State of the Human

Promising (full episode)

Promises can be made about almost anything. From promising to be a knight of God, to promising to talk about sex... to promising to stay together until death do us part. In this show, eight different promises are made. Some are kept, many are broken. But every broken, these promises changed something. Because even a failed promise has the power to change the world.
Host: Nina Foushee
Producers: Nina Foushee, Hadley Reid, Christy Hartman
Featuring: Nina Foushee, Will Hamilton, Liz Matus, Professor Jorah Dannenberg, Hadley Reid, Don Reid, Holly Russell, and Matt Rothe
Music used during transitions: Chris Zabriskie, Kevin Macleod, A Smile For Timbuctu, The Kyoto Connection
photo via flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/23733274@N06/14178850322/

Control: The Stanford Prison Experiment (full episode)

In 1971, Dr. Philip Zimbardo created a mock prison in the basement of Jordan Hall, the psychology building at Stanford. Mentally healthy college students were randomly assigned the roles of prisoner and guard. Dr. Zimbardo was trying to test how situations control human behavior, but within days, the situation spun out of control.
In this special episode, Drs. Philip Zimbardo and Christina Maslach tell the story of what ended up being one of the most infamous psychology studies in history - where young, mentally healthy participants turned brutal and desperate in only a few days. You'll learn surprising details of what inspired the Stanford Prison Experiment and how it ended, and hear how the experiment helped contribute to understanding the relationship between individuals and the situations they find themselves in.
Note: The original version of this episode mis-identified the location of the pilot study that inspired the Prison Experiment. The Stanford Storytelling Project regrets this error.
Featuring: Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Dr. Christina Maslach
Host: Bojan Srbinovski
Produced by: Rachel Hamburg, Bojan Srbinovski, Mischa Shoni, Charlie Mintz
Interviews conducted by: Bojan Srbinovski, Natacha Ruck, Victoria Hurst
Additional production help from:Justine Beed, Kate Nelson, Will Rogers
Original Music by Rob Voigt
Other music: Chris Zabriskie, Billy Gomberg, Gillicuddy, Tearpalm
Audio clips of the Stanford and Toyon Prison Experiments are from The Philip G. Zimbardo Papers at the Stanford University Archives.
News clip credit:
http://abcnews.go.com/Archives/video/april-30-2004-abu-ghraib-prison-scandal-9120643
Photo credit: Chuck Painter

Datafying (full episode)

Today, we generate data with every mouse click, phone call, and even every breath. This week on State of the Human, you'll hear about how an 18th century historian, a poet, a computer scientist, a composer, and a mysterious future being are all trying to interpret that data to understand something about the human experience. We're asking: what do we learn from seeing ourselves as data? And what is lost in translation?
Host: Kate Nelson
Producers: Rachel Hamburg, Miles S, Charlie Mintz, Kate Nelson, Rosie La Puma
Featuring:
Dr. Daniel Rosenberg, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jonathan Berger, Raven Jiang, Alec Glassford
Music used during transitions: Aboombong (Drag Along Behind), Chuzausen, Koona (Starkey), Kai Engel
Story 1: Straws on the River of Time
Description: Joseph Priestley was an 18th Renaissance man who helped discover oxygen. But he also invented something: the Chart of Biography. Here’s why he shouldn’t get too much credit for doing either of those things. It’s a story about one of the first times that people were turned into data.
Producers: Jess Peterson and Charlie Mintz
Featuring: Dr. Dan Rosenberg
Music: Jared C Balogh, Ergo Phizmiz, Dexter Britain, and Circus Marcus.
Story 2: Exposed
Description: Kyle is on a mission to scrape every last piece of his data off the internet. He’s devoted to navigating cyberspace without leaving a trace - but privacy has a cost.
Producers: Niuniu Teo and Charlie Mintz
Featuring: Haha, like we’d tell you
Music: Rod Hamilton (Bird); Pork Secret (Cool Crocs); Podington Bear (Operatives, Clouds Pass Softly); Marcel Pequel (Seven)
Story 3: The Stories that Feed Us
Description: Naomi Shihab Nye is a novelist, songwriter, and wandering poet. She tells a story about staring at people on planes, and how googling strangers can lead to a bigger life.
Producers: Justine Beed, Jack Dewey, and Will Rogers
Featuring: Naomi Shihab Nye
Music: Podington Bear
Story 4: Breathing Data
Link to Image: composition
Description: Jonathan Berger, a composer, teams up with a radiologist who needs to figure out a way to help calm anxious patients. His solution - have patients listen to their own data.
Producer: Kate Nelson
Featuring: Dr. Jonathan Berger
Music: Advent Chamber Orchestra, SJ Mellia, deef, Plurabelle, ZOE.LEELA, Gustav Landin
Sounds?: Coffee Shop, Deep Breath
Story 5: A Single Lifetime
Description: A new consciousness has just emerged - a product of all data and the interactions between it. That consciousness exists as a detached force, until falling in love teaches it to be human.
Producer: Alec Glassford and Rachel Hamburg
Featuring: Alec Glassford, Raven Jiang
Music: YACHT (Ring the Bell (Instrumental), The Afterlife), Podington Bear (Rythn), The Shivers (Kisses, Only Mine)

