Transcriber: Mo Siman Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
I want to tell you about a power we have to make deep connections with other people
that can change our lives,
connections that can teach us about ourselves and each other.
We need connections,
but we're so often disconnected from each other.
We don't always live near our families any more.
And even if we do, we don't have time to get together.
So we use these tiny lines of text to connect us.
That's not good enough.
There's a better way to make a connection with other people
than by using an app.
It's called interviewing, and it happens face-to-face.
I'm going to teach you how to do it.
But first I want to tell you
what you can learn by interviewing a stranger.
I've been a radio journalist almost my whole life,
and in the year 2000,
I decided to interview 25 people who were over the age of 100.
I thought I knew a few things about interviewing.
These people's lives had spanned the entire 20th century,
so in order to get ready,
I made these huge, long lists of questions
that dealt with all the major historical events of the 20th century.
But those people surprised me.
They were way more interested in the future than they were in the past.
One of them was still teaching law.
One was still driving.
(Laughter)
There was one guy who was desperate to get married.
(Laughter)
And then there was this beautiful woman who had dyed her hair bright red,
and every morning, she went down to the lake behind her house
and she rowed her boat.
Her name was Anna Wilmot.
(Audio) Anna Wilmot: And what I do, I come out here, and I sit in the sun.
Is this nice?
Neenah Ellis: Yeah.
AW: Huh?
NE: What a nice view.
AW: And when you get out here,
no interference, nobody's around.
You can come out here and skinny-dip.
(Laughter)
NE: Do you do that?
SR: Yep, I do.
NE: I know.
AW: Only if it's foggy.
(Laughter)
I'm telling ya, I'm something.
(Laughter)
Aren't I?
(Audio ends)
Soon after I started interviewing Anna,
I had to throw out my long list of questions
because what I really wanted to know was what gave her life so much meaning.
And the answer had to do with her sense of place.
She loved her neighbors, her house, her lake.
She loved to be outside,
where she could row her boat and swim and just sit under the trees.
And I realized pretty soon that Anna's truth is my truth.
I love trees. I love lakes. I love to swim outside.
I've even been known to skinny-dip.
(Laughter)
So what did I learn by interviewing a hundred-year-old woman
who, until that day, had been a complete stranger to me?
Well, I made a friend who I visited for several years,
and I got a glimpse of myself at age 100.
And now I have an image of me as a very old lady.
That thrills me.
You don't have to be a journalist to use interviewing skills.
In our daily lives, we all ask questions,
we all make assessments,
we all reach conclusions.
It's not quite the same as interviewing.
An interview is a conversation with intention.
It's not casual chitchat,okay?
In my job, at the public radio station,
I am very lucky to get to teach what I love,
and I teach community members who are not journalists to do interviews.
And we put those interviews on the radio.
Among the most interesting are what I call "peer-to-peer interviews,"
between people who have a shared experience,
because there's already a trust there.
For example, we have a project called Veterans Voices
where we train military veterans to interview each other.
We put them on the radio.
I'm going to play you a little clip now of an interview between two veterans,
and what they're talking about is what it's like
to see their young children again after a long deployment.
(Audio) Vet 1: It was almost like being a stranger to everybody,
or I felt like one for a while when I came home here,
everybody you're real familiar with, sometimes, it's like -
especially my daughter, it did take a while.
Vet 2: When I landed,
my daughter, literally, didn't even seem to recognize me or to -
look, I don't want to say I was nothing to her,
but really, she's just -
we got in the car, and I looked back, you know,
and I tried to, you know, connect with her,
and she was just kind of like, "Who are you?"
(Audio ends)
We also trained a group of incarcerated women
from the Dayton Correctional Institution
to interview each other.
And those interviews went very deep, very fast
because those women had so much empathy for each other.
(Audio) Inmate 1: You can go to Timbuktu,
trying to get away from drugs.
If you want it, your body got an itch for it,
you can find it.
