Story 1: Shadows in Gold

When he first came to America, Professor Nicholas Jenkins rented a Chrysler Park Avenue and set out on a leisurely drive through the hills of California, the Golden State. Then, he slammed his car into a bridge, and began a very different kind of journey – into the shadowy reality of California’s highways.

Producers: Will Rogers and Rachel Hamburg

Featuring: Dr Nicholas Jenkins

Music: California Ramblers, Neuroleptic Trio, Coda (courtesy of elementperspective), Dan Friel, Sunhiilow

Story 2: The Possession of Chi

In the summer of 2009, Stanford student Dong-Nghi Huyhn returned to Vietnam to mourn the death of her aunt. Her family observed a hundred day funeral ritual, which was interrupted when her aunt suddenly returned in the form of their housekeeper.

Producers: Rachel Hamburg and Andrew Todhunter

Featuring: Dong-Nghi Huyhn

Photo by C. Frank Starmer

Story 3: Yanked by their Noses

Marcel Proust had a theory about the past – that our former selves don’t die, but live like ghosts inside of us, and can be reawakened suddenly. Re-awakening these ghosts is the best thing that could ever happen to you, because for a moment you live outside of time, and you discover your true self – the one that lives in both the past and the present. Dr. Joshua Landy reads passages from Proust and explains that this frequently happens through smell. Producers Rachel Hamburg and Christy Hartman take this a little too literally, and decide to perform an experiment with unsuspecting pedestrians.

Producers: Rachel Hamburg, Charlie Mintz, Christy Hartman

Featuring: Dr. Joshua Landy

Photo: Jacques Emile-Blanche – Portrait de Marcel Proust

Story 4: What can be Named

Nina Foushee shares her fiction story “What Can Be Named”, about a couple – Ellen and Thomas – on their first trip to Arizona, and what happens when the ghosts inside them unexpectedly come to the surface.

Photo by Robin Stevens

Producers: Rachel Hamburg and Christy Hartman

Story 1: Where Sam Went

When Sam went off into the woods with his friends, he had no idea he’d end up paralyzed, on his back. He had no idea he’d have to come to terms with the most important thing in life. He just wanted to smoke a little pot. But instead he got stuck in between.

Producers: Irys Clayter, Sophia Paliza and Charlie Mintz

Featuring: Sam CC

Story 2: Great Aunt Mary

Beth’s parents never stuck around anywhere long. So Beth settled in with her great aunt Mary, who lived alone at 100 years old. Mary helped Beth figure out how to survive high school. But soon Beth faced a new challenge: an out-of-town relative intent on destroying Mary’s life.

Producer: Rachel Hamburg

Featuring: “Beth”

Story 3: Save XOX!

Chi Theta Chi had a special deal with Stanford: they leased the house, so they got to take care of it. They painted the walls, built a bar in the basement, and fixed what needed fixing. This made it the most independent house on campus. But Stanford got nervous about all that independence, and so it tried to take Chi Theta Chi back.

Producers: Austin Meyer, Rachel Hamburg, and Charlie Mintz

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

Story 4: Love of Horse

Many of us seek oneness–with the world, with another person, or just with ourselves. But Logan Hehn is seeking oneness with a horse. He wants to travel along that space between his consciousness and that of the animal beneath him.

Producers: Christy Hartman and Joshua Hoyt

Featuring: Logan Hehn

Introduction

Joshua Hoyt Interviews psychologists to find out when and how children learn to lie.

Featuring: Austin Meyer, Dr. Gail Heyman, Dr. Karl Rosengren.

Story 1: The Santa Game

Victoria Hurst tackle the big one: Santa Claus. He’s the biggest, Jolliest lie in the western world. For his sake we’ve cleaned our rooms and smiled when our great aunts pinched our cheeks. Because of him, we believed wholeheartedly in the fairness of the world and in bearded old men from the North. But What has he really taught us?

Producer: Victoria Hurst

Featuring: Anish Mitra, Ian Girard, Rebekah Morreale, and Ashley Artmann.

Image Courtesy of Ken Grobe

Story 2: The Lying Lesson

Dana Kletter was only seven years old when she found herself in a situation where she needed to learn how to lie–and to lie well. It was a matter of survival. But like any little girl, she also felt a big pressure to tell the truth, no matter how dangerous that may be.

Producer: Poncie Rutsch

Featuring: Dana Kletter

Image Courtesy of Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales

Story 3: Lie to Me

What happens when lying takes over your home, and comes between you and the ones you love? In this story, Christy Hartman explores how hard it can be to face the truth about your family, and how learning to lie can be a gift of love.

