State Of The Human

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-

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

We can't live without stories, so today on State of the Human, we're investigating what stories do to us and for us. When are we in control of our story? When does our story control us?  We explore these questions with four stories. First, a woman is asked to come up with a story that will create life. Then, Buffalo Bill creates another kind of story: the American cowboy. Next, a cancer patient finds a new story. After this, children go beyond telling stories, and become them. Finally, two children look into strangers' houses and see stories. Hosts/Producers: Christy Hartman, Charlie Mintz Featuring: Nina Foushee, Richard White, Jess Peterson, Terri Wingham, Beth Wise, Jackson Roach, Tom Kealey Music: Los Amparito, Podington Bear, Thiaz Itch, Jared Balogh, Plurabelle, Ry-Man More info at:http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/407-episode-416-storytelling.html

Crises can take many shapes, from earthquakes, to chest pain… to a strange absence of strawberry blonde creatures in the forests of the Dominican Republic. In this show, four very different crises appear at four very different scales, affecting a person, a species, a city, and a human body. In each story, there is no emergency procedure, no obvious way out, and one person must make a choice: what are they going to save, and what are they going to sacrifice? Producers: Rachel Hamburg and Will Rogers Host: Rosie la Puma Featuring: Meg Smaker, César Avril, Nicolás Corona, Simon Winchester, Julian Lozos Music used during transitions: Chuzausen, Gustav Landin More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/419-episode-417-crisis.html

The human voice was once considered sacred. Priests and shamans would speak into ceremonial vessels made to preserve its magic. But now every Tom, Dick and Sally vibrates air like they're scratching their elbow. In this show, we try to make the voice weird again. We hear how one voice transforms its owner when he starts speaking a new language. We also hear about a parakeet who speaks like a deceased grandmother, a young man who makes a sound that baffles his neighbors, and the future of synthesized speech. Plus a story about lipreading that's guaranteed to make you pay a lot more attention, from here on out, to mouths. Producer: Charlie Mintz, Will Rogers, Rachel Hamburg Host: Charlie Mintz Featuring: Claire Woodard, Rob Ryan, Rachel Kolb, Bronwyn Reed, Clifford Nass More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season3/209-episode-310-the-human-voice.html

Unless you're a hermit living under a rock, you almost certainly spend your days passing in and out of spaces crafted for human use. You leave a bedroom designed for sleeping and go to a bathroom designed for washing and... you know. You enter an office designed for working or a store designed for buying. It's easy to forget just how much the space we're in shapes us. So this week's show is a cold-water, slap on the face, static-electric jolt reminder of just how powerfully spaces can affect the way we think and act. We have stories about paranoia in an outhouse, ghosts in an abandoned building, conformity at the mall, creativity in the classroom, memories in an apartment, and the space that separates us from everyone else, until it doesn't. Producers: Rachel Hamburg, Charlie Mintz Host: Rachel Hamburg Featuring: Alexis Petty, Larry Leifer, Kai Carlson-Wee, Chelsey Little, Aaron Thayer More info at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season3/213-episode-311-space-craf

Have you ever kept pursuing an idea even when everyone else told you it was wrong? So have most of us. There's no doubt about it, as a species, we've got a lot of conviction. But conviction can also lead to years spent howling on a cliff covered in rattlesnakes in the middle of a swamp, searching for Bigfoot. It can lead you to ride a motorcycle into the dangerous, illegal gold mining camps of Peru. It can make you stay in a relationship that doesn't make you happy. And finally, it can make you vote for one of the most absurd, offensive, and hilarious mascots to almost ever exist: the Stanford Robberbarons. On this week's episode, stories about barking up the wrong tree. Producers: Rachel Hamburg, Jane Reynolds, Xandra Clark Host: Xandra Clark Featuring: Mike Greene, Katy Ashe, Christina Ho, Yaa Gyasi, Jerry Lee, Glen Davis, Lee Rosenbaum, Vlae Kershner, Bob Ottilie, Chris Gray More info at:http://web.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season3/217-episode-312-barking-up-the-wron

Firsthand, empirical knowledge is a way of knowing we modern humans have gotten away from. The atomic number of carbon, the height of Mt. Kilimanjaro, how ant colonies work--these are things most of us never figure out ourselves. And fortunately, we don't have to. Yet, on that tricky matter of how to be a human, how to live well, what to do with ourselves, we are left all alone. There's no blueprint, no roadmap. We have to figure it out ourselves. Today on our show, three stories of people doing just that--making mistakes to learn how to live. First, a graduate student comes to a professor with a problem involving men. How does she solve it? Trial and error. Next, a story about a drastic case of trial and error, trepanation, the drilling of a hole in the skull. Last, the story of one man who spent fifteen years trying to believe something he just didn't know if he could believe. Who succeeds? Who fails? And was it worth it? Producers: Charlie Mintz, Xandra Clark, Will Rogers Host: Charlie Mintz Featuring: Pr