The website Narratively just alerted me to something cool from StoryCorps, a feature I generally hear on National Public Radio (NPR).
According to the StoryCorps website, “The first-ever animated feature from StoryCorps, Listening Is an Act of Love, presents six stories from 10 years of StoryCorps, where everyday people sit down together to ask life’s important questions and share stories from their lives. Framing these intimate conversations is an interview between StoryCorps founder Dave Isay and his nine-year-old nephew, Benji.
“Listening Is an Act of Love will be broadcast by public television stations nationwide. … on varying dates through February 2014. Can’t wait until the animated special airs on your local station? Watch on PBS Roku and Apple TV channels — available on DVD, too!” More here.
(At ny1.com, here, you can read how recording people’s stories caused Isay to take a permanent detour from his medical school ambitions.)
Do you have favorite StoryCorps stories? Have you ever created one?
I have a tape of my father reading the Kipling story “The Elephant’s Child” and poems he loved like “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” which always choked him up. But if you do a StoryCorps story, you get it archived at the Library of Congress — probably more permanent than my old cassette tape.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
It is the beautiful human spirit that is revealed the interviews that make StoryCorps so popular with millions of NPR listeners.
But if you’re considering sharing your story, It’s important to realize that the consent form you’re asked to sign does not merely
allow copies of your interview to be archived at the libraries. It gives StoryCorps, a $10 million operation, sweeping, exclusive rights to your stories and pictures. “permanently and irrevocably”: They can do anything they want with your material (they’ve already turned people into cartoons!).
READ THE RELEASE FORM BEFORE YOU SIGN IT!
Here are just two of eight stipulations in the release form:
“TRANSFER OF RIGHTS: In consideration of the recording and preservation of the Interview, conducted on or about the date set forth below, I hereby relinquish and transfer to StoryCorps all title and literary property rights that I have or may be deemed to have in the Interview. I understand that these rights include all rights, title and interest in any copyright, pursuant to United States copyright laws. I understand that my conveyance of copyright encompasses the exclusive rights of reproduction, distribution, and preparation of derivative works, as well as all renewals and extensions.
“I understand that StoryCorps and its licensees may, without further
approval on my part, exhibit, distribute, edit, reproduce, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and broadcast the Interview, or any portion thereof, in all media, including but not limited to: radio, television, compact disc, in print, and on the Internet, as well as any successor technologies, whether now existing or hereafter developed.”
You also agree that StoryCorps may use your “name, voice, photographic likeness and life story in connection with the exhibition, reproduction, distribution, publication, public performance, public display, broadcast, and
promotion of StoryCorps, without further approval on my part.”
StoryCorps, in other words, will OWN your story and picture, in perpetuity.
You become “content” and “raw material” for an ever-expanding
array of media projects.
http://kronstantinople.blogspot.com/2013/10/storycorps-predictable-plot.html
Thank you for letting folks know about this.