John Rennie: The lab safety officer
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 1 September 2013
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After he's named lab safety officer, John Rennie must recover a precious sample from the bottom of a vat of liquid nitrogen. So he reaches in. John Rennie is a science writer, editor, and lecturer based in New York. Viewers of The Weather Channel know him as the host of the original series Hacking The Planet and as one of the hosts of The Truth About… series of specials. He is also currently the editorial director of science for McGraw-Hill Professional, overseeing its highly respected AccessScience online reference and the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more and subscribe to our podcast (and see our celebration of a million downloads!) here: http://storycollider.org/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:04.0 | Is NYU a scientist? |
| 0:06.0 | I felt it. |
| 0:07.0 | I felt like. |
| 0:08.0 | And I just thought, well. |
| 0:10.0 | It was that golden moment. |
| 0:12.0 | Because science was on my side. Hey everyone, I'm Ben Lilly, and welcome to the Story Collider, |
| 0:28.1 | where we bring you true stories of how science has affected people's lives. |
| 0:32.0 | Quick reminder, we're running a survey of our listeners. |
| 0:34.1 | If you haven't already, please fill it out. |
| 0:35.8 | We also have shows coming up Wednesday, September 4th in New York, and Monday the 23rd in Boston. All of that is at |
| 0:42.9 | storycollider.org. This week's story is from John Rennie. The story was recorded in May 2013 |
| 0:49.5 | at the Bell House in Brooklyn as part of our three-year anniversary. |
| 1:10.2 | Back when I was working at Harvard Medical School as a lab technician, |
| 1:12.3 | pretty much by definition, |
| 1:15.5 | everyone there was smarter than I was. |
| 1:21.0 | I mean, of course, because I was just, you know, some guy, it was the early 1980s, I was just some guy right out of college with my lousy bachelor's degree. |
| 1:25.0 | I certainly really didn't even belong in the same thought with |
| 1:29.3 | brilliant guys like Dan, the head of our lab, who was just a genius cell biologist. In |
| 1:36.5 | addition to the fact that he was this warm, enthusiastic presence, I would tell him about things |
| 1:40.7 | I had done and he would say, dynamite Johnny, that's great news. |
| 1:45.4 | He was the only person who called me Johnny. I mean, Dan, so he was very, very smart, and he was also, you know, he was this warm mentor and friends to everybody he knew. |
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