The Art of Storytelling show began in the spring 2007 as Brother Wolf sought a way to support the art form world-wide. Every couple of weeks he posts a new interviews on the podcast. Each guest covers a different aspect of the art of storytelling. The interviews are conducted in person or in a conference call format which anyone is welcome to participate on the call. You are welcome to join a call or just listen online, use iTunes, or your podcasting software.
Park Güell, Barcelona, Spain. Photo by Scarlett Messenger Selected Shorts
There is a theme to each Selected Shorts episode and performance. Several stories are presented around each theme. The stories are always fiction, sometimes classic, sometimes new, always performed by great actors from stage, screen and television who bring these short stories to life. Evenings are often co-hosted by writers, literary producers, and other interesting characters.
Carcassonne, France. Photo by Scarlett Messenger Spark London
Spark London has been called Britain’s first true storytelling club. Everyone is welcome to sit back and listen, or you can get stuck into the action and tell your own story. There are only three rules at Spark:
1) It must be true
2) It must be your own story, and
3) It must be under five minutes long.
With a different theme each time, you’ll soon find yourself talking to friends and strangers about moments from each other’s lives. Our aim is always to connect people through true stories.
Dali Museum, Figueres, Spain. Photo by Scarlett MessengerSnap Judgment
Snap Judgment is a themed, weekly NPR storytelling show. We focus on presenting compelling personal stories – mixing killer beats with real drama to produce cinematic, dramatic and kick-ass radio. We are sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and distributed through NPR and Public Radio Exchange (PRX).
The Stanford Storytelling Project is an arts program at Stanford University that explores how we live in and through stories and, even more importantly, how to deepen our lives through our own storytelling. Our mission is to promote the transformative nature of traditional and modern oral storytelling, from Lakota tales to Radiolab, and empower students to create and perform their own stories. The project sponsors courses, workshops, live events, and grants. In 2012, we created a new radio show, State of the Human, where we share stories that deepen our understanding of single, common human experiences—fighting, giving, lying, resilience—all drawn from the experiences and research of the Stanford community. Tune in every Wednesday at 5pm on 90.1 KZSU or download our podcast on iTunes.
Based in Chicago, the Third Coast International Audio Festival (TCIAF) curates sound-rich audio stories from around the world and shares them with as many ears as possible – on the radio, on the Internet, and at public listening events all over the place. Operating year-round, Third Coast offers producers and listeners a multitude of ways to celebrate audio storytelling.
Béziers, France. Photo by Scarlett Messenger Risk!
RISK! is a live show and podcast “where people tell true stories they never thought they’d dare to share in public” hosted by Kevin Allison, of the legendary TV sketch comedy troupe The State. The award-winning live show happens monthly in New York and Los Angeles. It’s featured people like Janeane Garofalo, Lisa Lampanelli, Kevin Nealon, Margaret Cho, Marc Maron, Sarah Silverman, Lili Taylor, Rachel Dratch, Andy Borowitz and more, dropping the act and showing a side of themselves we’ve never seen before. The weekly podcast gets hundreds of thousands of downloads each month. Slate.com called it “jaw-dropping, hysterically funny, and just plain touching.”
What were the first games? Space Invaders, Pac-Man. These were goal-oriented activities that had a vague overlay of story. So now we fast-forward thirty years, and games are primarily story-like experiences organized around the successful achievement of goals. And so the balance has flipped. The storytelling game and the purer, more traditional type of video game are, I think, on a path of divergence right now: whatever is happening in video games is going to split these two kinds of games off from each other, and so storytelling games are, eventually, going to become their own thing.
Plateau des Poètes, Béziers, France. Photo by Scarlett Messenger True Story
True Story is a secret society of anonymous storytellers. In living rooms, attics, and vacant lots, on rooftops and around fires, people are gathering to tell each other stories from their lives.
Recordings from the True Story underground are more raw and revealing than you’ll find anywhere else. Since 2012, we’ve published the best of these on our podcast and on public radio.
