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The Story Collider

Outliers: Stories of unusual outcomes

The Story Collider

Story Collider, Inc.

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

4.4 • 824 Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2017

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Part 1: A series of unfortunate events reveals something off about molecular biologist Maryam Zaringhalam’s sense of smell. Part 2: Hillary Savoie’s daughter is born with a rare genetic mutation. Maryam Zaringhalam is a molecular biologist who just received her PhD from The Rockefeller University. In the lab, Maryam tinkers with parasites and computers to understand how small changes to our genetic building blocks can affect how we look and function. When she's not doing science, Maryam runs ArtLab, a series that pairs scientists with artists, and podcasts with Science Soapbox, exploring science and policy. You can follow her science-ish musings on Twitter @webmz_ Hillary Savoie is a writer, advocate, and mixer of killer cocktails. She is also mother to Esmé, a beautiful little girl with multiple rare genetic conditions. Hillary has blogged about life with Esmé since 2012. Her writing has appeared onMotherlode—the NY Times parenting blog, The Mighty, Vector—Boston Children’s Science and Innovation Blog, and the Huffington Post Blog, among others. In 2015 she published two short memoirs, Around and Into The Unknown and Whoosh. Hillary is the Founder and Director of the Cute Syndrome Foundation, which is dedicated to raising research funds for and awareness of PCDH19 Epilepsy and SCN8A Epilepsy. And she holds a doctorate in Communication and Rhetoric from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which was great preparation for parenting Esmé, who is an expert in nonverbal persuasion. In her free time she enjoys gardening, dancing to Beyoncé and the Muppets with Esmé, snuggling her geriatric cat, Chicken, and dressing her daughter up as famous women from history. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @HillarySavoie and Facebook @HillarySavoieWriter

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

A science story, huh?

0:04.0

Is NYU scientist the...

0:07.0

I felt...

0:08.0

I felt right.

0:09.0

And I just thought, well...

0:10.0

I figured it out.

0:11.0

It was that golden moment.

0:13.0

Because science was on my side.

0:16.0

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

0:34.8

Our first story this week is from Miriam Zeringhalem. It was recorded in November 2016 at the Crane Theatre in New York as part of the Gotham

0:41.8

Storytelling Festival.

0:43.3

So the bathroom has always been a sacred place for me.

0:57.8

When I was seven, I used to retreat into the bathroom to escape all of the day-to-day bullshit

1:04.5

that came with being a seven-year-old.

1:07.3

And I would wrangle up my stuffed animals and I'd line them up on the tiles and I would assume my porcelain throne and I would teach them about math and I would read stories to them.

1:20.6

But our time together would inevitably get cut short when my brother, stupid brother, would come pounding on the door begging to use the

1:30.8

bathroom. And so having a bathroom of my own became this status symbol for me, this thing to

1:38.2

aspire to. Like all of my role models on TV, like Sabrina the Teenage Witch or the Olson twins had their own bathrooms.

1:47.7

So why couldn't I?

1:49.9

Now, I had one of those beds growing up that was lofted, so you could put another bed underneath

1:57.4

and turn it into a bunk bed, except I didn't do that.

2:00.5

I would use my lofted bed

...

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