THE ART OF STORYTELLING, ACCORDING TO THE FOUNDERS OF STORYCORPS AND HUMANS OF NEW YORK

Engage deeply. Interrupt kindly. People aren’t very good at knowing how to tell their own stories, says Stanton, and that means that they’re often vague and imprecise. Cutting through that is part of the interviewer’s job. “Interviewing someone is a very proactive process and requires taking a lot of agency into your own hands to get past people’s general normal self-preservation mode.”