Ben Lillie

Daniela Schiller: A new last memory

Tue, 07 May 2013 11:15:20 -0400

A few years ago, Daniela Schiller told a story on The Moth Mainstage, and then at one of the first Story Colliders. It was a beautiful piece about how her research on memory and emotion lead her to understand her holocaust-surviving father, who she’d never been able to talk to. Well, after she told that story she was approached a film-maker who make something absolutely remarkable happen. She told that story a few months ago in a show we co-produced with Studio 360. Listen to the first above, and the second below.

John Rennie: Agression

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:06:12 -0400

This week’s Story Collider podcast: A college course forces John Rennie to confront a furious rat, and himself.

John will also be telling a new story in our 3-year anniversary show, May 14th at The Bell House in Brooklyn. More info & tickets here.

Moran Cerf: Being dead while being alive

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:03:46 -0400

This week’s Story Collider podcast: Moran Cerf’s life is spun around when a computer glitch declares him dead — but that’s nothing compared to what happens when a real funeral comes around.

Andrew Revkin: My lucky stroke

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:38:59 -0400

This week’s Story Collider podcast: When he begins showing strange symptoms on a jog though the mountains, science writer Andrew Revkin discovers just how close to death he is.

Stuart Firestein: A mentor with a nose for science

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 09:32:53 -0400

This week’s Story Collider podcast: After a career as a theater manager, Stuart Firestein takes a biology class, which leads him to a completely new life, and a lot of salamander noses.

When your grandmother forgets who you are

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 11:20:52 -0400

This week’s Story Collider podcast: When Paula Croxson began to study memory as a neuroscientist, she also learned a new way of thinking about her grandmother’s failing memory.

When your asshole boyfriend is a philosopher of neuroscience

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 10:50:00 -0400

This week’s Story Collider podcast: Writer Jess Zimmerman discovers the dangers of dating a philosopher of neuroscience who thinks he knows what’s really happening in her head.

Jon Ronson: A journalist interviews a robot

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 08:33:41 -0400

This week’s Story Collider podcast: Journalist Jon Ronson is excited when he hears about some ‘sentient’ robots, but when he goes to interview them he finds both less and more than he ever expected.

The twisting road from basic brain research to helping malaria patients

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 11:00:11 -0500

This week’s Story Collider podcast: Andre Fenton always wanted to do research at the most fundamental level — to uncover basic truths about memory and how it works, never mind how useful. But a friend’s accident unexpectedly leads to him inventing a spectacularly useful, and lifesaving, device.

The rules of writing with your daughter

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 13:07:05 -0500

This week’s Story Collider podcast: Robin Marantz Henig and her daughter, Samantha, decided to write a book together about life as a twentysomthing. There was just one problem — how to handle the bits you don’t want to talk about with your mother?

When does "the public" start?

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 10:49:00 -0500

Here’s a question about outreach that came up after the SoNYC panel last night. It won’t fit on twitter, so I’ll ask it here.

Say you’re a cell biologist studying a signal pathway. You give a seminar to other scientists studying that pathway — that’s at one level (a very technical one). You give a seminar to other cell biologists, and it’s at a different level. You give it to other biologist and it’s yet another level.

Finally: You give that seminar to a group that includes physicists and geologists and every other type of scientist. Is that level different from giving a talk to the general public? If so, how?

Partly I’m wondering if there is a reason to have an event series for “other scientists,” but also wondering about the bigger question: is there something about being a scientist that makes it easier to understand other bits of science? I suspect the answer is “a bit,” but really want to know specifically what one could say to scientists they couldn’t to a general audience.

Update: There was a lot of good discussion on twitter, so I Storified those. I’ll update it if there’s more.

And you now have to scroll way down, but don’t miss the comments. Lots of good stuff.

How a sociologist became The Pigeon Guy

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 10:20:57 -0500

This week’s Story Collider podcast: Colin Jerolmack was floundering in grad school until he found deep insights into human nature… from pigeons.

