Ira Glass on Storytelling

It is really difficult for me to describe how I get to where I go on the web.

The best analogy I have comes from observing my father control the television as a child.  At first blush, it seems almost random; channel after channel each for only a few seconds sometimes it seems we would watch seven programs at a time.  After years and years of complaining, I am starting to see the bigger picture.  When my father watches TV there are certain things he will almost certainly do: check the ESPN crawl, scan through the movie channels, scan through the news channels and then settle in on about two programs.  The process repeats itself several times every half hour.  Re-check scores, see where that classic movie is, get the latest news update and then settle in on two or three new programs (you can only fully watch one, but you need to have back-ups for commercial times).

That strategy works for someone who is entertained by the television.  Things happen at a set schedule, and you are forced to make a decision about the programming you want to watch at any given moment within a very specific 20-70 channel parameter.  (Tivo is an entirely different story).

At the end of a TV-surfing day you can recommend different programs to watch at different times and expect that a friend might catch the next episode so you can have a chat about it.  But on the internet, time and content do not drive decisions.  On the internet, it is all there all the time whenever you want it.  You are only driven by your interestests and at the end of web-surfing day you have nothing really to show for it unless you share some links.

What the heck does this story have to do with storytelling?  I'm not sure. What I do know is that the point of my story is to say, I am not really sure how I found my way to this series of videos about storytelling, but I felt like you needed something to make you interested in watching them.

Ira Glass on Storytelling:









I hope you enjoyed.