BUGS: Stories about creepy crawlies
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2022
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers had to deal with some minibeasts, AKA insects, and surprisingly neither of them moved or burned the whole house down to vanquish them. (Sorry, spoilers!)
Part 1: While doing field work in the Belize jungle, Rachel Mann Smith learns how to handle an Alien-style bug.
Part 2: A case of lice makes Rachel Mans McKenny question her competence as a mother.
Rachel Mann Smith is a doctor, epidemiologist, poet and parent trying to make it all work in the middle of the chaos. A Californian by nature and birth, she thinks Atlanta is both too hot and too cold, but she has learned to love the fall foliage.
Rachel Mans McKenny is a writer and mom from the Midwest. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and other outlets, and her debut novel, The Butterfly Effect, is the 2022 All- Iowa Reads selection (and is very buggy). You can find her on twitter @rmmckenny. A version of her story appeared in the Washington Post in 2020: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/09/29/head-lice-parenting/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:04.0 | Is NYU scientist the... |
| 0:06.0 | I felt... |
| 0:07.0 | I was so... |
| 0:09.0 | And I just thought, well... |
| 0:10.0 | It was that golden moment. |
| 0:12.0 | Because science was on my side. |
| 0:15.0 | Hey, everybody. Hey everybody, welcome to the Story Collider, where we bring you true personal stories about science. |
| 0:30.7 | In today's episode, we have two stories about bugs and the ways they affect our lives. |
| 0:37.0 | And although the names of our storytellers this week are coincidentally strikingly similar, |
| 0:42.5 | there are stories and the bugs that they're centered around are very different. |
| 0:47.2 | Our first story is from Rachel Mansmith. |
| 0:49.7 | It was recorded last December at a closed show in Atlanta. |
| 0:53.0 | The theme that night was clarity. |
| 0:54.8 | All right. So the school bus that takes us to the jungle pulls over in the middle of nowhere, |
| 1:12.6 | and we clamber down the steps that are meant for children to a dusty road that's going to take us to the Belize Ecology Research Station. |
| 1:20.6 | My six compatriots line up off the bus, looking smart and prepared for the six-mile hike we're about to embark on. |
| 1:29.6 | They have athleisure wear on that's wick away, collapsible hiking sticks, and sensible backpacks with hip support. |
| 1:37.5 | I look nothing like that. My outfit screams unprepared in all caps. It's all cotton and kind of like loungeware, and I've paired it with |
| 1:47.4 | rubber rain boots and a suitcase that could but probably shouldn't be worn on my back. |
| 1:53.4 | My stomach is in knots as I get off the bus, and there's really nowhere to go but forward on this |
| 1:58.5 | hike. And by the end, my cotton outfit is stuck to me, and I'm full of chaf marks, |
... |
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