State of the Human

Burying (full episode)

As a society, we still maintain many ancient traditions and practices relating to the care of our dead. We invest tremendous resources and energy in maintaining cemeteries and sacred ground for the bodies of our beloved. In the face of death, we dig and scrape through dirt, mixing our emotions in with the earth. We create a grave--a hallowed space carved out for sadness and pain, but also for warmth and joy. We lay down what we carry from the person we’ve lost--the good and the bad. It doesn’t matter what we bury--a body, a feeling, or an object--we expect it to stay buried. We put it aside, and bid it farewell. And yet, when so much has changed, why do we still rely on this physical process? How can digging a hole--metaphorically or literally--help us to make sense of our loss? And what happens when things go awry? We may not like to admit it, but sometimes the grave is not a final resting place. In today’s episode, we’ll be investigating why we bury--and what happens when our attempts fail.
Host: Eileen Williams
Producers: Eileen Williams with help from Noelle Li Syn Chow, Kate Nelson, Yue Li, Jackson Roach, Nicole Bennett-Fite, Cathy Wong, Katie Lan, Reade Levinson, Christy Hartman, Jake Warga, Jenny March, Jonah Willihnganz
Featuring: Naveen Kassamali, Xochitl Raine Rhodes Longstaff, Janet Voight, Barbad Golshiri, Magellan Pfluke, and the staff of Pet’s Rest Cemetery. Thanks also to Sofi Filipa, Charlie Gibson, Ben Cady, Ivy Sanders Schneider, Jackie Langelier, Kim McElwee, Marlon Antunez, Skye Mooney, Tudi Roche, Chris Gerben, Caroline Spears, Stephen Aman, Adnan Khan, Jim Yount, Milan Mosse Phil C’de Baca, Teresa Hernandez, Carlos Yuen, Ganbat Namjilsangarav, Christine Murphy, Tsogbadrakh Banzragch, Tuya Banzragch, and Keith Bildstein
Show Music: Podington Bear
Image via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Copps_Hill_Burying_Ground_Headstones_Leaning.jpg
Intro Story: Unburying
Producers: Noelle Chow and Kate Nelson
Featuring: Magellan Pfluke
Special thanks: Xochitl Raine Rhodes Longstaff
Music: Response Data, Standing Like a Tree - Part II, Doomflaffsonoria (Whale Mix by Eisenlager)
Story 1: Vanishing Remains
Producer: Reade Levinson
Featuring: Ganbat Namjilsangarav, Christine Murphy, Tsogbadrakh and Tuya Banzragch, and Dr. Keith Bildstein
Special Thanks: Christy Hartman, Jake Warga, and Generation Anthropocene
Music: All ambient recorded by Reade Levinson, sound effects downloaded from FreeSound.
Story 2: Pet Cemetery
Producers: Yue Li, with help from Jackson Roach
Featuring: Lackie Langelier, Ben Cady, Skye Mooney, Sofi Filipa, Milan Mosse (voice over for Ben Cady), Phil C’de Baca, Teresa Hernandez, Carlos Yuen
Music: Alex Finch Seeking Clarity Pt. II, Ketsa Far From Home, Ketsa Clear and Present, Podington Bear Lonesome, Podington Bear Pink Gradient
Story 3: The Cryonicist's Wager
Producers: Nicole Bennett-Fite, Jake Warga, and Eileen Williams
Featuring: Jim Yount, Acting President of the American Cryonics Society
Music: Karma Ron (https://www.freesound.org/people/Karma-Ron/sounds/240624/)
Story 4: Anger Box
Producers: Cathy Wong, Jenny March, Jake Warga
Featuring: Naveen Kassamali, Adnan Khan
Music: Thread of Clouds - Blue Dot Sessions, Migration (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot_Sessions/Migration/Thread_of_Clouds)
Story 5: Unburying Iran
Producers: Katie Lan, recorded with the help of Jackson Roach
Featuring: Barbad Golshiri
Music: Dropped Ticket by Podington Bear, Isolate by Moby
Story 6: Through the Deep
Producer: Kate Nelson
Featuring: Dr. Janet Voight
Music: Chris Zabriskie (We Were Never Meant to Live Here, Remember Trees?, The Oceans Continue to Rise), Podington Bear
Story 7: Time Capsule
Producers: Yue Li and Reade Levinson
Featuring: Leslie Winnick and voices of Stanford's class of 2016
Music: Trellis , Golden Era, Dryness (by Podington Bear)
Listen to the individual stories here: https://soundcloud.com/stateofthehuman/sets/burying

