State of the Human

By Stanford Storytelling Project

What's State of the Human about?

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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State of the Human episodes:

04.03.2024
Reclaiming, part 7: Orca Boy (part 1)
Max Du was so obsessed with SeaWorld that his childhood friends called him Orca Boy. But when a SeaWorld trainer named Dawn was killed by an orca, his love for whales turned to shame . . . until he met...
04.03.2024
Reclaiming, part 6: Friends in Liminal Spaces
When Anastasia Sotiropoulos joined the Stanford chapter of the Prison Renaissance Project, she got paired up with a man named Adamu Chan, who had been incarcerated at San Quentin prison for two decades. Their relationship began a few weeks before...
04.03.2024
Reclaiming, part 5: Welcome to Paradise
Carolyn Stein grew up with music like Avril Lavigne and The Marianas Trench – classic, trashy pop punk. But she never considered herself much of a punk rocker, until she took a little trip to the East Bay to a...
04.03.2024
Reclaiming, part 4: Tattoos and Taboos
Whether you have a tattoo or not, we are all familiar with the stigmas that are commonly held against tattoos. Where does this aversion come from? What do these taboos say about history? What do they say about us? In...
04.03.2024
BONUS: Kaitlyn Auth and Charlie Darracott on creating Keep Stanford Wrestling
Alina Wilson and Alex Strong sit down with Kaitlyn Auth and Charlie Darracott for a craft conversation about the story behind creating Keep Stanford Wrestling.
04.02.2024
Reclaiming, part 3: Keep Stanford Wrestling
In the spring of 2020, Stanford University made the decision to cut 11 of their varsity teams due to financial issues and lack of success. This episode follows the men’s wrestling team and their coaches in the months following the...
12.20.2023
BONUS: Aru Nair on creating Journey Through Generations
As an added bonus to our Reclaiming series, we’re including conversations with the creators who made them to give you a behind-the-scenes look at the craft of audio storytelling. In this episode, Alex Strong talks with Aru Nair, the creator...
12.20.2023
Reclaiming, part 2: Journey Through Generations
In this episode, the 2nd in our Reclaiming What's Been Lost series, Aru Nair goes on a journey to India to understand how oral tradition preserves cultures. But when a surprise trip to her father's home town shows her a...
12.05.2023
Reclaiming, part 1: Home is Little Tokyo
Little Tokyo is a small neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles. Since 1905, it has been home to generations of Japanese Americans. Today, gentrification is threatening to destroy everything these families have built. This episode tells the story of one community's...
02.04.2021
Wonder Under Water by Gracie Newman
Come on a journey to understand our fascination with sea monsters and what they inspire in humans. In particular, hear about the Icelandic Lagarfljótsormur, the water monster that sparked a 13 person commission of the Icelandic government to investigate...
02.04.2021
Feeding
Eating is one of life’s great pleasures, but what about the pleasures that come with sharing your food with others? In this episode, we’re looking at how the act of feeding can bring people together. We’ll hear the tale of...
02.03.2021
Feeding Story 3: Garden On The Rooftop
Our second story takes us to one of San Francisco's toughest neighborhoods, to look at tender shoots growing on the rooftops of the Tenderloin. By tender shoots we mean ﬁfth graders, who are learning to grow and prepare their own...
02.03.2021
Feeding Story 1: First, Bread
What does it mean to preserve a living being? We follow the life of a sourdough starter, a live culture of bacteria and yeast, that was passed onto producer Parsa Nowruzi as a parting gift by a friend. After hitting...
02.03.2021
Feeding Intro Story: Mukbang
Feeding Intro Story: Mukbang by Stanford Storytelling Project
02.01.2021
Missed Connections by Neeharika Bandlapalli
Missed Connections by Neeharika Bandlapalli by Stanford Storytelling Project
02.01.2021
She Was There by Paloma Moreno
She Was There by Paloma Moreno by Stanford Storytelling Project
01.31.2021
Radical Puppets Revisiting The 1999 Seattle WTO Protests by Emily Zhang
Radical Puppets Revisiting The 1999 Seattle WTO Protests by Emily Zhang by Stanford Storytelling Project
06.02.2020
Gathering
What do we gain from gathering? In this episode, we’re thinking about how coming together can change us. We’ll hear about a citizen-led clean-up movement in India, a Bay Area artist who forms an unlikely friendship with a church in...
05.09.2020
Preserving, Full Episode
This episode investigates the act of preserving, a decision made in the present, regarding the past, looking towards the future. What can we learn from what we choose to preserve? What does preserving reveal about our values? Producers: Cat Fergesen,...
03.19.2020
Learning Medicine (Full Episode)
We visit five places on campus where future doctors are learning how to practice medicine. We’re going to real classrooms: anatomy lab and wet lab, lecture halls, we visit a Stanford Free Clinic, bike across campus to the mausoleum,...
12.06.2019
Materializing
What ideas exist behind material objects? In this episode, we’re going to look at stuff—things we can see or hear or touch—to try to understand the intangible, like memory, history, and bias. Producers: Adesuwa Agbonile, Jett Hayward, Yue Li, Jenny March,...
05.29.2019
Dying (full episode)
In this episode, we’re going to think about death. All things must come to an end, but that does not mean death is all ending. We ask -- what can death teach us about life? Featuring special reflections on death...
05.21.2019
Mythologizing (full Episode)
In this episode, we search for myths in the modern world. We ask-- where are monsters hiding, and who created them? What do the myths we circulate say about ourselves? Producers: Claudia Heymach, Morgan Canaan, Sophie McNulty, Ben Schwartz, Jett Hayward,...
04.01.2019
Solitude (full episode)
Stories about being alone, wanting to be alone, or feeling alone. What is that place we go to to protect ourselves? How and why achieve seclusion? Producers: Yue Li, Sofia Sanchez-Luege, Jett Hayward, Stephanie Niu, Sienna White and Adesuwa Agbonile. http://storytelling.stanford.edu
06.15.2018
Broadcasting (full episode)
Description: In this episode we ride the radio waves. We listen closely, digging deep in the static to hear stories of people following radio waves, of bouncing radio waves, but mainly stories of people listening to the voices. Producers: Cathy...
06.10.2018
Naming (Full Episode)
We name people, places, and things out of necessity, but the labels we choose take on the weight of history, culture, and identity. In this episode, we talk about the names we use, and why they matter.
04.25.2018
Survival (full episode)
Sometimes you have to keep your head down to stay alive. This is a show about playing the cello in the darkest hour, and returning to the site of the fire, and keeping your head down to stay alive. This is...
04.19.2018
Speculation (full episode)
What can we know about the future? And where do we look? We plan ahead by speculating. We can’t imagine not imagining the next hour, the next day, the next email. In this show we look at the nature of...
02.07.2018
Caretaking (full episode)
How do we take care of the past after it turns to ash? We visit with families digging through the rubble of their homes in Sonoma after the fires as they sift for memories. This episode asks how we care...
11.27.2017
Crossings (Immigrating, ep. 1)
We hear a lot about immigrants. In this episode, we hear from immigrants – not as statistics, but as individual human beings crossing borders. Oscar gets deported and tries to return home. Maddie comes to terms with her family relationships....
11.24.2017
Conversations (Immigrating, ep. 2)
Immigrating is a conversation that happens across borders, generations, and versions of oneself. Grace and Justin talk across political differences. Unknown workers who forged the Transcontinental Railroad receive a new voice. Solmaz writes poetry to orient herself in the world....
05.31.2017
Crashing (full episode)
Sometimes, marching steadily through the steps of life—we crash right into something entirely unexpected. In one instant, the entire world changes, without even a word of warning. When a crash comes, that collision can destroy everything. But it can wake...
05.17.2017
Navigating (full episode)
Ants navigate to and from food using pheromone trails; the stronger the pheromone trail, the more ants following it, like some kind of highway map. Humans use similar mapping strategies as we navigate through life, but how do we know...
05.03.2017
Breathing (full episode)
Breath and spirit have been closely related in human thought—for millennia. In a lot of human languages, we use the same word to mean both things. Yet it’s easy to take breathing for granted, in spite of the fact it...
01.31.2017
Inheritance (full episode)
In this episode, we explore inheritances’ many forms and unexpected outcomes. “You’ll hear the forgotten tales of hand-me down clothing, stories of family exploits that keep ancestors alive, how your genetic inheritance can define you...for better and for worse, and...
12.17.2016
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...
04.20.2016
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,...
02.10.2016
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...
01.20.2016
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...
10.21.2015
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...
04.22.2015
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...
03.10.2015
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...
07.16.2014
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...
06.25.2014
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...
06.17.2014
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...
05.31.2014
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...
05.19.2014
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...
04.03.2014
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...
02.13.2014
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...
02.13.2014
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...

