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. And Frankie and Francisco reflect on growing up in a new place.

This is part two of a two-part series. Listen to part one.

Host: Cathy Wong
Producers:​​ ​Carissa​ ​Cirelli,​ ​Noelle​ ​Chow,​ ​Jett​ ​Hayward,​ ​An-Li​ ​Herring,​ ​Julia​ ​Ingram,​ ​Louis​ ​Lafair,​ ​Rosie LaPuma,​ ​Yue​ ​Li,​ ​Jenny​ ​March,​ ​Kate​ ​Nelson,​ ​Jackson​ ​Roach,​ ​Helvia​ ​Taina,​ ​Melina​ ​Walling,​ ​Jake​ ​Warga, Eileen​ ​Williams,​ ​Cathy​ ​Wong
Show​ ​Music:​​ ​​johnny_ripper
Release date: 29 November 2017


Story 4: Grace and Justin

Grace and Justin send each other letters.

Producers:​​ ​Cathy​ ​Wong and ​Kate​ ​Nelson
Featuring:​​ ​Justin​ ​Hsuan and ​Grace
Music: “When in the West,” “Sage the Hunter,” and “Drone Pine” by Blue Dot Sessions

Image via Flickr

Story 5: Chinese Railroad Workers

The​ ​Central​ ​Pacific​ ​Railroad​ ​was​ ​completed​ ​in​ ​1869.​ ​150​ ​years​ ​later,​ ​we’re​ ​still​ ​searching for​ ​the​ ​stories​ ​of​ ​the​ ​people​ ​who​ ​laid​ ​out​ ​the​ ​tracks.

Producer:​ ​​Yue​ ​Li
Featuring:​​ ​Hilton​ ​Obenzinger,​ ​Barre​ ​Fong,​ ​Gordon​ ​Chang
Music: “Everything Ends Here” by Johnny Ripper; “More Weather,” “Waterbourne,” and “The Summit” by Blue Dot Sessions

Image via Wikimedia

Story 6: Solmaz

Solmaz​ ​Sharif​ ​wants​ ​to​ ​have​ ​the​ ​conversation​ ​we’re​ ​avoiding.

Producers:​​ ​Jackson​ ​Roach and Jett​ ​Hayward
Featuring:​​ ​Solmaz​ ​Sharif
Music: “c” and “m” by Gallery Six; “Krankenwagen im Stau” by rui; “Upward” and “It Moves Like A 500 Year Old Process” by junior85

Image via Flickr

Story 7: Frankie and Francisco

After​ ​immigrating​ ​from​ ​Mexico,​ ​Francisco​ ​Preciado​ ​Sr.​ ​gets​ ​a​ ​job​ ​as​ ​a​ ​groundskeeper​ ​at​ ​Stanford University.​ ​When​ ​his​ ​son,​ ​Francisco​ ​Preciado​ ​Jr.,​ ​applies​ ​to​ ​Stanford,​ ​they​ ​learn​ ​together​ ​what​ ​it​ ​means to​ ​carry​ ​on​ ​a​ ​family​ ​legacy​ ​in​ ​a​ ​new​ ​country.

Producers:​​ ​Louis​ ​Lafair and​ ​Melina​ ​Walling
Featuring:​​ ​Francisco​ ​Preciado​ ​Sr.​ ​and​ ​Francisco​ ​Preciado​ ​Jr.
Music: “An opener” by Bitbasic, “motion (johnny_ripper remix)” by noah, “Selbstheilend” by rui, “Pomp and Circumstance” by Edward Elgar and Miguel Flores

Image courtesy of Francisco Preciado Jr.


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. And Nisrin enters the U.S. from Sudan after the first travel ban takes effect.

In this episode, stories of crossing. This is part one of a two part series. Listen to part two.

