The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth by The Moth, Meg Bowles, Catherine Burns, Jenifer Hixson, Sarah Austin Jenness, Kate Tellers

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth by The Moth, Meg Bowles, Catherine Burns, Jenifer Hixson, Sarah Austin Jenness, Kate Tellers Over the past twenty-five years, the directors of The Moth have worked with people from all walks of life—including astronauts, hairdressers, rock stars, a retired pickpocket, high school students, and Nobel Prize winners—to develop true personal stories that have moved and delighted live audiences and listeners of The Moth’s Peabody Award–winning radio hour and podcast. A leader in the modern storytelling movement, The Moth inspires thousands of people around the globe to share their stories each year. Now, with How to Tell a Story, The Moth will help you learn how to uncover and craft your own unique stories, like Moth storytellers Mike Birbiglia, Rosanne Cash, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Gilbert, Padma Lakshmi, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, Hasan Minhaj, Tig Notaro, Boots Riley, Betty Reid Soskin, John Turturro, and more. Whether your goal is to make it to the Moth stage, deliver the perfect wedding toast, wow clients at a business dinner, give a moving eulogy, ace a job interview, be a hit at parties, change the world, or simply connect more deeply to those around you, stories are essential. Sharing secrets of The Moth’s time-honed process and using examples from beloved storytellers, a team of Moth directors will show you how to • mine your memories for your best stories • explore structures that will boost the impact of your story • deliver your stories with confidence • tailor your stories for any occasion Filled with empowering, easy-to-follow tips for crafting stories that forge lasting bonds with friends, family, and colleagues alike, this book will help you connect authentically with the world around you and unleash the power of story in your life.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss i'm the chris voss show.com hey welcome to the podcast we're having a little fun there if you go to the youtube.com for just chris voss of course subscribe at the bell notification on the show today so it's very going to be very cool.

We've got some amazing stuff you're going to learn today. It's going to blow your mind, open your brain cells. Open your brain cells? Does that sound safe? And, anyway, go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss.com. See everything we're reading and reviewing over there. Go see our new podcast. What is it called?

Beacons of Leadership with Chris Voss podcast. That's new. That's in regards to leadership interviews in my book um and also go to all of our groups facebook linkedin twitter instagram all those great places so we're excited to announce my new book is coming out it's called beacons of leadership inspiring lessons of success in business and innovation it's going to be coming on october 5th 2021 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful

stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. Or order the book wherever fine books are sold. As always, we have some of the coolest authors that are coming out with the newest, hottest books. They come right hot off the shelf. In fact, I've got my copy of their new book, How to Tell a Story. And this is coming out, I'm sorry, How to Tell a Story, The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from the Moth. April 26, 2022 is when this is coming out. I've got

two of the authors on the show with us today, Catherine Burns and Kate Tellers. They're going to be talking to us about it. And it's got that beautiful, fresh print smell that can get you kind of high. So that's all the more reason to order it and pre-order it so you get it ahead of time. Welcome to the show, both of you fine ladies. Thank you for coming by. Thank you so much. We're thrilled to be here. Thank you.

And we've got Kate Tellers and Catherine Burns on the show with us. Let me have you each introduce yourselves and give us a brief bio, if you want, on your backgrounds. Sure. I'm Catherine Burns, and I'm the longtime artistic director of the storytelling organization, The Moth. I'm one of the hosts of our public radio show, The Moth Radio Hour, and have been helping people tell their true stories on stage now for over 20 years. And it's a huge labor of love. Awesome. And I'm Kate Tellers. I'm a senior director and the director of our Mothworks program at The Moth.

I'm also a host of our live events, a host of our podcast, and a storyteller. And I am a co-author of the book that we've just mentioned. There you go. So let's find out who this moth is. What's going on with this moth and what kind of game is he running? What's going on there? Hey, do you want to take that? Yeah.