What's State of the Human about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

State of the Human episodes:

Reclaiming, part 7: Orca Boy (part 1)

Reclaiming, part 6: Friends in Liminal Spaces

Reclaiming, part 5: Welcome to Paradise

Reclaiming, part 4: Tattoos and Taboos

BONUS: Kaitlyn Auth and Charlie Darracott on creating Keep Stanford Wrestling

Reclaiming, part 3: Keep Stanford Wrestling

BONUS: Aru Nair on creating Journey Through Generations

Reclaiming, part 2: Journey Through Generations

Reclaiming, part 1: Home is Little Tokyo

Wonder Under Water by Gracie Newman

Feeding

Feeding Story 3: Garden On The Rooftop

Feeding Story 1: First, Bread

Feeding Intro Story: Mukbang

Missed Connections by Neeharika Bandlapalli

She Was There by Paloma Moreno

Radical Puppets Revisiting The 1999 Seattle WTO Protests by Emily Zhang

Gathering

Preserving, Full Episode

Learning Medicine (Full Episode)

Materializing

Dying (full episode)

Mythologizing (full Episode)

Solitude (full episode)

Broadcasting (full episode)

Naming (Full Episode)

Survival (full episode)

Speculation (full episode)

Caretaking (full episode)

​Crossings (Immigrating, ep. 1)

Conversations (Immigrating, ep. 2)

Crashing (full episode)

Navigating (full episode)

Breathing (full episode)

Inheritance (full episode)

Burying (full episode)

Imagining (full episode)

Teaching (full episode)

Losing (full episode)

Secret Keeping (full episode)

Healing (full episode)

Believing (full episode)

Promising (full episode)

Control: The Stanford Prison Experiment (full episode)

Datafying (full episode)

Belonging (full episode)

Beyond Human (full episode)

Joking (full episode)

Resilience (full episode)

Seeing Ourselves (full episode)

Crossings (Immigrating, ep. 1)