Host: Noelle Chow
Producers:​​ ​Carissa​ ​Cirelli,​ ​Noelle​ ​Chow,​ ​Jett​ ​Hayward,​ ​An-Li​ ​Herring,​ ​Julia​ ​Ingram,​ ​Louis​ ​Lafair,​ ​Rosie LaPuma,​ ​Yue​ ​Li,​ ​Jenny​ ​March,​ ​Kate​ ​Nelson,​ ​Jackson​ ​Roach,​ ​Helvia​ ​Taina,​ ​Melina​ ​Walling,​ ​Jake​ ​Warga, Eileen​ ​Williams,​ ​Cathy​ ​Wong
Show​ ​Music:​​ ​​johnny_ripper
Release date: 29 November 2017


Story 1: Oscar

Oscar​ ​gets​ ​deported.​ ​He’s​ ​determined​ ​to​ ​come​ ​back,​ ​no​ ​matter​ ​what.

Producers:​​ ​Kate​ ​Nelson,​ ​Carissa​ ​Cirelli,​ ​and​ ​Jackson​ ​Roach
Featuring:​​ ​Oscar
Music: “Delican’t”​ by ​Podington​ ​Bear​, “Door​ ​knock” by ​​taylorsyoung@gmail.com​​

Image via Flickr

Story 2: Maddie

Maddie​ ​searches​ ​for​ ​the​ ​formula​ ​to​ ​be​ ​an​ ​American.

Producers:​ ​​Kate​ ​Nelson,​ ​Carissa​ ​Cirelli, and Jackson Roach
Featuring:​​ ​Madeleine​ ​Han
Music: “Fater​ ​Lee”​ by Black​ ​Ant, “James​ ​p​. ​funk​ ​2″​ by ​Black​ ​Ant, “No​ ​sudden​ ​movements” by Rui, “i’m​ ​not​ ​here” by johnny_ripper, “dan1​”​ by ​junior85

Image via Pixabay

Story 3: Nisrin

On January 27, 2017, the first travel ban takes effect. And then Nisrin lands at JFK.

Producers: Helvia Taina, An-Li Herring, Eileen Williams, and Rosie La Puma
Featuring: Nisrin Elamin Abdelrahman
Music: “80’s Interlude” by Fanas; “Theme 4,” “Sleep,” “Intermission,” “In a Dream,” and “data” by johnny_ripper

Image via Wikimedia

This story was first published on Soundings.


Crashing

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 us up to what we truly need; we must decide what to raze and what to rebuild. How do humans move forward before the smoke is cleared? What happens after the crash?

Host: Eileen Williams
Producers: Eileen Williams, Claudia Heymach, Jackson Roach, Megan Calfas, Alex Cheng, Noelle Li Syn Chow, Jake Warga
Featuring: Eddie Mazon, Michael Peskin, Miles Traer, Dr. David Radler, Dan Klein, Dehan Glanz
Show music: “Darger’s strawberry” by Exteenager, “opening credits” by Johnny Ripper
Release date: 31 May 2017


Story 1: SLACing off

Dr. Michael Peskin works in the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, home of the world’s longest linear accelerator. At SLAC, researchers crash X rays and particles, and a huge variety of things together, but not for destruction or for fun—but for learning.

Producer: Claudia Heymach
Featuring: Michael Peskin
Music: Original viola by Rosie LaPuma

Image via SLAC

Story 2: Myth and Science

Miles accidentally crashed the Stanford server, but as an earth scientist there’s a lot more at risk. Myth and science have been separated in the real world, but in fantasy and fiction they dance together to tell stories.

Producer: Eileen Williams
Featuring: Miles Traer
Music: Soundtrack to “Game of Thrones”

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Story 3: Crash Cart

Dr. David Radler is a senior resident in the department of emergency medicine at Stanford University. He tells us about one particularly memorable crash, and what it taught him.

Producer: Eileen Williams
Featuring: Dr. David Radler
Music: Kai Engel

Image via Openclipart

Story 4: Car Crash

In an instant, everything can change. When Dan and Danno got in a car crash in their sophomore year at Stanford, everything did. Now they’re both back at Stanford as professors and recount the event that shook and shaped their lives (and even inspired a Lifetime Movie). Their perspective is one you might not expect in light of the tragedy that unhinged their world. Dan says today, “That’s a great approach to life—to assume that there’s something lucky to every unlucky thing that happens.”

