TRANSCRIPT:
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Luis Hernandez: Over the past 21 years, national story-gathering project StoryCorps has collected hundreds of thousands of conversations from all over the country and preserved them in the Library of Congress. It’s the largest collection of human voices ever gathered. Their latest initiative is One Small Step America, which brings together strangers from different ends of the political spectrum to have conversations that emphasize our shared humanity. StoryCorps founder and president Dave Isay will be talking about that initiative and more at the United Theater in Westerly this Friday. And he joins me now. Dave, it’s such a pleasure. Thanks so much.
Dave Isay: Luis, it’s great to be here.
Hernandez: I got to ask, just from the beginning, from the top, what inspired you to start StoryCorps? Where did it all begin?
Isay: Oh, God. (laughs) You know, basically every experience of my life led to StoryCorps. For decades before starting StoryCorps, I did documentaries for public radio. I did a lot of stuff in prisons and homeless shelters and housing developments, and a lot of stuff with people who had never been on the radio before. And I mean, you know this, it’s your everyday job that — the act of being listened to, especially for people who feel like they haven’t had the opportunity to be listened to and maybe don’t get treated with dignity all that much, is important in people’s lives; sometimes transformative. So the idea with StoryCorps was to kind of take documentaries and turn it on its head; to give everybody, instead of recording interviews for a final story that goes on the radio and is heard by a lot of people, to give everybody the chance to be listened to by a loved one. That’s who our audience is for StoryCorps of people who come into the booth. The recordings that you hear on public radio, while we love them, that’s secondary to the fact that people get the chance to have a loved one look them in the eyes and say, “How do you want to be remembered? Who was kindest to you in your life?” And, you know, be reminded that their lives matter and they won’t be forgotten.
Hernandez: Look, anywhere you go in the country, people know StoryCorps. It’s become the oral history of the entire country these last couple decades. Did you think this would become this big? Was that your goal?
Isay: Originally, StoryCorps was a time-bound project. It was going to be for a couple of years and then I was going to go back to doing radio documentaries. After starting StoryCorps — maybe six months in — I realized there’s really something important here and that I would spend the rest of my life doing this. We’re a nonprofit. We’re very much part and parcel of the spirit of public broadcasting. We’ve had about 700,000 people participate across the country. I didn’t see it coming. And honestly, at the beginning of StoryCorps, we started with a booth in Grand Central. And then we have mobile booths, airstream trailers that travel across the country. When we started, nobody came to the booth. It was this crazy idea, and it was empty. We had a couple of crazy, love them to death, but crazy super fans who would ride the subways in New York and pick people up. We had one woman who came, like, 150 times. And then at some point — in part, really, thanks to the NPR broadcasts — it got really popular. Now we’ll have thousands of people on a waiting list to get in and do an interview. But at the beginning, no, I didn’t see it coming. But it’s so simple. StoryCorps is about proximity and connection and listening. And it’s so fundamental. I have to say, I’m very easily distracted. It’s been 20 years now of StoryCorps, and I still wake up every morning and I’m pounding ideas into my cell phone. I’ve never been bored for one second. So simple. But it’s just about what it means to be human, and that’s an onion that you can peel forever.
Hernandez: Staying with that, I’m wondering, how does it feel to stop and think about the fact that StoryCorps has made this impact, that you’ve gathered thousands and thousands of stories and people now know the name and they look for it when you’re there in their city? Do you ever stop to think about the impact that this has done?
Isay: Well, we just do the work. Look, I think you know, I’m lucky enough to be doing what I was called to do. Like, this is what I was meant to do. So that’s a great feeling. It’s really good to do something that makes people’s lives a little bit better. So it’s a wonderful feeling. And, you know, it feels like there’s a lot more work to do. I think of StoryCorps as kind of a hope machine. You know, it’s made me over these 20 years much more hopeful. And we have these facilitators who travel the country collecting the wisdom of humanity. We’ve had more than a thousand of them over the years. And to a person, when they come back off the road, if you ask them what they’ve learned, their answer is a version of the Anne Frank quote that people are basically good. So it’s made me extremely hopeful, and I also realize there’s a ton of work to do because the country is kind of a mess. So a lot of that is about human connection and also proximity and the idea that people don’t feel heard. I mean, I think that’s a big reason why we see feelings of despair, the divisions in the country; people don’t feel heard and they don’t feel respected. And that gets to the core of what we’re trying to do at StoryCorps every day.
Hernandez: And that leads me into this: You’ve got this new national project called One Small Step America. You set up these conversations between strangers and differing political perspectives. I’m wondering, considering what we’re going through right now in this country, how divided we feel, have you found these conversations making a difference? What’s it been like?
Isay: Well, it feels like maybe the most important thing I’ve ever done and I’ve been on this now for eight years. And I have to say at the beginning, the operative difference between One Small Step and StoryCorps is all of the 700,000 people who’ve done StoryCorps have recorded with someone they love. And One Small Step, when we started testing eight years ago, it was the first time that strangers came to Storycorps. And exactly as you said, it’s strangers across a political divide coming together not to talk about politics, but just to get to know each other as human beings under the premise that it’s hard to hate up close. And we’ve done thousands of these, and we just became a national project knowing that the elections were coming up, knowing that there’s going to be a firestorm of division. And again, One Small Step is about toxic polarization. It’s not about arguing, which is fantastic. There’s nothing wrong with arguing. It’s about what happens when we can’t see each other as human beings. People come into this a little nervous and they come out changed.
Hernandez: So in reflecting on your life — the past 21 years with StoryCorps — I’m going to ask you some StoryCorps style questions. I have to, come on. All right, who has been the biggest influence on your life and what lessons did they teach you?
Isay: (laughs) You know, I have been doing interviews for 20 years and nobody has actually asked me that question. It’s hard to pick one. You know, I think my dad had a very big influence on my life and he was someone who really couldn’t stand phonies. That had a big influence on me. StoryCorps is the opposite of reality TV. No one comes to get rich. No one comes to get famous. When you come into a booth, it’s just out of generosity and love. And what you hear in these stories is people are not phonies in any way, shape, or form. Those stories speak to me, and I think they speak to me so strongly, in part, because my dad gave me a spidey-sense about phoniness and just an unwillingness to tolerate it.
Hernandez: How do you want to be remembered and how do you want StoryCorps to be remembered?
Isay: Well, I think that we brought people closer together and made them less fearful of one another and more hopeful about the world and about our country. I hope that people remember me as a good dad, doing a little bit of good in the world.
Hernandez: Dave Isay, founder and president of StoryCorps. It has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much, Dave.
Isay: Great talking to you as well.
Hernandez: The United Theatre in Westerly is hosting a conversation with Dave Isay this Friday where Dave will talk about the One Small Step America initiative, share some of his own story and feature a few highlights from the StoryCorps archive. That’s Friday at 5 p.m. at the United Theatre in Westerly. Learn more at https://unitedtheatre.org/shows/storycorps-a-conversation-with-founder-dave-isay/.
Listen to the conversation from the United Theatre:
