In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers find themselves reckoning with the choices they’ve made—discovering how a single decision, whether made years ago or in the chaos of a crisis, can shape who we become and the responsibilities we carry.

Part 1: When Misha Gajewski’s grandfather has a stroke while the rest of her family is out of town, she suddenly becomes the emergency contact.

Part 2: After learning that her mother gave up on her dream of becoming a musician, Paula Croxson vows never to give up on her dream of being a scientist.

Misha Gajewski is the artistic director and host of The Story Collider podcast. She is also a freelance journalist, educator, and copywriter. Her work has appeared on Vice, Forbes, blogTO, CTV News, and BBC, among others. She’s the co-found of the world’s first 24-hour True Storytelling Festival and a proud cat mom. She has also written scripts for the award-winning YouTube channel SciShow.

Dr. Paula Croxson is a neuroscientist, award-winning science communicator and storyteller. She is a Senior Producer at The Story Collider and the President of the Board of Directors. In her day job, she is President at Stellate Communications where she supports academic and nonprofit science communication. Paula has an M.A. from the University of Cambridge and a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford. She was an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai for 5 years before shifting her career focus to science communication and public engagement with science, first at Columbia University and then at the Dana Foundation. She is passionate about communicating science in meaningful and effective ways, and fostering diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in science. She is also a musician, playing flute in several rock bands, and a long-distance open water swimmer. The swimming is apparently for “fun”. You can learn more about her at paulacroxson.com.

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In this week’s episode, both our storytellers come face to face with the growing power—and pitfalls—of artificial intelligence.

Part 1: When AI takes over comedian Kyle Gillis’s job, he takes it personally.

Part 2: While researching an AI model, engineer Omiya Hassan discovers one major problem: the amount of energy it’s consuming.

Kyle Gillis is a Brooklyn-based comedian, musician, and Guinness World Record holder from Atlanta, GA. His stand-up highlights the contradictions of modern life—work that feels meaningless, a culture obsessed with productivity, and the absurd ways people cope with both. His act blends grounded emotional honesty with controlled chaos.

Dr. Omiya Hassan, born and raised in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boise State University. She is also the principal investigator and director of her research lab, "LPiNS: Low-Power Integrated Circuits and Embedded Systems," where her team's primary research focuses on solving the energy-demand problem of Artificial Intelligence (AI) accelerators and high-computation hardware. She completed her PhD in 2023 from the University of Missouri, focusing on building power-efficient AI hardware architectures for biomedical applications. Dr. Hassan also holds a professional degree in Music majoring in Vocal and Classical South-Asian Music. If you tune in to the national radio and national TV of Bangladesh, you might hear or see her sing the songs of Tagore. Besides teaching and researching at Boise State, you can find her hiking in the mountains, sharing cold sandwiches with her friends, or trying to ski but falling miserably with no shame during weekends.

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In this week’s episode, like Icarus, both our storytellers fly a little too close to the sun—and learn the hard way that confidence doesn’t always equal competence.

Part 1: As a kid, JR Denson is determined to master the art of homemade french fries—but then his kitchen experiment goes up in flames.

Part 2: Faced with a looming Science Olympiad deadline, Adam Ruben is sure his last-minute “clock” made from a bag of water will do the trick.

JR Denson --a Washington, DC native-- is a full-time college educator and a part time emergency medical technician (EMT). He has become increasingly involved in the DMV's storytelling scene ever since accidentally falling into right before the pandemic. JR has performed for both local and national storytelling organizations such as The Perfect Liar's Club, the Stone Soup Storytelling Festival, and NPR’s The Moth.

Adam Ruben is a writer, comedian, and molecular biologist in Washington, DC. He writes the monthly humor column “Experimental Error” in the AAAS journal Science Careers and is the author of two books: Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School, and Pinball Wizards: Jackpots, Drains, and the Cult of the Silver Ball. He has appeared on the Science Channel, the Food Network, the History Channel, the Travel Channel, the Weather Channel, Discovery, Netflix, and NPR and is a writer for the preschool cartoon “Elinor Wonders Why” on PBS Kids. Adam has performed on stage in 34 states and six countries, including two solo shows. He has told stories onstage with Story Collider, Story District, and Story League, and is a five-time Moth Story Slam Champion and a Lead Producer for the DC/Baltimore chapter of Mortified. He has three kids, two cats, and a day job as a molecular biologist for the US federal government that feels less secure every day.

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