Studs Terkel with Tony Parker: Interviewing an Interviewer

"I'm looking for the uniqueness in each person. And I'm not looking for some such abstraction as the truth, because it doesn't exist. What I am looking for is what the truth is for them."

Louis "Studs" Terkel (1912-2008) is an iconic oral historian, Chicago-based radio broadcaster, and author. Above and below is excerpted exactly as presented from an interview with Tony Parker, often described as the UK's own "Studs".

There was a black woman one time, I saw her standing in the street, with two or three of her kids round her and she was looking in a shop window. And as I'm walking by, I look to see what it is she's looking at -- and you know what? There's nothing in the window, she's looking in an empty shopwindow -- looking at nothing. So naturally I'm curious -- naturally I'm curious -- so I say 'Excuse me ma'am -- but what are we looking at?' She doesn't seem to mind being spoken to by a stranger, and she doesn't turn her head around to see who's asking her or anything, and after a moment or so she says 'Oh' she says, 'Oh, dreams, I'm just looking at dreams.' So I've got my tape recorder and I switch it on and I say 'Good dreams, bad dreams...?' And she starts to talk. Then she talks a little bit more, and a little bit more. And her kids are playing around her, and they can see I'm tape-recording what their mom is saying, and when she stops talking after eight, maybe ten minutes or so, one of them says "Heh mom, can we listen to what you said?' And I ask her if it's OK with her and she says yes, so I play it back and she listens to it too. And when it's over, she gives a little shake of her head and she looks at me, and she says "Well until I heard that, I never knew I felt that way.' 'I never knew I felt that way!' Isn't that incredible? The way I look at it, it's like being a gold prospector. You find this precious metal in people when you least expect it.

"If you can't have the [static magnetic] field you love, love the [static magnetic] field you have." - William A. Edelstein

Ever have an MRI? If so, you benefited from many inventions by Bill Edelstein, whose passing, earlier this week, is mourned by many.

"He's silent, wherever he is." [On metaphorical terrain.]

"By now one more American sheep the shepherds have temporarily lost track of, somewhere in the high country above this ruinous hour, cragfast* in the storm."

-From page 402 of "Bleeding Edge" by Thomas Pynchon.

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*From the Oxford English Dictionary:

New Stories Needed

In my new essay, What Will Replace the Hero's Journey, on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog, I explore the skepticism generated by reliance on the hero's journey narrative: person goes on journey, is challenged, resolves challenges, and is transformed. I offer several examples of authentic stories that reflect the complexity and messiness of life, and that are currently being publicly shared by organizations.

An excerpt:

Familiarity can be extremely comforting. In a hero’s journey, there are definitive winners, villains, benefactors, and plot twists. It certainly accelerates message comprehension: You too—if you act similarly—can be a hero.

But familiarity can also, ultimately, breed skepticism. And if audiences are becoming skeptical of such pat storylines, what, if anything, might replace the common hero’s journey?

Click here to read the full post.

How to Gather Stories

How to Gather Stories, a piece inspired by my recent work with philanthropic foundation program officers, has just been published at the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog.

Here's an excerpt:

Ask: “Tell me about a time…” By asking about a discrete moment in time, you encourage the sharing of experience and the details and emotion that accompany the recollection.

Ask for superlatives....

We tend to remember the superlative moments in our lives. Probe for those experiences. Ask for heightened emotional moments. Emotion is often referred to as the “glue” of memory. Ask people about moments when they have felt connected, surprised, or touched. Ask for “Aha!” moments of epiphany and for turning points.

You can also share a story of your own—and then be quiet. Sit back, and transfer all your attention to the person with whom you just shared your story. Most likely, you will hear one in return. If necessary, ask: “Does that story remind you of anything?”

You can read the entire short piece here.

Adam Gopnik on Stories & Science

Good science is more like Proust than Mr. Popper’s Penguins; its stories startle us with their strangeness, but they intrigue us by their originality, and end by rewarding us with the truth, after an effort. It is the shock good stories offer to our expectations, not some sop they offer to our pieties, that makes tales tally, and makes comtes count. The story that tells us only that we like all kinds of stories lacks that excitement, that exclusionary power, which is the only thing that makes us want to hear stories at all.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/can-science-explain-why-we-tell-stories.html#ixzz1vheSMDdd

"h" vs. "H" (and the Mountain Goats, Down Under)

The Mountain Goats rocking Melbourne's Toff, 9 May 2012 (iPhone photo).

Last week I was in Melbourne, Australia, for the 20th annual meeting of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. Melbourne is a great place for live music, and, as it happened, I found out in advance that the Mountain Goats would be in town! So, when I travelled Down Under I did so with a ticket for what was to be a sold-out show at Melbourne's The Toff in Town.

How eager was I to see the Mountain Goats (whose songs I've loved for years, but whom I'd never seen live)? Let's just say I went to the Toff a whole day early, to check out the venue, which is how I came to see Max Savage and the False Idols play soul-tinged country-western Rock-n-Roll:

Max Savage and the False Idols at the Toff, 8 May 2012 (camera: Ricoh GX-100).

However, dear NeuroCooking friends, my topic today may not be singer-songwriters, or rock-n-roll, or intimate venues for live music, or fantastic audiences who shout out the choruses to early Mountain Goats songs, allowing Mr. John Darnielle to sing just the verses, or even the persistent paradox of how listening to songs about self-destructive persons engaged in abusive relationships can be uplifting. No, my topic today may be beer.

