Hello and welcome back to Story Collider's Stories of COVID-19. I'm your host, Aaron Barker,

and this is part one of episode five on the theme of connections.

Six months ago, I watched my little sister graduate college over Zoom. Instead of seeing her walk across

a stage, I waited with bated breath for over an hour for her senior photo to be flashed up on a screen

for a total of four seconds and cheered alone in my kitchen even though nobody could hear me.

Believe it or not, I found this a little unsatisfying.

This year has been full of moments like this, watching life events from graduations to weddings to funerals on screens, struggling to make that emotional connection

with our loved ones from a distance.

In this episode, we'll hear about the ways our storytellers found to connect, despite everything.

In part one of this episode, we'll hear from one of those storytellers, and then we'll talk

to neuroscientist

Daniela Schiller about her research into social interaction during COVID-19.

Our first story is from computational biologist C. Brandon Ogbonu.

It was recorded at his home in New Haven, Connecticut. By April of 2020, I had decided that I'd had enough that it was time to get the

hell up out of here.

And by here, I didn't mean my block or my city, didn't even mean the country.

I'm talking galaxy.

For real.

To do so, all I needed was a warp cell to fuel my hyperdrive.

However, to get a warp cell, I needed antimatter.

And to get antimatter, I needed 25 parts of chromatic metal and 20 parts of condensed

carbon.

...