Friction: Stories of difficult relationships in science
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 7 July 2017
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we bring you two stories of difficult professional relationships in science, whether in the field or in the lab. Part 1: As a young biology student, Margot Wohl is excited to spend a summer in the field, but her male colleague expects her to do all the work. Part 2: Physics major Stephanie Loeb travels to Singapore to study nanoparticles, but is intimidated by her enigmatic project leader. Margot Wohl hails from Bel Air, Maryland but found her spirit city is Philadelphia when she moved their to study biology at the University of Pennsylvania. Now she is pursuing a PhD in neuroscience at UC San Diego where she confirms daily that the sun sets in the West and then retreats to her science cave for the night. Her research centers on how brain cells and the molecules they exchange give rise to aggressive behaviors in fruit flies. She enjoys all experiences that make her feel as though she is not on the planet Earth. In her free time she can be found playing tennis, doting on her cat to which she has allergies and taking pictures of insects she finds [hashtag insectagrams]. Also, Margot produces a podcast called Salk Talk for which she weaves together character vignettes of up and coming scientists. Stephanie Loeb is a PhD candidate in Environmental Engineering at Yale University. She came to Yale with the support of a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Fellowship to study surface plasmon resonance and the photothermal properties of nanomaterials for solar water treatment. Prior to moving to the US, Stephanie completed an undergraduate degree in Physics and Nanoscience jointly with the University of Toronto and the National University of Singapore, as well as a Master's of Applied Science in Environmental Engineering at the University of Toronto. She is an avid story listener, and first-time story teller.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This week's podcast is brought to you by Shutterstock. You might know if Shutterstock is home to royalty-free photos, but they offer much more. You can kickstart your next interactive project with video clips or music tracks from their collection. All of your creative needs are served to you in one place. You can take advantage today of a 20% discount the company is offering for a limited time at Sh shutterstock.com slash special slash collider. |
| 0:22.4 | That's shutterstock.com slash special slash collider. |
| 0:30.1 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:33.4 | Is NYU scientist the... |
| 0:35.1 | I felt... |
| 0:35.9 | I felt... I felt... I feel. And I was so... And I just thought, well... |
| 0:38.3 | I figured it out. |
| 0:39.3 | It was that golden moment. |
| 0:41.3 | Because science was on my side. |
| 0:47.3 | Hi everyone, I'm Ben Lilly, and welcome to the Story Collider, |
| 0:53.3 | where we bring you true personal stories about science. |
| 0:56.5 | This week will bring you stories from scientists who found dream jobs and had to share them with not-so-dreamy colleagues. |
| 1:02.7 | Our first story this week is from Margot Wohl. |
| 1:04.7 | It was recorded in November 2016 at Camp Hess Kramer in Malibu, California as part of our show with Sycom Camp. |
| 1:17.3 | So it was my sophomore year of college. It was the summer. And I was about to embark on my first real foray into science. |
| 1:30.4 | And I was really excited and I had no idea what to expect. |
| 1:35.3 | In fact, I wasn't sure how I really got there. |
| 1:38.8 | I've always really felt more like an observer for everything. |
| 1:43.3 | This kind of manifested itself in my childhood past |
| 1:47.3 | times, which are really just watching things. So watching wildlife, stargazing, just like looking at |
| 1:52.5 | things. And this really made it into how I also felt like I just was always observing my own life |
| 1:59.8 | that I didn't really have agency and control over it. But I felt like I just was always observing my own life, that I didn't really have agency and control over it. |
... |
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