Producers: Megan Calfas and Alex Cheng
Featuring: Dan Klein and Dehan Glanz
Music and sound: Kai Engel, David Szesztay, Podington Bear, De la Soul, The Clientele, “A Mother’s Fight for Justice”

Image via Flickr


Navigating

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 that the paths we’re on will lead us to where we want to be? Today’s show is about navigating, with four stories and a poem about various ways that humans are moving through the world, with unique answers to these questions: How do we navigate through life without any instructions, or with instructions that might be wrong? How do we know which way to go to get whatever we’re going for? And how do we decide when to stop moving?

Host: Connie Xiao
Producers: Will Rogers, Alec Glassford, Rosie La Puma, Yue Li, Cathy Wong, Virginia Drummond, Katie Wolfteich, Aparna Verma, Jenny Han, An-Li Herring, and Connie Xiao
Featuring: Chris Leboa, Deborah Gordon, Julie Sweetkind-Singer, Glen McLaughlin, Saptarshi Majumdar, Jennifer Johnson, and Louis Lafair
Show Music: Noelle Li Syn Chow, Melina Walling, Sarah Jiang, Gillicuddy, Doctor Turtle, Podington Bear, Polyrhythmics

Image via Flickr

Release date: 17 May 2017


Story 1: California as an Island

When the Spanish explorers set out to discover the Americas, they came to find wealth and a new start. In this story, we hear about how the Spanish explorers navigated through these unfamiliar territory and how a myth turned into a reality that passed around for centuries.

Producers: Yue Li, Virginia Drummond
Featuring: Glen McLaughlin, Julie Sweetkind-Singer
Special thanks: G. Salim Mohammed, of the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford
Music and sound: Original music by Latifah Hamzah, “Rain Stops to Play” by Ketsa, “mutanterrante remix” by toiletrolltube, additional sounds from freesound.org

Image via Wikimedia

Navigating – Story 2: In Transit

“Once you decide something, you kinda have to destroy everything else right? Your other options? You gotta let em go.” We spend an entire day at the Oakland Greyhound station and ask people where they are going. Mark Mendoza chases a cameraman. Cathy Wong learns when not to own a skeleton key. Hollie Kool talks to a Japanese pizza lover. Mimes are involved.

Producer: Cathy Wong, Hollie Kool, and Mark Mendoza
Featuring: Cathy Wong, Hollie Kool, and Mark Mendoza
Music: “Night Owl” by Broke For Free, “Freak Mode” by Fleslit, “Dollar Theatre” by Jalen Warshawsky, “Unknown Variables” by Jalen Warshawsky, “El Fuego” by Polyrhythmics, “Cold Feet” and “I’ll Miss You” and “Looking For That Moment When Time Stands Still” by Will Bangs

Image via Flickr

Navigating – Story 3: It’s not a Sap Story

Live the life of a savage adventurer. It’s a motto that Saptarshi Majumdar lives by as he travels across the globe, whether it’s from one continent to another or one coast to another. Sap’s journeys are wild and crazy, and the stories that he picks up even crazier. Why not sit back and enjoy the ride?

Producers: Aparna Verma and Jenny Han
Featuring: Saptarshi Majumdar and Aparna Verma
Music: “Hex (Instrumental)” by Forget the Whale, “We’ll Get Ourselves in TV-News” by Break the Bans

Image via Saptarshi Majumdar

Navigating – Story 4: A Speck in the Ocean

When she was 25, Jennifer Johnson sailed out of a Japanese harbor on a 27-foot boat with sights set on Hawaii. Sit in the cockpit with her as she charts her way through storms, fish colonies, and nearly capsized boats with only her partner for company, and re-experience the newness and stillness of land. “Adventure? Oh, I don’t know, adventure has too many positive connotations to say it was an adventure.”