I mean, I don't know that there is one moth in particular. The name, the name, the moth, the bug speaks to the community element of storytelling. You know, moths gather around a light, the attraction of a light, the light being the stories that we share. So we're named for that element of community that's so fundamental to storytelling. our founder is from the south, from Georgia and would sit on a porch and tell stories there and sort of brought that storytelling tradition or identified it in the open mic story slams, sorry, poetry slams in New

York City. And so we felt like the moth was an appropriate element for all of us. There is not just one. There are thousands and millions. Yeah, everyone comes to the beacon of the light. uh this is really interesting like i i was telling you guys before the show uh a couple months ago i asked my audience i was i'm looking to speak now on my book that i published uh after 54 years the next one

comes out when i'm 108 evidently um i'm taking 54 years between each one to do um there's a lot of writing involved you know there's at least 10 words. So mostly pictures. But I asked my audience, I said, well, what's a, who's, who's a good thing to teach storytelling to? And there's a lot of resources out there. And somebody goes, the moth is the best. I've never heard of this moth, but I've seen a few.

And so they referred me to the site and I checked it out and i was like oh wow and and then you know i i put it on my to-do list and then uh and then all of a sudden this popped up with all the great authors we have and i'm like cool i'm gonna finally find out what's going on is there a dot com did we get a dot com on this yet so people know where to look it up that or actually or dot. Or dot org, I'm sorry. Yeah, so it's like the moths at work. We're a not-for-profit. So you guys have been around since 1997? Yeah.

It's going to be 25 years in June. That moth has been hiding me from everywhere. I tried to find a local one up in, I guess, Logan, Utah, there is one. And then people can go to your website, find different places. And then what goes on at some of these different events that you guys put on? So our flagship series is the main stage series. And that's how the moth began in 1997. And so for the main stage, we invite five people, ideally from all walks of life, to come tell a

personal story on stage. And for the main stage, we actually work pretty extensively with the storytellers to help them tell their story. Not to try to put words in their mouth, but we have a 10 to 12 minute timeline. It tends to fly by. And so we just find if you work with people a little bit in advance, help them figure out what do they really want to say? What is the story really about for them? And we encourage people to go on stage knowing the stepping stones or bullet points of what they want to hit. And so we work with them in advance. And then we do these shows all around the country and occasionally around the world. We also have open mic story slams all around the world where anyone can come and put their name in a hat and the first 10 names are picked.

These are five minute stories are told and it's a contest for the audience votes. Oh wow. So those are really fun. They're modeled after the poetry slams. It's so inspired our founder back in the day. You know, one of the things that I was disappointed in myself in life is I didn't figure out till about 50 how important stories are to to humans and and storytelling and everything else I just always kind of went yeah there's a movies the tvs

there's all that kind of stuff there's books you know and then some people do that for entertainment but I didn't really understand how important telling those stories are and how much it affects other people it lets us know we're not alone. It lets us know that the human condition is similar, and it helps us problem-solve. It's kind of almost like an oratory or even in written form or film. It's almost kind of a way that we learn stuff because, you know, we don't get a manual. I don't know about you two, but I didn't get a manual.

Did you guys get a manual? I didn't get a manual. Sadly, no. No. So that's how we learn about life. And so I imparted that to my, uh, young nephew and niece when they were graduating and said, life is a collection of stories. And I didn't realize all my life I'd been telling my stories like an African griot, um, where I'd been constantly retelling them because I was trying

to remember them. I was being my own historian. And then finally I was able to put them in book format. But telling great stories and really capturing the essence of it and having that power is really important in all different formats, I think. Amen. I mean, we definitely find that people connect through stories. I mean, if the moth is all about something, this word gets a little overused these days. I'm trying to find a different one. But empathy is one of the things that you really see come out of stories. I mean, often people tend to tell the best moth stories are often about people's mistakes and missteps.

You know, I think people sometimes think that the moth would be looking for stories about, oh, the time of day, I saved the day. But actually, it's our missteps that make us so interesting and connect us to each other and my favorite part of the about the moth is when someone tells a story on stage and then tons of people come afterwards and say i always felt that way too but i was too afraid to say it i thought i felt so alone now i feel more connected you know we get letters when people hear the stories on the radio saying that um and I definitely think since the dawn of time, this has been a way for us to connect with each other. You know, the moth came up kind of hand in hand with the tech age, right? Where everyone was having email and a computer and our little devices. And I don't think it's any coincidence that even as we were going into our screens, which we're all talking to everyone on the screen right now, but that there was this primal need to get back in the rooms together and connect in a deeper, more meaningful way that wasn't just about blinking lights.