Imagining (full episode)

The mind’s ability to envision more than what is physically present in the world is an astounding fact of life. We’re always imagining, thinking, and living in our heads. Our thoughts and our imaginations shape how we see the world, they shape our words and our actions. This is nothing new. We’ve been doing this for all our lives. as far as we can remember. But that’s why we take a closer look and ask the question: how do our imagined lives shape our reality? What happens day to day at the frontier between the worlds we imagine and the worlds we inhabit.
Host: Justine Beed
Producers: Justine Beed and Natacha Ruck with help from Louis Lafair, Amabel Stokes, Alec Glassford, Tamu Adumer, Joshua Hoyt, Austin Meyer, Claire Schoen, Christy Hartman, Will Rogers, Albert Gehami, Jonah Willihnganz, and Jake Warga
Featuring: John Rick, Tamu Adumer, Louis Lafair, Terry Root, Louie Psihoyos, WonGi Jung, Austin Meyer, Amabel Stokes, Alec Glassford, Max Whitmeyer, Nina Donaldson, Maria Doerr, Liam Bhajan, Jeffrey Abidor, Emma Fisher, Natacha Ruck, and Jackson Roach
Music and Sounds: See storytelling.stanford.edu for full list of music and sounds used in this episode
Image via Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kainkalju/5894855297
Story 1: Birth of Imagination
Description: What happened the first time humans used imagination to shape the world?
Producers: Tamu Adumer and Natacha Ruck
Featuring: Professor John Rick
Image via Wikimedia: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bifa…o_(Madrid).png
Story 2: One Quinoa Burger At A Time
Description: Can imagination help one student tackle one of the biggest problems of our time?
Producer: Louis Lafair
Featuring: Terry Root and Louie Psihoyos
Music: "T-Shirt Weather," "Little Dipper," "Pure Swell," "Funk," and "Boop" by Podington Bear
Photo via the Stanford Review: stanfordreview.org/article/is-stan…conserve-water/
Story 3: My Imaginary Girlfriend
Description: How hard can it be to break up with an imaginary girlfriend?
Producer: WonGi Jung with help from Justine Beed
Featuring: WonGi Jung
Image via StoryNight
Story 4: Double Banded Dream
Description: In this story, we venture into the land of dreams and investigate how imagination can endanger reality.
Producers: Austin Meyer and Joshua Hoyt
Featuring: Austin Meyer
Music: "Nothing Lasts" by Alexandre Desplat and "Gnossienne No. 2: Avec étonnement" and “Gynopédie No. 1”by Erik Satie
Image via Wikimedia: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wedding_rings.jpg
Story 5: The Periphery
Description: In this story we dive deep into the head of a coffee shop vigilante and listen to her thoughts as she tries to save the day.
Producers: Amabel Stokes, Justine Beed
Writer: Amabel Stokes
Featuring: Amabel Stokes, Alec Glassford, Max Whitmeyer, Nina Donaldson, Maria Doerr, Justine Beed, Liam Bhajan, Jeffrey Abidor, Emma Fisher, and Jackson Roach
Music and Sounds: See storytelling.stanford.edu for full list of music and sounds used in this piece
Image via Unsplash: unsplash.com/photos/k_RYBedEvDw

Teaching (full episode)

