As an avid reader, podcast listener, documentary watcher, and TEDster, I love sharing a good resource.
Check out some of these interesting and inspiring videos, radio shows (available as podcasts), documentaries, websites, and books that explore the nature of memory and demonstrate the power of narratives and the importance of connecting.
TED Talks
“Tales of Passion,” Isabel Allende
“The Art of Collecting Stories,” Jonathan Harris
“Finding Happiness in Body and Soul,” Eve Ensler
“The Music of a War Child,” Emmanuel Jal
“The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Adichie
“Listening to Shame,” Brene Brown
“The Power of Vulnerablity, ” Brene Brown
“Life’s Third Act,” Jane Fonda
“Connected, but Alone?” Sherry Turkle
“Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive,” Phuc Tran
National Public Radio
The Moth – ” True stories told live on stage without notes”
“Telling the Difficult Story,” To The Best Of Our Knowledge
“Stories of You,” To the Best of Our Knowledge
“Literature of Memory,” To the Best of Our Knowledge
“Listen Generously: The Medicine of Rachel Naomi Remen” On Being
StoryCorps—“to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening.”
“Memory and Forgetting,” Radiolab (looks at how memories are made and forgotten)
“Memoir,” Voices in the Family
“How I Got Into College,” This American Life (Act 2 and 3 – a story of the effects of different versions of the same story)
Documentaries
(Both of the following are available through Netflix.)
The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler (V-Day, “a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls” )
What I Want my Words to Do to You: Voices from Inside a Women’s Maximum Security Prison, Eve Ensler
Dogtown Redemption, a film by Amir Soltani , Opening America’s heart: “the story of America’s untouchables: Americans who survive by recycling trash in Oakland, CA.”
Other Resources
Studs Terkel: Conversations with America
Storycatchers – “records and preserves personal stories by people from every corner of our community”
Cowbird – “the most beautiful place in the world to tell stories” A collection of individual photographs accompanied by their story, either written or spoken
6billionothers.org Yann Arthu- Bertrand asks people all over the world the same questions
National Listening Day – (the day after Thanksgiving) an invitation to interview family and friends.
Transom.org – “a showcase and workshop for new public radio” which offers “tools, advice, and community” and focuses “on the power of story and the ways public media can be useful in a changing media environment”
Narrative4– started by writer Colum McCann, it “uses story exchanges as a tool for social change” and to develop empathy
PostSecret (a project that invites people to send in self-illustrated postcards on which they anonymously share a secret)
PostSecret, Frank Warren
The Secret Lives of Men and Women, Frank Warren
My Secret, Frank Warren