A second story that interested me was of a mother and son, Sarah and Joshua Littman, discussing college. Joshua had recently completed his first semester of college, and it had proven to be a difficulty due to his Asperger’s. Because of this syndrome, he has a particularly hard time, socially, and can obsess over little things – in his case, animals. This is apparent in his interview of his mother (which really turns into a conversation, with them seemingly interviewing each other simultaneously), when he mentions missing his dogs (rather than his family) when he is away at college.
While this conversation of college between a mother and son struck me as interesting, what I found even more attention-grabbing was that the two had submitted another story six years ago, when Joshua was in the seventh grade (http://storycorps.org/listen/stories/sarah-and-joshua-littman/). This recording is of a younger Joshua interviewing his mother on a variety of topics, and couldn’t be more different from the one done later on. Whereas their college story had a flow, and conversational feel to it, you can tell that, in the earlier one, Joshua created a list of questions and stuck to them, regardless of how their conversation went. For instance, the questions ranged from ‘How different, from 1 to 10, would your life be without animals?’ to ‘Who is your mortal enemy?’. It struck me as really interesting how the two developed over time, as well as how their interview styles did. Their first interview was jumbled, and had no significant end goal, while their more recent one had a better flow and vibe to it, and actually led you to learn something about the two. Listening to these two recordings gave me some examples of what’s good, and what’s bad in an interview.
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