Teaching seems pretty straightforward: one person knows something better than someone else and teaches it to them. But there’s something important that happens to the teacher themselves. In this episode, a 3-year-old teaches his parents what he’s made of, a student defies expectations and becomes a teacher himself, teachers are surprised to learn what makes them tick, prehistoric people have to teach one of life’s hardest lessons (hint: there are llamas involved), a professor regrets a missed opportunity, and the cover of a Ghanaian newspaper does a whole lot of teaching. This week, we’re exploring how teaching shapes the teacher.
Host: Kate Nelson and Hadley Reid
Producers: Kate Nelson, Hadley Reid, Christy Hartman with help from Jake Warga, Will Rogers, Nina Foushee, Claire Schoen, Natacha Ruck, Joshua Hoyt, and Jonah Willihnganz
Featuring: Chris Andrews, Andrew Nelson, Gabe Lomeli, Madonna Riesenmy, John Kleiman, John Rick, Linda Paulson, and Emily Polk.
Music used during transitions: Nick Jaina, Podington Bear, Broke for Free, Alex Fitch, Gillicuddy
Image via Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gracewong/141384577
Story 1: Training Wheels
Description: When Kate’s parents set out to teach her and her brother how to ride bikes, they expected to take it step by step, using every precaution: helmets, kneepads, training wheels. What they didn’t expect was a lesson of their own.
Producer: Kate Nelson
Featuring: Chris Andrews and Andrew Nelson
Music: Podington Bear (Ice Cream Sandwich, Bit Rio); Alex Fitch
Story 2: See Me After Class
Description: Gabriel Lomeli didn’t look like your typical A+ student. Problem was, he was getting A+’s. In this story, we follow Gabe as he reconciles others’ expectations with his own ambitions and achievements.
Producer: Eileen Williams and Emmerich Anklam
Featuring: Gabriel Francisco Lomeli, Junior
Sounds: 76288__timbre__dramatic-violin-stab-long-decay
Music: Kai Engel; Broke for Free (Golden Hour, Heart Ache, Something Old, And And, Something Elated)
Story 3: The Power of Teaching
Description: Professor Madonna Riesenmy was curious about what motivates teachers and decided to investigate. But other teachers weren’t too happy to hear about her findings. To be honest, we’re not quite sure how we feel about them, either.
Producer: Emma Heath with help from Christy Hartman and Hadley Reid
Featuring: Jonathan Kleiman, Madonna Riesenmy
Music: Podington Bear (Caravan, Jettisoned), The Losers
Story 4: Expulsion of the Yearlings
Description: Stanford Anthropologist John Rick takes us to the highlands of Peru to discuss the impact of teaching at it’s most fundamental level.
Producer: Jacob Wolf with help from Hadley Reid
Featuring: John Rick
Sounds: blouhond, 15050_Francois, kurono01, damiananache, felix.blume, JohnsonBrandEditing, sardan1972
Music: Original Scoring by Christina Galisatus
Story 5: Tales from the RF Apartment
Description: Linda Paulson is a Stanford faculty member who lives with eighty-eight teenagers in a freshman dorm. A late night knock at her door takes on new meaning years later.
Producer: Vanna Tran with help from Kate Nelson
Featuring: Linda Paulson
Music: Alex Fitch (We Call this Home, Secret Place); Chris Zabriskie (Cylinder Six, It’s Always Too Late to Start Over); Broke for Free (Love is Not)
Story 6: Just a Little Bit of Sweat
Description: Emily Polk went to Buduburam refugee camp to teach journalism. But one newspaper photo ended up teaching the most memorable lesson of all.
Producer: Hadley Reid
Featuring: Emily Polk
Music: Gillicuddy (Fudge, A Garden and a Rose ) Martin R, Original music by Man of Suit (Breathing Rhythm, Diagnosis)

Losing (full episode)

When you lose something, there’s an emptiness, a hole, where that something used to be. And you have to figure out a way to keep living your life with that loss. Even though the emptiness will always be there, what can be gained from trying to fill it? What can be gained from losing? This episode has four stories about people who lose something, and then look for new things to fill the emptiness. A lifelong dream gets derailed by a butterfly knife, an athlete’s passion for her sport crumbles after an injury, a girl searches for something she isn’t really sure she wants to find, and a woman slowly loses her ability to hear.
Host: Jackson Roach
Producers: Jackson Roach, with help from Jonathan Kleiman, Will Rogers, Nina Foushee, Jake Warga, Christy Hartman, Claire Schoen and Jonah Willihnganz
Featuring: Owen O Súilleabháin, Gabriel Lomeli, Amabel Stokes, Julia Berkson, Mitch Berkson, Olivia Berkson, Claire Richards, Daniela Roop, Jody Louise
Music: All music in this episode originally composed by Owen Ó Súilleabháin
Story 1: Hole-Hearted
Description: When a policeman stopped Gabe Lomeli on the street, he thought he had nothing to hide, but that one interaction would shift the course of his dreams.
Producer: Maddie Chang with help from Will Rogers
Featuring: Gabriel Lomeli
Story 2: Getting Off Track
Description: As a successful track athlete, Amabel Stokes has crossed many finish lines. In this story, she learns to move beyond the red tape.
Producer: Justine Beed
Featuring: Amabel Stokes
Story 3: An Eventful Brunch
Description: A lovely meal in a small mountain villa is interrupted by a stumbling man with his hand tight against his stomach. Everyone spends the rest of the morning frantically searching for something they’re not sure they want to find.
Produced by: Maddy Berkson with help from Nina Foushee, Jackson Roach, and Jonathan Kleiman.
Featuring: Julia Berkson, Mitch Berkson, Olivia Berkson, Claire Richards, Daniela Roop
Story 4: Forgiveness
Description: Dr. Fred Luskin, founder of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, shares his story of loss, and how he learned to move forward.
Producer: Jake Warga, Emma Heath, Jon Kleiman
Featuring: Dr. Fred Luskin
Story 5: Sound by Sound
Description: In her twenties, Jody Louise started to lose her hearing, and her doctors couldn’t figure out why.
Producer: Jackson Roach with help from Maya Lorey
Featuring: Jody Louise

