I was in Chicago last week for the annual Communications Network Conference, and I had the good fortune to attend the keynote, given by Ira Glass of This American Life fame. In addition to making all the ladies of a certain age swoon just by being his charming self, Glass gave a really interesting talk on the building blocks of effective storytelling, illustrated with sound clips from the show and music that he played off a couple CD players. It was like sitting in on a live version of This American Life and getting an ongoing meta-analysis of what made the stories compelling.

I’m a geek for this kind of stuff, of course, but man it was fun.

And this gives me a chance to link to a Youtube clip from Current TV that I’ve been meaning to share for a while– Glass covers a lot of the same ground he went over last night in it, though without the cool sound effects.

More of these short segments can be found here.

Oh, and if the phrase “Squirrel Cop” means nothing to you, you must, must stop what you’re doing and listen right now. It starts about 20 minutes in.

Tags: communcationsnetwork, iraglass, storytelling

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