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Best of Story Collider: Identity Crisis

Best of Story Collider: Identity Crisis

Update: 2025-08-29
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This week we present two classic stories about people struggling with their identity.

Part 1: When science journalist Katherine Wu interviews a scientist about a new facial recognition algorithm, the conversation turns more personal than she expected.

Part 2: Hurricane Katrina gives Mary Annaise Heglar a new perspective on both her grandfather and home state.

Katherine J. Wu is a Boston-based science journalist and storyteller whose writing has appeared in Smithsonian magazine, Scientific American, NOVA Next, and more. She's also a senior producer for The Story Collider. In 2018, she earned a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunobiology from Harvard University, where she studied how bacteria deal with stress so she could one day learn to do the same. She can spell "tacocat" backwards.

Mary Annaise Heglar is an author and communications consultant based in Birmingham, AL. Her writing has been published in Vox, The Cut, Rolling Stone, and WIRED, among other outlets. She is the author of the novel, Troubled Waters, and the children's book, The World is Ours to Cherish.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Best of Story Collider: Identity Crisis

Best of Story Collider: Identity Crisis