Finding and telling emotionally resonant stories

The most resonant stories take time to uncover, and skill and experience to tell through different media.  Each medium requires its own rhythm and unfolding to reach an audience emotionally as well as intellectually. Here are examples of a few of the ways I have worked with clients and led teams to harness the power of audio, images, and video, finding and telling powerful stories on the radio, on stage, as podcasts, and on social media.

Radio

A single-voiced Aha Moment produced for Studio 360 from my interview with Steven Holl, who talks about falling in love with the Pantheon.


Here, I tell a story about a dance performance that dives deep into the human heart, for Studio 360.


The Peabody Committee said "This is great radio" when they awarded Studio 360 a Peabody for our American Icons program about Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. 

Podcasts

An interview episode from the PRX podcast Totally Cerebral.  Host Wendy Suzuki, a neuroscience professor at NYU, talks with Neal Cohen about his class at University of Illinois on amnesia and pop culture.


When Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts decided to honor Wayne Higby, Jack Troy, and Paula Winokur, they asked me to create podcasts about these legendary artists and their work.

If you have the good fortune to spend time with ceramic artists in their 8th and 9th decades, you quickly venture into deep conversations on subjects we all ponder – about wisdom, loss, the passion to create, and where we find meaning.

Watershed Legends Wayne Higby, Jack Troy, and Paula Winokur welcomed us into their studios and homes for our new podcast series, which I had the great pleasure to host and produce. These three artists reveal for us creative lives full of beauty, challenge, and inspiration as they talk about clay, making, and life.

Paula Winokur

Jack Troy

Wayne Higby

Live Events

Capturing live events on video is also powerful for sharing resonant ideas.  I loved working with Andrew Solomon as he prepared for his TEDxMet talk, which has been viewed more than 8 million times.  


I have worked with Dr. Wendy Suzuki for many years as she brings her message about the positive effects of exercise to bigger and bigger audiences. Here’s Wendy’s TED Women talk from 2017, which has already been watched more than 4 million times.


If you’d like me to help you or your organization uncover your most powerful stories and find new ways to tell them, please contact me through the form below.

Social Media

For NJ 11th For Change, I created a series of audiograms shared on social media, stories from neighbors about why the 2018 midterm elections mattered.

Thanks to everyone who shared their stories, to Julia Binswanger and Zeke Maben for production assistance, and Ellanor Milkowski Dahlgren and Pascal Lemaitre for illustrations.

Posters and Postcards

Trump where are the children jpg.jpg

In response to news of forced separation of children from their asylum-seeking parents, Holly McGhee and I created Raising Our Voices Today to share protest images by prominent children’s illustrators, some targeted to adults and some designed for children to carry.  The posters are free to download and print.

DERA NEIGHBOR, PLEASE VOTE _VOTING BOX.jpg

We also asked the artists to create images to encourage voting participation in the 2018 election, and to create images for postcards to send to legislators to ask that families be reunited.

asylum Erin Entrada Kelly (1).jpg

In just a few months, Raising Our Voices images were downloaded more than 2,500 times.