Why storytelling gets so much hype

In a few weeks, I’ll be participating in a storytelling event… It’s an awesome event where I get to practice longform personal narrative oral storytelling on stage. If you’re familiar with The Moth… it’s something like that!

Storytelling is my hobby and it’s what I do for fun. But it’s my job, too. And I don’t just mean that in the sense of ~applying storytelling techniques is my secret weapon for a career in communications~, (though, sure, that’s true) I mean that my literal job title is storyteller.

I’m not the only one. A quick scan on LinkedIn reveals that there are all kinds of posts and positions out there with the title of storyteller. There are cultural storytellers, brand storytellers, data storytellers, visual storytellers… the City of Detroit even has a chief storyteller, which is simply fantastic.

But how did we get to this point? When I was a kid, the only people I thought could claim storyteller as an actual job title were Levar Burton and the dog, Wishbone. (90s kids public television references are 2-for-1 today). I still think having storyteller as a job makes me sound like the town bard in some Shakespearean village.

I cover the Rise of the Storyteller on my latest video, which is on YouTube now.

There’s no doubt the power of storytelling has become embraced by the corporate world. Even when people don’t quite know how they’re using the word, they’re nodding along in agreement to statements like “your brand is all about the story you’re telling.”

The rise to prominence of Nike and Apple in the 1980s are largely credited with why storytelling plays such a big role in the world of marketing. Nike spent scarce amounts of time talking about the features of their product, and instead focused on the story of a person who probably wears Nike. A successful sportsman who doesn’t mind working hard. The embodiment of “Just Do It.” Meanwhile, Apple’s Think Different campaign also shunned sharing any technical specs of its program, simply saying “hey, if you don’t really like following rules, check out our computer!”

This behavior shifted into politics. Ronald Reagan embraced an electorate that didn’t dissect policy proposals of candidates for the most part, but focused on whether or not they saw themselves in that candidate’s vision. His cinematic experience allowed him to bring storytelling into that arena, reshaping the way a lot of people saw the government.

In a very different space a few years later, Nelson Mandela would use storytelling to interest people in a South Africa without apartheid.

Nowdays, most people who have a product or service to promote have embraced the fact that storytelling is the way to do it. And I have some mixed feelings about this.

For starters, the fact that storytelling has become a massive buzzword is what enables me to have a job as a storyteller. My role doubles as communications manager for an environmental organization. There is direct storytelling involved, in thinking of how to communicate our partner’s stories to donors, potential donors, fans, and supporters, but also the tactical side of figuring out how Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey can apply to something like an end-of-year fundraising campaign.

I really do love what I’m doing. I get to apply my creative side to work that meaningfully supports an organization doing some important work. It feels like play to me. But here’s my concern with the mainstreaming of storytelling as an important tool.

There’s so much more to it than using literary devices to sell products.

Storytelling isn’t just a part of a good sales pitch. It can be effective in that role because it basically speaks to what makes us spring to life as humans. I don’t want that to become everyone’s first association with the word storytelling.

I do think that everybody should try and find a creative practice that enables them to tell their own story, whether that’s orally or visually, direct and vivid or abstract. Being able to look at your own life through that lens can help you best understand what makes you tick.

Storytelling is important work, so here’s hoping that its popularity can continue to grow without losing what it really means. I suppose that’s not a bad task for people who call themselves storytellers to take on.

Bryson Stott

No baseball like playoff baseball, and it’s good to have my Phillies back there for another year.

It’ll be really hard to top 2022, but there’s one very clear and obvious thing they can do in order to make 2023 a better year.

Bryson Stott piece inspired by:

🔴 My favorite hitter in the lineup this year. Only in his second season but works a great at bat and doesn’t give the pitcher an easy time.

🎧 Tai Verdes with Stott’s at-bat song, best on the team.

🌅 Those Philly sunsets at CBP.

Go Phils.

The Rise of the Storyteller

Storytelling is a total buzzword.

I often hear people say stuff like ‘it all comes down to the storytelling these days!’ Or ‘It’s not just about the product we’re making but the story it’s telling.’

I am a storyteller. Like, it’s literally my job title. And I think that’s possible because of the growing awareness of how important storytelling is. Nonprofits, tech startups, and even major cities have storyteller positions.

However, I’m not always certain we’re using the word the same way.

Some people talk about using the power of personal narratives in persuasion. Other people talk about framing a message around something like Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey with the recipient in the role of the hero. In my practice, it’s yes to all.

But where did this enthusiasm come from? And does storytelling actually live up to this hype? As one of those people wearing the label of storyteller as an actual job title… I sure hope it does!

Working with a Local Crew

The secret sauce to my last storytelling trip

Over the past several months, I’ve been creating content from a number of different storytelling trips around the world, and two in particular are really shining as trips that really allowed me to take my creative work to a deeper level. 

I collected more heartfelt and vulnerable interviews, developed an understanding around cultural complexities, and felt a lot of enthusiasm around sharing those discoveries with others.

I think it’s no coincidence that these two trips have another thing in common as well. These were trips where I was able to work closely with locally-based creatives, as fixers or videographers. Mudassir in Bangladesh and Yikuno in Ethiopia helped bring these stories to a whole new level. They helped me gain access to interviews I likely couldn’t get on my own. They helped me understand how to read between the lines after hearing from people.

I’m now committed to partnering with locals for storytelling whenever I get the opportunity to. It makes such a big difference. Here are some of the big reasons I think this should be the approach we regularly aspire to.

Five Reasons Storytellers Should Team Up With Locals

1) You gain a better sense of the whole story

In all my experiences, my fixers and filmmaking partners were great at understanding my creative vision but also making sure I had an appropriate understanding of what I was seeing. If they sensed I needed some insight into history or culture that I might not have, they would fill me in between filming, and that helped me understand the whole picture of the story.

For example, in Bangladesh, I came thinking I would film all the many environmental challenges that the country faces separately, but Mudassir helped me realize that it was a broader picture of climate migration that tied all these things together. He helped me figure out how to zoom out the perspective, made great recommendations for experts I should reach out to. And he helped make sure each subject was appropriately compensated for their time.