Producers: Katie Wolfteich
Featuring: Jennifer Johnson
Music: Weaves of K

Image via Flickr

Navigating – Story 5: If There Were a Manual

“May I please have a manual for life?” Louis Lafair reads an original poem.

Producer: Alec Glassford
Featuring: Louis Lafair

Image via Flickr

 


Breathing

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 is maybe the most common human experience. In this episode, we’re going to think about every inhale and every exhale, and speak to people who have to think about breathing in a lot of interesting ways: a biathlete, a beatboxer, a dancer. We’ll dive deep underwater to a dark and dangerous cave in the Bahamas, travel to China to think about collective breathing, and reflect on the role artificial breathing plays in the perception of what constitutes life and what constitutes death.

 

Host: Jackson Roach
Producers: Kate Nelson, Carissa Cirelli, Jenny March, Jake Warga, Jackson Roach, Melina Walling, Katie Lan, Jett Hayward, Claudia Heymach, Netta Wang, Jonah Willihnganz
Featuring: Brad Ross, Joanne Reid, Tom Johnson, Jace Casey, Janice Ross, Andrew Todhunter, Paul Fisher
Show Music: johnny_ripper

Image via Flickr

Release Date: 3 May 2017


 

Intro Story: Beat Breathing

Brad Ross started his beatboxing career as a senior in high school, “as kind of a joke.” Now you can spot Brad dropping a beat in the acapella group, Stanford Mixed Company, or just ask him for a demo like we did. Brad shares how he learned how to harness the rhythm behind the rhythm—the rhythm of the breath—and what he’s discovered from “using [his] lungs to make art.”

Producers: Kate Nelson, Carissa Cirelli, Jenny March, Jake Warga
Featuring: Brad Ross
Music: Brad’s sick beats

Image courtesy of Brad Ross

 

Story 1: Shot Breathe Shot Breathe Shot Breathe

Could you transition from the flurry of a race to the calm of absolute still in a few seconds? In biathlon, a sport that combines cross-country skiing and rifle marksmanship, this skill is a must. After much trial and tribulation and many failed shots, Joanne Reid, biathlete of the U.S national team, learned that it’s all about the breath. Be warned, this story is not for the faint of lungs.

Producers: Kate Nelson, Carissa Cirelli, Jenny March, Jake Warga
Featuring: Joanne Reid
Music and Sound: “Epiphany” by Podington Bear, “Women 15 km Individual Race 2017 Biathlon IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen HD” by HQ Sport

Image via Flickr

 

Story 2: Running out of Breath

This is a recorded performance about breath, exhaustion, and struggle, written by a choreographer named Tom Johnson in the 1970s. With reflections from Dr. Janice Ross, professor of dance. “The body is a leaky, messy medium for art making.”

Writer: Tom Johnson
Producers: Jackson Roach and Jenny March
Featuring: Jace Casey, Janice Ross

Image via Wikimedia

 

Story 3: Stargate

Andrew Todhunter, a writer for National Geographic, explores the underwater cave of Stargate in the Bahamas. It’s dark, dangerous, and “as alien as any possible science fiction world.” But while exploring the perilous surroundings around him, Todhunter reveals a surprising truth—one that comes from within.

Producers: Jackson Roach, Melina Walling
Featuring: Andrew Todhunter
Music and sound: “Oceans Between Us” by Maritime, “Falling” by Kamikaze Deadboy, “waiting (in the wet alley” by lost-radio, “Moon Morning” by Aymeric de Tapol, “A Million Worlds” by Andrew Odd, additional sound effects from Freesound.org and Archive.org

Image via Flickr

 

Story 4: Breathing to Resist

After Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, China was catapulted into an era of great change. At the same time, masses of people began practicing qigong, a healing breathing practice. Qigong became so popular that public spaces would be filled with practitioners breathing together. Nancy Chen, a professor of medical anthropology at UC Santa Cruz, tells us more about the “qigong fever” in China during the 1980s and 1990s and the government’s reaction to the fever.

