With A Little Help: Stories about the power of really good friends

The Story Collider

As The Beatles famously sang: “I get by with a little help from my friends.” And the saying is just as true in life as it is in science. In fact, in this week’s episode, both of our storytellers show just how much they needed the help of their friends to succeed at science.

Part 1: Months into her fly experiment Michaela Agapiou still can’t catch flies efficiently and now she’s faced with the challenge of scaling up her experiment.

Part 2: In order to get a good grade in her biology class, Ashley McKelvy designs her own experiment that requires her friends to drink a cup of coffee every 20 minutes.

Michaela Agapiou is a research scientist and storyteller living in London. Nowadays Michaela’s research is all computer based but she carries around a glow in the dark sperm cell keyring to remind her of her lab work days.

Ashley McKelvy has lived in Arkansas, Florida, Texas and currently lives in Georgia. She is a former runner who has traded her sneakers in for cycling cleats, and she loves nerding out over her last workout. She has worked as an English teacher, a librarian, a grader of standardized tests, and she once had a career at Old Navy that lasted three hours.

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