Do you want to jump in here, Kate, with anything? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the things, and Catherine is speaking to this that I love, we say in our mission statement, you know, we celebrate the diversity and the commonality of the human experience. And I love for exactly what Catherine is describing. It's sometimes it's not, I've had the same experience, but I've had like an essential experience like yours. So you'll hear someone who tells a story so specifically about a series of events that another person in the audience has had no,

you know, there's no similar plot line, but there's a similar like emotional essential plot line. And then you'll find the connection there. I always love at the Moth, you know, as Catherine said, with our main stage, we work with storytellers one-on-one to craft their stories. The day before, two days before the show, we do an in-person rehearsal. And so you'll have, like, I always go back to this dinner I had. I'm from Pittsburgh, which you'll know if you talk to me for 10 seconds. And when we had this dinner, we had a civil rights activist. We had a woman who rejected Mormonism. We had a journalist who almost threw away her entire career to save her best friends. You know, people like that were all in rehearsal.

Then we all went to dinner. We all had muscles. We sat around, you know, shelling this seafood and just talking. And it was like the best dinner party you've ever been to because everyone brought these really diverse experiences to the table. But we'd all sort of shared a bit of our soul, you know, like shown who we were. And then we found all these gorgeous connections to take us to those dinners. Those dinners are the best dinners.

They sound like it. You know, when you watch like a TV show or a movie, you know, they're telling stories. But if they can't be communicated in an effective way or in a way that captures the hearts and minds of an individual, you watch it and it's just, you know, you just kind of like, I don't really get this. And then you can, you can, in other times you get into, you know, great stories where they're put into the TV, film, book, or speaking format, where they capture you, they move you. Um, you know, years ago when I, when I, uh, uh, a acting agency, uh, in Utah, when Utah was really big for acting, I would go to different, uh, uh, uh, a acting agency, uh, in Utah, when Utah was really big for acting, I would go to different, uh, um, uh, director screen things where we would, uh, where we'd audition talent.

I get to sit in with them and it was amazing how, you know, more people come up and they would do their little bit they were supposed to do. And you just be like, you know, I need to be going to sleep. And then, you know, a person would come up and just with the energy and power and sometimes some improv, they would just deliver. And you wouldn't be in a movie setting. You wouldn't have the music that can cheat with and you wouldn't have the background that could cheat with. You just had that person just dumping everything, emotion, character into the performance. And you'd be sitting there crying. You're like, we're in a warehouse. So, uh, yeah, storytelling is everything. So what, what made you guys want

to write the book and, uh, let's talk about what's inside of it. Kate, do you want to start? Well, the book came to me as an email from Catherine, would you like to write a book with me? And I was like, with a smiling con at the end of it, which is not the way we typically communicate at the Moth, but it came to the book is very unique. It's written by five people. And we're five people who have been working together for many, many years. My very first job before I was officially hired at the Moth was editing the early episodes of the podcast. And just so you know, it was edited in the free software garage band, which I had to teach myself. They recognized my enthusiasm, enthusiasm, anything else, you know, and so that was early days, it was pre podcast, pre radio, pre many of

our, our series, our established series, you know, when we were really expanding outside of New York City. So we finally had this opportunity a few years ago to start to think about what we have all of this information that we've sort of collaborated and made together. No organization operates like the Moth or has ever operated like the Moth and now let's write it down. And the conversations that we had in writing were like the nerdiest story conversations that I just like delight, like just fighting over the definition of truth for hours on end is like thrilling. And for, I think I would say, Catherine, you can speak for yourself, but I think our co-authors, we were all so emotionally invested and really like putting down what we've really thrown ourselves into for all of these years. Yeah. And one of the things I think is really special about the book is it's written by technically the five of us, but there's contributions from so many people. I mean, there's more than 200 people whose quotes from their stories or comments on the process are in there. Many of our other story directors contributed. So one of the great stories about the moth, I feel like it's something that has come,

