We can all relate to the desire to feel comfortable, safe, secure. But what about those moments when we took a chance and gambled with our relationships, our futures, or even our lives? This month we bring you stories that remind us that on the road to reward, we all have to take some risks.
Hosted by Shane M Hanlon and Farah Z Ahmad.
Gretchen Goldman is the research director at the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, where she studies how science is used and misused in policy making. When she’s not chasing around her one-year-old son, Gretchen can be found biking across Washington, DC and planning her next tourist adventure. She holds a PhD and MS in environmental engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a BS in atmospheric science from Cornell University. Follow her @GretchenTG.
Tom Di Liberto is a meteorologist, dad and improv performer. He is the winner of AAAS’s first Science Idol competition. During the day, he is the consulting meteorologist for Climate.gov at the Climate Prediction Center within the National Weather Service. And he is at least partly responsible for everyone’s recent obsession with El Niño. When he isn’t working at a governmental acronym inside an acronym inside another acronym, you can find him on stage talking about climate change or trying to get people to laugh as he attempts to make something out of nothing. He also really likes clouds.
Abbas Mousa is an Economist at the Bureau of Economic Analysis. growing up in Baghdad Iraq he always wanted to be an artist but ended up with a Computer Science and Economic degrees, he's been featured on the Moth Radio Hour on NPR, and with his passion for art and storytelling he became a regular storyteller with the Moth StorySlam. Mousa immigrated to America in 2009 through a special immigrant visa for Iraqi translators and currently working on his memoir, he has been featured in multiple articles and a guest speaker sharing some of his stories and experiences. Follow him on twitter @atmousa.
Miranda Paley is the managing editor of ACS Central Science, the first fully open access journal of the American Chemical Society. She is a graduate of Grinnell College and received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Irvine, where her research, focused on engineering the light-generating enzyme from fireflies, called luciferase, to develop a tool designed for tracking different cell populations in live animals. When she isn’t writing press releases, organizing symposia or nagging overdue reviewers, you can find her at her much beloved MINT DC gym, going to concerts or trying to convince her cat-like dog to get up on couch with her. Follow her on twitter, @paleymir (pronounced “polymer”).
Dr. Rashawn Ray is Associate Professor of Sociology, the Edward McK. Johnson, Jr. Endowed Faculty Fellow, and Co-Director of the Critical Race Initiative at the University of Maryland, College Park. Formerly, Ray was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Ray’s research addresses the mechanisms that manufacture and maintain racial and social inequality. His work also speaks to ways that inequality may be attenuated through racial uplift activism and social policy. Ray has published over 40 books, articles, book chapters, and op-eds. Currently, Ray is co-investigator of a study examining implicit bias, body-worn cameras, and police-citizen interactions with 1800 police officers with the Prince George’s County Police Department.