2) You connect even better with other locals

In both Bangladesh and Ethiopia, my local connections greatly helped me throughout the interview process. I came with a list of questions, and asked them, but Yikuno and Mudassir helped make sure they landed. They asked organic follow-up questions and put the people we were interviewing at ease. They helped our subjects better ignore the camera and simply be themselves.

In past visits, I’ve conducted interviews through translators who weren’t involved in the filmmaking and storytelling per se. The difference is stark. Having people who could interview and translate with an understanding of our finished product enabled them to ask questions that were more dynamic and useful for storytelling purposes. Seeing their translations and transcriptions eventually also helped me realize that simply translating the ideas without the nuances they included and drew out were so much flatter.

3) You can be a more gracious interviewer/storyteller

The norms around what to expect as a visiting filmmaker vary a lot country-to-country. In general, I often find that many of the cultures of the places I visit prioritize formal introductions, making personal connections, and honoring relationships at the very beginning of an interview. 

In contrast, I’ve seen filmmakers from Western countries visit who are more used to immediately setting up gear and adjusting settings because they’re aware how cumbersome that can be and want to get it out of the way. Working with a local fixer or filmmaker can help bridge the gap, understanding how to meet local expectations while still keeping a production on track.

Of course, when you’re an outsider, you’re usually offered a good amount of grace for doing things differently, but whenever I can minimize their need to adapt, I appreciate it. Part of my visit to Ethiopia included many interviews with priests and clergy, in a country where religious devotees are very visibly devout. To what degree should I bow, take off my shoes, and receive blessings as a Christian, but not an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian?

My local friends helped me navigate that.

4) It supports the local creative community

I’m all about supporting the creative community, just about anywhere. However, spending time with creatives from various countries has helped me appreciate how much harder it is to launch and grow a creative career in a setting like Ethiopia or Bangladesh.

Many of the creatives I’ve worked with are able to succeed by building a body of work, having more examples to point to, and organizations they can list among collaborators. Word of mouth and referrals are also incredibly valuable.

5) It’s a big win for ethical storytelling

Ultimately, my concept of ethical storytelling is that in an ideal world, people tell their own stories. Of course, some of the challenges that exist in the real world are things like language barriers, access, and things like privilege and who people are more likely to pay attention to. All these things inevitably affect the process, but there are things we can do to minimize their interference.

Of those things, working with somebody who is from a much more similar cultural background, who can better keep a person’s voice intact is a really big win.

Of course, it’s not black and white. Just because somebody is from the same country doesn’t mean other differences like gender, class, or ethnicity can’t also alter a perspective. But you at least move significantly closer than you would on your own. After all, ethical storytelling is less about checking all the boxes, and more about doing everything you can to honor the people involved and fully considering the impact of your story.

A Healthy Creative Life in spite of Clickbait Culture

The art world isn’t lacking examples of times where an artist or a piece of artwork just wasn’t appreciated in its time.

Vincent Van Gogh is perhaps the most prominent example, having hardly sold any artwork in his lifetime. Blues legend Robert Johnson’s work was nearly forgotten about until 23 years after his death. Freaks and Geeks probably would’ve been given a lot more episodes if people could foresee how popular its cast would eventually become.

White it’s a bit sad that Robert Johnson and Vincent Van Gogh literally wouldn’t survive long enough to gain a true sense of the impact of their work, at least we can be thankful that eventually they gained the popularity they deserved. That way, we could discover them, and many future artists could be influenced by their creativity. Thankfully, the Freaks and Geeks team were all able to find success elsewhere, and the show can now live on in perpetuity via streaming.

But these are exceptions. I often wonder, what about all the brilliant work that gets out there that no one will see because they don’t make a big enough splash right off the bat?

Watch it here

A Healthy Creative Life in spite of Clickbait Culture

In today’s creative economy, the immediate reception of a piece of work is prioritized above all else. If things don’t get enough excitement right away, they’re often buried in the algorithm, canceled half-way through their first season, or ignored by publishers under the premise that they won’t sell well enough. A subplot on a series I watched featured an actress whose new show debuts to much applause, only to be canceled by the next morning simply because it didn’t perform as well as the streaming service was hoping. This is not too far removed from reality.

The problem with this, is that not all great work is meant to make an immediate impression, and some of the best pieces of art take more time and attention to appreciate. I recently came across a review I wrote for a student newspaper back in the day for Sufjan Stevens’ Age of Adz. It was a fairly critical review where I was unimpressed by his shift to a more electronic sound after a couple good albums taking an analog approach. Funny enough, I ended up listening to that album a lot over that fall and gradually fell in love with every track. To date it’s one of my favorite albums, but you’d never guess that based on my initial reaction.

Unfortunately, it’s a lot harder for works of art to be met with that level of patience that allows for them to shine. Pandering to immediate impressions means loading up storytelling with the artistic equivalent of artificial sugar. Something that can appeal to our most surface level reactions without aiming for anything deeper. While I believe things like short form social media video can be an artistic medium, it also sets up our society with so many opportunities to become enthralled with these shallow hits.

As a creative, you end up with a sense for how this game is played. Since much of my work revolves around marketing for nonprofits and organizations, I’ve attended plenty of conferences and seminars on how this game gets played. And sometimes you can get caught up in this conundrum of not wanting to play the game and sacrifice your artistic integrity, while realizing that if you don’t play it, nobody will end up seeing your work.

It’s something I’ve kind of wrestled with as well. If nobody sees the work you want to make, what’s the point? At the same time, if millions of people see your work, but it is so punched up for mass appeal that it’s no longer the work you wanted to make, what’s the point there?

The most ideal outcome, as I’ve come to see it, is to learn how to play the game as much as you can until the point where it conflicts with your artistic vision. At that point, it can take a backseat.

I’m saying that as an idealist who finds it pretty unlikely that any person’s purest artistic version will be so individualized to themselves that it will have a potential audience of zero. Every creator exists somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, between pandering only to what’s popular, and saying only the message authentic to them.

Finding that sweet spot takes ongoing experimentation, reflection and self-evaluation. These lines are constantly moving as technology evolves and public tastes take new forms. But it’s worth doing in the end. Because even in a culture that thrives off virality, there’s no substitute for a consistent, creative commitment.