Writers: Katie Lan and Jenny March
Producers: Katie Lan, Jenny March, Jake Warga, and Jackson Roach
Featuring: Nancy Chen

Image via Wikimedia

 

Story 5: Still Breathing

When 13-year-old Jahi McMath suffered complications during a tonsillectomy that resulted in her being declared brain dead, Doctor Paul Fisher served as a court-appointed official tasked with administering an exam to confirm Jahi’s brain death. Despite confirmation that Jahi suffered from irreversible brain death, Jahi’s family decided to keep her on life support. Dr. Fisher reflects on the role that breathing plays in the perception what constitutes life and death.

Producers: Jett Hayward, Kate Nelson, and Jenny March
Featuring: Paul Fisher
Music: “Stay” by Igor Khabarov, “Three kites circling” by Axletree, “Dead Waters” by Rest You Sleeping Giant, “Harbor” by Kai Engel, “Stanford Doctor to Examine Jahi McMath” by KRON 4, “Hospital Ventilator Sound Effect | Sfx |HD” by n Beats Sound Effects

Image via Public Domain Pictures


Inheritance

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 how even our values can get passed down from one generation to the next.”

 

Host: Rosie La Puma
Producers: Rosie La Puma, Luke Soon-Shiong, Hadley Reid, Jake Warga, Claudia Heymach, Christy Hartman, Annina Hanlon, Benjamin Philip Suliteanu, Jonah Willihnganz, Ethan Chua
Featuring: Rosie La Puma, Deborah Wicks-La Puma, Deanna Wicks, Luke Soon-Shiong, Brooke McEver, Claudia Heymach, Marisa Heymach, Sierra Freeman, Matthew Porteus, Devon Cajuste, Amalia Saladrigas, McGregor Joyner, Emma Rothenberg
Show music: Proliferate by Podington Bear

Image courtesy of Rosie La Puma

Release Date: 1 February 2017


 

Intro Story: Alice

“For my mom and myself, taking care of Alice means taking care of a part of my grandmother, and her mother, and her mother before her.” She’s over a century old, but still the size of a toddler. Meet Alice, the inherited family member that has been handed down for five generations of daughters.

Producer: Rosie La Puma
Featuring: Rosie La Puma, Deborah Wicks-La Puma, and Deanna Wicks
Music: Proliferate by Podington Bear

Image courtesy of Rosie La Puma

 

Story 1: The Stories We Wear

Brooke McEver, an MFA student at Stanford sets up a free store where people donate clothing along with a handwritten tag that explains the story behind the clothing. When someone takes that clothing, they respond to the story on the other side of the tag. We explore what this means for understanding inheritance as a choice.

Producers: Luke Soon-Shiong with help from Hadley Reid and Jake Warga
Featuring: Luke Soon-Shiong, Brooke McEver
Music: Bensound.com

Image courtesy of Brooke McEver

 

Story 2: Abuelita

Twenty years ago, Claudia’s mom created a book of family history based on interviews she taped with Claudia’s late great-grandmother. Claudia listens to the tapes for the first time and explores what it means to collect family history and receive it.

Producer: Claudia Heymach
Featuring: Claudia Heymach, Marisa Heymach, Rosie La Puma
Special thanks: Kate Nelson
Music and Sound: Afterglow by Podington Bear, gunfight sound effect from Freesound

Image courtesy of Marisa Heymach

 

Story 3: We’re All Okay

A young woman comes to terms with a potentially lethal condition that runs in her family. “‘Is he okay, is he going to be okay, is the surgery going okay?’ Maybe they were just tired of the same sentence, rearranged. We want to know, is he going to be …”

Writer: Sierra Freeman
Producers: Claudia Heymach, Christy Hartman, and Rosie La Puma
Featuring: Sierra Freeman
Music: Jackson Roach on mandolin

Image via Flickr

 

Story 4: CRISPR-Cas9

A Stanford Lab develops gene editing tools to fight disease, and in the process challenges whether our destiny is predetermined by DNA.

