The Great Thanksgiving Listen is an annual storytelling and oral history project created by StoryCorps. The idea is simple: Spend time with someone you care about and record a conversation about their life to preserve their stories for future generations.
WYSO’s Will Davis spoke with StoryCorps founder Dave Isay about the project. Isay is one of Davis’ storytelling idols.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Dave Isay: StoryCorps traditionally had been done face-to-face with a facilitator, and we created an app 11 years ago that made it possible for anyone, anywhere, to record a StoryCorps interview with a loved one and, with one tap, upload it to the Library of Congress. Once we created the app, we thought about what's an occasion that we could build a tradition of recording around. It was pretty obvious that Thanksgiving was a great time to do this.
Families are together. This is largely an educator-driven holiday, the Great Thanksgiving Listen, where high school teachers, usually social studies or English language arts (ELA) teachers, assign students to record with a mentor, a loved one, an elder over Thanksgiving and upload it to the Library of Congress. It's the most fun and meaningful assignment of the year.
So we've had hundreds of thousands of people participate in the Great Listen, and we're looking to do even better than that.
Will Davis: If you could persuade every American ...
Isay: I love this question. Yeah.
Davis: Do you get this question a lot?
Isay: The beginning of it, I already love it.
Davis: If you could persuade every American to ask just one question around the Thanksgiving table, what would it be?
Isay: First of all, I want to just clarify: When you're doing these interviews, you do not want to do it around the family table because it's too noisy. You want to go in a quiet room. But in terms of the question, I've actually never been asked that question before.
And I think, just like StoryCorps stories, there are certain stories that are particularly meaningful to me at different times. At this moment, I think if I was going to have the whole country ask one question, it would probably be, "Who's been kindest to you in your life?" Because that's a very generative kind of question that gets to the soul of the person who's speaking and also honors someone else in the telling of the answer to that question. So that is my current favorite question, but that will change in a week.
Davis: Well, that's a great question. Can I ask you that question?
Isay: Sure. Who's been kindest to me in my life? Well, there have been several people, but I think of my ... It's very hard for me to talk about.
See, this is why it's such a good question, because everybody cries when they talk about it. I had a great-aunt named Cecile, my Aunt Cecile. And I was kind of a strange kid and a bit of an outsider and very much of an introvert.
And my Aunt Cecile was ... She was a spunky great-aunt. She was incredibly spunky and loving. She had osteoporosis, so she had lots of broken bones and kind of a humpback, but she adored me, and I adored her.
We used to watch Knicks games together back when the Knicks first won the championship in '73. And she would make popcorn for me, and I just used to go to ... Her house was like a refuge, and I used to go to her house. And she always believed in me when other people didn't believe in me.
So she is one of a number of people who has been kindest to me in my life.
Davis: Well, that's lovely. Thank you for sharing that.
Isay: Well, thank you.
Taking part in the Great Thanksgiving Listen is easy. Find someone whose story you'd like to hear, sit down together and record a conversation using the free StoryCorps app.
You can upload your interview to the StoryCorps archive and help preserve those memories for generations to come. And teachers, this is a great opportunity to bring storytelling and family history into your classrooms. Encourage students to interview a parent, a grandparent or someone in their community.
To learn more about participating and find free classroom resources, visit StoryCorps.org.
