An Evening with Julie Snyder, Senior Producer of This American Life

Julie Snyder, This American Life
TAL logo

Wednesday, January 22, 2014
7:30pm
Paul Brest Hall, Munger Graduate Center
Free, open to the public, but seating is limited

With almost 2 million listeners each week and the most downloaded podcast in America, This American Life is well known for using the traditional tools of journalism to document everyday life. But sometimes the show has flipped that equation by using the tools of personal narrative to document more traditional, topical “news” stories. Julie Snyder, the Senior Producer of This American Life, has produced and edited many of these kinds of stories—stories about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the financial crisis, the healthcare system and gun violence, among others. In this very special evening, she will talk about some of the successful ways she has learned to use personal narratives to tackle these kinds stories, and the challenges and pitfalls she has encountered along the way.

Julie Snyder joined the staff of This American Life in 1997, first as a producer and later becoming Senior Producer of the radio show and Executive Producer of the This American Life television show. As Senior Producer, she is responsible for finding and developing stories for the show and, with Ira Glass, establishing the show’s editorial direction and shaping its content. This American Life is heard on more than 500 public stations and has won several broadcasting awards, including the Peabody and DuPont-Columbia awards; its television show won an Emmy in for Outstanding Nonfiction Series. Before joining the show, Julie worked at WGN Radio in Chicago and as a news anchor and reporter at radio stations in Santa Cruz, California.


Never Lost: An Evening with Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye book

Tuesday, November 12, 2013
7:30pm
Geology Corner (Building 320), Room 105
Free; no registration is required

We live in and through stories, and the best ones can ground us and provide abiding navigational tools throughout our lives. How, though, do we identify and live by these stories amidst the clamor of the news and the abundant chaos that surround us? And how do we then weave together the stories that guide us with the stories that surround us? Join us for a special evening with Naomi Shihab Nye, award-winning winning poet, writer, and educator, to explore these questions and to experience stories that invite us to fuller, authentic lives.

Naomi Shihab Nye is the author or editor of more than 30 volumes of poetry, essays, and stories, most recently There Is No Long Distance Now (2011) and Transfer (2011). Her work has won numerous awards, including a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, four Pushcart Prizes, two Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards, and her collection 19 Varieties of Gazelle was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has been a Lannan Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow and in January 2010 she was elected to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets.

“In the current literary scene, one of the most heartening influences is the work of Naomi Shihab Nye. Her poems combine transcendent liveliness and sparkle along with warmth and human insight. She is a champion of the literature of encouragement and heart. Reading her work enhances life.” — William Stafford

This program is co-sponsored by The Stanford Storytelling Project and Stanford Continuing Studies.


QUESTIONS FOR Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket)

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Wednesday, October 9, 2013
7:30 pm
Cemex Auditorium
Stanford University
Free; no registration is required

The Stanford Storytelling Project is thrilled to announce our first event of this school year: an evening with Daniel Handler, author of Adverbs, The Basic Eight, and most recently, Why We Broke Up. Under the name Lemony Snicket he has also written two best-selling series A Series of Unfortunate Events and All the Wrong Questions. He is also a screenwriter, composer and the adjunct accordionist for the band The Magnetic Fields. His latest book, When Did You See Her Last, will be released on October 15th.

In this very special event we are choosing 2-3 Stanford students to appear on stage with Daniel Handler to interview him about his writing and creative life. We will choose these students based on 5 questions submitted on the  facebook event page, by 12 noon Sunday, October 6th. Questions may also be submitted to storytelling@stanford.edu. Winners will be announced that evening.


Finding Genius: An Evening with Michael Meade

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Friday, April 19, 2013
8:00 pm
Cubberley Auditorium
Stanford University
Free; no registration is required

The original idea of genius refers to the natural spirit and inner qualities of a person; this includes god-given talents as well as the way they are aimed at life. In that sense, everyone has a genius nature and something essential to give to the world. The inner genius is what our “calling” calls forth as it tries to become known throughout our life. Whether young or old, our job is to answer the call and risk our unique destiny. Enduring happiness requires that we awaken to the inner spirit that brought us to life in the first place. For when neglected or rejected our natural genius can incite our worst inner demons. Often, our genius waits to be found where the world seems most dark and fearful to us and following our genius always involves risk, but the greater risk is to live a life not aligned with one’s inborn spirit.

Join us for a special evening with mythologist Michael Meade to discover the territories in which genius can be found, and the qualities of genius, including: talents and skills as well as one’s natural style. We will consider the ways in which our genius will lead us into the “right trouble” and the ways that genius can trouble our lives in order to grow our soul.

Michael Meade, D.H.L., is a renowned storyteller, author, and mythologist. He is the author of Why the World Doesn’t End: Tales of Renewal in Times of Loss, Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of The Soul, and The Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of the Soul. He is the founder of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a nonprofit network of artists, activists, and healers who work with oppressed and at risk populations. Besides directing Mosaic’s innovative healing work, Meade serves as adjunct faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute teaching intensives in mythology and psychology and is also a regular contributor to the Huffington Post.


Oh, Inverted World

Smuin Ballet

Thursday, April 11, 2013
8:00 pm
Roble Gym, Studio 38
Stanford University
Open to Stanford students, faculty, and staff

Stanford Dance and The Stanford Storytelling Project present Smuin Ballet performing Trey McIntyre’s Oh, Inverted World, choreographed to music from The Shins’ album “Oh, Inverted World.”