Producers: Claudia Heymach with help from Annina Hanlon and Rosie La Puma
Featuring: Claudia Heymach and Matthew Porteus
Music: Dark Waters by Podington Bear

Image via Wikimedia

 

Story 5: Father to Son

Live from StoryNight 2015, Devon Cajuste tells the story of how his father told him that he has five years left to live. “You don’t know what to do when you’re thirteen years old and your dad tells you that he has five years left to live … and I count and that’s my freshman year of college.”

Producer: Rosie La Puma
Featuring: Devon Cajuste

Image courtesy of StoryNight

 

Story 6: Call Me by My Old Familiar Name

Non-narrated story of three Stanford students who share something in common: they lost their fathers. “You can be angry about death for a very long time but it’s not really worth. I think death just makes you look at life in the face. Even when he was sick, he was still very much trying to live his life …”

Producer: Benjamin Philip Suliteanu
Featuring: Amalia Saladrigas, McGregor Joyner, Emma Rothenberg
Music: Original song by McGregor Joyner

Image via Flickr


Burying

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 death, we dig and scrape through dirt, mixing our emotions in with the earth. We create a grave–a hallowed space carved out for sadness and pain, but also for warmth and joy. We lay down what we carry from the person we’ve lost–the good and the bad. It doesn’t matter what we bury–a body, a feeling, or an object–we expect it to stay buried. We put it aside, and bid it farewell. And yet, when so much has changed, why do we still rely on this physical process? How can digging a hole–metaphorically or literally–help us to make sense of our loss? And what happens when things go awry? We may not like to admit it, but sometimes the grave is not a final resting place. In today’s episode, we’ll be investigating why we bury–and what happens when our attempts fail.

Host: Eileen Williams
Producers: Eileen Williams with help from Noelle Li Syn Chow, Kate Nelson, Yue Li, Jackson Roach, Nicole Bennett-Fite, Cathy Wong, Katie Lan, Reade Levinson, Christy Hartman, Jake Warga, Jenny March, Jonah Willihnganz
Featuring: Naveen Kassamali, Xochitl Raine Rhodes Longstaff, Janet Voight, Barbad Golshiri, Magellan Pfluke, and the staff of Pet’s Rest Cemetery. Thanks also to Sofi Filipa, Charlie Gibson, Ben Cady, Ivy Sanders Schneider, Jackie Langelier, Kim McElwee, Marlon Antunez, Skye Mooney, Tudi Roche, Chris Gerben, Caroline Spears, Stephen Aman, Adnan Khan, Jim Yount, Milan Mosse Phil C’de Baca, Teresa Hernandez, Carlos Yuen, Ganbat Namjilsangarav, Christine Murphy, Tsogbadrakh Banzragch, Tuya Banzragch, and Keith Bildstein
Show music: Podington Bear
Image via Wikimedia

Release Date: 18 January 2017


 

Intro Story: Unburying

When Bathsheba Smith’s family buried the body of their beloved daughter, they hoped that she would finally find peace. However, when bodysnatchers exhume her corpse, more than just Bathsheba’s body is unearthed. What happens when what was meant to stay buried becomes unburied?

Producers: Noelle Chow and Kate Nelson
Featuring: Magellan Pfluke
Special thanks: Xochitl Raine Rhodes Longstaff
Music: Response Data, Standing Like a Tree – Part II, Doomflaffsonoria (Whale Mix by Eisenlager)

Image via Flickr

 

Story 1: Vanishing Remains

Braden Grant Recipient Reade Levinson travels to Mongolia in hopes of witnessing a practice known as sky burial, in which the bodies of the dead are prepared for the afterlife. But as Reade learns on her journey, in Mongolia the forces of urbanization, modernization and environmental change may be threatening this sacred ritual. “The scene would be not very nice, when you look at a dog running around with someone’s hand in his mouth.”

