Mark Lovett

Franziska Trautmann: Your Empty Wine Bottle Could Help Rebuild Coastlines @ TEDNext 2024

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During the week of October 21, 2024 I had the pleasure of attending TEDNext, held in Atlanta. The event is a new initiative from the folks who produce the TED Conference. There were enlightening talks, insightful discussions and revealing discovery sessions. This post is the first in a series highlighting some of my favorite talks from the stage.

In her TED Talk, Franziska Trautmann highlights the power of individual action to create innovative solutions to local environmental challenges. The first problem she noticed was how Louisiana was falling short when it came to recycling glass. The result: about 295 million pounds of glass was ending up in landfills annually. The next problem Franziska identified was the fact that Louisiana was suffering from a coastal erosion crisis. Since glass is made from sand, the logical solution was to turn discarded glass into sand that could be used for coastal restoration.Glass Half Full Founder Franziska Trautmann

To turn their idea into reality, Franziska and her partner founded Glass Half Full, a company that’s diverted millions of pounds of glass from landfills and restored thousands of square meters of wetlands. At just over 5 minutes, her talk is brief, yet clearly highlights the issues, the initiative, the result, and their future plans.


While the talk was top notch, I really wanted it to be longer as there were lots of questions that came to mind: issues around the lack of recycling, the process of turning the glass into sand, alongside how to scale that process, and the nature of the state’s erosion crisis. But that was not to be, as Franziska’s talk was in a session created along with Ignite Talks, which are only 5 minutes in length.

It’s easy to see how this 5 minute talk could be expanded to 15, 30, 45 minutes in length. And that’s not uncommon when it comes to stories that involve social or scientific topics. If this is an issue you’re facing – how to compress a lengthy talk – then study this transcript to see how the main points are laid out in a way that a member of the public can follow and understand.

Transcript

00:04
As a kid growing up on a Louisiana bayou, the boogeyman was the existential threat of my state being washed away with the Mississippi River.

00:16
Louisiana loses a football field’s worth of land every 100 minutes due to coastal erosion. It’s an unimaginably large amount to a kid. But in my lifetime so far, we’ve lost over 600 square miles. That’s more area than New York City, San Francisco, DC and Atlanta combined. It’s due to sea level rise, warming waters, increasingly severe storms and exploration of the oil and gas industry.

00:51
Fast forward to 2020, in my last full semester as an engineering student and over a Two-Buck Chuck, my boyfriend and I lamented over the lack of glass recycling in Louisiana. My state was landfilling about 295 million pounds of glass annually. The bottle we just finished would likely end up in a landfill. It felt like a total waste, and we wanted to figure out how we could get all of this glass recycled.

01:20
The next day, it took a quick Google search to remember that glass comes from sand, and that sand is an increasingly finite resource. We also learned about everything sand is needed for, including toothpaste, by the way. And the last puzzle piece we found was this small, human-sized machine that could crush one bottle at a time into sand, and we jumped into action, setting up a GoFundMe campaign and a pilot project in the backyard of a fraternity house.

01:50
(Laughter)

01:52
Now you might be thinking to yourself, how in the world would two college kids ever be able to make a dent in these problems? And that would be valid. Plenty of people told us the exact same thing. But we didn’t listen, because we knew that no matter how small of an impact we made, it would be worth it. It felt like we could alleviate two problems with one solution: convert the otherwise landfilled glass back into sand and use it in restoration projects across the state. Easy, right?

02:22
(Laughs)

02:25
But we didn’t listen to the haters, which is actually why we named our company Glass Half Full.

02:30
(Laughter)

02:31
But that glass-half-empty mindset might actually be one of the biggest threats we face today. Because climate apathy might be the new climate denial. Meaning that the biggest threat to our environment may no longer be people who deny our part in the changing climate but people who deny that we can actually make a difference.

02:54
Now climate change is happening right before our eyes. It’s terrifying. I’ve witnessed firsthand the severity of rapidly intensifying hurricanes like Ida. But dread, doom and gloom tend to get us nowhere. Whereas hope, combined with action, can be one of the most powerful tools to enact change.