I believe that AND is one of our most powerful words. The yes and core belief of improv holds true across the board. Being able to affirm something that exists outside of you then add to it with your own experiences and heart us how so many things come together. The power of and is what it links together. When it comes to the act of making the world a safer place for marginalized people, it benefits us to remember that in some way we all have our sphere where we’re disadvantaged. Yes some people have it much harder than others, but if you look at it, there are very few people who don’t have an intersection with a way of being that deals with an uneven playing field. Gender, race, income, and the sooner we move from what about to AND- let’s create a world and embrace the ideas that resolve poverty AND climate AND xenophobia etc… the sooner we realize all our struggles are interconnected and that create s our chance to connect more deeply with one another.

A Peak at My Most Recent Adventure

Is this the most fascinating country I’ve ever been to?

If you follow me on social media, you might know that my posts lag behind my real life by a good chunk of time. It’s not unusual for people to think I’m in a country I returned home from many months ago. I like having a very non-chronological online presence.

Out of appreciation for the community that’s formed around my newsletter, I thought you should be the first to hear about my most recent international adventure. 

Ethiopia.

I went on another climate storytelling venture and Ethiopia proved to be a storyteller’s paradise. I met some of the most insightful and helpful people who hosted my trip, and we got to explore the country- from its farms and villages to its church forests.

My main mission was to explore Plant With Purpose’s program, talk to its participants, attend a tree-planting campaign, and learn about the ways it partners with the Ethiopian Orthodox Churches.

When I started working for Plant With Purpose seven years ago, its program in Ethiopia was nonexistent. It would launch the following year, making it the first program that really started after my tenure. Getting to visit that team over there was truly impressive- a lot of great work has gotten done in a rather short amount of time.

I spent a day in Addis Ababa before setting out to explore the Amhara region. Ethiopia has always been a country I’ve been deeply curious about. As one of only two African countries to evade colonization, there’s a sharper clarity around its cultural and historical distinctives compared to other parts of the continent. 

After several days there, learning about historical perspectives from locals, tasting all kinds of new dishes, and walking across all sorts of terrain, I came to the conclusion that Ethiopia might be the most interesting country I’ve been to.

I say that as a person who has been privileged with getting to see so much of the world.

Ethiopia is like nowhere else.

Here are just a few of the areas of Ethiopia’s depth:

• Religion: The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is the biggest player, and the country can trace its Christianity all the way back to the fourth century, perhaps even earlier. Some of the oldest Christian churches in the world are in Ethiopia. Many Ethiopians are extremely devout, and religion has influence over everything from fasting to a unique calendar used in the country.

• Coffee: The birthplace of coffee, legend has it. Even though coffee is consumed numerous times throughout the day, it’s never done so half-heartedly. From village meetings to hotel lobbies, the proper coffee set up is everywhere. And it’s a whole sensory experience. They don’t even skimp on the smells.

• Cuisine: Ethiopian cuisine is pretty popular around the world, and some U.S. cities have an especially large number of options, like Washington D.C. That said, there are so many items to get to know beyond just injera, I could spend a while there, constantly discovering new things.

• Nature: I spent most of my time in the hills during rainy season. The hottest place on Earth is also in Ethiopia, along with many salt pools and volcanes. You’ll have forests and jungles in other parts of the country, and huge rocky crags that house monasteries. The landscape is incredibly diverse.

My time in Ethiopia was an adventure, and I’m thankful for everything I got to see, smell, taste, and experience while in the country. It’s a deep country. It’s also complicated. The political situation in recent years has been especially messy, and no sooner than a week after I left, the region I visited descended into conflict. Air travel was shut down. I learned a bit about this awful situation from the locals there as well. It was concerning, but also made me admire their spirits all the more.

I look forward to sharing even more about Ethiopia’s amazing culture and landscape over the next few months. In the meantime, here are a few photos:

They Cloned Taye

My latest art is inspired by the pastoral life of Amhara, and the poster from what is probably my favorite movie in 2023 thus far. Recognize the reference? Have you seen it?

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They Cloned Tyrone.

So good, dude.

That film is sophisticated. It took what could’ve been a very heady message and made it a high-action puzzle film by playing with the genre of blacksploitation. I’m not gonna act like I totally interpreted every metaphor or whatever correctly. Odds are, I didn’t, despite the dozens of YouTube explainers I watched afterwards.

But there were strong messages in there of the system being folded against you and using stereotypes to maintain that subjugation. And then… a pimp, a hooker, and a gangster totally flipped those same stereotypes on their head to subvert them.

It made me connect the dots with how I’ve felt on some recent trips to East Africa. Countries imprinted with plenty of stereotypes that have been used to control or justify terrible moments from history. There’s power in telling deeper stories as a way of breaking apart those old narratives.

Climate Vulnerability & Success in Bangladesh

So yeah… this is probably my favorite video that I’ve made up to this point!

I got to visit the brick kilns of Dhaka. These sites that are the primary source of the city’s notorious pollution. I came with the question- could anything be done about it?

I didn’t find my answer until I visited the home communities of its hard working bricklayers… the Sundarbans, a gorgeous habitat for the threatened Bengal tiger, but also a severely threatened area, constantly battered by cyclones and losing land to the sea.

It was there that I found something remarkable. An eco-village, demonstrating success stories in the heart of one of the most climate vulnerable places on earth.

I am blown away by the depth of interviews I was able to get for this video and extremely grateful to the hard working men and women for their vulnerability in sharing their experiences with me.

The most climate vulnerable country is also a success story?

Climate Vulnerability AND Success?

“We feel like birds in a cage now. When we finally get to see the faces of our wives and our children, we will finally be flying free.”

I could not believe the vulnerability, warmth, and openness of the brick layers in Dhaka as they shared with me their struggles working one of the most difficult jobs on earth. Working with the heavy machinery and toxic emissions of a brick kiln put these guys in harm’s way on a daily basis.

“I was injured just a few days ago,” one kind bricklayer told me with an incongruent smile on his face. “But I am still working. We are like robots.”

My problem-solution approach to storytelling immediately sent me on the hunt. The problem in this scenario was so obvious I was inhaling it. The pollution around Dhaka plus the working conditions around these brickyards. The solution? It seemed completely obscured. People had to take these jobs because they had no other means of working. Is there a way to at least minimize the hazards and toxicity of the brickmaking process? I’m sure there is, but nothing seems remotely close to implementation. Definitely not at the scale that would take care of the pollution of a whole thousand of these kilns.