Join us for a special evening of storytelling through dance with Smuin Ballet. Fresh from its New York premiere and back by popular demand, Smuin Ballet presents an encore workshop performance of Oh, Inverted World at Stanford University. Smuin Ballet commissioned the riveting Oh, Inverted World from acclaimed choreographer Trey McIntyre. Set to music by indie-rock band The Shins, this dynamic piece received its world premiere in San Francisco in October 2010. An innovative fusion of McIntyre’s fresh, impulsive choreography and The Shins’ distinctive style, Oh, Inverted World is a mesmerizing and lingering work, called “action-packed” “striking” and “remarkable” by the New York Times.

This program is co-sponsored by Stanford Dance and The Stanford Storytelling Project.


A Community of the Heart: An Evening with Coleman Barks and Martin Shaw

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Friday, February 15, 2013
7:30 pm
Memorial Church
Stanford University
Free; no registration is required

Join us for a special evening with poet Coleman Barks and storyteller Martin Shaw to explore the playfulness and intensity of the heart and its many secrets. Focusing particularly on Rumi, whose poetry so powerfully opens the heart, the evening will feature poetry, myth, jokes, and lively conversation about the place where language and feeling combine to make a caravanserai of longing. Two travelers tell of their dreams and invite you to join them. Bring your dancing shoes to hurl at the moon.

Coleman Barks is the author of numerous Rumi translations, including The Essential Rumi, and has been a student of Sufism since 1977. His work with Rumi was the subject of Bill Moyers’s Language of Life series on PBS, and he is a featured poet and translator in Moyers’s poetry special, Fooling with Words.

Dr. Martin Shaw is a mythologist and author of the award winning A Branch From the Lightning Tree: Ecstatic Myth and the Grace in Wildness. Director of the Westcountry School of Myth in the United Kingdom, he is also visiting lecturer in Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s leadership program at Oxford University.

This program is co-sponsored by The Stanford Storytelling Project and The Stanford Office for Religious Life.


Voices from the Front, An Evening of Stories with Stanford Veterans returning home from War

Dust Storm
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Sunday, November 11, 2012
5:00 – 6:30 pm
A3C Ballroom, Old Union
Stanford University
Free and open to the public.
Please RSVP to storytelling@stanford.edu

The Stanford Storytelling Project invites you to share an evening of personal stories, music, letters and conversation with Stanford student veterans recently returned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While we hear almost daily about the large-scale effects of these wars in the news, we rarely hear about their profound effects on the lives of thousands of veterans and their families.

This Veterans Day, the Stanford community will have the chance to hear those stories. Stanford veterans and some of their family members will come together for a single special event, to share what they have experienced and learned both about war and about the journey home.

The evening will feature excerpts from the Storytelling Project’s audio documentary of these soldiers, “Returning Home,” produced by Xandra Clark and Natacha Ruck, which will be aired on KZSU 90.1FM at 6pm on November 12 and 14. Stream live at kzsulive.stanford.edu; download at storytelling.stanford.edu or on iTunes.

The event will be hosted by Xandra Clark, producer for the Stanford Storytelling and the discussion will be moderated by Joel Brinkley, Pulitzer Prize winner and former foreign correspondent for The New York Times. A reception will follow the program.

Join us for a rare perspective on war and help build a bridge between the civilian and military experiences.

This program is co-sponsored by The Stanford Storytelling Project, The Haas Center for Public Service and the Stanford Military Service Network.


An Afternoon with Ira Glass, host of This American Life

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Sunday, November 4, 2012
2:00 pm
CEMEX Auditorium, Knight Management Center
Event sold out but check our Facebook Page to win tickets

In his first appearance at Stanford, This American Life creator and host Ira Glass will talk about what makes a compelling story and how he and his staff are trying to push broadcast journalism to do things it doesn’t usually do. On stage, Glass creates a kind of live version of the radio program, combining live commentary and narration with music and taped interviews. Sharing funny and memorable moments from the show, Glass will describe what was behind their creation, how he and his staff find and produce stories for the show, and what goes into great storytelling.

This American Life premiered on Chicago’s public radio station WBEZ in 1995, and is now heard on more than 500 public radio stations each week by over 1.7 million listeners. Most weeks, the podcast of the program is the most popular in America. The show also airs each week on the CBC in Canada and on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s radio network. Under Glass’s editorial direction, the program has won the highest honors for broadcasting and journalistic excellence, including several Peabody and DuPont-Columbia awards. The American Journalism Review declared that the show is “at the vanguard of a journalistic revolution.”

This program is co-sponsored by The Stanford Storytelling Project and the ASSU Speaker’s Bureau.


An Evening with David Whyte: Life at the Frontier: Human Identity and the Conversational Nature of Reality

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Thursday, May 10, 2012
7:30 p
CEMEX Auditorium, Knight Management Center
FREE; no registration is required

The truth is not the truth until it can be heard and recognized, no matter how well it is said, and one of the difficult truths is that human beings arrive at newness, revelation, and understanding through recognition of something already established within them. To tell the truth, therefore, is not to fire off the right ammunition at an established target, but rather to create a live frontier, a field of communion, between a deep internal core and something that, to begin with, looks like the otherness of the world. Living and breathing at this frontier is what most of our religious and contemplative traditions have called enlightenment. Join poet and philosopher David Whyte for what is sure to be an enlightening experience of this frontier through poetry, the imagination at play, and storytelling.

David Whyte
 is the author of six books of poetry and three books of prose. He also holds a degree in marine zoology and has traveled extensively, including living and working as a naturalist guide in the Galapagos Islands and leading anthropological and natural history expeditions in the Andes, the Amazon, and the Himalaya. He brings this wealth of experience to his poetry, lectures, and workshops. His most recent books are The Three Marriages, River Flow, and Crossing the Unknown Sea.

This program is co-sponsored by The Stanford Storytelling Project and Stanford Continuing Studies.