03:15
(Applause)

03:21
Since that late night wine-fueled idea over four years ago, we’ve been able to divert more than eight million pounds of glass from our landfills.

03:30
Thank you.

03:31
(Cheers and applause)

03:34
We quickly grew out of that small, tiny machine and upgraded a lot along the way. We continue to work with over 50 scientists and engineers across the Gulf South. And they helped me learn if this is good-smelling mud or not. But also understanding the interactions of our sand with the plants, animals and even fungi of our region. We’ve also answered difficult scientific questions as well as questions like, can you actually walk on sand made from glass? And I exposed my toes to the internet to answer that.

04:11
In a few short months, we’ll be opening up our new facility, enabling us to recycle the 295 million pounds of glass entering our landfills annually.

04:23
(Cheers and applause)

04:29
And with a combination of biodegradable sandbags and native marsh grasses, we’ve already restored thousands of square meters along our coast, converting open water back into thriving wetlands.

04:41
(Cheers and applause)

04:48
But the key to our success so far isn’t that we had all of the answers in the beginning or tons of money to try this thing out. The key was that we simply started, and we kept going. Somewhere, the belief that we, as individuals, could enact change trumped our doubts. And for us, finding a way to help with a problem much, much bigger than us meant taking that first step. And in our case, it was a step in the sand, in an eroding but once magnificent swamp.

05:22
Thank y’all.

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Mark Lovett

Latif Nasser: You have no idea where camels really come from @ TED Talks Live

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TED Talks Live were held at The Town Hall Theater in NYC, in November of 2015. I had the pleasure of attending all six nights to hear speakers present impactful Ideas Worth Spreading. This post is an analysis of a talk by Latif Nasser about a journey of scientific discovery that can help us to see the world anew.

Watch Latif’s TED Talk. You can feel his enthusiasm throughout the story. His vocal variation, facial expressions and body movements convey emphasis at every turn. This is an unusual presentation, structured as an interview, but there’s much you can learn about how to create and tell an impactful story.

Transcript

(my notes in red)

So, this is a story about how we know what we know. It’s a story about this woman, Natalia Rybczynski. She’s a paleobiologist, which means she specializes in digging up really old dead stuff.

I always tell storytellers not to open their narrative with the phrase ‘this is a story about’, as it’s usually better to let that information come out in the talk. But in the vein of ‘rules are meant to be broken’, the practice can be successful when there’s mystery attached to the statement. Latif’s opening line is simply stated, yet contains that sense of mystery and therefore it quickly grabs our attention.

(Audio) Natalia Rybczynski: Yeah, I had someone call me “Dr. Dead Things.”

Using audio clips within a story is unusual, but it can add impact when it allows someone else to speak – we hear the story in their own words – or adds information best delivered by that person. But the main reason Latif has chosen to use audio within his talk is that he works in radio, so it makes perfect sense to simulate his natural environment.

And I think she’s particularly interesting because of where she digs that stuff up, way above the Arctic Circle in the remote Canadian tundra. Now, one summer day in 2006, she was at a dig site called the Fyles Leaf Bed, which is less than 10 degrees latitude away from the magnetic north pole.

Latif not only tells us who the main character is in his story (Natalia) but takes us to a specific year (2006), a time of year (summer), a general area (Arctic Circle / remote Canadian tundra), and a specific place (dig site). In just 40 seconds.

(Audio) NR: Really, it’s not going to sound very exciting, because it was a day of walking with your backpack and your GPS and notebook and just picking up anything that might be a fossil.

And at some point, she noticed something.

(Audio) NR: Rusty, kind of rust-colored, about the size of the palm of my hand. It was just lying on the surface.

And at first she thought it was just a splinter of wood, because that’s the sort of thing people had found at the Fyles Leaf Bed before — prehistoric plant parts. But that night, back at camp …

(Audio) NR: … I get out the hand lens, I’m looking a little bit more closely and realizing it doesn’t quite look like this has tree rings. Maybe it’s a preservation thing, but it looks really like … bone.

