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The Story Collider

Fight or Flight: Stories about confronting threats

The Story Collider

Story Collider, Inc.

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

4.4824 Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2018

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, we present two stories about confronting threats -- whether it’s actual physical danger or a threat to your career.

Part 1: Climate scientist Kim Cobb is exploring a cave in Borneo when rocks begin to fall.

Part 2: Neurobiologist Lyl Tomlinson is startled when he's accused of stealing cocaine from his lab.

Kim Cobb is a researcher who uses corals and cave stalagmites to probe the mechanisms of past, present, and future climate change. Kim has sailed on multiple oceanographic cruises to the deep tropics and led caving expeditions to the rainforests of Borneo in support of her research. Kim has received numerous awards for her research, most notably a NSF CAREER Award in 2007, and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2008. She is an Editor for Geophysical Research Letters, sits on the international CLIVAR Pacific Panel, and serves on the Advisory Council for the AAAS Leshner Institute for Public Engagement. As a mother to four, Kim is a strong advocate for women in science, and champions diversity and inclusion in all that she does. She is also devoted to the clear and frequent communication of climate change to the public through speaking engagements and social media.

Lyl Tomlinson is a Brooklyn native and a neuroscience graduate student at Stony Brook University. He is also a science communication fanatic who often asks: “Would my grandma understand this?” Using this question as a guiding principle, he won the 2014 NASA FameLab science communication competition and became the International final runner-up. In addition to making complex information understandable, he has a growing interest in science policy. Lyl meets with government representatives to advocate for science related issues and regularly develops programs to tackle problems ranging from scientific workforce issues to the Opioid Epidemic. Outside of his work and career passions, he seems to harbor an odd obsession with sprinkles and is a (not so) comic book and anime nerd.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

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.

0:20.0

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

0:27.7

I'm your host, Aaron Barker, and this week we're presenting stories about confronting threats.

0:33.6

Whether it's actual physical danger or a threat to your career, how do we react in those moments?

0:41.3

I'll tell you how I did once. A few years ago, I was ice skating here in New York around Christmas time, and this kid skates into me really hard.

0:51.3

And I just have this like reflexive reaction before I even have the chance

0:55.6

to think about it. I find myself reaching out to smack him in the head. But I catch myself just in

1:02.9

time. So I just sort of pretended like I was straightening his hat, which is a totally normal thing

1:08.3

to do to a stranger on an ice rink, right?

1:12.7

Nobody bought it, of course.

1:16.8

My boyfriend was like, uh, you definitely just almost did that kid.

1:21.3

Anyway, ice skating kid, if you're out there, I'm sorry.

1:22.9

I did not mean to menace you.

1:25.5

I was having a fight or flight moment.

1:26.4

I apologize.

1:35.2

And I can promise you all that the storytellers in today's episode react to much more dire threats with a lot more maturity and composure.

...

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