it's been an emerging community that's developed around this. I mean, inevitably, if you're going into a theater and listening to people pour out their hearts and souls, like there's been connections that are going to happen. And so this book was really coming together of not just the knowledge that the Moth team has gathered, but the collective knowledge of this entire group of people, which is so wonderful. And part of why we wanted to write it is because we hope that it'll inspire people who maybe think they don't have a story to realize they do, because we truly believe that everyone has a story to tell. So this was a big choice we made. We could have written it to be just about how to tell a story at the moth. But very early on, we decided that we wanted to make it be for somebody who wants to ace their job interview and have the perfect story. Someone who's giving a

eulogy, very difficult. And one of the things we talk about is you need space sometimes between yourself with something that happens in a story. When someone's just died, there is no space. So how do you go up and do that? How can you be charming on a date? Just like so many places that stories appear in our lives. And so we are hoping this will be a book that could inspire anyone reading it to think of the stories they have and how they might use those stories to connect with those around them.

Yeah. And just being an interesting person. Like I've always been, I didn't realize I was a story collector all my life where I would collect stories. And because I owned a lot of companies, I started business when I was 18, I would come home with five or six employee stories. I mean, there's always employee stories. I wish I would have written them all down.

I would have four volumes of employer stories back in the day. But I would come home to my girlfriend and go, you know, hey, you don't believe what Bob did today. You know, or sometimes it was about me. But I have all these stories. And one of my girlfriends used to travel with Delta. And she was a flight attendant manager who would oversee the things. And sometimes she'd be in three different cities. She'd pass through hundreds of people.

I think we had, what, 100 people at my office. But she would pass through all these people and come home, and I'd be like, I'd tell my stories, and I'd be like, so what happened your day? What did you see? What went on? You know, because I love stories. And she'd be like, nothing.

It's interesting that that did not watch it. It didn't make for a fun relationship and it didn't obviously work out, but, and, and no, not to her. I mean, everyone's got a different thing, but to me,

stories just make life so much richer is the point I'm trying to make and being able to see what's going on. And then of course, tell great stories. Cause I'm, I'm a person who will tell stories that are a little too long where people start glazing over and go, get to the fricking end moron, you know? So I need this book.

Um, but, but you know, helping people, like you mentioned, uh, funerals, uh,

weddings. Um, I've done a few best man weddingss i i've almost made some uh brides pass out on the pre things that i i ran by them that i might tell but they i was never going to tell them but they're like you can just say that i'll kill you um so there was this one time where bob and i were in mexico anyway um but uh there's so many different things that stories can enrich your life and i didn't realize that how much they'd meant to me all my life. I'd just been collecting them and living them and retelling them and stuff.

So there's lots of different, you basically lay out a foundation here. In fact, foundation is one of the chapters. Everyone has got a story. You know, I hear that from a lot of people. I don't really have a story. I don't have a book. I don't have a story. I don't have an avenue in life that's interesting. And a lot of people i don't really have a story i don't have a book i don't have a story nothing to have in my life that's interesting and a lot of people realize there are interesting

things yeah um you uh how to tell your story the power of a story and i think i've skipped a part here developing your story uh mining for memories and you guys it looks like really help people go through and and compile this and get it put together yeah i mean we've collectively spent so much time on the phone with people, often people who think they don't have a story to tell. I mean, sometimes people come to us and we know what story roughly they might want to tell. But a lot of times we just get on the phone with them and someone's just thought that they might be good. And we're trying to help them figure out what stories they have to tell.

I'm sure me and Kate both have our ways of trying to get stories out of people. But one of the things that I often will say is like, what are the stories that when you have a new girlfriend or close friend that you can't wait to tell them? Because we all have a handful of those like little nuggets that we know are fun. Or I'll say, well, what are the stories that your friends ask you to tell new friends that they introduce you to? Because sometimes these stories are a little anecdotal, but we find that if you

dig into it with a person often that there's something bigger about it, that there's a reason why you tell these particular stories over and over. And it's pretty easy then to pull it out into something that will have a little bit more of an arc. We're always looking for stories where there's some change in the person. Like an easy way to think of the moth is who are you at the beginning of this? And who are you at the end? And I sometimes like to say, and why should we care? Which I'm joking though, but it's really like more like, why do you care? Because if you can make us feel why you care, we're automatically going to care. Like you have things to add to this. Yeah.

