Feb 01, 2010
Ed Mullen
Storytelling is a tool used to share things we’ve learned and things we value with our community in order to increase common experience and advance our objectives.
The impulse to tell stories is one of our most human capacities and is central to our ability to share knowledge and grow as a whole. Stories allow us to span time, gain from the experiences of others and advocate for a desired action. The better the storytelling, the more wisdom can be transferred and unnecessary effort avoided in the rehashing of previously attempted approaches. It includes everything from the pragmatic “Hey, I know a guy who died after he ate the kind of berry you’re holding” to the culturally binding (and culturally distinguishing) “How was the world created? Well, it all started…”.
Stories move us ahead. Or rather, they move us in a direction. The direction reflects the intention of the teller and advances some agenda, however malignant or benign. The best storytellers move us the most. When we realize this, the value of telling a good story becomes quite clear.
Getting to Know Each Other, 7000 Miles Away
One World Youth Project is helping students from across the world understand each other in meaningful ways.
Dec 21, 2011
Ed Mullen
Not long before Lake Area Middle School was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, Jess Rimington was facilitating a classroom exchange program there; one of the earliest implementations of her then-fledgling organization, One World Youth Project. Jess’s classroom was paired with a classroom in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Over the course of the academic year, the students in her New Orleans classroom and their Mongolian counterparts shared their experiences, stories, and learned the similarities of their lives. They got to know each other.
When the floodwalls were breached, the Gentilly was flooded and with it, Lake Area Middle School. Jess heard nothing from her New Orleanian students. It would be months before she would hear the harrowing stories of students waving down planes from their rooftops or hear about the boy who was forced to break through his ceiling to get free.
Dec 16, 2010
Ed Mullen
Chris Jordan’s amazing photographs of birds and the indigestible pieces of plastic that killed them are amazing in their efficient and potent storytelling.
Since I saw this series, I can not get them out of my head. Every time I see plastic in a gutter, I think about this. And that’s great.
Someone designed all those things. Someone used them. Some person lit dozens of cigarettes of that lighter. Someone took those caps of their soda. Maybe me.
View the full Midway: Message from the Gyre series.
Feb 11, 2010
Ed Mullen
Radiolab co-host Robert Krulwich (also NPR Science Correspondent and Special Correspondent for ABC News) was asked to give the commencement speech at California Institute of Technology in 2008. When the science journalist addressed the graduates of science-related programs, he chose to speak to them not about science, exactly, but about the value of storytellng.
While Krulwich specifically talks about the reasons scientists need to tell their stories well—they must compete with anti-Science proponents—his lessons can be broadly applied. Good ideas can fail because they are poorly explained, while bad ideas can win because they their explanation is convincingly told.