Dave Isay
Dave Isay (I-SAY) is the Founder and President of StoryCorps, a New York Times bestselling author, the recipient of numerous Peabody Awards, and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow. His life’s work taps into the heart and soul of the human experience. In 2003, Dave founded StoryCorps, an independent nonprofit organization based in Brooklyn, New York, that has brought more than 620,000 Americans together—two at a time—to record intimate conversations about their lives, create a human connection, pass wisdom from one generation to the next, and leave a legacy for the future. Each conversation is preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress—the largest single collection of human voices ever gathered. Millions of listeners hear StoryCorps’ weekly broadcasts on NPR’s Morning Edition, and select stories are also shared through StoryCorps’ podcast, animated shorts, digital platforms, and books. In 2015, Dave was recognized with the $1 million TED prize, awarded annually to one exceptional individual with a creative, bold vision to spark global change. Dave is currently leading StoryCorps’ work to help decrease political divisions in the United States through its latest effort, One Small Step, which was featured in a segment on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in early 2022.
- From Story Corps, Image © Harvey Wang
I'm interested in eccentrics, dreamers, visionaries, believers,” says Isay. “They all have a long-term devotion to something. Most of these people have spent their lives refusing to give up. There will always be such determined people. They give meaning to what it means to be alive.
I want to help create a world where we listen closely to each other and recognize the beauty, grace, and poetry in the lives and stories we find all around us.
You have to shut out all the chatter of what your friends are telling you to do, what your parents are telling you to do, what society is telling you to do and just go to that quiet place inside you that knows the truth.
This book is basically a love letter to nurses, teachers, social workers — the people who don’t often get celebrated for the work they do.
I think that sitting and being present with someone, and asking them important questions is something that doesn’t happen that often during the course of day-to-day life, and is one of the most profound and powerful ways we have to tell someone else how much we love them. Just asking them who they are and what they’ve learned in life. And how they want to be remembered.
You’re hearing about regular people living lives of generosity and, often, courage and decency. And you’re showing us this path, and when you hear those kinds of stories, you’re walking on holy ground. And I think that’s why people get emotional when they hear them.
I am thankful every single day that I was lucky enough to find my calling as a young man. I was twenty-two years old, headed to medical school, when I fell into public radio completely by accident."
Many of the sixty-five thousand conversations recorded in StoryCorps booths across America over the past dozen years have dealt with the subject of work, and we have dug deep into our archive to cull the most powerful stories and the wisest words from those interviews for this collection.
Listening has always been at the heart of StoryCorps' mission. And, as you read in these stories, finding what you're meant to do with your life has a lot to do with careful listening -- to the quiet voice inside that speaks who you really are.
For those of you in search of your calling, consider yourself warned: this pursuit takes discipline, resilience, sacrifice and tremendous hard work. At those moments when fear creeps in and you're unsure where to go or what to do next, remember to trust your instincts always. Allow yourself to be led by what truly moves you.
And I guess there’s something about the way these interviews, the 40-minute StoryCorps interviews are structured that it’s almost — in some ways, we think of it as if you had 40 minutes left to live, what would you want to say to someone else? What would you want to learn about them?
But we have everything going for us, because it’s the voice, and it’s intimate, and it’s honest. I think of it as the opposite of reality TV. No one comes to get rich, no one comes to get famous, it’s just about generosity and love.
Storycorps
Onbeing
Storycorps
Leonard Lopate Show
Ted Podcast
Oral History Online provides access to over 2,700 collections of Oral History in English from around the world. The collection provides keyword searching for transcripts, audio, and video files.
Publication providing data and analysis across a wide range of industries.
In-depth reports on industries, providing an overview of the industry, outlooks, products and markets, operations and key statistics.
Provides access to journals and magazines that aid users in researching a vocation, finding an appropriate institution of learning, job searching, and maintaining a career.
The Storycorps mission is "StoryCorps’ mission is to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world. We do this to remind one another of our shared humanity, to strengthen and build the connections between people, to teach the value of listening, and to weave into the fabric of our culture the understanding that everyone’s story matters. At the same time, we are creating an invaluable archive for future generations." The organization was founded in 2003 by Dave Isay and has nearly 700,000 stories in the archive.
