Ben Lillie: The Truth About My Grandfather
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2016
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After his grandfather passes away, Ben Lillie learns the surprising truth about his life -- from Wikipedia. Ben is a high-energy particle physicist who left the ivory tower for the wilds of New York's theater district. He is co-founder and artistic director of The Story Collider, where he’s lead the production of over 200 events in ten cities, and the five-year (and ongoing) production of the Story Collider podcast. He spent four years on the editorial team at TED, covering and participating in the production of the annual TED and TED Global conferences. He has a degree in physics from Reed College, a PhD from Stanford in theoretical physics, did a postdoc at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, and has published in The Atlantic, Slate, and Method Quarterly. He is ben@storycollider.org and @benlillie.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:04.9 | Is NYU scientists the... |
| 0:06.4 | I felt... |
| 0:07.4 | I was so... |
| 0:08.7 | And I just thought, well... |
| 0:09.6 | It was that golden moment. |
| 0:12.8 | Because science was on my side. |
| 0:30.7 | I... Hi, everyone, I'm Ben Lilly, and welcome to the Story Collider, where we bring you true personal stories about science. |
| 0:33.7 | This week's stories from, well, me. |
| 0:40.3 | The story was recorded in June 2016 at Union Hall in Brooklyn as part of the Story Collider six-year anniversary show. So, one of the things that I noticed most about my grandfather's funeral was how many people |
| 0:59.0 | there knew him, which shouldn't have been surprising. This was his funeral. But my whole life, |
| 1:06.8 | I'd been wondering that question. I've been wondering how many people actually know who my |
| 1:10.8 | grandfather is. Because my mother had told me a lot growing up about what a big deal he was. |
| 1:19.3 | And I should back up and say, my mother's family is a little bit odd. They really like status. |
| 1:26.1 | So, for example, my aunt, my great aunt, gave herself an English accent so that she would be more sophisticated. |
| 1:34.5 | Come straight. |
| 1:43.0 | You know, she grew up outside of boston um |
| 1:45.1 | and i grew up in corvallis oregon which is like the pro yeah so did you |
| 1:51.5 | no okay so um i grew up in corvallis which is like it is like the suburb suburb it wants |
| 2:00.6 | to be a suburb so hard that it acts like it, |
| 2:03.0 | except that there's no big city nearby. |
| 2:05.0 | So it's like the platonic ideal of a suburb. |
... |
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