A few days later I left for the Sundarbans. I learned that this was a large mangrove forest area in the south of Bangladesh. Many of the villages there were becoming flooded during cyclones. The farms were no longer producing and many homes were collapsing into the sea.

As that side-quest started taking shape, I started to feel like I was only getting a sense of the climate related problems of Bangladesh. Where were the solutions?

There was a connecting thread. The Sundarbans were the place where many of the bricklayers had migrated from. I’m thankful I’ve had the chance to dive deeper there.

We visited the community of Banojibi, an eco-village on the edge of the national forest. Banojibi was a project of the organization BEDS. BEDS not only confronted environmental challenges, but it did so through the lens of how to do so in a way that makes a positive impact on people’s lives and livelihoods. A dream outcome is one where people no longer need to leave the Sundarbans, but can instead find abundant and sustainable ways of living while also keeping their neighbors safe from threats like climate change.

It boasted guest houses for tourists, plenty of solar power, and acres of farmland and fish ponds. It was also a training ground where people could hone their sustainable skills and share them with the surrounding communities.

One of the most effective methods of building climate resilience is planting trees. Mangrove forests are especially valuable in buffering storms. When a cyclone strikes the coast, mangroves can be a great line of defense, absorbing much of the direct winds from a cyclone, and insulating the villages inland.

I was perhaps most impressed by the weather clubs. The women of Banojibi formed networks where they could use cell phones to relay weather information, evacuation alerts, and tips on how to stay safe. “When we hear about natural disaster 2-3 days in advance),we go to door to door for making awareness. We request people to bring the elderly, children and pregnant women to the cyclone shelters. We continue doing until the last moment,” one of them told me.

Banojibi was just one of many examples of how the Sundarbans were a site of climate resilience. Is it possible to be perhaps the most climate vulnerable country on earth and to also be a success story? Yes. After everything I saw, I can’t answer otherwise.

We need to go beyond the surface level descriptions of Bangladesh as a crowded and polluted place and to instead ask the ever important question. Why?

Climate of course plays a massive role in this story. The climate vulnerability of Bangladesh can’t be overlooked.

At the same time, though, Bangladesh features many powerful examples of climate resilience. Of ordinary people applying creativity, problem solving, and a care for each other that helps them weather the storm.

I got to visit the brick kilns of Dhaka. These sites that are the primary source of the city’s notorious pollution. I came with the question- could anything be done about it?

I didn’t find my answer until I visited the home communities of its hard working bricklayers… the Sundarbans, a gorgeous habitat for the threatened Bengal tiger, but also a severely threatened area, constantly battered by cyclones and losing land to the sea.

It was there that I found something remarkable. An eco-village, demonstrating success stories in the heart of one of the most climate vulnerable places on earth.

I am blown away by the depth of interviews I was able to get for this video and extremely grateful to the hard working men and women for their vulnerability in sharing their experiences with me.

Cross-Cultural Storytelling

Cross cultural storytelling is a big task.

One of the most powerful things about storytelling is its inherent ability to build bridges of empathy between people who may have had totally different life experiences from one another. When that power can be harnessed to correct an injustice that has gone on for far too long… well, that’s pretty much what being a Creative Changemaker comes down to in my opinion.

But cross cultural storytelling is something that intimidates a lot of people. When the people in a story live such different lives than the story’s audience… it can feel like having to make a big stretch in order to make it work effectively. On top of that, there are plenty of legitimate and valid concerns around the ethics of cross cultural storytelling. Most people want to do things right but quickly discover all kinds of ethical quandaries.

Those of us who help process the lived experiences of others to an audience with the potential to help are in a critical role. It makes total sense to be a bit nervous about wanting to do things right! And to do them well! While there is an endless array of topics to address within the realm of cross cultural storytelling, especially surrounding its ethics, my latest Creative Changemaker video focuses on three areas of focus in particular. These are three areas that, when you properly pay attention to them, you greatly increase the opportunity for your audience to empathize and relate to a story that takes place beyond their immediate horizon.

I’m pretty fresh from a recent storytelling trip that took me to India and Ethiopia- two extremely different contexts- and while we were on the ground filming, I frequently had to ask the question: can our audience relate to this?

Then on the flight back, I watched an Indian movie. Chello Show was a Gurajati film. It’s set in a small village. A boy goes with his family to see his first movie and absolutely falls in love with the world of film. His dad isn’t too thrilled as he thinks the film industry as a whole is pretty shady. The only reason the family went to the cinema in the first place was to see a religious movie about the goddess Kali.

The film was in a language I rarely hear, in a remote setting. But by the end, it felt more familiar than unfamiliar.

It felt like being a kid with dreams and ambitions that are bigger than your immediate environment can contain. It felt like having parents who get in your way and friends who get your back. It felt like young mischief, wonder, all these things.

How do you accomplish this sort of cross-cultural storytelling magic? Here’s what I’ve learned.

Pick an epiphany

Pick some connectors

Find your shorthand

Pick an epiphany – This means, what is the takeaway you want your audience to have. It can be a bit of awareness or a strong emotion. I remember watching some documentaries about child soldiers as a student and coming to the realization that I wanted to do everything in my power to shift the world away from things like that happening.

That is a strong epiphany. I wonder if Chello Show’s creators were thinking, I want to remind people of the magic and wonder of cinema!

When you’re more focused on the epiphany… the challenge of cultural translation suddenly takes a backseat role and feels much more manageable.

Connectors – These are things that will help meet your audience where they are and lead them towards that epiphany.

Imagine rich, universal experiences or ideas that transcend culture. They can be the bridge that helps take your audience from their world into the epiphany you want them to have.

In an earlier episode I talked about how the ways you can make any sort of character relatable are through an emotional experience, a difficult decision, or a familiar relationship. These things all serve as great connectors.

Shorthand–  These are bursts of things that are familiar in order to help facilitate the journey across terrain that’s less familiar.

