Lets make historyby recording it StoryCorps TED Prize
StoryCorps Founder & TED Prize winner
Davey Isay has created an app that aims
to bring people together in a project of
listening, connection, and generosity.
Here’s why…
This is the library of lost stories.
It’s where you’ll find the true origins
of the Sphinx and Stonehenge,
the text lost in the fire of Alexandria,
all of the great ideas
that Einstein never thought to write down,
the dream you can’t quite
remember from last night,
your ancestor’s first words,
her last words.
And it’s the fastest growing library
in the world.
In the next year,
25 languages will be added
to the collection,
never to be heard aloud again,
50 million points of view
never related,
the last eyewitness account
of an incredible act of athleticism,
disobedience,
courage,
unread,
unheard,
unwatched.
But this is the StoryCorps archive
at the Library of Congress
where everything recorded by StoryCorps
is preserved for posterity.
This is where,
if you record your parents,
your grandparents,
your neighbors,
your children,
their stories will live on.
What if Anne Frank hadn’t kept her diary?
What if no one could listen to
Martin Luther King’s Mountaintop speech?
What if the camera hadn’t been rolling
during the first moon landing?
But what if, this Thanksgiving,
the youngest member of every family
interviewed the oldest?
“It’s like the only thing on his mind
was to tell the kids that he loved them.”
Or if on February 14th, you asked a person
you love some questions
you’ve never thought to ask.
“Being married is like having
a color television set,
you never want to go back
to black and white.”
History is all of these things,
the testament to tragedy,
the progress of civilization,
the heroic triumphs,
and the moments and stories
that are our lives.
It’s also the act of actively listening
to the voices of the past
and the people who matter to us.
“Grand Central Station, now,
we know there’s an architect,
but who hung the iron?
Who were the brick masons?
Who swept the floor?
Who kept the trains going?
We shall begin celebrating the lives
of the uncelebrated.”
So you can make history
by recording it.