The Power of the Story
Lesson 7 from: FAST CLASS: Power Your Podcast with StorytellingAlex Blumberg
The Power of the Story
Lesson 7 from: FAST CLASS: Power Your Podcast with StorytellingAlex Blumberg
Lessons
Why Audio is Perfect for Storytelling
17:13 2The Art off the Interview
16:49 3The Nuts & Bolts of Interviewing
13:44 4What Makes Interviewee Interesting?
05:57 5The Elements of Story
24:38 6Putting the Story Elements Together
18:32 7The Power of the Story
09:29 8The Power of the Story Formula
14:22Lesson Info
The Power of the Story
to the power of a story. I want to talk a little bit about that. So and I sort of touched on in a little bit like if if you heard it in the raw tape. When Henry said when Henry said it, the way he originally said it where he was like it was a situation, the guy I moved and the boys in the hood showed up and they said, That's our mailman, right? It was like it didn't land, right? Like it was just sort of like it just came out of nowhere and it wasn't like and you didn't know what to do with it. It felt sort of like, Oh, that feels somewhat meaningful But it doesn't It hasn't landed it didn't register, uh, and so that I think, is the great power of of telling a story. Whatever you're doing, if you can tell it is in this sort of in this in the story form where the point lands as the crescendo of buildup of a sequence of events, then it sticks with people and it makes it, um it just makes it real in a way that if they just say the punch line. Without this story, you could miss it. It doesn...
't feel riel. And there's a couple of powerful examples of that that have happened in my work that I want to talk about now. And it's just a couple of small pieces of tape here. So the first one was like So I did a lot of financial reporting and a bunch of you know what Planet money. I was a lot of financial crisis reporting, and we did this big story and it's super complicated stuff, right? And we did this big story about this hedge fund that during the financial during the run up to the financial crisis, had been doing these complicated things where they put together these complicated financial instruments that they they made money if the things inside the financial instruments that they're making failed. So this hedge fund had this had this incentive to create sort of these these investments out of riskier and crappy er assets, Um and, uh and and we did the story about them. So it's a really complicated thing, and so the first thing we need to do is we need to be like, OK, that's the minute you say risky assets and financial CDOs and stuff like that people are going to now. So we found a metaphor on the metaphor. Was the producers Have you ever see that play the producers? So in the play, the producer is they realized, like, Oh, the play. You can make more money in a play if it fails the opening day because then you can collect the insurance on the play. So that's the realization, right? So they so they set about making the worst play in history, hoping that it will close immediately and collect the insurance money and be rich on. They end up making the play Springtime for Hitler. Eso So? So we were saying This is this financial. The hedge fund was doing something very similar to what they did in the Producers. They were trying to create the crappiest financial products they could in the hopes that they would fail, and they could collect essentially insurance money on this on these things. But they weren't telling people that they were crappy so that but then the problem is that you have to sell this financial assets to people thinking they're good. So that's that's the problem with it, right? Um, there's a super complicated thing. And we had and I was working with these, like, super wonky financial reporters. These great guys Theis place called propublica, which does this amazing financial, investigative journalism. And these two guys, Jesse and Jake, and they were constructing the story together. We're talking about the hedge fund we've got. We talked all these people and nobody would talk on tape. It was just this really complicated thing. So they were and they had this moment that they kept on trying to tell me, but they kept on trying to put it in the store. And I kept on being like, I don't get it. And they were like and they kept on saying like, there was this one guy who said, Um, yeah, after looking at that after looking that over, I should I lost my job. I was like, OK, who is this guy? What is it? And they were like the captain saying to me, like, uh, you know, he said it like it was like, this very powerful moment to me, but I didn't get it because it was like, uh, like it just they weren't telling it, right? And I was like, So wait to me down. Wait, where were you? And then they told me, like, where the scene in which this guy had revealed this information to them, and it was around this table. I was like, uh well, that's just tell that story. Put that tell that story. So that's what they did. So the guy in question, but I don't think even need another details. He was like a regular financial guy, and at the best of this evil hedge fund he was was picking bad assets to put into this and into this, you know, investment vehicle on purpose s so that's so that's sort of what he's doing. But so and, uh, and and so and again, you'll see like once they have the details, the punchline land. So this is what they said at