At TED, Dave Isay Makes a Wish

       Whatdo Tulsa, Oklahoma; Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minnesota, and Albany, New York, have in common?  

They’re the places where, after a couple of years – years of fitful but determined spadework – the American Pilgrimage Project will begin in earnest this spring, recording stories of the American people in conversation with one another about the ways their religious beliefs have figured into crucial moments in their lives.

The project is a partnership of Georgetown and StoryCorps, and in this first phase it will give special attention to stories of American Catholic experience and American Jewish experience, and the ways those realms of experience converge.  

Meanwhile, StoryCorps founder Dave Isay has been awarded the 2015 TED Prize, and the TED talk he created in connection with the prize is just finished and streaming.  The supplementary material on the TED site includes the amazing fact that the “36,870+ hours of audio recorded since 2003” include “54 different languages represented in the StoryCorps Archive.”

For the talk, Dave and StoryCorps were urged to “work with TED to conceive of an audacious wish that builds on his decade of success with the organization.”

What that wish could be – well, I am going to the TED site right now to find out.  

• 17 March 2015