familiar— I missed Alex.

So I reached out to him. He had actually gone through something similar at the time. He had moved from our small Podunk town to Hoboken, New Jersey for a job. And despite failing for so long, he was now somehow thriving so I wanted to know what the secret was.

So we started talking almost every night on the phone. On the phone, okay. So I'm on the outer side of millennial, but I'm 100% subscribed to the stereotype of hating talking on the phone. Do not talk to me on the phone.

But we did it and it helped. And he helped pull me through it. So after we did, he invited me to come visit him out in Hoboken. I said, “Yeah, of course. I'd love to visit you.”

So I pull up to his apartment and he's standing outside waiting to greet me. He greets me with this big bear hug, which was weird because we didn't really hug. But you know what? I rolled with him.

And he says, “Shane…” again, it's just how he sounds in my head, “Shane, I'm so glad you're here. This is gonna be a great weekend and you'll get to meet Julia.”

Who the fuck is Julia? Julia, it turns out, was Alex's new girlfriend. So what I thought was going to be a boys’ weekend was slowly turning into a third‑wheel weekend. However, I was cool. I rode with it.

That night, the three of us went out. We went to some house parties. We went to some bars. We had a great time, like we really had a great time. At the end of the night, we end up at a local pizza shop to get some carbs and grease to abate the inevitable hangover.

And so the three of us were walking down the street, pizza in hand, having a great time, and Alex says to me, “Shane, this pizza is so much better than Vito's from home, right?”

“No. No, it's not.” It wasn't but, no. Like it's not better than our pizza from home, from my youth, from that familiar of those memories of so much time we spent together, not just us with our friends. Like how dare he say that.

“No,” I literally yelled at him. “You have said some dumb shit in your life, but that is the dumbest thing you have ever said.” Then I stormed off, like I literally ran away down some street in Hoboken, New Jersey, a city I am not familiar with. A city I have never been to. I do not know where I'm going.

Somehow, miraculously, I make it to his front stoop of his apartment where he and Julia find me about an hour later quite sheepish but no worse for the wear.

The next morning, he and I go out and get some coffee and bagels and we end up sitting along the river overlooking New York. And he says, “Shane, what the fuck was that?”

I don't have a good answer. It's like, “Oh, you know, I was just drunk and being silly. Who knows what goes on in this mind. And you know what? I just really love Vito's Pizza.”

It wasn't the pizza. I was angry that he was doing so well. That despite failing or at least me perceiving him failing for so long, that he was now thriving. I was the one who had done everything right. I was the one that should have been happy. He didn't deserve it. It should have been me.

And I hated that I felt that way. I should have been happy for him, and I was happy for him. In time, I let him know that.

Eventually, I figured, “Blow this out,” and I became happy for me. Because when I made that decision to get a PhD, I did. I thought that I was somehow better than him. That I was doing something great for science or whatever. I was so determined to succeed but then things got tough and I got sad.

And being there at that pizza shop with him and his new girlfriend and he has his fancy job where he's making so much more money than I was with my pittance of a grad school stipend, something in me snapped. I was angry. I was pissed. I was jealous. And not necessarily jealous of exactly what he had, just jealous that he seemed settled. That he was comfortable in his own skin. That he was content. That's something I wanted. I wanted to find that happiness.

So he showed me that, thing one, not better than him. Three letters after my name, not better than him, not better than anyone. Like fuck that noise. Get over that shit. But thing two, seriously, he showed me that there are many different ways to happiness, many different paths to lead. And taking different paths is really okay and so I really appreciate that. He taught me that and it means more to me than he'll ever know. And he will never know because there is no way that I am telling him.

Thank you.