Telling Stories that Move You
Many of my close friends, if not all, have a burning curiosity for the world that truly comes from within. Indeed, that is why I love being their friend. And I like to see such a trait in other people and stories. Radiolab brings a short but sweet (adorable!) story of a mother who observes her little boy’s insatiable curiosity and interest in flight. She tells Jad and Robert about how he started with arranging Tupperware into the shape of airplanes but then moved on to trying to connect the little motors in his other toys to a homemade propeller he fashioned. And then how he made a duct tape harness and tried with a short rock wall. And then how her little son climbed a tall tree with the intent of jumping out and achieving flight by spinning his propeller himself…and ended up scratched and tangled up in the branches.
The reason she told Jad and Robert about this was that in order to keep him still to treat his scrapes, she put on an episode of Radiolab on her iPod, the one about parasites. And he lay there…completely transfixed. And he understood everything he heard. Her little boy seems to listen well to these podcasts but doesn’t understand it when his mother tries to lecture him about consequences. So Jad and Robert record a lesson with her explaining how one should always think things through to the end. And then they put their wonderful Radiolab spin on it and elevate it to something entirely new.
There was a smile on my face for the whole segment. Jad says:
..there is something about this story that just gets to the whole point of why we do this. Here you’ve got this kid who is obviously in a lot of pain, and he just sits still and listens to a story on parasites?
What we’re trying to do here is to tell stories that move you, or keep you still in this case, but stories that draw you in, and make you think differently about the world, even if just a little bit.
I’m so happy this exists. It makes me feel like a kid again with a whole world waiting to be explored.