I watched the four videos of Ira Glass on Storytelling. What stood out to me the most about these four videos is how he kept talking about the fact that one must acknowledge the fact that starting out, your work is gonna suck. You have, what he calls the “taste” for it, but you just can’t translate those ideas/thoughts/creativity into your work. It takes awhile before everything comes together and your final piece is the result you came up with in your head.

Another thing about Ira Glass’s videos that really struck me was his talk about how you speak in the broadcasts. He mentioned two pitfalls of radio broadcasting and the one he said that he fell into was trying to talk like someone on the radio or television. He emphasized the fact that your best results come from when you speak naturally, speak like you would with friends and family and such. Especially make sure to not “underline” every third word, which sounds so staged and fake.

In Radiolab’s Jab Abumrad “How Radio Creates Empathy” video, he talks about what he calls “coimagination.” He loves radio because he feels he can create an image with his words in his own head, but his listeners have their own personal “paintbrush” with which they can imagine what he’s talking about. This is what is unique and great about radio, and audio storytelling in general, because each person has a different image, a different perspective, of what the speaker is talking about.