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The Story Collider

In the Field: Stories about venturing into the wild

The Story Collider

Story Collider, Inc.

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

4.4824 Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2017

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Part 1: As a grad student, Liz Neeley falls in love with the order of science, but when she heads into the field, she’s forced to confront messy reality. Part 2: Criminologist Heith Copes gets close to his subjects when he studies meth users in rural Alabama. Liz Neeley is the executive director of The Story Collider. She is a lapsed marine biologist who will always name her printers after fish. For the past decade, she has been helping researchers around the world understand the science of science communication and find the courage to tell more stories about their work. She is a member of the advisory boards of Ensia Magazine and the CommLab at MIT. Heith Copes, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Justice Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has served as the President of the Southern Criminal Justice Association and has been a visiting professor at the University of Oslo, University of South Wales, Aalborg University, and the Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research at Aarhus University. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Tennessee in 2001. He is currently working with Jared Ragland on a photo-ethnography in rural Alabama. The project entails interviews, observations, and visual methods to document the lives of people who use methamphetamine in Marshall County, Alabama. Heith Copes's story was produced as part of a partnership with Springer Storytellers. Find out more about Heith and his work on the Before the Abstract website: http://www.beforetheabstract.com/2017/03/01/caught-being-stupid/

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

A science story, huh?

0:05.0

Is NYU scientist the...

0:06.0

I felt...

0:07.0

It felt...

0:08.0

It was so...

0:09.0

And I just thought, well...

0:10.0

It was that golden moment.

0:13.0

Because science was on my side.

0:19.0

Hi everyone, I'm Ben Lilly, and welcome to The Story Collider, where we bring you true personal stories about science.

0:27.4

This week, we're bringing you two stories about life in the field, from a research cruise in the Chesapeake Bay to the trailer parks of rural Alabama.

0:34.4

Our first story this week is from Liz Neely. It was recorded in September

0:37.6

2016 at Bus Boys and Poets in Washington, D.C. The theme was damages.

0:48.3

So I started drinking in college, alone. And it's not in a sad and sloppy way or at least not in a sloppy

0:58.6

way but rather this was an extravagantly nerdy experiment conducted largely in secrecy

1:06.0

you see it's the autumn of my freshman year I I've done the frat parties, the house parties.

1:11.6

I like it.

1:12.6

Except I realize I am data deficient.

1:16.6

I don't know what's being given to me in these drinks.

1:20.6

I don't know which liquors I actually like.

1:23.6

And I don't know how my body responds to this stuff.

1:26.6

So I think this is a titration problem.

1:32.3

All I need is a more precise calibration. So fortunately for me, one of my best friends,

...

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