Yeah. I always say like at the party, what's the story where someone's at a party, always pulling your arm and saying, Kate, Kate, tell them about, you know, tell them about this, tell them about this or, you know, or like the very obvious, like in the movie of your life, what would, what would the scenes be? And starting, you know, using that as a little nugget to get you going. Yeah. That was me with my

friend andy grignan i'd pull people over to him and be like he was one of the 12 people who worked on the iphone he built it tell him the story and he told the story he's like uh he's really shy um now now you can get and tell the story all day long but uh um you know i mean i remember one person was so bad at at being so boring and not having any stories. I actually joked, and this is just a joke, but I would joke about how, you know, maybe if I paid someone to kidnap them and just hold them hostage for a couple days and then release them, then they'd have a story to tell me. But, you know, maybe this is kind of a lost art. I know that, you know, before radio and TV and stuff, you know, families would get together

and they would tell stories to each other and they'd play piano or sing songs, but they would sometimes get up. You hear a lot about a lot of comedians that were successful. They used to get up in front of the family at dinnertime or after dinner or whatever they did with the family time and, you know, tell stories. And of course, radio came and TV and now everyone just sits there and drools out the side of their face. But it seems to be a lost art that people tell stories and are good at it.

I think that people, there are still a lot of wonderful storytellers in the world, but I think many of them don't think of what they're doing as art. And we definitely do. I also agree though, that you can have someone who's really funny and clever, but maybe not a ton has happened to them as far as having some big story. And then suddenly something will happen. Like speaking of comedians, Mike Rubiglia, I don't know if you're aware, know him. He's a wonderful comedian. He was a standup. I first worked with him when he was only 23 years old. And I remember thinking, God, this kid is amazing. He's so smart, so talented. Can you imagine what's going to happen when he has something to talk about that's like

bigger? And then, I mean, his story at the time, which went on to become a hit one person show that's now on Netflix, I should say, was about realizing his college girlfriend had another boyfriend. That became his show, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend realizing his college girlfriend had another boyfriend. That became his show, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, later, which is so wonderful. So even then, I was like, he has so much. But then a few years later, he had the sleepwalk disorder and he sleptwalked out a window of his hotel. He just had a crazy dream and went flying through the window, landed one story below in the bushes. It's unbelievable that he wasn't killed. And from there, that became the centerpiece and his entire career blew up

because like finally something had happened that was like on a scale that nobody could comprehend and the rest was history. And I was like, see, I told you, you know, but you don't have to jump out of a second story motel window in your sleep in order to become a great storyteller. Yeah. Go ahead.

What I was going to say, I don't find storytelling to be a lost art necessarily either. But I do think, you know, a great story requires some degree of vulnerability to it. And a lot of the time we need to give each other space for that vulnerability. And I think it is hard if you're sitting next to someone and they have a phone and you have a this or you have a TV on in the background, like it is easy to sort of turn away. And so making the space to simply sit across from someone

and connect with them, I think can be challenging. There are more and more and more present challenges to that. But I think as human beings, we crave and are drawn to and will find great stories in the place where there is space for them. Yeah. And make it more compelling because that's what really captures people's interest and, you know, the empathy and everything else. What are some other things people are going to learn from the book? Well, as Catherine was saying, we talk a lot about the different contexts in which you can use story. And obviously we have, you know, weddings and funerals, places where you're called up to stand and speak. But as we were saying, like when you, when you date someone,

when you're in a job interview, when you're meeting someone new, and then, you know, I'm the director of a program called Mothworks, where we go into businesses and help people bring storytelling into business, which is, which was a huge departure for the organization originally. The entire program started because we got a phone call from an agency that said, we'd like a storytelling workshop. And we said, we don't do corporate workshops or an arts nonprofit. And they said, we don't want a corporate workshop. We want to be better storytellers. And so what I found over my years of building this program is that we do go into spaces,