If that still sounds complicated, think about the impact music has when you’re watching a foreign film. Even though your brain might feel like it’s playing catch-up with the subtitles, the music can help signal to you a little bit ahead of time how you’re supposed to feel. What outcome you’re rooting for.

For example, at one point during this most recent trip, we thought a theme that stood out from people’s stories they shared with us was the support they found from their community. How they felt acceptance and that everyone had their back.

When thinking of our audience, we wanted them to remember times that they had this feeling of acceptance, belonging, or support.

So maybe people have felt that at a book club. Or on a sports team. Or in a choir. Can I shorthand that? What if I edit the video a little bit like a sports movie? What if I look for ways to include sounds of people singing together in one voice? Can I frame everybody in a way so it looks like they’re gathered in a circle? Like in a book club? This is one of my favorite parts of the process.

And if you want a sense of what it’s like when you finally get to put all these things together… check out the podcast Song Exploder. It’s always amazing when I hear musicians talk about how they went with a certain instrument or sound to conjure up a specific image or a historical reference.

Cross-cultural storytelling is not always the easiest thing to do. Thankfully there are ways to approach it that’ll make things a lot less difficult.

MF Doom

Fifty years of hip hop and somehow I’ve only gotten around to drawing two pieces. Thankfully, Doom & Kendrick aren’t bad picks if I’ve only gotta go with two. They each represent a decade’s worth of my listening pleasure. Can you tell I’m a lyrics guy?

I was pretty sad about MF Doom’s passing a couple years ago, and along Gift of Gab, we’ve lost a few too many of my early favorite lyricists. Scenes change so subtly it’s hard to tell when the baton is passed from one set of hands to another, but it undoubtedly gets passed.

The Climate Wakeup Call We Don't Need

Do we really need more climate awareness? MAYBE IT’S SOMETHING ELSE WE LACK.

The scenes of Maui’s wildfires have been devastating. There’s a sense of fondness and familiarity many Americans have for Lahaina, and a strong sense of loss accompanies its destruction. As homes, businesses, and parcels of nature have gone up in flames, it also feels as though happy memories from past visits alongside Native Hawaiian history and culture are also being scorched.

This represents one of those moments where the climate crisis hits an especially resonant emotional note. These feelings of grief and anger can be catalysts of action, which is why some hope it serves as the wake-up call for more swift action.

In the wake of these fires, the Los Angeles times ran an op-ed claiming that if the Maui fires don’t wake up Americans to the climate emergency, nothing will.

It’s a bold statement, but I don’t know if it’s accurate to think one big emergency that nobody can ignore will be the tipping point for action.

After all, it was just a couple months ago where the east coast was registering some of the worst air quality scores in the world. Out of the ordinary wildfires swept through the heavily populated northeast, darkening skies and making it hazardous to walk outside.

This is where most of the country’s economic and political institutions are located. How do you ignore that?

And for us West Coasters, remember 2020 and those orange skies? I particularly can’t forget the apocalyptic image of a baseball game being played in front of cardboard fans due to Covid as the sky above the stadium is a stark orange.

There’s another wake up call. Right near the world’s hubs for entertainment and technology.

But I don’t think an alarmingly ominous wake up call like these examples is what we’ve been missing.

In fact, 2020 and the pandemic are also an example of how an emergency and heightened attention don’t always generate an effective and coordinated response. Sometimes that attention is enough to make things that once seemed obvious into controversies, and I think the climate scene has had enough of that.

No… the problem isn’t a lack of awareness.

I don’t even think it’s a lack of urgency. An entire generation, if not two, on the whole experiences climate anxiety as a part of everyday life. The population of the U.S. in denial of climate change is below 10%, a number that would likely be nonexistent if it weren’t for things being politicized the way they are.

So what’s getting in the way?

I think some of the more underrated barriers to effective climate action is ignorance towards solutions and a felt lack of efficacy. In my TED Talk, I referenced these briefly as distance and despair. And here’s what I mean:

Ignorance towards solutions: So much of our climate coverage is focused on effects and projections. I recently watched a full hour block of climate reporting, where reporters showed us scenes of heat-related disruptions from Greece to Arizona to Southeast Asia. Whenever we weren’t seeing a new location facing a heatwave, we were seeing a scientist unpack their graphs showing what we’re in for in the near future.

It’s great that climate can get an hour long block of coverage now, but you know what was drastically missing? Solutions. If I didn’t actively work in the arena of climate solutions, I probably wouldn’t be aware that there are so many that are actively available and ready to scale. I wouldn’t be aware that in places where they have been implemented, they’ve saved money and lowered emissions and that they’ve actually resulted in some good progress. Shout out to my peeps at Project Drawdown for unpacking these solutions so effectively for years.

We often don’t act because we feel helpless. Seeing solutions, over and over, helps us feel less helpless. It also nudges those in a position of power to actually implement those solutions rather than ignoring them.

A felt lack of efficacy. In other words, your ordinary person doesn’t feel like there’s much they can do to make a meaningful impact.

It’s easy to be a critic, especially when it comes to climate action. The history of environmentalism is full of things that were once pushed as miracle solutions. Recycling, tree planting, carbon offsetting, and so on. Eventually, we found that each of these examples were more complicated than they seemed at first. They could potentially do more harm than good, and often failed to live up to their potential.

It’s a good thing that people today are more willing to put proposed solutions under scrutiny, but a side effect has been a surge in cynicism. It’s hard to come up with a game-plan to do something about climate change when you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. To find out why the approach you took was actually problematic.

On top of that, there’s an extremely strong consciousness around how little power and influence the ordinary person holds in comparison to, say, a multinational corporation or a municipal government.

That said, I think storytelling with a focus on solutions helps to lower this barrier as well. Because there are plenty of stories that remind us of how our actions, even as ordinary people, can help shift norms. There are few things as powerful as normalizing a behavior, and as these behaviors shift, the institutions with power must respond. After all, ecology reminds us that none of our actions take place in a vacuum. Even the smallest of actors can shift the trajectory of an entire ecosystem.

If the tragic scenes from Maui, or anywhere else, have stirred up a level of climate concern that wasn’t there before, use that. Know that there are solutions and that finding your own opportunity to advance any one of them does have a meaningful impact.

Know that we don’t need another wake up call to take action. We have the solutions. We have the efficacy. We just need to act.

