Dave Isay, founder and president of StoryCorps, talks with KC Counts about the value of recording and archiving conversations with loved ones. Educators are encouraged to offer students the opportunity to participate in "The Great Thanksgiving Listen". Here's a transcript of their conversation:
KC Counts:
So Dave, before we talk about The Great Thanksgiving Listen, can you talk a little bit about the inspiration for StoryCorps?
Dave Isay:
Well, I've been making radio documentaries for decades before starting StoryCorps. And it was such an incredible experience to be able to go and use the microphone to ask questions you wouldn't normally ask of people to get into places that you wouldn't normally get to go and record, as you well know. And I wanted the rest of the country to have that incredible experience that I've had of using the microphone to talk about things that are not everyday things to talk about. So that was an inspiration for StoryCorps, but really everything that happened in my life in one way or another led to the creation of this thing.
When I was a kid, when I was 12 or 13 years old, my grandparents came home for Thanksgiving with my grandmother with her sisters and They were, you know, wild characters and there was a tape recorder around the house. This was decades ago. It was either reel to reel or an early cassette recorder. And I recorded interviews with them. And, you know, a decade, two decades later, I went looking for those interviews and they were gone. And I still want to go to my mom's house. look through her closet to see if I can find those tapes, what I would give to be able to listen to those voices again of these folks who passed away many, many years ago.
So part of the impetus for StoryCorps was making sure that nobody made this stupid mistake that I made. Each of these interviews goes to the Library of Congress, which means that generations from now they'll be available. So those were two kind of landmark moments that led to the creation of StoryCorps, but there are many others.
KC Counts:
Yeah, and as I was just talking about this upcoming interview with some colleagues, people remember StoryCorps coming to town, setting up on the Mesilla Plaza here in southern New Mexico and just having people come out. So we're going to go digging around in the archives there to see if we can find some of those local interviews. But as we enter the holiday season and families are coming together, the great Thanksgiving listen sounds like a great opportunity for folks to make some of those memories.
Dave Isay:
For sure. Now, the Great Thanksgiving Listen is for everybody. Everybody can participate in this using our app, which allows you to record an interview and with one tap, upload it to the Library of Congress. The Great Thanksgiving Listen is largely educator-driven, and we'd love any educators who are listening to this, high school teachers, to assign this to their students, usually at social studies or English English language arts teachers who assign recording a parent, a brother, a sister, a mentor over Thanksgiving weekend, kind of is the most fun and meaningful assignment that you may get all year. So we love to have students do this and we love to have everybody do it. Anyone can do it. You go to thegreatlisten.org and there's instructions, although it's very, very simple. You could just go and download the app and figure out how to do it yourself, but we would love to have as many participants as possible. We've had hundreds of thousands of people participate in the Great Thanksgiving List so far and we're ready for hundreds of thousands more.
KC Counts:
So what is your message to educators? Because some kids might say, oh, they're giving me homework over Thanksgiving!
Dave Isay:
You know, I now run into people who had this as an assignment and who are adults now and I run into in the course of business who say that they remember this as being one of the most memorable and meaningful assignments that they had. I don't think it's not a burden to most kids and they usually get other homework anyway over Thanksgiving. So even if they don't realize it now, at some point they'll realize that having done these interviews with the people who matter to them was an important moment and important for both the person they're interviewing and for them as well when they get to listen to these long in the future and maybe that loved one who they interviewed isn't around anymore.
KC Counts:
Is there a special message for educators in terms of how to guide students through the process?
Dave Isay:
So at thegreatlisten.org, we have lesson plans, permission slips, videos, anything and everything an educator could need to get their students to be well prepared to do this assignment over Thanksgiving. So there's lots of stuff, but again, you can make it as simple as just letting students know to download the app and hit record and sit with a loved one and tell them how much you love them by listening to their story.
KC Counts:
At what point did you realize that StoryCorps just created this wonderful opportunity to write books?
Dave Isay:
We actually have a new, we have our first graphic novel coming out in a couple weeks called Home of the Brave. i love radio and obviously like the soul is kind of contained in the human voice and there's something so immediate and visceral about voice but we started doing books almost you know soon after StoryCorps launched and we've done a lot of books And there's something about print that is, you know, radio is fantastic, but it's ephemeral. It's out and, you know, once that voice has spoken, it's gone. And books are more permanent. So, you know, doing books of these stories was sort of a natural for us. And it's been, you know, there are some stories that are best told on radio, there are some stories best told in print, there are some stories best told in video and so forth, and we look for the stories that are best told in print for the books that we do. And we'd love to have people take a look at Home of the Brave and hear what they think of it.
KC Counts:
So because you had that experience as a kid and lost those very important conversations, what was the first thing you did when you figured out this way of saving these forever, for yourself, for example? Who did you reach out to speak with?
Dave Isay:
So the first interview that I ever did, Interview 001 for StoryCorps, again, there have been hundreds of thousands at this point, was with the last person who was still alive from my grandmother's generation, my great uncle Sandy. And I sat with him. We built a booth out of styrofoam plastered to wood to make it soundproof. It was a model booth. And I brought my uncle Sandy in to ask him about his life. And he was, you know, my uncle Sandy was just a regular guy. He wasn't a huge character. And I wanted to know like what would happen with just an absolute ordinary person coming in and recording. And I started the interview with my uncle Sandy and he told me about meeting my great aunt Birdie. And my great aunt Birdie was like the way I knew her was crazy Birdie. She was, she insisted she had invented fruit salad. I mean, she just bonkers. She was out of her mind. But to my uncle Sandy, my Aunt Birdie had died, to my great uncle Sandy, this was the love of his life. And he told me a story about how after World War II, when he got back from serving in the Army, that he asked my Aunt Birdie to meet him on a stoop on 14th Street because he had fallen in love with her before the war and he had just gotten back. They'd only met a couple of times. And he was sitting on a stoop in Manhattan here in Manhattan and he saw my aunt Birdie walking down the street and he told me that she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in purple from head to toe and this was just he was just sitting on a random stoop and he turned around and he panicked and he tried to escape into the building and the door was locked and he started crying and said you know I think I think to myself, if that door had been open, it would have destroyed my life. The door was locked, so Birdie and Sandy met and married and had this great love story. So, you know, seeing that, seeing the impact that this had on my uncle Sandy, this was when we started StoryCorps. We used to press CDs of every interview. And my uncle, who was in his 90s, he still drove, used to drive around listening to that interview over and over again. So there was a lot to learn from those very, very early interviews.
KC Counts:
So special. All right. Well, easy for anyone to do. Dave Isay founder of StoryCorps, thank you so much for reminding us that we've got to take the time and save these conversations. And you'll learn so much, right? Things you never knew about people that are closest to you.
Dave Isay:
The microphone gives you the license to say things, to ask things that you don't normally get to ask, as you well know.
KC Counts:
Thank you very much.
Dave Isay:
Thank you, KC.
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