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We all come from somewhere—and then life happens. In college maybe more than anywhere else, you're stuck between two worlds. This week on our show, the story of the Chi Theta Chi co-op, one of the most unusual houses at Stanford, and its residents' fight to preserve their independence from the university. Plus a story of animals being trained to act, a near death experience, and other tales of liminality.

Producer: Charlie Mintz

Host: Natacha Ruck

Featuring: Sam CC, Abel Allison, Elif Tasar, Gerad Hanono, Adam Pearson, Nathaniel Nelson, Deborah Golder, and Logan Hehn

music by Mississippi John Hurt, Colleen, The Norskadelen Trio, Anaïs Mitchell

More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/309-episode-406-in-between.html

October is full of ghosts, but in our show we will not be talking about little kids who wear white sheets. We're embracing the unseen, and talking about haunting: how things we can't see nonetheless press upon us, affect our choices, our actions, and sometimes even our beliefs. We'll be talking about the ghosts that inhabit California's highways, about a spirit who is very hungry, about the ghosts of our past selves that persist inside each of us, and finally, we'll bring you "What Can Be Named," the story of a young man haunted by a country.

Producers: Rachel Hamburg and Christy Hartman

Host: Christy Hartman

Featuring: Dr. Nicholas Jenkins, Dong-Nghi Huynh, Dr. Joshua Landy, Nina Foushee

Music: California Ramblers, Neuroleptic Trio, Coda, Sunhiilow, Dan Friel, Broken Gadget, Zoë Lidstrom, Carnivorous Snowflake, Gist, Jason Marey,Owen Callery and Silvio Rodriguez.

More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/329-episode-407-haunting.html

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

Whether or not there's a cape, a sword, or a noble steed involved, we all go on quests. We leave the comforts and routines of ordinary life in search of a light that hovers just beyond the horizon. In the old days, it was a better trade route, a new world, the holy grail. It's much the same today. But what is it about the quest that makes it so different from merely reaching for a goal? And what makes it worth leaving everything else behind? In this episode, a girl named Rachel searches the world in a quest for her holy grail. Accompanying her is an academic all-star named Bobby, who is questing for certain kind of community. In our last piece, a film editor named Giusepi goes on a quest around America for a better way to serve people.

Producers: Rachel Hamburg and Sophia Paliza

Host: Rachel Hamburg

Featuring: Bobby Holley, Daniela Bize, Guisepi the Tea Guy

Music: Cam Deas, Black Twig and Steve Gunn, Fred van Eps, Victor Herbert Orchestra, James Blackshaw, Loren MazzaCane Connors, The Oo-Ray, Broke for Free, and Phil Reavis

More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/345-episode-409-questing.html

Listening is way more than just paying attention, and this week's show explores how. To find out just what listening can do to us, we eavesdrop with a cochlear implant, learn what crying babies teach us about music, find out how silence can be full, how God enters our thoughts, and ask what a single moment of being listened to can achieve. We're finding out what happens when we listen to sounds we never expected to, when we take our listening where it's never been.

Host/Producer: Charlie Mintz

Featuring:

Professor Tanya Luhrmann,

Professor Jonathan Berger,

Musikilu Mojeed ,

Rachel Kolb,

Eoin Callery,

D'or Seifer,

Daniel Steinbock

What is so piercing about a baby's cry? Why can't we ignore it? We were curious what makes us listen, and we ended up learning why we like music.

More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/355-episode-410-listening.html

Sometimes, the only way to voice our feelings is to break into song. We’re not just talking about singing, we’re talking about that surprising moment - when melody, lyrics, and pure emotion swell inside us. When we have no choice but to open our mouths and let our voices soar. In that moment, our own voice escapes us and ventures into the world with what seems like a mind of its own. We hear ourselves like we never have. Others hear us too, and the results can be life-changing - for the better and for the worse. In our first story, we find out what really happens when you open your heart and break into song for the girl who may (or may not be) the one. In our second story, we explore what it takes to lend your voice to others, and break into song for them, whatever the consequences may be. In our third story, we go to France, to find out what happens when two lifelong enemies break into song together.