I Was Totally Wrong About Bangladesh

How is climate change impacting Bangladesh?

I came expecting to find an intense, but straightforward answer to the story. A menagerie of problems. Pollution and heat. Storms and floods. Rural-urban migration. And I did hear about those things. But…

I also found that if you zoom out, there is so much interconnectedness between all these elements. Bangladesh wasn’t so much a container for various climate challenges, but a locus where all of them meet and interact.

I learned so much from talking to climate migrants in Dhaka and trying to understand their journeys.

Bangladesh… you’ve taught me so much.

Reducing Creative Friction

Road Trips and Resistance

A Creative Changemaker’s task is to move people to take action through the art of storytelling. It’s a parallel journey. Both the artist and the audience are on a journey from the world that is towards the world that could be.

From the artist, this journey demands commitment to a craft- be it speaking, documentary making, or even something like cooking. (See: Andres, Jose) Meanwhile, the audience is called to action. A sustained, significant action. Planting trees. Speaking out against bigotry. And so on.

To keep that sustainable, it helps to link that action to a state of flow: the activity that you love so much, participating in it makes time start to breeze by. So, how does one keep that momentum?

In my newest Creative Changemaker episode, and the following post, I dig into a metaphor that’s helped me out a whole bunch.

Steven Pressfield says, “the more important a call or action to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

How do you get past that resistance?

Here's a metaphor that's helped me. I think of creative movement like a road trip. Just like how you need a vehicle, destination, fuel, and a key to get it all started... you need different elements to get your creative work going. You need a vision for the world you want to make, a craft or call-to-action that gets us there, the motivation to get started, and something that gets you in the flow state to keep at it.

I’ve found it helpful to think of these things as similar to the components of a good road trip.

You need to have a destination. A sense of where you’re going. I think that’s comparable to having a vision for the world. A sense of what the world looks like when its restored to justice. When the problem you are addressing is finally solved.

You also need to have a way to get there. So does your audience. A craft and a call to action.

That’s your vehicle.

Do you write songs to inspire people to participate in major social movements?

Do you make documentaries so people know how to donate their money effectively?

Think about where your craft meets your audience’s call.

The two other parallels I’ve found helpful to consider: A car needs a key to catalyze a spark to get its engine started. People also need a spark to call them out of homeostasis into looking for something to do. Over the past few years we’ve seen plenty of people discover things in the world that make them angry and ways to get started in taking action.

You also need fuel (or perhaps a battery charge) to sustain that action. To keep in motion, it really helps to turn your craft from simply a chore into an act of joy. When that activity becomes something that nudges you into a state of flow, where you gain deep joy and lose track of time, that makes it pretty sustainable.

The reason why I find this metaphor so helpful is that maintaining creative momentum and overcoming resistance doesn’t take just one of them, but all of them running into each other. Shifting your focus from one to the other can also be a powerful way to get unstuck. If you’re having trouble improving your craft, try and simply focus on enjoying it. If you’re stuck and unable to get into the flow state, remember why you started. What moved you in the first place?

The process of creating change invites all kinds of resistance. But having the tools to move beyond that can be significantly helpful.

The Key to More Relatable Storytelling

I have a new Creative Changemaker episode out now!

In this one, I share my secret sauce to crafting stories that are relatable. Stories that people find themselves invested in, even though they share little in common with the characters. Even though they’re set in places distant and foreign for their audience.

In the end, these differences only exist at a surface level. Deeper down, there are some shared experiences that are a part of being alive, and tapping into those universal elements can help bridge the gap between the world of your story and the world your audience lives in.

After all, that’s when a story is really grooving, isn’t it? When a person looks at a character’s situation, choices, and emotions and feels like it so closely matches their own experiences.

Watch my latest video where I unpack how to get to that effect a little sooner.

My Recipe for Relatable Storytelling

One of the biggest fears that most storytellers face is telling a storyteller that people simply can’t relate to.

We’ve all been there. Trying to share a fascinating personal story to somebody whose interest just doesn’t emerge. The half-hearted smile unsuccessfully disguising a mind that is someplace else.

It’s one thing when our spontaneous stories don’t land, but it’s probably even more painful when the stories we’ve been deliberately and carefully crafting fall flat.

I think that’s one of the big reasons many storytellers choose to play it safe. To only tell stories that exist within a world of familiarity. To stick with settings, characters, and lifestyles that resemble those their audience can relate to.

Of course, we’ll all marvel when something like Dune or Squid Games can take us to a totally different time, setting, or environment… but for every one of these efforts there are eight or nine artists who chose to play it safe, all because the audience might not really relate with what they’re trying to do.

However, when we choose to play it safe, we’re essentially pulling our punches. We’re holding back the power of stories to move people, spark empathy, and change outlooks. If you’re like me, and you believe being an artist isn’t so much about creating something from nothing, but channeling an act of creation that flows through you, then that simply doesn’t sound like acceptable stewardship.

But telling relatable stories that grease the wheels of empathy… that often sounds easier said than done. How does a person actually accomplish this?

Here are the three things that I’ve found people are most apt to connect to in a story they watch:

1. An emotional experience

It seems obvious, but seeing a character go through a deep emotional experience that you’ve had before can be so powerfully validating. This is a big thing that happens whenever people talk about a book or movie meeting them at exactly the right moment.

The thing with this, is that it helps to be specific with the emotion that’s portrayed. Loss? That’s a universal. But what about a sudden loss that robbed you of a relationship just as it was getting deeper? One that felt snuffed out as it was emerging, creating a grief that lacks resolution? That’s a very specific flavor of loss, but if you’ve experienced that, it’s powerful to know you aren’t the only one who has.

2. A relationship

Our relationships color our lives, and while there are many different relationships, the same ones seem to be endlessly ripe for storytelling. The fact that Everything Everywhere All At Once managed to portray a mother-daughter relationship in a way that felt both fresh and familiar is a testament to how timeless relationships can be as the heartbeat of a story. In the end, this is what people related to, not the universe-jumping escapades.

Like with emotional experiences, it helps to be specific. To find a specific flavor of relationship. To draw from real life. We’ve seen plenty of father-son stories, but there’s a world of difference between Field of Dreams and Manchester By The Sea.