Secret-Keeping (full episode)

Nearly three decades ago, Psychologist James Pennebaker discovered a shocking correlation between secrets and health outcomes - that people who kept more secrets were dealing with more health issues. Today, secrets are generally considered bad. But in today’s episode, we’re going to discuss creative secret keepers. These people use secrets to form relationships, to explore worlds they wouldn’t otherwise be able to access, even to build new lives for themselves until - well - the secret’s out. Today we’ll explore what opportunities open up when someone keeps a secret, and what happens when that secret is revealed.
Host: Chelsea Davis
Producers: Rosie La Puma, Eileen Williams, Will Rogers, Claire Schoen, and Jonah Willihnganz
Featuring: James Pennebaker, Jackie Chan and Justin Krasner-Karpen. Thanks also to Preet Kaur, Natacha Ruck, Joshua Hoyt, Tess McCarthy, Alexander Muscat, Lilly Gill, Shara Tonn, Dustin Dienhart, Christy Hartman, Jake Warga.
Music used during transitions: Podington Bear, Revolution Void
Image via Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mharrsch/3292777771/

Healing (full episode)

We’ve come to think of healing in mechanical terms, as repairing something broken, like fixing a flat tire. But for most of human history healing has meant more than repairing the body. Healing has meant restoring a sense of wholeness to a person—or even a relationship or community. In today’s show we’ll hear two stories that explore this older sense of healing. First, a Bay Area woman diagnosed with breast cancer finds healing through a complementary medicine modality at Stanford Hospital called Healing Touch. Second, a Stanford student living with an incurable disease finds healing in an encounter with the ocean and one of its creatures. How do we heal when our bodies are irrevocably changed?
Host: Preet Kaur
Producers: Bonnie Swift, Christy Hartman, Taylor Shoolery, Preet Kaur, Alka Nath, Will Rogers, Julie Morrison, Mallory Smith, Natacha Ruck, Claire Schoen, Jonah Willihnganz
Featuring: Preet Kaur, Carolyn Helmke, Catherine Palter, Melissa Anderson, Rosa Fuerte, Marilyn Getas-Byrne, Anne Proctor, Laura Pexton, Margot Baker, David Wolf, Maggie Burgett, Maria Cacho, Katie Talamantez, Elizabeth Helms, Diane Wardell, Sue Kegal, Jim Batterson, Margaret Schink, and Mallory Smith
Image via The Archeological Museum of Piraeus

Believing (full episode)

In this show, we are talking about a very special kind of belief—belief in something. Often considered a defining human characteristic, like language, belief shapes our lives. We put our confidence in something that is unseen; we understand the world in terms of a bigger, unknowable framework. This ability may not be unique to humans, but it does appear to be a very special talent. Today, we want to find out what this specific type of believing means for our lives. How are we changed by belief? What does it do to us? Spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically: what can believing do?
Host: Eileen Williams
Producers: Eileen Williams, Rosie La Puma, Will Rogers, Claire Schoen, and Jonah Willihnganz
Featuring: Beth Duff-Brown, Krista Tippett, and Carol Dweck. Thanks also to Lora Kelley, Louis Lafair, Sonia Gonzalez, Natacha Ruck, Madeleine Chang, and Lisa Hicks.
Music used during transitions: Broke for Free (XXV, A Beautiful Life)
Image via Wikimedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Airplane_Window_View_6_2013-04-01.jpg

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)