Each year, the Stanford Storytelling Project awards Braden Grants to support the research, writing, and production of audio documentaries. The aim of the program is to help students learn how to tell powerful, research-driven stories based on testimony they gather through interviews, research, or oral history archives. Grantees receive up to $2,500, along with teaching, training, and mentorship for the duration of the project.

Here's what the 2023 Grantees had to say about their experience.

Applying for a Braden Grant? Here's what you need to know. (BLEEPED VERSION)

Have you ever felt like your cell phone is controlling your life, or that of someone you know? I’m sure you’ve asked yourself, “Why is it so addictive?” and then just scrolled once again. In this episode, dive into the new yet familiar world of TikTok as three Stanford students uncover the dangers of data collection, addiction, and algorithmic manipulation, shedding light on the impact of social media on privacy and mental well-being.

Data Diaries: Unpacking the TikTok Algorithm and Data Practices

When’s the last time you spent an entire day without looking at your to-do list? Chances are —never. If so, you’ve come to the right place. Come take a break from your productive routine and join us as we uncover the layers of productivity, one checkbox at a time. Hold onto your Google calendars, because after this episode, you might just want to throw that to-do list away and join us as we lie in the wood chips!

Behind the Grind: Revealing the Hidden Realities of Productivity Culture

Sometimes you have to climb mountains to go on an adventure, other times the adventure is hidden right in front of you. Join us as we uncover a campus mystery in real time, one where the writing was on the walls the whole time. Are all of Stanford’s stories set in-stone?

Deep the Plaque

What can you expect from Sound Stories? The 2024 class weighs in.

Taught by Laura Joyce Davis through the Stanford Storytelling Project, this hands-on, workshop-oriented course is designed to teach you the fundamentals of podcast storytelling. Class work will include pitching, interviewing, scriptwriting, narration, audio editing, and sound design. You’ll learn time-honored principles for strong storytelling in any medium, as well as strategies specific to storytelling in sound. Though we focus on audio stories, the craft skills you learn here are transferable to making stories for any medium, from print and performance to film and games. By the end of the course, you will have crafted both a narrative essay and a 10-minute podcast episode that entertains, challenges, and moves your audience. All fully produced student pieces will be published in the Stanford Storytelling Project Soundings podcast. 
Course info: https://shorturl.at/eLOR0

2024 Sound Stories trailer

Sound Stories Trailer

Have you ever felt like an outsider in a new place, not sure how to act? In this podcast, we delve deep into how Hawai’i has changed over the past 2000 years as a result of different groups of outsiders, from the military to tourists to scientists. Along the way, we might just discover how we all can be better outsiders to wherever we may visit.

Foreign Footsteps

Have you ever wondered how seemingly ordinary people are able to accomplish extraordinary feats? In this episode of Soul Searching, we explore this question and attempt to find the common threads between rowing across the Atlantic ocean, founding a start-up venture, and raising thousands of dollars for charity. Listen now to hear three amazing stories from some incredibly accomplished Stanford students, learn about their motivations, and difficulties, and glean transformational takeaways from their experiences.

Soul Searching

Living Memory

A story of the rise of electric vehicles and their promise to make a more sustainable planet. Yet this promise has proven to be detrimental to the quality of life for the people in the Congo. Sustainability Paradox pulls back the curtain on the realities of the electric car industry, and the promising solutions that might offer real, meaningful change.

Produced by Sydney Davis and Jana Gomri with support from Laura Joyce Davis and the Stories to Save Our Planet class, a part of the Stanford Storytelling Project.

Asu Kulu - Undergraduate Congolese Student at Stanford, Anonymous Congolese Miners via Friends of the Congo https://friendsofthecongo.org/ Links to an external site.

Link to References https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GcK2hsyt8L_VyogsNTaPxsf5AgtizYzm1F9uJHLYzxM/edit?usp=sharing Links to an external site.

All music by Blue Dot Sessions

Sustainability Paradox: Cobalt Mining in the Congo

In this episode, Nathan, Ana, and Nia explore the importance of sustainable food practices, and how alternative, truly healthy food practices are not necessarily the most commercially produced and advertised ones. The episode aims to broaden the horizon of viewing food practices in a context beyond just your own plate.

This episode was produced by Nathan Elias, Ana Nguyen, and Nia Patton, with support from Laura Joyce Davis and the Stanford Storytelling Project's course "Stories to Save Our Planet."

Complete show notes at storytelling.stanford.edu.

World On Your Plate

Stories to Save the Planet is a podcast about the stories behind climate change solutions. 

The United Nations have called climate change the challenge of our generation. A growing body of environmental storytelling is bringing clarity to complicated climate conversations by casting a vision for a better future, and providing compelling, actionable climate change solutions.

All work is produced by Stanford students, who learn the entire process of narrative podcast production in just 10 weeks, research a climate change challenge and solution of their choice, and work together to create a narrative episode. The class it taught by Laura Joyce Davis and the Stanford Storytelling Project.

Stories to Save Our Planet trailer

To hear all Soundings episodes, go to storytelling.stanford.edu orhttps://soundings.podbean.com/

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