We all love stories. They are part of the essence of our humanness.

We connect to our past through stories. We develop and maintain families and friendships through stories. We often imagine our future in the form of a story.

Well, last week I happened upon a podcast that tells very good stories.

Griddlecakes Radio, which explores “the lost art of audio storytelling” is a podcast that is meant to — and does — evoke a range of emotions. One of the first episodes I listened to was called “Mr. and Mrs. Reich,” in which host Ron Ploof reflects on the life lessons he learned as a teenage paperboy for the Boston Globe. Through an interaction with a German couple on his route, which Ron recounts vividly, he comes to recognize that we’re living in a vast world that stretches beyond our sometimes tunnel-vision understanding.

The story resonated with me because I was also a Boston Globe paperboy in the early 1990s. That job taught me about responsibility (rising by 6:00 a.m. 365 days a year — no easy ask for a high-school kid) and handling money, and almost singlehandedly funded the purchase of my first “real” computer (not counting the old Radio Shack 16K in this case) and my first overseas trip — to Paris, Barcelona and Madrid — in 1994.

Ron’s stories are often performed in the style of old radio dramas — by bringing “characters” and stories to life with multiple voices, sound effects, and moving music.

It’s a good change of pace from many of the business-centric podcasts that I listen to.

On the subject of stories and how they impact our lives, longtime “Diva Marketing” blogger Toby Bloomberg is now also publishing “Blogger Stories.”

The site invites bloggers to share stories of how their lives have been “touched” by blogging. One of my favorite entries to date has come from Yvonne DiVita, who built a blog for her business with the support and encouragement of her loving partner Tom Collins. So much is the blog a part of their relationship, in fact, that Yvonne and Tom are now considering getting married … on their blog!

While that may not necessarily be your or my cup of tea, it isn’t a story that our imaginations can’t handle.

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