Snap Judgment's Glynn Washington: Lessons from a Master Storyteller
Sound Judgment
The Power of Story
"I grew up watching this guy take stories from the Bible, twist them to his own purposes and use those narratives," he says. "The same tools that we're seeing being twisted for propaganda and political access right now, I think that those tools can be used for good." He adds: "We're talking about cult stuff. Can you take those tools and use them for good as opposed to the detriment of the society?"
Before creating the Snap Judgment radio show, Glynn worked as an educator, diplomat, community activist, actor, political strategist, fist-shaker, mountain-hollerer, and foot stomper.
Snap Judgment is heard on about 500 public radio stations in the U.S. and on podcasts everywhere.
Scroll down for takeaways you can use from today’s show.
The episode discussed on today's show
"Zoo Nebraska," a Snap Classic, Season 13, Episode 18.
The story of a chimpanzee and a man whose dream brought disaster to a small American town.
This story details violence against animals. Sensitive listeners, please be advised.
Read more about Zoo Nebraska in Carson’s book, Zoo Nebraska: The Dismantling of an American Dream.
Additional thanks to Patti Ragan from the Center for Great Apes.
Produced by John Fecile and Carson Vaughan, original score by Renzo Gorrio
Additional production by Jesse Dukes and Pat Mesiti-Miller
Artwork by Teo Ducot
Interested in protecting Great Apes? Learn more at the Center for Great Apes
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Takeaways from today's show:
1. What you’re doing is taking the listener on a journey with you. That takes intention.
From the very beginning of any episode, Glynn is thinking about how to persuade the listener to go on a journey with him. He’s taking you into a different world, introducing you to the interior lives of the characters in these stories. He wants you to be curious, surprised, to feel things. He asks this question: “What piece of myself can act as an avatar for this journey I want to take people on? What piece of me can do that? That’s the hostiness of it all.”
2. To have hostiness is to be animated by a question – and the question that lights you up will be different than the one that lights me up. Snap Judgment is all about empathy - how to evoke, how to get listeners to walk in someone else’s shoes for a little while. But Jad Abumrad of RadioLab’s animating force was curiosity. What animates you? Stay true to that.
3. To Glynn, the best characters are not the famous and successful. They’re the people who’ve made mistakes; who don’t want to face the ramifications of their actions, who’ve had some hard knocks – like Dick, the zookeeper in Zoo Nebraska who didn’t want his story told. Rarely – if ever – are people villains on purpose.
4. You don’t have to be Batman to have a good story to tell. In fact, you may be able to tell an amazing story about walking across the street, if we learn what it took for you to get from one side of the street to the other, and how high the stakes are.
5. And five…Don’t leave out the washing machine. It’s the ordinary details of life – even when they happen in the middle of a chimp escape – that make stories real for listeners.
Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, guesting, scriptwriting and more.
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Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts
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Credits
Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies, LLC.
Host: Elaine Appleton Grant
Podcast Manager: Tina Bassir
Production Manager: Andrew Parrella
Audio Engineer: Kevin Kline
Production Assistant: Audrey Nelson
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