Producer: Christy Hartman

Image Courtesy of Christy Hartman

Story 1: Me and the 49ers Cheerleaders

State of the Human producer Rachel Hamburg had the chance to cater a charity fundraiser. She got to see what enticements were used to get people to give. She started to wonder, what was the point of it all?

Featuring: Rachel Hamburg

Story 2: How Not To Give

It was an epic project: send one million shirts to Africa. But before it even got off the ground, it hit a snag. Is sending a million used shirts across the Atlantic ocean even a good idea?

Producer: Will Rogers and Charlie Mintz

Featuring: Jason Sadler, Saundra Schimmelpfennig, TMS Ruge

Links: Good Intents; Project Diaspora; I Wear Your Shirt

Story 3: A Tale of Two Donors

No one said donating bone marrow was a trip to the water park. But if it’s a choice between avoiding pain, and saving a life, how do you decide what to do? 

Featuring: Nick Hartley, Mandeep Gill

Links: Stanford BLood Center

Story 4: Odyssey Works

What would it be like to have a play made just for you? One that incorporated your dreams, and your wishes, and brought you into its world to participate?

Featuring: Kristina Kulin, Abraham Burickson, and Jen Harmon

Links: Odyssey Works

Story 1: The True Mirror

Every day we look in the mirror to see what we look like. But that reflection is a lie. It’s flipped. The face you see in a mirror is a face only you know. Maybe that’s fine, but if you want to see how you look to other people–and not just frozen in a photograph–you need a “true mirror”. State of the Human brought one to Stanford’s White Plaza, in the heart of campus, to see how students reacted to seeing themselves, truly.

Producers: Xandra Clark and Rachel Hamburg

Featuring: Daniel Steinbock

Story 2: The Human Map

For seeing one’s self, there’s no portrait more fundamental than the genetic code. But the genome is a frustrating way to see ourselves because there’s still so much we don’t know. Hear how three individuals deal with this incomplete information to see themselves, others, and the future of genetics.

Producers: Raj Bhandari and Jonah Willihnganz

Featuring: Lone Frank, Colleen Caleshu and Hank Greely

Story 3: I Have Enough T For 1000 People

Personality tests are ubiquitous today. You could spend a life time answering multiple choice questions, figuring out which brand of sports drink you are, what animal you most resemble, and which pop star is your psychological twin. But how helpful are any of these? And which just feed our desire about ourselves? In our next story, you’ll hear about one test known as the Myers-Briggs. It’s about someone who was exposed to the test at 14, and hasn’t stopped pondering it since.

Producers: Rachel Hamburg and Xandra Clark

Featuring: John Nantz

Story 4: Keeping Score

The most powerful mirror we use may be other people. We all know the cliche, true self-worth comes from within. But what if that’s wrong? Like it or not, we see ourselves how other people see us. We like to know what other people think. But not too many of us, probably, have developed a point system for keeping track, like in our next story.

Producers: Christy Hartman and Alexzandra Scully

Featuring: Iris Clayter

Story 1: When I Put On This Suit I Don My True Nature

The narrator of this story of resilience says the country club pool was a place to look hot in your bathing suit. But if you weren’t a 16 year old girl’s definition of hot you had some problems. So what do you do? You don your swimsuit and dive in.

(Note: this story and Story 4 both came to us from True Story, a storytelling event series and podcast)

Story 2: Just a Yes Waiting to Take Shape

It’s rare to seek out rejection. But that’s what happens every day at the Stanford Call Center. It’s a trial by fire if you hate hearing the word no. Who makes it? And who drops out? And just what are you supposed to do when someone answers the phone and tells you they’re having sex?

Featuring: Jessica Talbert, Jordan Raymond, Michelle Powers

Story 3: What Will You Want to Have Gotten From This?

Resilience is in fact getting a lot of attention in academic circles. This is because we’re discovering that it might be one of the most important things to learn. But how do you teach this to students? Especially Stanford students, for whom rejection is about the most alien experience imaginable.

Featuring: Adina Glickman

Story 4: The Storm Rolling Through Me

Sometimes when life is hard, the only thing to do is visit Burning Man. After losing one friend to violence, and with another friend hospitalized with cancer, Michael Zeligs took a trip with his girlfriend to Burning Man. There he found the crying temple.

Featuring: Michael Zeligs

Story 5: A No Every Day

Resilience is often defined by psychologists as the ability to adapt to adversity. In this story, Jane Reynolds, decides that’s a skill she’s lacking. She tries to fix it by experimenting with “rejection therapy”, which requires her to seek out a rejection every single day.

Featuring: Jane Reynolds