Why Alix Spiegel is the best NPR Voice
I've long loved the TAL tao. The flippant story-telling attitude on PRI's This American Life. It's infiltrating the rest of Public Radio. Thank you, God. Alix Spiegel is the best at it.
Here's a great example of what I'm talking about, a story Spiegel filed in 2009. You should go here and listen to the story if you want to hear this in action. Spiegel demonstrates a sly way of painting this Dr Wennberg as a very intelligent, artistic type. She didn't have to say that. She didn't just say, "Dr Wennberg is smart" and leave it at that. She showed us:
Now, eventually Jack Wennberg expanded his research, and that led us to a clear understanding of what doctors and hospitals are doing with their patients all across America. So if you want to investigate doctor decisions, Jack Wennberg is a pretty good place to start, which is how I ended up in his living room.
Hello. Hello.
This is me trying to set the levels on my recording equipment. To do this, I asked Wennberg what I ask most people: could you say a little something. Usually, people count to 10. Maybe they'd tell me what they ate at breakfast. But for Wennberg, a lank 75-year-old, breakfast wasn't the first thing that came to mind.
Dr. JACK WENNBERG (Founding Director, Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care Project): (German language spoken)
SPIEGEL: Nineteenth century German poetry. Apparently, for fun in college, Wennberg committed German verse to memory. Wennberg is that kind of guy - the kind of guy whose projects tend to be unusually rigorous. This was certainly the case with his work on health care. (full transcript here)
Awesome. Good authors don't tell you what is going on, they show you. Of course, in a conventional novel, you really aren't shown anything. The author paints the picture in your mind using words. A good author doesn't write, "he walked into a 50's style diner." A good author writes something like, "the checkered tableclothes were splattered with ketchup and the tinny jukebox speakers blurted 'Runaround Sue'" or something like that. Something that makes you think, "50's diner." You don't even think about it when you are reading, but it's a superior and more interesting way to get the same information across.
That's what impresses me about Spiegel, or whomever is producer her stories. In serious news reporting you have to be careful about using creative storytelling because, well, it's news and you are supposed to be objective. I get that. You can't use music to evoke an emotion you want, you should tell both sides of the story, those things are important. But this kind of reporting is genius. In a 20 second anecdote Spiegel showed us more about Wennberg than we'd have found out with a dry paragraph describing him otherwise.
I have nothing near Spiegel's apparent interest in psychology and health care, but I listen to every one of her stories because they are so engaging.