Producers: Natacha Ruck and Victoria Hurst

Host: Victoria Hurst

Featuring: Lecturer Wendy Goldberg, Danny Smith, Chris Worth, Andi Harrington, Jared Muirhead and Natacha Ruck

Music: Sweet Thang by Shuggie Otis , The Concubine by Beirut

More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/375-episode-411-breaking-into-song.html

When is wildness on our side, and when does it have to be eliminated? We’re not be talking about wilderness but wildness. We examine wildness as both a place of terror and a place to find meaning. And, as you’ll hear later, we don’t have to go into nature to find it. We’ll hear a story about what happens when you venture into nature for the first time. We’ll hear from a graduate student who holds some nontraditional ideas about his clothing and is a modern day outlaw because of it. We’ll introduce you to someone who studied Muay Tai in a gritty gym in Oakland. He has to be wild, right? We meet a wilderness rites of passage guide who tells us what happens when we don’t have elders, and finally, we’ll meet Tea. She may or may not raise wolves.

Hosts/Producers: Christy Hartman and Joshua Hoyt

Featured: Andrew Forsthoefel, Dr. Richard White, Andrew Todhunter, Osvaldo Murro, Mason Alford, "Jordan," Annalise Lockhart, Liam Purvis, Darlene Franklin, Martin Shaw, Melina Lopez, Teresa Yammamoto, Joshua Hoyt

Music: Ian Brown, Monk Turner and Fascinoma, Gasnoprod

More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/379-episode-412-wildness.html

This week on State of the Human, we're looking at obsessions, the helpful and the debilitating. We've got four stories of people battling unwanted thoughts. A philosopher who is disgusted at the sight of food, battles his fears with the help of an obsession. A new father is obsessed with the thought that he's not feeling enough. An essayist finds that unwanted thoughts manifest in surprising ways. And Stanford athletes remind us that obsession helps you win at sports.

Host/Producer: Charlie Mintz

Featuring: Professor Elias Aboujaoude, Maria Hummel, Jon Kleiman, Nick DiBella, Kristian Ipsen, and Helena Scutt

Music: Anitek, Kevin MacLeod

More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/383-episode-413-obsession.html

This week on State of the Human, we're hearing stories about people whose vision changed, first throwing them in the dark, then revealing something new. When the lights go out, at first we can’t see anything, but eventually our eyes adjust. We slowly begin to see again, but the world looks a little bit different than it did before. This week, we’ve got four stories about people who learn to see in a new way after finding themselves in different kinds of darkness. A young kid has a superpower to see things no one else can see, but then he loses that ability. A mythologist embarks on a retreat in darkness on a mountain in Wales. An art student learns to see the human body in a new way. And an Oxford University student finds himself, unexpectedly, in darkness.

Producers: Xandra Clark and Sophia Paliza

Host: Xandra Clark

Featuring: Martin Lowenthal, Martin Shaw, Lauren YoungSmith, Ala Ebtekar, Tom Skelton, Dougie Walker

Original music: John Hollywood

More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/387-episode-414-seeing-in-the-dark.html

Recovery can be pretty straightforward - you take medicine, you sleep, you wait. But sometimes getting back on your feet requires a radical act. The stories in this show are about those acts: people who have to do something surprising in order to recover.

Producers: Rachel Hamburg and Xandra Clark

Host: Sophia Paliza

Featuring: Zubair Ahmed, Ryoko Hamaguchi, Lucas Loredo, Carlos Loredo, Nina Foushee, and Greg Wrenn

Music: Steffen Basho-Junghans, Podington Bear, Nic Bommarito, Matt Baldwin, Gillicuddy, Augustus Bro and Gallery Six, The OO-Ray, Candlegravity, Alright lover

More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/391-episode-415-recovery.html