How to Tell a Story, with Alan Alda and The Moth’s Catherine Burns

This week, Alan Alda and The Moth’s Catherine Burns join us to talk about storytelling. What makes a good story? What makes a good storyteller? How can we use storytelling to communicate better, to sell people on our ideas, to make people like us?

Actor, director, screenwriter, author and science advocate Alan Alda is the founder of the Alda Center for Communicating Science and Alda Communication Training, which trains scientists and businesspeople to use improv in order to more effectively get their ideas across. Catherine Burns is artistic director of The Moth, the non-profit dedicated to the art and craft of stories told live and without notes. We talk with both about the magic and science of storytelling and effective communication. Additionally, Lifehacker staff writer Beth Skwarecki speaks with a children’s librarian about how best to tell a bedtime story, and Lifehacker staff writer Nick Douglas schools us on Dan Harmon’s guide to structuring any written story.

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