May 18, 2010, by telephone

“The StoryCorp Method” interviews exist (about 30,000) in the Library of Congress. Different than the ones people do on their own. Interviews are [he didn’t say ‘edited’] shaped by a “facilitator” (I think he called it). There’s a DB of their stories.

He’s created a National Day of Listening.

One of the possible venues he’s looking at is getting the methodology and content of SC into ESL within the next three years, maybe.

SC says you have “40 minutes to leave a legacy.”

He has a list of questions online. He wrote them and they have evolved, though they’re pretty stable by now.

“The act of doing an interview is an important process.”

With SC there’s no assumption about a public. “It’s purely a human service, first and foremost.”

Among the rewards of his work is “seeing the impact that doing interviews has on people’s lives.”

“We still shape the interview [of the ones they have in their archive and LOC]. We have guidelines for the kinds of questions to ask.”

“SC is less of a telling project than a listening project. The mic gives you license to ask questions you don’t normally ask. It reminds people that their lives do matter.”

Re teaching people to use equipment: It’s pretty easy. With audio, it’s just ‘put on the headphones and hold the mic close and be in a quiet place.’ Technology is not an obstacle if they want to do it.

To help people learn:

• Find easy equipment.
• Give them adequate training.
• Make sure they’re comfortable with the equipment.
• Give them examples: they have to hear what is possible
• Sometimes in schools he goes around and asks, if you could interview one person in the world, who would it be and why would you want to talk to them.

There has been a lot of interest in SC from the ESL world. SC offers free educational tool kits on their site.