Heartbreak: Stories about times science breaks our hearts
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2018
⏱️ 26 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, in honor of Valentine's Day, we're presenting two stories about heartbreak in science.
Part 1:Â Rattled by a recent heartbreak, neuroscientist Prabarna Ganguly makes a mistake in the lab.
Part 2: Marine ecologist Kirsten Grorud-Colvert bonds with her diving buddy when they have an unexpected encounter with a hammerhead shark.Â
Prabarna Ganguly is one of the many Bostonian graduate students, studying neuroscience at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on how and why maternal care is necessary for the healthy development of infants. As an aspiring science writer, she is constantly looking for good science stories to share, and makes sure that her elevator pitches are always grandma-friendly. Comfortably Indian, she likes cricket, Pink Floyd, and enjoys simple frivolities. Also, having just dyed her hair red, she is quite excited about its possibilities. Â
Note: Kirsten's story was produced as part of our partnership with Springer Nature's Springer Storytellers program. Find out more at beforetheabstract.com.
Kirsten Grorud-Colvert is a marine ecologist at Oregon State University, where she has studied ocean organisms in the Oregon nearshore, the Florida Keys, and California’s Catalina Island, along with other marine systems from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. She uses data from different species and habitats to ask, What happens when you protect an area in the ocean? And what can we learn from those areas to design even better protection? She also directs the Science of Marine Reserves Project and loves learning from her creative colleagues in science, communication, and graphic design. Kirsten has always been obsessed with water—that’s what growing up in the 120 degrees Arizona desert will do to you!
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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 | It felt... |
| 0:08.0 | 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 | Hi everybody. Welcome to the Story Collider, where we bring you true personal stories about science. |
| 0:26.3 | I am your host, Erin Barker, and this week, in honor of Valentine's Day, we're presenting stories about the times when science breaks our hearts. |
| 0:35.3 | Our first story is from Paborna Gangoli. It was recorded in October |
| 0:39.4 | 2017 at the Oberon in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The theme that night was roadblocks. |
| 0:50.0 | So in 2009, I came to the U.S. on a student visa and a suitcase full of expectations and |
| 0:59.3 | pressure neatly packed in by my not so overbearing Indian parents. And following the normal |
| 1:06.5 | Indian immigrant trajectory, I studied and got my bachelor's in biology and then found myself |
| 1:14.2 | studying early life stress in rats. Not sure where that came from. And everything was going |
| 1:21.6 | pretty well when I fell in love. So we met on the first day of grad school. He said that he fell in love with me by the |
| 1:31.9 | fourth day. We were friends for eight months and then we started this whirlwind romance. I can imagine |
| 1:40.9 | all of you knowing this whole idea of, oh, he made me feel so good, he made me feel so |
| 1:45.4 | amazing, and he would send me these postcards from faraway places saying things like, |
| 1:50.8 | home is not where you're born. It is where you belong. Some people find it in places. Some people find it in people. |
| 2:03.6 | I know this to be true. |
... |
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