Story Now I have a confession to make. I really didn’t want to talk about roles and hats and value. I wanted to talk about story. But I didn’t want to talk about story directly. Instead, I wanted to illustrate it by structuring my entire presentation as a story. You’ve seen that with each of the headings, I labeled a component of the story. I … more »

Of all the podcasts I listen to, I enjoy This American Life the most. I enjoy it because Ira Glass, the show’s producer, has a keen sense of story. Not story in the sense of fables or fiction (which you can listen to at Storynory or The New Yorker Fiction podcast). Nor single personal narratives that you find with podcasts like The Moth Podcast (which … more »

Act 1 of this American Life’s latest episode, The Enforcers, mesmerized me. I highly recommend listening to it. Here’s the description: Three guys who go by the names Professor So and So, Jojobean and YeaWhatever spend part of each day running elaborate cons on Internet scammers. They consider themselves enforcers of justice, even after they send a man 1400 miles from home, to the least … more »

If you enjoy podcasts, check out Act One of the “Devil in Me” episode of This American Life. The episode explores how Iraqi war veteran Sam Slaven returns from Iraq with post-traumatic stress syndrome and a fear of Iraqis. Just being in the same room with an Iraqi makes him start trembling and thinking of ways to remove him (for example, by “choking him out”). … more »