Huh. So over the next four years, she went to that spot over and over, and eventually collected 30 fragments of that exact same bone, most of them really tiny.

(Audio) NR: It’s not a whole lot. It fits in a small Ziploc bag.

And she tried to piece them together like a jigsaw puzzle. But it was challenging.

The mystery continues, as it’s not clear what Natalia has found. Too often storytellers unravel a mystery too quickly, but in this story, the audience is moved along step by step.

(Audio) NR: It’s broken up into so many little tiny pieces, I’m trying to use sand and putty, and it’s not looking good. So finally, we had a 3D surface scanner.

Ooh! NR: Yeah, right?

It turns out it was way easier to do it virtually.

(Audio) NR: It’s kind of magical when it all fits together.

How certain were you that you had it right, that you had put it together in the right way? Was there a potential that you’d put it together a different way and have, like, a parakeet or something?

(Audio) NR: (Laughs) Um, no. No, we got this.

What she had, she discovered, was a tibia, a leg bone, and specifically, one that belonged to a cloven-hoofed mammal, so something like a cow or a sheep. But it couldn’t have been either of those. It was just too big.

(Audio) NR: The size of this thing, it was huge. It’s a really big animal.

So what animal could it be? Having hit a wall, she showed one of the fragments to some colleagues of hers in Colorado, and they had an idea.

(Audio) NR: We took a saw, and we nicked just the edge of it, and there was this really interesting smell that comes from it.

By this point the addition of Natalia’s narrative almost has her on stage, as though the interview is happening in front of the audience.

It smelled kind of like singed flesh. It was a smell that Natalia recognized from cutting up skulls in her gross anatomy lab: collagen. Collagen is what gives structure to our bones. And usually, after so many years, it breaks down. But in this case, the Arctic had acted like a natural freezer and preserved it.

Then a year or two later, Natalia was at a conference in Bristol, and she saw that a colleague of hers named Mike Buckley was demoing this new process that he called “collagen fingerprinting.” It turns out that different species have slightly different structures of collagen, so if you get a collagen profile of an unknown bone, you can compare it to those of known species, and, who knows, maybe you get a match.

Departing from Natalia’s journey, Latif includes a science story block that describes a revolutionary process which provides a turning point in the story.

So she shipped him one of the fragments, FedEx.

(Audio) NR: Yeah, you want to track it. It’s kind of important.

And he processed it, and compared it to 37 known and modern-day mammal species. And he found a match. It turns out that the 3.5 million-year-old bone that Natalia had dug out of the High Arctic belonged to … a camel.

(Audio) NR: And I’m thinking, what? That’s amazing — if it’s true.

So they tested a bunch of the fragments, and they got the same result for each one. However, based on the size of the bone that they found, it meant that this camel was 30 percent larger than modern-day camels. So this camel would have been about nine feet tall, weighed around a ton.

Yeah. Natalia had found a Giant Arctic camel.

The mystery is solved, and Latif delivers the line emphatically, which results in laughter. Had the sentence been delivered in a monotone fashion it would have been received as another bit of data. Revelations within a story are often presented in this dramatic fashion. So much has been revealed in his story, but we’re less than half way through. We wonder what’s next.

Now, when you hear the word “camel,” what may come to mind is one of these, the Bactrian camel of East and Central Asia. But chances are the postcard image you have in your brain is one of these, the dromedary, quintessential desert creature — hangs out in sandy, hot places like the Middle East and the Sahara, has a big old hump on its back for storing water for those long desert treks, has big, broad feet to help it tromp over sand dunes. So how on earth would one of these guys end up in the High Arctic?

Well, scientists have known for a long time, turns out, even before Natalia’s discovery, that camels are actually originally American. They started here. For nearly 40 of the 45 million years that camels have been around, you could only find them in North America, around 20 different species, maybe more.

(Audio) LN: If I put them all in a lineup, would they look different?

NR: Yeah, you’re going to have different body sizes. You’ll have some with really long necks, so they’re actually functionally like giraffes.

Some had snouts, like crocodiles.