Upcoming events: Spring 2013 edition

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:53:00 -0500

I have a lot of very cool events coming up, so I thought I’d make a big list of them.

This friday, The Story Collider makes it’s second appearance at OBERON in Cambridge, MA. It’s a fantastic space, and we have an amazing lineup. We’re particularly scientist-heavy this time — usually one or two of our storytellers are working scientists, this time five (!) are. There’s still a few tickets available, so if you’re in town (say, for AAAS), come see the show! 7pm Friday, Feb 15th at OBERON near Harvard Square.

Speaking of AAAS, I’ll be running a workshop with Adam Ruben and Michael A. Simon called “Science in Storytelling.” We’ll be talking to researchers about how to weave great stories about their work. If you’re attending and that sounds exciting to you (and it should!) it’s 3:30 on Saturday.

Next Wednesday, Feb 20th, I’ll be moderating a panel at the American Museum of Natural History called “Telling Stories With Scientists.” We’ve been working on putting this together for a while, and I’m pee-my-pants excited about it. Five people from very different backgrounds will talk about the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of collaborating to turn the abject messiness of science into a coherent, comprehensible and compelling story. Also, if you come, I’ll promise not to alliterate further. The panel is amazing: Amy Harmon, John Rennie, Meehan Crist, Carter Emmart, and Jer Thorp. 6:30pm at the AMNH, reception to follow.

The next Story Collider in New York is March 11th. We’re working with the people at the Dana Foundation producing Brain Awareness week to bring you stories of…, well, BRAINS! No zombies, we promise. The lineup is still coming together, but a little birdy tells me Andrew Revkin will talk about his “Lucky Stroke,” among other stories. 8pm, March 11th at Union Hall in Brooklyn.

March 20. Oh boy, March 20th. This is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time: I’ll be telling a story on the Moth Mainstage, and it’s my story of how and why I left physics. I don’t really talk about this much in public. OK, except that one time at Science Online last year in front of 400 people, but those were all my friends, this is for a bunch of strangers. For those who don’t know, The Moth is the organization that developed and made incredibly popular the form of storytelling that we use at The Story Collider — one person in front of a microphone, telling a true, personal story about themselves for about ten minutes. Appearing on their Mainstage is both an honor, and quite terrifying. The second part will, I’m sure, be quite amusing to all the people I’ve made nervous by asking them to tell their science story. March 20th at The Players Club in NYC. Tickets go on sale two weeks before the show.

April 16th, The Story Collider is back in Boston for the Cambridge Science Festival! Tickets should go on sale soon. We also have a couple slots still open in the lineup. Want to tell a story? Let us know.

May 14th is the three-year anniversary of The Story Collider. Nothing definitive to say yet, but hold the date.

Two nerds fall in love

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 13:30:10 -0500

This week’s Story Collider podcast: Biologist Kelly Smith and comic artist Zach Weiner were having trouble dating, until they met online and realized what they each needed was another nerd.

Science Studio -- now aiming for Video!

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 11:00:21 -0500

I’m part of a wonderful new project: Science Studio. We’re collecting the best science multimedia on the web and publishing it as a big, easy to browse collection. Yay! Of course, we also have a kickstarter.

And that’s the exciting news! We’re almost at our goal — $5,000 — with a week to go. So we’re announcing our stretch goal. We had originally planned to only collect audio pieces this year, and expand in future years. But if we can get to $8,000 by the end of next week we’ll include video as well. That’s worth shooting for, because there is a metric shit-ton of good science video out there, so help us make it happen!

Confessions of a fourth-grade science fraud

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 09:06:33 -0500

This week’s Story Collider podcast: Anica Rissi realizes the true purpose of her science project: to increase her popularity. But how far is she willing to go?

A bartender from Queens learns theoretical physics

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 14:02:01 -0500

This week’s story Collider podcast: Tara Clancy’s worry over making bad life choices leads her to think about all the things she doesn’t know — and from there, obviously, to theoretical physics.