3. A decision

One of the things that makes a story shine is when a character needs to make a difficult decision. Everybody faces decisions at one point that would send their life down a completely diverging path. This is an opportunity to have that experience reflected in a character they see.

I’m a big believer that any setting or sort of character can be relatable. Just look at what Pixar has done with a trash compactor, a rat, a disembodied soul, the elements, and a bunch of emotions.

This belief fuels my work.

As a climate storyteller, I’m banking on the fact that people in more comfortable positions who can advocate, give, and vote would do so while keeping in mind the plight of those living in more vulnerable situations. It’s possible, but it also takes work. These three elements help take care of a lot of the heavy lifting.

Creative Lessons, Lately

What I’ve learned about creative work in recent months

I love sharing creative lessons. So much so, that I recently launched an entire series on my channel applying creative lessons I’ve learned from writing, improv, filmmaking, and being a huge nerd about storytelling to the work of creating a just and sustainable world.

What I usually share are insights that have proven themselves valuable over and over again in my creative journey, but I also think there’s some value in sharing some lessons that are a little less cooked… the learning in progress.

Over the past year or so, I’ve found myself more aware of certain habits I’d like to let go of and things I’d like to develop more in my work.

Here are a few of the realizations that have really shaped my most recent work.

If you want to make your message clearer, try getting to it quicker.

Some creative teachers are very insistent on keeping a word count to an absolute minimum, trimming out every adverb, and sacrificing detailed descriptions for stating things plainly. I’m not exactly a believer in being this rigid about your efficiency. There can be value to the things that come up when you give them the space.

That said, aiming to “tighten and brighten” a piece will typically make it a lot better.

My hypothesis is that the practice of distilling a message into fewer words, frames, or bars typically forces you to take a second thought about which parts are most important. It makes you consider if every part of your work is serving its bigger purpose. Sometimes the value isn’t so much that brevity. It’s the fact that you more vividly understand what purpose each part of your work serves and which parts are the most important.

This has never been an easy thing for me. I used to try and pack in every detail possible, thinking that the more details I included, the less likely it was for my audience to misunderstand me. Quite often this had the opposite effect. It gave them more rabbit trails and side quests to potentially get lost in.

Lately, my first draft is the lengthy one. I’ll write things out stream of consciousness, lay out all my video clips, etc. On the next draft, I’ll start challenging myself to cut the word count by a noteworthy amount, or to trim several minutes off the final video.

A clearer message creates a bigger impact. One of the easiest ways to make something clear is to free up the space around it.

I’m learning that I don’t always need to present a “finished” product to start inviting others in.

Someone pointed out to me how much I’ve loved the “ta-da” effect. I’ve had this habit of moving creative work forward in stealth mode before revealing what I’ve done to the rest of my teammates once it’s been about 90% of the way there.

When I’ve tried to think about where that habit came from, I’ve discovered that I have a strong aversion to being misunderstood. It’s probably why I’ve put so much effort towards studying communication and messaging in my life.

I worry that showing somebody an early version of a creative work in progress is akin to serving somebody a dish raw and asking for feedback. They lack the context to critically evaluate it. And to be fair, there have been times I’ve submitted things for feedback only to discover that the other person was trying to take the piece in a totally different direction than intended.

However, I’ve learned that it’s still good to include a lot more people earlier in the process than I’m used to. The fear of being misunderstood is just something to get used to. Part of creating art is setting up a regular invitation to be misunderstood. And if somebody gives feedback that doesn’t match the vision, it’s totally fair game to just say thanks and leave it.

But, inviting other people earlier increases the odds that you’ll share with somebody who understands what you’re going for. And that person likely has some fresh perspective on what can get you there more easily.

I’m learning to create with greater emotional honesty 

There’s a popular notion that most people favor either their head (logic), heart (emotions), or body (senses) to process the world. Of the three, I find being logically oriented to be the least romantic… and that’s probably because it’s my default.

This year, I’ve received a lot of invitations to be more sensitive to my body and to the spectrum of emotions I encounter throughout the day. I’m realizing that How do you feel right now? and Why do you suppose you feel like that? are as good of a prompt as any for drumming up some creative work.

My longstanding habit was to create as a way to explain things. And it often still is. But I’m realizing that this work is always stronger when I think about how to incorporate a stronger palate of emotions into the work. Often this looks like loosening up my need to move something forward, and to simply practice being more present and responsive.

Put these things together and it’s been quite a year of creative growth.

How about you? What habits or assumptions about your own creative work have gotten a good challenge lately?

My TED Talk is LIVE!

Hello friends,

I’ll keep my check-in this week pretty short. Just wanted to share with you all that my talk at TEDx San Diego has been officially published.

It’s live. Check it out. Go watch it!

It’s quite the timing. We’re about to wrap up a month that will have been the hottest month in recorded history.

Last night, I watched nearly an hour’s worth of climate coverage from my hotel room. The fact that the news is dedicating this much time to it is both a testament to how severe the crisis is, as well as fairly recent improvements in how climate change is being handled by major media outlets. The latter is the effect of public pressure. That said… there’s still more work to be done!

Most of the people interviewed by the journalists were heads of state, United Nations officials, and high-ranking scientists. We didn’t hear from farmers. Day workers. People who’ve had to move due to the impact of climate change where they live. We also didn’t hear from anyone who demonstrated enthusiasm around a particular solution.

Instead, we saw the familiar images of upticking graphs and highlighted reports.

What happens when this is the way we talk about climate change?

Distance and despair.

It is absurd that the voices of people from the most climate vulnerable countries are often excluded from these conversations and stories. It makes us only think of climate impacts and actions in a top-down manner. In my experience, the most exciting and promising shifts have been at the local community level, led from the bottom-up.

Our flow of information, however, keeps us at a distance from both empathy and enthusiasm.

At the same time, it makes us feel like we can’t do anything. It’s great that climate can command an hour of coverage, but what isn’t great is that zero minutes were solutions-focused. At the end of the program, you’re left feeling pretty fatalistic. Like nothing can be done to stop living through this year after year.

That’s exactly how the major polluters would want you to feel. That feeling enables the pollution to keep happening.

