State of the Human
State of the Human, a podcast of the Stanford Storytelling Project, shares stories that deepen our understanding of single, common human experiences—belonging, giving, lying, forgiveness—all drawn from the experiences and research of the Stanford community.
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Episodes
Thursday Feb 13, 2014
Thursday Feb 13, 2014
Firsthand, empirical knowledge is a way of knowing we modern humans have gotten away from. The atomic number of carbon, the height of Mt. Kilimanjaro, how ant colonies work--these are things most of us never figure out ourselves. And fortunately, we don't have to. Yet, on that tricky matter of how to be a human, how to live well, what to do with ourselves, we are left all alone. There's no blueprint, no roadmap. We have to figure it out ourselves. Today on our show, three stories of people doing just that--making mistakes to learn how to live. First, a graduate student comes to a professor with a problem involving men. How does she solve it? Trial and error. Next, a story about a drastic case of trial and error, trepanation, the drilling of a hole in the skull. Last, the story of one man who spent fifteen years trying to believe something he just didn't know if he could believe. Who succeeds? Who fails? And was it worth it?
Producers: Charlie Mintz, Xandra Clark, Will Rogers
Host: Charlie Mintz
Featuring: Professor John Krumboltz, Pankaj Tandon, Galen Menzel
More info at:http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season3/215-episode-313-trial-and-error.html