Now, I moved to Columbus, Ohio,
got a little itch for it one day,
went right around the corner,
and from there, you know,
my life kind of spiralled out of control again.
Inmate 2: So you're here, in DCI and in prison.
From my understanding -
which is a touchy subject for anyone that knows you
because so many people love you.
You have life without parole.
Am I correct?
Inmate: Yes. Yes, I do. (Audio ends)
See, these women felt safe with each other,
safer than they would have, I think,
than if they'd been interviewed by a stranger who might judge them.
I think it would be absolutely amazing
if we heard more of these peer-to-peer interviews on the radio,
and on television too.
We all have so much to learn.
I think we'd see each other so much more clearly.
We'd understand each other so much better.
So, do you know yet who you're going to interview?
I would recommend that you start with a family member
because interviews with loved ones can be the most fulfilling of all.
And here's how you do it.
it's very easy.
Number one,
think about what you want to know.
Write down some questions.
Number two, tell that person,
"You know, this isn't going to be a casual interview.
I want to know the story of your life."
Number three, create a quiet place.
No telephone, no TV
and no other people, for sure.
Number four, start slow and ask them to tell you stories.
Say something like,
"Tell me about your first day of school."
And number five, when that person starts talking,
you sit perfectly still.
You just listen.
Make eye contact.
Give that person the gift of your full attention.
And when you do that,
very slowly,
something deep and powerful is going to happen to you.
I've been interviewing my dad for several years.
He's 88.
He's also been a radio producer most of his life,
and he's a great storyteller.
A great storyteller.
So we've been documenting his life.
When my dad and I sit down on his couch and start our interviews,
that deep and powerful thing happens to us every single time.
The room drops away.
Time stands still.
It's as if we're stepping into another dimension.
And my dad starts to remember things that he hasn't thought of in years.
In years.
I want to tell you about what science calls "limbic resonance,"
which explains that phenomenon, okay?
Because we're mammals,
we have this region in our brain, called the limbic region,
where emotions reside.
And with time and proximity,
we begin to feel each other's emotional state.
It's a real sensory experience, just like seeing or hearing,
only nobody much talks about it,
and they sure don't teach you how to do it.
But you follow these five steps, and you are going to be on your way.
And limbic resonance feels great.
It might be the best feeling, the best feeling.
I think there's nothing that people want more
than to spend time with people they care about
and feel that deep connection.
Remember I said that connection can change your life?
I want to to tell you
about some aha moments that I've had with my dad.
In 1959, my dad got fired.
And he poured all of his anger and frustration
into building a beautiful tree house for us kids.
We loved that tree house!
And I used to think about that oak tree as if it were another human being.
And when my dad told me that story,
I thought, "Aha,
that's where I got my love for trees."
Another story.
My dad grew up on the South Side of Chicago
in the Great Depression
in an immigrant neighborhood.
And when it got really hot outside,
they would all get on the streetcar and they'd go down to Lake Michigan.
And the women would lay out food,
and the men would tell stories about the old country,
and when the sun went down,
they would all sleep on the beach where it was nice and cool.
And my dad loved those evenings by the beach.
And I thought, “Aha,
that's where I got my love of the lake,
from my dad.”
And then, here's a story I just heard recently -
all my life, I never knew this -
how my dad got connected to radio.
It turns out, in high school,
my dad had a choir teacher who singled him out and said,
"You have a beautiful voice!
You sound like Bing Crosby!"
And that set my dad on his path.
This woman, whose name I don't know,
changed my dad's life and mine.
There's nobody but my dad,
my dear dad,
that could have told me these stories.
And these stories help me in my search for who I am.
Interviewing with an open mind and an open heart
can deepen the love you have for people you already know
and bring you close to people that you've just met.
Interviewing is a conversation with intention.
And when you do it right,
you can know yourself better
and change your life.
So who are you going to interview?
Good luck.
(Applause)
Thank you.