My talk is a call for storytellers to show up. For institutions to invest in storytelling. Ethical storytelling. Solutions-focused storytelling. Powerfully creative storytelling.

Thanks for watching my TED Talk.

Now if you could also please blast that thing with likes, comments, and shares… that would really help get the message out there!

Judith Huemann

“Part of the problem is that we tend to think that equality is about treating everyone the same, when it’s not. It’s about fairness. It’s about equity of access.”

–Judith Huemann

July is Disability Pride Month

Judith Huemann passed away earlier this year, and while I’ve wanted to draw a portrait of her for a long time, I didn’t quite get the chance to finish this up until recently.

Her name is probably deserving of a lot more recognition than it gets, and in my book, she’s probably on a short list of the most impactful activists of the past century. Her advancement of the Americans with Disabilities Act, along with making accessibility a more prominent concern in public spaces impacted a ton of lives… including many of those with invisible disabilities.

Her activism was forceful when it needed to be, compassionate at its foundations, and relentless, despite a whole bunch of obstacles. The documentary Crip Camp and her memoir Being Heumann are both really, really good.

One more quote for good measure.

“Change never happens at the pace we think it should. It happens over years of people joining together, strategizing, sharing, and pulling all the levers they possibly can. Gradually, excruciatingly slowly, things start to happen, and then suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, something will tip.”

The two very different sides of my life

When did living a quiet, simple, dignified life become such a bad thing?

A friend asked this question rhetorically, but it made me really want to think through my answer. When did that happen?

On the surface, I wouldn’t want to admit that I ever thought it was a bad thing. When I think of a dignified quiet life, I often think of the people in rural villages I have the privilege of meeting and working with. Their lifestyles are modest by our standards, and yet they are absolute heroes of mine.

I don’t seriously think a simple life like that is a bad thing, right?

But then, I think about the books I read, the conferences I attended, and the accounts I followed throughout my twenties and even up until today. So many of them are oriented around pursuit, adventure, or a quest. I’ve always been attracted to stories about extreme pursuits- like wanting to visit every country without using planes. I’ve also found it especially inspiring when the pursuit was something heroic. Stopping a war, or human trafficking, for example.

So often, these books, posts, and conferences challenged people to do something ambitious. Something where success was not guaranteed.

You did this to make the world a better place, but you also did it for yourself. To live your legend, as The Alchemist would put it.

I have a life that allows me to be pretty adventurous. My work trips are more likely to bring me to India than Indianapolis, and I’ve been getting especially exciting invitations the past few years.

On the flip side, the ordinary moments of my life have never been better. Being a dad to three toddlers makes my world pretty small, but it is indeed beautiful.

I like to think my year could be divided up into Anthony BourdIn days- a handful of spots on the calendar that are full of exploring new places and eating boldly-

surrounded by Jim Gaffigan days. Those are the ones where I wrangle my many children until it’s time to put them to sleep so I can binge watch stuff while eating ice cream out of the tub.

In my life, the tension between ambition and simplicity isn’t just a philosophical one, it’s my daily life. That’s why I made this the topic of my latest video.

In my most recent years, I’ve been wrestling with whether or not the call to adventure conflicts with the beauty of the ordinary. By nature, I am much more inclined towards thrill-seeking, so learning how to appreciate the quiet side of life feels like maturity.

First came fatherhood, then the pandemic. Work, travel, conferences, races, boxing, etc. all went on hiatus. It was a lot of staying put.

It was a challenge but I grew.

Then came the twins and my life got three times as domestic. But I learned how to see the beauty in that.

All this time spent staying still gave me the chance to reevaluate what I thought about adventure and travel and striving. I missed going places, for sure, but the lifestyle I once lived of seeing dozens of countries a year started to lose its shimmer.

There are all kinds of reasons why people do things like climb mountains and visit very distant locations. As you do this for longer, your motivations likely become mixed.

There’s probably some genuine curiosity combined with the hope that it makes you a more interesting person.

There’s probably the desire to take on the adventures that are burning on your heart within your precious, limited lifetime. This can come from a place of good stewardship, or it can come from a scarcity mentality. Or both.

And the more I thought about the social and environmental impact of travel and other adventures, the more gray areas emerged.

I started to feel like embracing a simpler life might be the better way to go. A couple years ago, I felt more ready for it than I had ever been.

Then, I started traveling again. I visited new and old destinations, and it reminded me of how much this stuff makes me feel alive.

I honestly feel like my truest self when meeting a remote village, or trying out a dish somewhere overseas I’d never seen before.

While the simplicity of a quiet life was growing on me, making that my entire pursuit didn’t feel true to who I was. Romanticizing it could only go so far. I needed that integrity.

I now realize that these two sides in my life might be complementary opposites that hold each other in balance. Learning how to make room for each feels the most whole.

I think I’ll probably always be thinking up my next adventure, not to mention a few more further down the line to look forward to.

At the same time, I absolutely don’t want to go non-stop. I actually love the current rhythm of my life, where in between the big pursuits I get a long stretch of ordinary life. It’s during those stretches where my experiences really sink in and it doesn’t just feel like rushing from one destination to the next.

For me, I suppose it all stems from a realization of how precious each day of life is.

It is too short and precious to not pursue the big things that make you come fully alive.

At the same time, it’s too short and precious to simply rush that pursuit, without the beautiful ordinary scenes in between.

Put these epiphanies together and I suppose we’re getting somewhere.

My Two Lives

I often think that our world doesn’t value quiet, dignified lives nearly enough.

We spend so much time fixated on sensational, extreme personalities, that the simple act of doing one’s work, caring for those around them, and being present go really undervalued.

It’s something I’ve come to appreciate. At the same time… it’s SO different to how I’m wired.

I’m an adventurer. I love big experiences.

I’ve found a lot of personal and spiritual growth by challenging myself. Mentally. Physically. I find a ton of joy in having good stories to share. And I believe life is too much of a miracle and too valuable to not pursue something BIG. Whatever that means to you.

If it feels like these two values are in opposition to each other, they kind of are. But they’re the two contrasting sides of my life right now. Simple days spent with my kids make me long for more quiet moments, but the trips and adventures I get to embark on remind me of how much that stuff brings me to life.

So which path makes the most sense for me.

Do I even have to choose?