Producer: Reade Levinson
Featuring: Ganbat Namjilsangarav, Christine Murphy, Tsogbadrakh and Tuya Banzragch, and Dr. Keith Bildstein
Special Thanks: Christy Hartman, Jake Warga, and Generation Anthropocene
Music: All ambient recorded by Reade Levinson, sound effects downloaded from FreeSound.

Image via Thinkstock

 

Story 2: Pet Cemetery

The bond between humans and pets run deeper than the eye can see. But what happens when the pets pass away? In this story, take a step into a pet cemetery and listen to stories of people’s heartfelt relationships with their pets.

Producers: Yue Li, with help from Jackson Roach
Featuring: Lackie Langelier, Ben Cady, Skye Mooney, Sofi Filipa, Milan Mosse (voice over for Ben Cady), Phil C’de Baca, Teresa Hernandez, Carlos Yuen
Music: Alex Finch – Seeking Clarity Pt. II, Ketsa – Far From Home, Ketsa – Clear and Present, Podington Bear – Lonesome, Podington Bear – Pink Gradient

Image via Wikimedia Commons

 

Story 3: The Cryonicist’s Wager

As a young man, Jim Yount was introduced to cryonics, the idea that you can freeze your body in liquid nitrogen, until the day doctors are able to revive you. It seemed so natural to him that he’s devoted the majority of his life to making sure as many people as possible have access to cryonics services. For Jim, acceptance of death is simply cultural conditioning, and he’s not interested in buying into it. He thinks we can do better than an “after”life. As he says, “we’re not going to heaven we’re going to the future.”

Producers: Nicole Bennett-Fite, Jake Warga, and Eileen Williams
Featuring: Jim Yount, Acting President of the American Cryonics Society
Music: Karma Ron

Image via Wikimedia Commons

 

Story 4: Anger Box

There are some stories that feel too painful – too huge, too impossible to change – to ever be said out loud. We box those stories up, keep them buried down deep. Naveen Kassamali, an art therapist, talks about a group of people who have a lot of practice keeping those kinds of stories inside, and what happened when she tried to dig them up again.

Producers: Cathy Wong, Jenny March, Jake Warga
Featuring: Naveen Kassamali, Adnan Khan
Music: Thread of Clouds – Blue Dot Sessions, Migration

Image via Pixabay

 

Story 5: Unburying Iran

Imagine Iran’s beautiful history completely erased by oppression. Barbad Golshiri, an artist from Tehran, simply won’t let that happen. His art is surrounded of motifs of cemeteries and burial grounds, but he doesn’t seek to bury the past. Instead, he finds his own creative way of portraying burials as the only way to preserve the past. “Remembrance does not need a corpse. That’s why you have a cenotaph. You don’t need corpses.” With this, Golshiri has set off on a quest to memorialize all who were forgotten after the Iran-Iraq War

Producers: Katie Lan, recorded with the help of Jackson Roach
Featuring: Barbad Golshiri
Music: Dropped Ticket by Podington Bear, Isolate by Moby

Image: Collage by Katie Lan from Wikimedia Commons , Pixabay, and New York

 

Story 6: Through the Deep

We join Dr. Janet Voight on a journey down to the bottom of the ocean in an effort to discover some of Earth’s buried biological treasures.

Producer: Kate Nelson
Featuring: Dr. Janet Voight
Music: Chris Zabriskie (We Were Never Meant to Live Here, Remember Trees?, The Oceans Continue to Rise), Podington Bear

Image via Wikipedia Commons

 

Story 7: Time Capsule

For over a century, students at Stanford have been leaving a tiny trinket underneath the tiles of the Main Quad. These items represent significant life events or just silly things. This story explores how leaving even the smallest memories can be so significant.

Producers: Yue Li and Reade Levinson
Featuring: Leslie Winnick and voices of Stanford’s class of 2016
Music: Trellis , Golden Era, Dryness (by Podington Bear)

Image via Wikipedia Commons