Heather Berlin: Can a scientist believe in life after death?

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 11:56:31 -0500

This week’s Story Collider podcast: Her grandmother’s death forces neuroscientist Heather Berlin to think hard about what she believes, and why.

Stephen McCarthy: Certainty in a cult

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 09:56:18 -0500

This week’s Story Collider podcast: Science provides an insight for Stephen McCarthy, whose unusual upbringing started when his parents were told to marry by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Farewell to TOLD

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 19:46:38 -0500

When I started doing what we call “storytelling,” there were only a few places to do it. It’s a particular kind of storytelling: One person in front of an audience, telling at true story for 5-10 minutes. Not quite theater, not quite stand-up comedy, definitely not the “picture book for kids” that people think of when they hear the word. So, finding the right place was important.

There was The Moth, of course, they largely invented, refined, and popularized the form. There were a couple open-mic type events were people could work on material. There were couple shows run by comedy theaters that focused on the, well, comedic side. There was The Liar Show where the twist — one storyteller is lying, guess which — was enough to turn it into a completely different experience. And that was it. In between Moths you pretty much just did other stuff and were sad.

Oh, and there was TOLD. Once a month you could go into the East Village, down into a tiny basement theater, sit on some old, but still quite nice, seats, listen to the heating pipes clang as they expanded, and wait. Then the lights would go down, a spot would come up on a stool by a railing, and a guy in a flannel shirt and a shaved head would walk into the spot, sit down, and say, “Hello, I’m Seth Lind and welcome to TOLD!”

About an hour and a half later, you’d blink and think, “I’m not entirely sure what happened, but that was great!”

The thing is, even though that was the reaction, it wasn’t some crazy spectacle with special effects you’d never seen before, it wasn’t Dadaist theater with language used in surprising and nonsensical ways. It was actually quite simple: Four people would get up in front of the audience (without a microphone) and tell a story on a theme. In between there would be interludes by someone doing something appropriate to the theme — for the “Magic (A gathering)” show it was a magician, for the “Trust Falls” show it was an acrobat.

And that was it. One simple thing done really, really well.

TOLD was the creation of Seth Lind, Operations Manager for This American Life, and Heidi Grumelot, Artistic Director at Horse Trade Theater Group — one of those theaters is Under St. Marks, the tiny basement space where the events were held. That combination was perfect. Heidi and Seth brought the right combination of enthusiasm and discernment while the space provided the most intimate setting you can get in a theater. The result was that when that spotlight came up, you knew you were going to hear stories in a way you hadn’t before.

For years TOLD was known as the place to go to watch really good storytelling. It was a mark of distinction among storytellers to have been invited to tell a story there. As the years went on and more and more shows sprang up (many of them quite good), TOLD remained a thing apart. It had it’s own character, it’s own unrelenting quality, and of course it had (as far as I knew) always been there. So when, a couple months ago, they announced that TOLD #50 would be, “Goodbye For Now,” and would be the last one, my first thought, honestly, was that it was a joke. (Classic stage 1 of grief, I know.)

But it wasn’t. I couldn’t see the final one, since I was already booked in an event across town. In all the craziness of the holidays I didn’t have any time to think about it. But today, Seth posted on Facebook a list of the things he learned while running the show. I thought it was pretty great, so I asked him if I could post it here so other people could see it. He said sure, so I sat down to write a little intro, so people who hadn’t seen the show would know what it was about.

I seem to have written a eulogy instead.

Not having had any time to think about it, I hadn’t realized how much I’m going to miss the show. I’ve had some time now, and it’s pretty clear: TOLD was one of the highlights of the month, and I’m going to miss the hell out of it. So, Seth and Heidi, thank you for the extraordinary stories, for the inspiration to do what we do, and of course for the many hours in Grassroots Tavern afterward. You’d better do something fucking incredible next to make up for cancelling this one.