Karen Hopkin: Who's The Donor?
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 9 October 2014
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A panicked day leads Karen Hopkin to wonder if her sperm donor really is the father of her child. Karen Hopkin is a freelance writer and the creator of the Studmuffins of Science calendar. Karen received a PhD in biochemistry in 1992, and then traded in her test tubes for a keyboard. A former producer for NPR's Science Friday, Karen currently voices stories for Scientific American's daily podcast, 60-Second Science. She is a coauthor of the textbook Essential Cell Biology and has written for many magazines including Science, New Scientist, The Scientist, and Golf Digest. Karen once led 1200 people in a musical tribute to the inventor of Karaoke, and in her spare time, she collects the signatures of Nobel Laureates on a 1950s-style autograph dog and is a mom to 8-year-old Christopher.
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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 | 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, everyone. I'm Ben Lilly, and welcome to the Story Collider, where we bring you true personal stories about science. |
| 0:29.7 | We have shows coming up in Pittsburgh and San Francisco and a special show this Wednesday about science fiction at the 92Y as part of New York's Superweek. |
| 0:37.2 | Check out Story Collider.org for times and tickets. |
| 0:40.4 | This week's story is from Karen Hopkin. |
| 0:42.6 | The story was recorded in September 2014 |
| 0:44.8 | at Oberon in Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
| 1:03.0 | When my son Christopher was four years old, I ordered a DNA test to determine the identity of his father. |
| 1:08.6 | Now, don't get me wrong. It wasn't that I had like no idea who his baby daddy was. |
| 1:12.0 | You know, I wasn't ready for the Jerry Springer show. It's just things got a little complicated in the month he was conceived. I'd been trying to make a baby |
| 1:18.6 | for two and a half years. And as a single woman, I had this sort of, I faced this special |
| 1:24.9 | challenge of having to acquire some of the necessary materials every month that I needed for this project. |
| 1:33.0 | At first, I relied on friends who were only too happy to provide home delivery service. |
| 1:39.3 | But as time wore on and my friends wore out, I started ordering the material online. It was much |
| 1:47.2 | less messy that way. So in the month in question, when the time was right and insemination, |
| 1:55.5 | rather ovulation was imminent, I phoned the clinic to request my usual table, the one with the padded stirrups, |
... |
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