which might speaking of places that aren't giving space to story that feel like these cold corporate spaces. And what people are realizing is that you need to give space to story. Storytelling is a way to communicate. Storytelling is a way to connect. Storytelling is a way to get people excited about your ideas it's a culture building uh it's a major tool for culture

building and so we have the opportunity to go into spaces where maybe someone has never in their work life been asked you know why do you do what you do and helping them to develop the tools to be able to communicate that and to get people excited and say, I believe that too. I've done this too. My experience was similar, but different. And, you know, connecting, communicating that way has been a strangely surprising, satisfying way that we've been able to continue our work in storytelling in the world. Totally. And a fun example of that very first workshop that I love to tell and think about is we were there, it was this tech company that designed really complicated instruments, like someplace outside of Boston.

And they were telling their story and just like this very dry data. And they, they knew they could do better. And so we're working with them and sort of teaching them what we do and trying to help them figure things out. And then we all went to lunch and someone at lunch mentioned that, because we heard these trains going by and we're like, oh wow, how close is the commuter rail? And they're like, it's a mile away. And they told us how they have the train schedule posted everywhere

because the experiments they're doing are so sensitive that they have to time them around the train schedule a mile away because it'll mess up the instruments. I was like, that's your story. Are you kidding me? They're like, what? It is? And I was like, that is so much more interesting than the blah, blah, blah point, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah of that. I'm so not scientific. I can't even come up with a fake example, but you know, all these little slow things it was like that's the story is that what you guys are doing is so high level that it's affected by a train a mile away so um yeah so like that's the thing that we do too is like trying to get people even like not you know people tend to get caught up in the facts and this and that and to get them out of it and to help them see like what the real heart is,

um, it can, can be a lot of fun, you know, and you can change people's lives with stories. You really can. You can have an impactful difference. Uh,

I had, I've always had a huge audience with social media. Um, and, uh, I think, uh, 2013 or something.

Uh, one night, my very first child, my child dog, if you will, my child Husky, went into a seizure. And it was over in 30 minutes. And, you know, we'd known that there was going to be a seizure that would come. She'd been having seizures for a while. But I never thought that it would be over that quick. I thought we'd have some time. And it was a shock. It was a blow, uh, emotionally. It just,

it just took me over the edge. And as I pounded out just what I was feeling on Facebook with a, with a bottle of vodka in me, um, I wrote this huge sort of memorial, you know, to where all my fans have been seeing my dogs for years. They have snow dogs. They love the Siberians. And, um, and I remember looking at it and I went, oh my God, this is just, this is so emotional and really not me. And it's so open where I'm just sharing my, my heart and my soul here. And I'm just letting it bleed out onto the thing. But, and I sat there for a half an hour just waiting to push, you know, send, and I didn't want to do it. I'm just like, yeah, it's too much. No one cares. This is all about me. It's just selfish crap. I mean, who cares about what the hell I feel? And finally, I, you know, I was in, in probably the bottom of

the bottle. I just finally hit send and went and passed out. And, uh, I woke up the next morning with people calling me and people writing me. And, uh, since then we've had, uh, since then I've had, uh, one or two other dogs that have gone through some issues. Um, and people, and I was stunned because people weren't just, you, you're, you know, we're sad for you and all that stuff. They were, people wrote me and they're like, oh my God, what you wrote made me realize that I'd never got closure with my relatives deaths, my father's deaths, my dog's deaths. I never cleared that out until I saw you go through that cathartic, you know, bloodletting, um, with your story. I, I, I didn't realize that I had to heal myself either.