Belonging (full episode)

Sometimes you’re in your own country, your own home, and you know in your bones you don’t belong. That feeling pushes you to change something. This week we bring you four stories of people who don’t quite belong in the world where they live, and who take matters in their own hands to construct their own belonging. A very young girl finds a sense of belonging while running away from an angry mob. A student creates a bridge between the Jewish and Irish sides of her family. Seven gender-defying divas share what it means to belong to yourself. And a young man discovers how to prove you belong, when the numbers are against you.
Host: Leslie Nguyen-Okwu
Producers: Will Rogers and Natacha Ruck
Featuring: Justine Beed, Carla Lewis, Eileen Williams, Josh Hoyt, Winona Azure, Raya Light, Macy Rodman, Peaches Christ, Alexis Blair Penney, Heklina, Sissy Spastik, Mathu Andersen, and Cher Noble.
photo via flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ganesha_isis/4439563089
Music used during transitions: Welcome Wizard, Monk Turner, Johnny Ripper, Zachary Cale, Mighty Moon, & Ethan Schmid, Blue Ducks

Beyond Human (full episode)

Humans aren’t the fastest or strongest animal, but we do make the best tools. From plows to pacemakers, we’ve always used technology to transcend our human limits. This week, we ask how far that project can go. We’ll tell you how the first farmers in history transcended the limits of meat and muscle, only to create a very different kind of boundary. And we’ll present the story of two scientists excited to leave their human skin behind. Also, the story of a man who cannot walk, but who can fly; why PCs can be our friends; and finally, robot phenomenology.
Host: Mischa Shoni
Producers: Charlie Mintz, Rachel Hamburg
Featuring: Ian Morris, Byron Reeves, BJ Fogg, Edward Maibach, Shyam Sundar, Laurie Mason, Henry Evans, Jackson Roach
Music used during transitions: Fabrizio Paterlini (Veloma); Gillicuddy (Porthlaze Glove); Podington Bear (Delphi); Latché Swing (Hungaria)
image via flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/1080p/2421386153
For more information, visit storytelling.stanford.edu
Intro Story: Feeding Back Into Us
After the last ice age, we humans moved from hunting and gathering to farming. With the plow, farming became a whole lot easier -- but there was a dark side too.
Producer: Charlie Mintz, Bojan Srbinovski
Featuring: Ian Morris
Music: Broke For Free (Night Owl, The Gold Lining, Only Knows); Wilted Woman (Turing); Podington Bear (Dole It Out,); Black Hoods (Talking Cure)
Story 1: Robots Are My Freedom
As an adult, Henry Evans suffered a medical trauma that left him paralyzed and unable to speak. Then the second half of his life began.
Producers: Eileen Williams, Miles S.
Featuring: Henry Evans
Links: Robots For Humanity
Music: Broke For Free (My Always Mood,One And, Budding); Audionautix (Atlantis)
Story 2: With 18 Arms And Compound Eyes
A scientist visits a relative in the hospital and finds the best available cures lacking. He and a partner go to work at the next frontier of medicine. They wind up bumping into the question of what makes us human.
Producer: Jack Dewey, Rachel Hamburg
Featuring: Xander Honkala, Andre Watson
Links: Ligandal
Music: Podington Bear Christian Bjoerklund Rolemusic
Story 3: Sympathy For The Dell
This story is a tribute to the late Stanford professor Clifford Nass. Friends and colleagues described him as one of the most human humans you could ever meet. He discovered ways that computers can be human too, and one consequence of that research is coming to a hospital near you.
Producers: Charlie Mintz, Josh Hoyt
Featuring: Clifford Nass, Byron Reeves, BJ Fogg, Laurie Mason, Edward Maibach, Shyam Sundar, Chris Corio
Link: Engineered Care
Music: Podington Bear (Lake Victoria, Formless) Broke For Free (Note Drop, Like Swimming, Luminous, Blown Out, One And); memotone (This Is The Room, Fractal, Sleeping With the Insects) ; 2ndMOUSE (Arc Reactor); Audionautix (Namaste)
Story 4: The Simulation Deck
A radio play about the strawberry-sized gap between humans and machines.
Producer: Jackson Roach
Featuring: Andrew Brassel, Matthew Libby.
Links: Robot voice created by Cepstral Voices.

