Andrew Forsthoefel is an author, speaker, and peace activist living in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts. After graduating from college, he spent eleven months trekking across the United States with a sign on his pack that read “Walking to Listen,” recording interviews with the people he met along the way. He co-produced a radio documentary about this project that was featured on Transom.org and This American Life.

His book, Walking to Listen tells the tale of the journey.

"Every one of us has an extraordinary story worth hearing, and I’m walking the country to listen. There’s no such thing as the Average Joe, no such thing as a boring, uninteresting, unexceptional life (for more on this, see this poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko). This walk is to honor that. Life is fast, and I’ve found it’s easy to confuse the miraculous for the mundane, so I’m slowing down, way down, in order to give my full presence to the extraordinary that infuses each moment and resides in every one of us. We’re a country of great diversities and divisions; sharing stories, I think, is one way to find resonance" (via)

The Moth recently shared one of the many stories from Andrew's journey, one where Andrew "meets a man who tests the limits of his compassion and makes him see his project in a new light". You can listen to it here.

For more on . . .

Stories  :  Humanity  :  Power of Stories