Storycorps

Storycorps is a fairly simple premise: interviews of ordinary people, exploring important parts of their lives -- For instance, the famed “Danny and Annie” piece, about how these two old New Yorkers met and how they parted, and Hector Black’s recounting of the murder of his daughter.

I chose these two as examples because Storycorps is the kind of program that can hit you in the heart unexpectedly. There’s a scene in the Dannie and Annie animation wherein Dannie knows he’s going to die – so Annie hugs him, and he disappears in a poof, and the scene changes from wedding to funeral. Suddenly there were tears in my eyes. Then one of them got onto the computer screen, and I thought, “dammit, even the computer is crying.” It was that sort of moment.

I didn’t cry during Hector Black’s retelling, but I had the same thought process he did: after the initial desire to see the murderer die, I began to wonder what his motivation was. It turn out that the man was mentally ill, and had watched helplessly as his mother drowned his little sister.

We all have our stories, if we care to remember them. The premise of Storycorps is that while most people are ordinary, very few of us are inherently boring. Being boring is, in fact, a status unusual enough to be noted whenever it occurs. Most of us are actually worth listening to, and we’re all human – so if someone tries to paint a person or group of people as anything less, take it with a grain of salt. No, a mountain.

The premise is simple: talk to people and get to know them. You probably won’t be disappointed.