And so they were helping to heal themselves. There's been times where I've helped people, you know, I had a dog that was in a cancer, um, cancer, uh, hospice care for a year and a half where we kept her alive and, and, and, and kept her going. And people were just moved by that. And, you know,

people to this day will write me and go, that made such a difference to my life when you did that. And so people don't realize that sometimes digging those stories at yourself and sharing them, you can literally change the world. I think that's very true. I mean, because yeah, sometimes people don't realize something about

their own grief or about their own thing until they read, you know, another person is able to finally articulate it for them and they're like, oh my goodness and they can go back and dig in. It's so important. The more we are willing to be vulnerable and open, I find the more willing the world

is. It's one of the, I really think when the moth works well, it becomes kind of a sacred space where people walk out. We often find that intermission, the whole audience is connecting and people are telling their own stories because one of the stories in the first half made them think of something, which is so moving to see. And I know just in my own family, it's like moth stories have brought out a lot of stuff like there's a one of my favorite moth stories um i can't really write about him in

the book but it's a story where it's from a slam where a guy comes to a nursing home to say goodbye to his grandmother because she's not doing well and he's going to be overseas for a year and a half and not see her and he ends up going to this ice cream social with all the other old people at the nursing home. And one of them starts talking about what age she feels like. And because he's like, not because she wants him to get up and dance with her. And then they all go around the room and talk about what age they feel. And it's all of them have different answers, but none of them feel like they're 80. Right. And so this actually caused this brilliant conversation around the table with me and my family, where it was like, my very young feeling cousin said that she felt 25. And it was funny,

me and my cousin is a doctor, we both were like, Oh, no, we would like forever want to be 38. It is because it's more rare women. 38 is like young enough to be 38. It's because that's for career women. 38 is young enough to be young. I think this is what we agreed on. But old enough that people have to listen. So you're not trying to insist. And then my aunt, who's now 88, talked about how confused she is when people try to help her cross the street. And then she remembers that she's an 88-year-old old lady. And it was just like this joyful thing.

We were crying, laughing. And it all came out of this little four a little four minute story that someone dared to tell i think michigan wow i also find that there's the um there's the telling of the story and the hearing of the story but there's also the crafting of the story so when you start to consider or when we work with storytellers from their lives very often they'll have an experience and we'll be in conversation and we'll and they you know, I never thought about it this way, or I never realized that the connection of this thing that happened 15 years ago has to the way I behave now. People liken it to therapy. We're not therapists, but it is talking about and understanding your

feelings. And I'll say, speaking personally, one of the reasons that I came to the Moth was because my mother had passed away and I was very devastated, very close with my mother. And I noticed when she passed away, how my entire family came in circle and was just telling stories about her. And I realized anyone that hasn't met her will only know her through these stories that we're sharing. And I felt very compelled to share those stories and tell those stories. And I worked very early on

with Catherine as my director to work on this story about my mother. And through the course of like, I would send Catherine these long emails of all of these thoughts, memories and whatever, but Catherine helped me find a logic to it and a way to sort of remember her and a way to share her that the process itself was equally, if not more valuable than the way the story ended up with. And I think you'll get that in the book, you'll get the chance to look and say, okay, now I have this memory. So what do I do with it to build it into a compelling story? And in the course of building that story, you know, what profoundly can happen within you or your understanding of yourself. And then even before you then put it out into the world for that greater ripple effect.

Yeah. Being able to tell great stories is really important because you can move the world, you can change your life, you improve the quality of how you communicate stuff. And yeah, it's just everything. Anything more we want to tease out in the book before we go? I was about to say, but maybe it's like too dark to end here, but I will just put it out there. One of the things we write about a lot of the mock

is about how processing death through the stories we tell. And we even towards the end of the book, talk about different ways to think about your loved ones, alive or not. Sarah Austin-Ginness, who's one of our co-authors, writes a beautiful thing about it's sort of a tip i would say if you're trying to draw stories out of someone who's a little older even someone who is starting to not have all of their faculties one tip is to like sit

down with them with a photograph album and then press record on audio because the pictures will trigger memories and she did this with her grandfather as he was dying. And he just started telling all these stories, some of which they had never heard before. His humor came back, like things that they just had not seen in him in a while. Suddenly with looking at these pictures, he came alive again in the room and the magic of that.

