This week, we had to watch Ira Glass talk about storytelling. It was broken up into 4 parts, each focusing on a different point.

Part one went over the two building blocks for stories on the radio; anecdotes and a moment of reflection. An anecdote is simply a sequence of actions. Glass emphasizes that action is essential; no matter how boring the story is, actions give it momentum.
The moment of reflection brings the whole story together, a moral, purpose, a reason the story was being told. This seems to me the harder part of the story to pick up on.

Part two was on finding great stories, where the “real work” is. You’ll kill a lot of stories before you find the one you want. A lot seems to rely on luck.

Part three was on good taste. Ira simply said that you’ll probably produce a lot of crap for a while but the fact that you know it’s crap shows your taste. It takes a lot of time to actually like what your making. My favorite part of these clips was in this segment when Ira played a clip he made 8 or 9 years into his career and it was horrible. He critiqued himself really harshly.

Part four was on the two common pitfalls; speakers trying to imitate other people on the tv or radio and having a horrible personality. The most interesting way you can speak on the radio is how you do in real life. You should not try to change it. You also want to make sure you don’t constantly talk about yourself and have a good balance of you and the subject.

After watching these youtube videos, I listened to an episode of This American Life, which I have listened to a few times before. I have always been impressed with this program because a lot of talk radio is so hard to keep your attention on but Ira Glass always sucks you in.

The episode I listened to was “Switched At Birth.” (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/360/switched-at-birth)
This was a really interesting story about two babies who went were, well, switched at birth, but one mother knew the entire time and didn’t tell the girls until more than 40 years later. This was a difficult one to do on the radio, I think. The reporter, Jake Halpern, keeps describing the looks of the two girls who were switched and comparing them to the biological families and I really just wanted a visual of it. I think this story relies so much on the visual and it was difficult to translate on the radio. Also, a lot of characters were introduced at once and it was hard to keeps track of who was who at the beginning. Like “which was the biological daughter of who?” and “who raised her?” It was pretty hard to follow but got a little easier as the story progressed.