Joking (full episode)

When we joke with our friends, our coworkers and our family, it’s not just about hearing them laugh. More often than not we’re looking for something beyond laughter. We’re after acceptance, bonding, release, shaming… and sometimes even more. This week on State of the Human we’re investigating how people use joking to create new realities for themselves and the people around them.
We have six stories, exploring the way jokes, pranks, and even puns can change our lives. We’ll hear stories from stand up comedian Tig Notaro and humor theorist Marvin Diogenes, and we’ll travel from Stanford’s cafeterias to the presidential suite on Air Force One. We’ll hear stories about how jokes can help us and synchronize our minds, stare cancer in the face and make us question our humanity along with everything we take for granted. And also, we'll laugh a lot.
Producers: Natacha Ruck and Nina Foushee
Featuring: Rosie La Puma, Jackson Roach, Nina Foushee, Miles S., Justine Beed, Charlie Mintz, Ken Grobe, Lora Kelley, Marvin Diogenes, David Demarest, Sam Roach, Jay Roach, the La Puma family, Claire Slattery, Nathaniel Nelson, Reggie Watts, and Tig Notaro.

Returning Home (full episode)

What is it like to be a student who has fought in a war? In this episode, six Stanford students and recent alumni, all veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tell their stories. With thoughtfulness, humor, and stone cold honesty, they share with us their decision to join, their experiences in boot camp, living and fighting in Iraq, and their eventual return home to civilian and student life. This is your chance to listen.
Producers: Xandra Clark and Natacha Ruck
Hosts: Natacha Ruck and Xandra Clark
Featuring: Dustin Barfield, Chris Clark, Josh Francis, Annie Hsieh, Heidi Toll, Russ Toll, and William Treseder
Music and scoring by Eoin Callery
More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/327-episode-408-returning-home.html
more info about this episode here: http://bit.ly/sspveterans
In April 2013, this story won The General Oliver P. Smith Award from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation. More info about the award here: http://www.marineheritage.org/Awards.asp
Warning: this episode contains explicit language

Resilience (full episode)

Almost 100 years ago, a rogue geologist named Alfred Wegener proposed his theory of continental drift. It didn't matter that he was right. He was laughed off the stage. And even though he spent the rest of his career proving his theory, he died unknown. But eventually the theory of continental drift was accepted. Talk about resilience. That's our theme this week and we have five stories of people discovering resilience and how to become resilient. In Wegenerʼs day, people thought character was like the continents, fixed. Either you were a resilient person or you werenʼt. Today we know we can cultivate resilience. We can all become Wegeners.
Producer: Jonah Willihnganz
Featuring: Jessica Talbert, Jordan Raymond, Michelle Powers, Adina Glickman, Michael Zeligs, Jane Reynolds
More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/245-episode-401-resilience.html

Seeing Ourselves (full episode)

Since the days of Narcissus and the looking pool, we've known there's a danger in seeing ourselves. There's a possibility of caring too much, or seeing something we don't want to see. But that hasn't stopped humans from trying to see more and more. Today we have more ways to see ourselves than ever before. So it's time to take a look at looking. What do we want to see, and what do we do with that information? Today on our show, four stories of people who tried to see themselves clearly. A woman views her genetic profile, and learns why her tendency towards depression might be an asset. A true mirror--one that doesn't reverse your image--is deployed on Stanford students. A personality test called the Meyers Briggs profile is taken to the max. And a girl explains her point system that lets her keep track of exactly how people feel about her.
Producer: Jonah Willihnganz
Host: Xandra Clark
Featuring: Daniel Steinbock, Lone Frank, Colleen Caleshu, Hank Greely, John Nantz, Rachel Hamburg, Xandra Clark, Iris Clayter, Christy Hartman, and Alexzandra Scully
More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/263-episode-402-seeing-ourselves.html

How to Give (full episode)

This week on our show, four stories of giving. First, it's a story about a charity fundraiser, and the woman who comes to question why fundraisers even exist. Then it's the story of a t-shirt entrepreneur's attempt to send one million shirts to Africa. Third, it's two interviews with people who had to decide if they were willing to donate bone marrow. Last, the story of Odyssey Works, a group of artists that create works of art for a single person.
Producer: Charlie Mintz
Featuring: Rachel Hamburg, Will Rogers, Jason Sadler, Saundra Schimmelpfennig, TMS Ruge, Nick Hartley, Mandeep Gill, Kristina Kulin, Abraham Burickson, and Jen Harmon
More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/265-episode-403-how-to-give.html