As I tell my improv students, it's all stories about humans. We watch TV, movies, and plays, and read books, because we humans love to see other humans do what we do. We want to know how other humans are affected and changed. People are fascinating.

That may sound like it goes without saying, but improvising a story feels very personal and vulnerable. You sometimes steer away from true human interactions, out of a desire to play it safe, or simply to get a laugh for doing something unexpected. But the best stories, in any form, are the ones that head straight into our humanity. The magazine articles you read, the stand-up comedy you see, the commercials, the books, the theatre, the film and television, the gossip you indulge in. You go to it because it's about humans and their emotions, their reactions to life situations, their motivations, and, well, their humanity.

So, look for the humanity in a piece of copy and enjoy it! We're all telling stories about humans.

The Sony ad audio was recorded in a class. It was not the actual Sony ad.

Today, I’m honoring Reginald Fessenden, mathematician, inventor, and probably the world’s first voiceover artist. Radio was in its infancy, and he had been working on a more efficient method of transmitting and receiving than what they had going at the time. (Thanks, Marconi, but I think we can do better than this spark-gap transmitter and coherer-receiver combo you have here.) He took his mad skills and went to work for the US Weather Bureau, where they needed an on-staff inventor to keep coming up with new and better ways to get the weather word out there. Fessenden was hoping to prove they could go wireless, and he did it - in what seems to have been the very first audio radio transmission. It happened on December 23, 1900, and his voice travelled a mile, and that was a huge deal back then. A mile. No telegraph lines. 1900. That’s thirteen years before crossword puzzles, bras, and zippers came along, and thirty-eight years before the ballpoint pen!

Six years later, while we were all struggling along pre- rock music and tube mascara, Fessenden had left the Weather Bureau, contracted with GE to design and produce some high-frequency alternator-transmitters, and successfully transmitted what’s surely got to be the first radio broadcast of entertainment and music. It was on Christmas Eve in 1906, and it included a phonograph record (Handel), and Fessenden himself playing the violin (O Holy Night).

So, Reginald Fessenden, thanks for believing in your work, for working hard, and for taking those first steps on the voiceover trail. 

[I learned all this from Wikipedia, HistoryLearningSite.co.uk. Go read some more; it was pretty fascinating!]