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The Story Collider

Expertise: Stories about knowledge

The Story Collider

Story Collider, Inc.

Arts, Science, Society & Culture, Personal Journals, Performing Arts

4.4824 Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Experts are a dime a dozen, but true expertise is hard to come by. In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers – who shared their stories at our annual Proton Prom fundraiser this week – struggle with finding the knowledge they seek. We’re especially grateful to the Burroughs Wellcome Fund for supporting the event and making this all possible.

Part 1: When Zach Weinersmith agrees to create a trivia game, he doesn’t realize how hard it is to come up with facts that are both interesting and actually true.

Part 2: Concerned about his eyesight, comedian Josh Johnson desperately searches for a good doctor.

Zach Weinersmith is a cartoonist, best known for making the comic strip SMBC. He co-authored the NYT bestselling pop science book Soonish, illustrated the NYT bestselling Open Borders. His work has been featured in too many places and society is the worse for it.

Josh Johnson is a stand-up, Emmy-nominated writer, performer, and NAACP award-winner from Louisiana by way of Chicago. He is currently a writer on The Daily Show, and is a former writer and performer on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where he made his late-night debut. Johnson is Comedy Central’s ‘most watched comedian ever’ with 40M+ views to date across their platforms. As a stand-up, Johnson performs at clubs, colleges, and festivals around the world. Johnson was named Comedy Central’s “Comic to Watch” in 2015, a “New Face” at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in 2016, and “New York's Funniest” in 2018. Comedy Central released Johnson’s first hour-long special #(Hashtag) in June 2021, and he taped his second hour-long special at The Bourbon Room in Los Angeles in May 2022, which is set to debut early 2023. Johnson’s self-released comedy and music mixtape album Elusive, was described by Vanyaland as “live stand-up observational humor with musical compositions. Both elements wade in and out of political and social waters between the two “arcs” of the multi-genre epic". Johnson also co-hosts two podcasts, The Josh Johnson Show (with fellow stand-up Logan Nielsen) and Hold Up (with The Daily Show colleague Dulcé Sloan). Johnson’s other credits include, CONAN (TBS), @Midnight, Kevin Hart's Hart of The City, The New Negroes, and This Week at The Comedy Cellar on Comedy Central. Johnson lives in New York and can be seen performing regularly at The Comedy Cellar.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

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0:22.6

That's one good thing.

0:24.3

Search Capital One.

0:25.9

34.9% APR representative variable.

0:28.5

T's and Cs apply.

0:31.8

A science story, huh?

0:35.0

Is NYU scientist the...

0:36.7

I felt... I felt.

0:37.7

And I just thought, well.

0:39.7

It was that golden moment.

0:42.9

Because science was on my side.

1:00.7

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Story Collider, where we bring you true personal stories about science.

1:07.5

I'm your host, Aaron Barker, and this week we're bringing you two stories about what it means to be an expert.

1:12.7

Both of these stories were recorded at Story Collider's annual Proton Prom fundraiser, which took place last Tuesday, May 2nd at the Bell House in Brooklyn. We had an

1:19.1

amazing time celebrating 13 years of Story Collider and were so grateful to everyone who came out

1:25.3

and support or watch the live stream,

1:32.5

and we're especially grateful to the Burroughs Welcome Fund for supporting the event and making it possible.

1:37.9

We'll be sharing more stories from the event in the coming months, I'm sure, but for today,

1:44.7

we're excited to bring you two of them, from author and cartoonist Zach Wienersmith and comedian Josh Johnson.

1:48.7

Our first story today is from Zach Wienersmith.

1:54.7

As I mentioned, it was recorded at the proton prom this month at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Thank you. My name is Zach Wienersmith. I'm a cartoonist. My wife is a research biologist, and we write popular science books together, and we are, if you like, science communicators.

2:19.2

And because of that, we are very angry, unhappy people.

...

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