lunch. They showed this bank of the list of unusually risky assets that were in the CDO that he'd helped put together with manager, and he looked at it and, you know, he went down the list. He said, Yeah, they asked for this one and they got it. Uh, they ask for this one and they got it and they ask for this one and it went in and then he Hay said, After looking at this, I deserve to lose my job. I mean, that's just like that was a minor detail in this in this story, but it was like but it was a very, very meaningful detailed in their reporting, Like for them. That was his big ah ha moment where he was like, I looked at this and I deserved to lose my job, but they were just giving it. They were just give me the punch line and they didn't and they hadn't set up what had actually happened. The scene at the table where he was like looking over this list was like, Yep, I put that one in. They shouldn't have put them in and I shouldn't have. You know, it's essentially what he was saying. And, uh, and and then and and then all the sudden, it resonated. So that was like one tiny example of how like turning something into his story makes it land. Um, one of the thing about stories you were talking about personal stories, but stories can be big and broad, and you can tell the story of a you know, the story of somebody's day. But you can also tell the story of an era or the story of a century or the story of, you know, sort of like, you know, we've told on planet money we've stole the story of how you know garment manufacturing came to Bangladesh. It's like, you know, it's not a person is not a personal story doesn't happen today. It happens over a century over over decades, but it still is. It follows the same thing, their details. There's rising action, and then there's sort of this resolution where it finally arrives or whatever. And so I'm gonna play something, and this is like, a little bit outside of sort of what we've been talking about. But we did a story like this on this American life, where we telling the story of the American health care system and how we got the health care system that we have. Um, and if you think about our health care system, most health care is delivered through our jobs. We get health care on our jobs. Um, but that's sort of the only thing like that, right? Like our jobs. You know, our jobs don't give us a grocery store plan where you can, where they pay for all our groceries. But you can only shop at certain stores, right? Uh, and they don't They don't give us a clothing plan where you can. They pay for all our clothes, but you can only shop at certain certain certain designers. Uh, So, um so why did wise healthcare different? Why is health care The one thing that we expect our jobs to provide for us that other things aren't. And it turns out there's a story behind that, Um, and the story starts, you know, at the turn of the century. And then there's a key detail that happens during World War two. Um, and so we eso Adam Davidson, who was my co founder of Planet Money. And I found this economic historian, this wonderful woman, Melissa Thomason. And she helped us tell that story. Ah, and this is one moment from that story. So it's like and it's a big moment. It's like, sort of like those again, getting to your point. This was a larger story that was made up of smaller stories. And so this was one of those pivotal moments, and it's, Ah, World War Two and World War Two. What happened was the government was very, very worried about inflation because inflation often happens during wars. So the government said, You're not to businesses. You're not allowed to raise your wages because that leads to inflation. So, um, so that was the situation during World War Two. There's all these businesses they need to produce all this stuff for the war effort. But they can't raise wages. The war economy is an entirely different ballgame. I mean, essentially, we go from being a a mixed economy with mostly market in some government intervention to being a planned economy. I mean, think of government rationing on all levels, you know, and they just they don't want inflation. They need to harness all the resource is in the economy for the war effort. And so what they tell people is you can't legally cannot raise prices. You can't raise wages, and so people have no ability to do this. At the same time, lots of people are are joining the military, and and labor is scarce, so you can't find workers. Can you imagine? In today's environment, you can't find workers who can work for you. You can't lure them by increasing wages. And at the same time you need to produce enormous amounts of stuff for the war effort. Right? And you're losing all your young strong men. Exactly. So what's a poor employer to dio? They turned to fringe benefits, and they just started offering more and more generous health insurance plants and pensions and everything else. Actually, So you would say you would say, Rosie, come work at my riveting factory because I can offer you this boutique insurance package versus exactly I mean, that was just like one detail. But again, it's a story that we're telling about the health care system so you can and and we made it into on. We've been turning it into a story and putting it in the sort of digestible moments it really helped. People sort of realized like, Oh, that's where that started, right
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