I like hoppy beers, like India Pale Ales. When I visit someplace with unfamiliar offerings on tap, especially overseas, I will ask the bartender to recommend a beer. So, that Tuesday night at the Toff, I asked the bartender:

"What's hoppy? Like an IPA?"

And he replied:

"Yes. Would you like a taste?"

I did a double-take, and looked at the taps, and yes, they had a beer on tap called "Hoppy."

And yes, it was.

This "hoppy" vs. "Hoppy" reminded me, instantly, of the old "Who's on first" routine:

It's too late to see Abbott and Costello live, but, thankfully, it's not too late to see the Mountain Goats, which I recommend that you do, wherever and whenever you can!

"We love you, John!" The Mountain Goats at the Toff, 9 May 2012 (iPhone photo).

Simple Stories & Complex Narratives

Read my new post, reflecting on the question, "If your organization is seeking to solve a complex problem, must it always share complex stories?" Inspired, of course, by Invisible Children's Kony 2012, the most viral video ever.

I don't happen to think simple stories are needed to share complex narratives. (I use "narrative" to refer to the larger story and frame, and "story" as the small episodes and moments that encapsulate the larger narrative.) People are emotionally complex, live complex lives, and can relate to authentic, emotionally complex stories. The longevity of The New Yorker, the popularity of This American Life, the respect and attention paid the deeply reported journalism of ProPublica attest to our willingness to thoroughly engage with complex long-form narratives.

Read the complete essay here.

Mr. Feffer goes to New York.

With all due respect to Ms. Ginevra de' Benci, when it comes to the arts, one of the best things about Washington D.C. is the Capital Fringe Festival, and, for each of the past three years, one of the best things about the Capital Fringe Festival has been the plays of Mr. John Feffer.

For one night only, on Monday, April 23rd, NeuroCooking friends in the New York City area can see Mr. Feffer play seven characters in his 2011 work, "The Bird" ("In search of adventure in Poland 1989, a young man discovers a female assassin, a Jewish skinhead, a mysterious bird, and the end of innocence.").

That's at the Tada theater, 15 W 28th St, New York, April 23rd, at 8 PM. Tickets here.

Why Story Matters

"Communication is more than transactional. Communication can be transformative."

Stanford Social Innovation Review just published an excerpt from a lecture I recently delivered at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University (my alma mater).

Click here to see my advice to future professional communicators, including:

• Why focus on storysharing, as opposed to storytelling
• The importance of story elicitation in business communication
• The transformational power of story

The Smithsonian's TrailBike.

We rarely see bikes of any kind in museums, let alone trendy artisanal bikes featuring custom steelwork and wooden accessories. Today though, in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, we came upon this twin-forked Ho Chi Minh Trail bike:

Apparently though, these bikes were not ridden, but pushed:

"Ho Chi Minh Trail

The North Vietnamese dispatched troops and tons of supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a series of rough roadways and footpaths that led through the highland jungles of Laos and Cambodia to South Vietnam. Civilian porters pushing overloaded bicycles transported everything from boxes of ammunition to bags of rice."

Long-Form Storytelling in a Short-Attention-Span World

Last night, I attended Long-Form Storytelling in a Short-Attention-Span World, the first public event of the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica, in conjunction with The New School. The panelists were:
Ira Glass, Host and Producer, This American Life
David Remnick, Editor, The New Yorker
Raney Aronson-Rath, Series Senior Producer, Frontline
Stephen Engelberg, Managing Editor, ProPublica
The moderator was Alison Stewart, Co-Anchor, Need To Know.

Here are my notes from the discussion

Engelberg
If it's a really great story, you wind up in a place you couldn't imagine at the beginning.

Remnick
Sometimes you have to publish a writer's B piece in order to get their A piece.

Glass
Great stories happen to those who can tell them.

Glass said that his mentor, Keith Talbot of NPR, told him: "Every story is an answer to the question, "How should I live my life?"

Engelberg
The new era of all these choices tends to crowd out poorly done, bad journalism.

Aronson-Rath
We used to save the good stuff for the end, because we thought everyone would watch all the way through. Now, we're seeing that we need to know more, earlier.
[On the use of iPads, etc, to watch Frontline] People want to be more engaged in the content. We need to move from 2-dimensional to 3-dimensional storytelling. We need to let people see eyes and pores.

Remnick
Language is still the greatest invention we have...I'm not sure I want readers to leap out of language and into video just because the technology is available.

Aronson-Rath
We use the other media to take the viewer 15 feet deeper. How do you use the other media, righteously?

Glass
I'm not sure I agree with the premise of this panel: that we live in a short attention span world. People listen to us for an average of 48 minutes!

Remnick
If the story is good enough it's going to reach 2 degrees deeper than the surface stuff and change somebody's life in a significant way.
We have to think about the density of a story. I mean density in the best sense, like chocolate cake.

Engelberg
I try to outwit the reader...I try to give people enough candy to keep them interested.

Remnick
It can't all be brown food.

Engelberg
The Kindle, the iPad, etc., is about to make long-form journalism incredibly accessible.

Remnick
The New York Times is elitist because it tries to do the greatest thing possible.

Glass
Radio is reporting on things that have happened. In order for TV to be compelling, it has to be emotionally compelling; something has to be happening. TV is like reporting on the future!