"You know how to open a can of tuna fish, you know how to shmear it with mayonnaise..."
I chose "The Art of Misdirection" TedTalk. Apollo Rollins was engaging, entertaining, and shared sage lessons about our what captures our attention, all while performing sleight of hand magic tricks while engaging the audience. He used humor, personal interaction, storytelling, and tricks to entertain. His first lesson: that misdirection doesn’t happen off to the side, but often in front of us. Also: attention controls your perceptions. If you can control someone’s attention, what would you do with it? It’s more than balancing a poker chip on someone's shoulder, slipping a wallet out of a pocket, or unfastening a watch from someone’s wrist. I would respect my audience and make sure what I was sharing with them is valuable, informational, and entertaining.
I LOVE STORY CORPS! Their shorts have been shown on PBS for years, to the point I looked more forward to them than the show I was actually watching. They are short, only 2-3 minutes snippets giving the viewer a glimpse of their lives. Story Corps gets right to the heart by simply stating a good conversation starts by asking great questions. One of my favorites is "Two by Two," the story of two sets of twins who married in the late 40s, as told by Elliot and Hunny Reiken. Their story of meeting and the joke of them marrying twins evolved into them talking about their 60+ year marriage, where Hunny relishes the man Elliot is, and how he "doesn't have a phony bone in your body," and holds her fantastically when they dance. In "No more questions!" Kay Wang, a cantankerous grandmother, was interviewed by her son Chang and granddaughter Chen on her courtship with her husband and her job as a detective at a Bloomingdale's in NYC. Kay passed away a few weeks after the interview, and Chang explains how he still talks to her ashes, and misses her spirit, "balancing between independence and stubbornness."
I LOVE STORY CORPS! Their shorts have been shown on PBS for years, to the point I looked more forward to them than the show I was actually watching. They are short, only 2-3 minutes snippets giving the viewer a glimpse of their lives. Story Corps gets right to the heart by simply stating a good conversation starts by asking great questions. One of my favorites is "Two by Two," the story of two sets of twins who married in the late 40s, as told by Elliot and Hunny Reiken. Their story of meeting and the joke of them marrying twins evolved into them talking about their 60+ year marriage, where Hunny relishes the man Elliot is, and how he "doesn't have a phony bone in your body," and holds her fantastically when they dance. In "No more questions!" Kay Wang, a cantankerous grandmother, was interviewed by her son Chang and granddaughter Chen on her courtship with her husband and her job as a detective at a Bloomingdale's in NYC. Kay passed away a few weeks after the interview, and Chang explains how he still talks to her ashes, and misses her spirit, "balancing between independence and stubbornness."
The joy in this lesson is relational storytelling that is compelling and heartfelt. For StoryCorps, Kay's story was told from competing points of view: she saw herself as grouchy, selfish, confrontational, but her family remembered her as caring and strong-willed. The Reikens' stories complemented one another: it evolved from the story of two sets of twins marrying in a double wedding, to celebrating the longevity of their union. This also goes back to what Rollins said about controlling perceptions. My favorite StoryCorps are the ones animated by The Rauch Brothers. I find this design commands my attention and enhances the storytelling. To tie it to technology, I have seen the shorts on PBS, YouTube, and Facebook: they are accessible. Innovative? They are committed to telling the story of everyone who perished in the 9/11 attacks on NYC; that is a tremendous task and an extraordinary feat.
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