This week, I watched a couple of videos where Ira Glass talks about what makes good audio storytelling. One thing he said that really stood out to me was that finding a good story is often harder and takes longer than actually producing it. I understand that this is true because for example, finding the actual algorithms to solve the Rubix cube would be harder than actually executing them. Ira Glass said that for his team at This American Life, they spend more than half their week just looking for stories worth telling. He said you have to be okay with killing a story if it isn’t working, even if you’ve already spent time recording it. That’s something I think I’d struggle with. If I spent all day interviewing someone, I’d feel bad about just deleting it. But he made me realize it’s not about disrespecting the person or wasting time. It’s about respecting the final story enough to make sure only the best parts stay. The same principle applies with pruning a bonsai tree where you’d cut off the small weak branches so the stronger ones can grow better. He also talked about how everything you record is “trying to be crap.” That made me laugh a bit, but I understood what he meant. Most raw recordings are messy and unstructured and not very interesting on their own. It’s up to us to shape them into something that actually reaches people’s hearts. He said you have to be “ruthless” about cutting out the boring parts. I think a lot of beginners including myself probably try to keep everything they recorded because it feels precious. But now I see that storytelling isn’t about collecting everything. It’s about finding only what matters.
Listening to the War of the Worlds broadcast by Orson Welles helped me see what Ira Glass was talking about. That broadcast wasn’t just people reading lines in a studio. I think that’s why people believed it was real back in 1938. They used the structure and pacing of normal radio to their advantage. Ira Glass said that the best stories have a sense of drama and characters interacting with each other. Even though War of the Worlds was fake, it sure did sound like the reporters were witnessing everything first-hand, describing alien tripods stomping across New Jersey farmlands with tentacles and poisonous gas and are currently heading towards New York! I didn’t need visuals to imagine it. The calm way they described terrifying things made it feel even scarier.
Another thing Ira Glass said was that beginners often try to talk like “people on TV” instead of just being themselves. I think I do that too sometimes, like trying to sound more formal or “professional” instead of just… me! He said people connect better with someone who talks like a normal human being. When I think about War of the Worlds again (even though it was dramatic), it still sounded like real people reporting news instead of actors reading lines. Maybe that’s why it was so powerful. Overall, what I learned from Ira Glass this week is that good audio storytelling takes patience, being honest, and being willing to fail many times before finding something special! And listening to War of the Worlds just showed the real effects of powerful storytelling when done right.
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