Suzanne Ross, who we work with, has a ritual, but she lost both of her parents young and her children barely knew one of them. And so every year on their birthday, she actually makes their favorite food, makes their favorite cocktail, and the whole family sits around and they tell stories. And so she's been telling these stories to her children all their lives. And what she talks about is that now they tell them, even though they never even like met. Yeah. And so it's a way that people live on through the stories we tell about them, which can be, you know, such a moving thing when you're dealing with grief. It's a way to kind of share this person that you loved with other people around you in a really meaningful way.

Yeah. I had some of my show and they, they told me about what was in, you know, in the early days of Africa, we know what the foundation of, of human, of humankind.

They had these things called the griot and they had, I think there's a female version called griot. I think there's a male and female version, but they're, but they basically were the historian for the tribe. They didn't have computers back then. They lived in tribes in the desert or grasslands, wherever. The griot, that's your job to be the historian.

That's your job to keep track of everything that happens before and after the people, the places, the things. And so it was interesting. We've been, we've been telling stories since the beginning of time as, as human species. So very interesting. Let me ask you this. I noticed for those people who are also listening, you can go to your website, you guys can,

and people can see like different people speaking and telling their stories on the stage and different things. And then you guys have different satellite, people speaking and telling their stories on stage and different things. Like the next story telling. And then you guys have different satellite events around the nation. I noticed there's New York and Boston and all the big cities. Yeah. Detroit, Louisville, you name it, London, Melbourne. So if people go to the website, you can just plug in where you live,

and it'll come up with the closest moth to you. And then can people apply to start one maybe in their local community? Right now, we don't have a way to do that. But there are so many storytelling organizations all around the world. Like when the moths first came out, it was fairly unique in what we were doing. I wasn't around in the very beginning. But one of the wonderful things is there are now thousands of organizations all around the world. fairly unique in what we were doing. I wasn't around in the very beginning, but the organization, but one of the wonderful things is there are now thousands of organizations all around the world.

So if the Moth is in your city, there might be a local version that would be totally amazing. And so we think of it, I mean, it started with the Moth, but it's really something we think of as like a modern storytelling movement that has like really swept around the world it includes us but it also includes so many other wonderful organizations and so if like starting a moth want work which sometimes it might you know but you could also just start your own and do your own thing and have your own rules which yeah there you go there you go and this has been good okay just me good. If you want to, I mean, there's many ways to get involved in storytelling. You could start your own storytelling organization,

which is an undertaking, but you also can tell a story. And so in addition to the open mics that we have, we have a pitch line. You can call into our pitch line, pitch us a story. We travel our main stage all over the world. So,

and we'll bring people in from different cities. So even if, you know, you may live in this area of Michigan, but we're doing people in from different cities. So even if, you know, you may live in this area of Michigan, but we're doing a show in Detroit, you know, if we develop a story with you, we might bring you in, for example. And there are many prompts in the book to start to inspire your stories. And there's instructions for how to use our pitch line book. So you can come to a live event or just use your phone or computer. Totally. We listen to every single pitch. In fact, very

senior directors, including some of the people who wrote this book, are listening to the pitch line. So know that if you call, it's just not going into a black hole. Every single one is listened to and many, many wonderful stories have been developed from that. There you go. Stories can really enrich your life. In fact, I saw the other day that it was Steve Jobs on stage doing his thing. And they're like, he doesn't sell the product, he sells the story. He sells the problem and the solution. A lot of CEOs miss that where you've got to

tell great stories to capture the imagination of people to get them to go do things and get them to do extraordinary things sometimes. Anyway, it's been wonderful to have you ladies on the show and thank you for coming by. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us. Give us your guys'.org or.org, I guess, so that we can find out more about you guys.

TheMoth.org. There you go. There you go. Well, thanks, my audience, for tuning in. Order of the book, you can find it wherever fine bookstores are sold. But remember, stay on those alleyway bookstores. They have sharp knives, and you'll need a tetanus shot. How to Tell a story.

The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from the Moth. It comes out just a few days here, April 26, 2022. Thanks so much for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com for just Chris Voss. Go to youtube.com for just Chris Voss. See our big 132,000 group on LinkedIn and our LinkedIn newsletter. This will be going on. That's always fun.

The thing is killing it over there. All of our groups, wherever you find the Chris Foss show. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.