Eventually, I would learn that stories are not just a way of communicating science; they are intrinsic to science, actually part of doing science. My own story of merging these Two Cultures – for me, literary writing and particle physics – was complicated by a Third Culture, religion. I grew up in Utah, in an era when Mormon women could have physics careers, technically, but following this path was difficult, lonely, and considered a threat to the traditional family model. We were encouraged to pursue education, not to prepare for competitive careers but for traditional roles as wives and mothers. This worldview, where a woman’s education is merely a safeguard if her husband can’t work, exemplifies what George W Bush’s speechwriter Michael Gerson called ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’. It is a mindset that stifles ambition and curiosity. In fact, in my world, ambition in a woman signified pride, selfishness, sin.