Let's make history…by recording it - StoryCorps & TED Prize — Transcript

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1. 0:04StoryCorps Founder & TED Prize winner Davey Isay has created an app that aims
2. 0:08to bring people together in a project of listening, connection, and generosity.
3. 0:12Here's why...
4. 0:13This is the library of lost stories.
5. 0:16It's where you'll find the true origins of the Sphinx and Stonehenge,
6. 0:20the text lost in the fire of Alexandria,
7. 0:23all of the great ideas that Einstein never thought to write down,
8. 0:27the dream you can't quite remember from last night,
9. 0:32your ancestor's first words,
10. 0:34her last words.
11. 0:41And it's the fastest growing library in the world.
12. 0:44In the next year,
13. 0:4625 languages will be added to the collection,
14. 0:49never to be heard aloud again,
15. 0:5350 million points of view never related,
16. 0:57the last eyewitness account of an incredible act of athleticism,
17. 1:03disobedience,
18. 1:04courage,
19. 1:06unread,
20. 1:07unheard,
21. 1:09unwatched.
22. 1:15But this is the StoryCorps archive at the Library of Congress
23. 1:20where everything recorded by StoryCorps is preserved for posterity.
24. 1:25This is where,
25. 1:26if you record your parents,
26. 1:28your grandparents,
27. 1:29your neighbors,
28. 1:30your children,
29. 1:32their stories will live on.
30. 1:37What if Anne Frank hadn't kept her diary?
31. 1:43What if no one could listen to Martin Luther King's Mountaintop speech?
32. 1:48What if the camera hadn't been rolling during the first moon landing?
33. 1:58But what if, this Thanksgiving,
34. 2:00the youngest member of every family interviewed the oldest?
35. 2:06"It's like the only thing on his mind was to tell the kids that he loved them."
36. 2:10Or if on February 14th, you asked a person you love some questions
37. 2:16you've never thought to ask.
38. 2:18"Being married is like having a color television set,
39. 2:21you never want to go back to black and white."
40. 2:23History is all of these things,
41. 2:26the testament to tragedy,
42. 2:28the progress of civilization,
43. 2:30the heroic triumphs,
44. 2:32and the moments and stories that are our lives.
45. 2:36It's also the act of actively listening to the voices of the past
46. 2:41and the people who matter to us.
47. 2:44"Grand Central Station, now,
48. 2:46we know there's an architect, but who hung the iron?
49. 2:50Who were the brick masons?
50. 2:53Who swept the floor?
51. 2:56Who kept the trains going?
52. 2:58We shall begin celebrating the lives of the uncelebrated."
53. 3:02So you can make history by recording it.