(Audio) NR: The really primitive, early ones would have been really small, almost like rabbits.

What? Rabbit-sized camels?

(Audio) NR: The earliest ones. So those ones you probably would not recognize.

Oh my God, I want a pet rabbit-camel.

(Audio) NR: I know, wouldn’t that be great?

Within the science, we have a historical story block that continues below. Taking us back in time allows us to imagine the evolution that occurred. This could apply to many topics and gives the listener a frame of reference that extends beyond the current moment.

And then about three to seven million years ago, one branch of camels went down to South America, where they became llamas and alpacas, and another branch crossed over the Bering Land Bridge into Asia and Africa. And then around the end of the last ice age, North American camels went extinct.

So, scientists knew all of that already, but it still doesn’t fully explain how Natalia found one so far north. This is, temperature-wise, the polar opposite of the Sahara. Now to be fair, three and a half million years ago, it was on average 22 degrees Celsius warmer than it is now. So it would have been boreal forest, so more like the Yukon or Siberia today. But still, they would have six-month-long winters where the ponds would freeze over. You’d have blizzards. You’d have 24 hours a day of straight darkness. How is it that one of these Saharan superstars could ever have survived those arctic conditions?

We’re now on to mystery number two. It’s not uncommon for the solving of one question to raise a subsequent question. By stating that question implicitly, the narrative shift is clear.

Natalia and her colleagues think they have an answer. And it’s kind of brilliant. What if the very features that we imagine make the camel so well-suited to places like the Sahara, actually evolved to help it get through the winter? What if those broad feet were meant to tromp not over sand, but over snow, like a pair of snowshoes? What if that hump — which, huge news to me, does not contain water, it contains fat — was there to help the camel get through that six-month-long winter, when food was scarce?

And then, only later, long after it crossed over the land bridge did it retrofit those winter features for a hot desert environment? For instance, the hump may be helpful to camels in hotter climes because having all your fat in one place, like a fat backpack, means that you don’t have to have that insulation all over the rest of your body. So it helps heat dissipate easier. It’s this crazy idea, that what seems like proof of the camel’s quintessential desert nature could actually be proof of its High Arctic past.

Now, I’m not the first person to tell this story. Others have told it as a way to marvel at evolutionary biology or as a keyhole into the future of climate change. But I love it for a totally different reason. For me, it’s a story about us, about how we see the world and about how that changes. So I was trained as a historian. And I’ve learned that, actually, a lot of scientists are historians, too. They make sense of the past. They tell the history of our universe, of our planet, of life on this planet. And as a historian, you start with an idea in your mind of how the story goes.

While Latif does not go into any detail, just the mention that he was trained as a historian gives us a sense of who he is and why he’s interested in the topic to begin with. And he also makes the connection between history and story, which is something we naturally do has humans.

(Audio) NR: We make up stories and we stick with it, like the camel in the desert, right? That’s a great story! It’s totally adapted for that. Clearly, it always lived there.

But at any moment, you could uncover some tiny bit of evidence. You could learn some tiny thing that forces you to reframe everything you thought you knew. In this case, this one scientist finds this one shard of what she thought was wood, and because of that, science has a totally new and totally counterintuitive theory about why this absurd Dr. Seuss-looking creature looks the way it does. And for me, it completely upended the way I think of the camel. It went from being this ridiculously niche creature suited only to this one specific environment, to being this world traveler that just happens to be in the Sahara, and could end up virtually anywhere.

At this point we hear the true reason for Latif telling this story. In this case it’s about scientific discovery, but in the larger perspective, it’s about all of us. That our lives can be different based on the smallest bit of wisdom. It says that we don’t know where life will take us, but maybe, just maybe, it will take us on an amazing journey of discovery.

This is Azuri. Azuri, hi, how are you doing? OK, here, I’ve got one of these for you here.

So Azuri is on a break from her regular gig at the Radio City Music Hall.

That’s not even a joke. Anyway —

But really, Azuri is here as a living reminder that the story of our world is a dynamic one. It requires our willingness to readjust, to reimagine.

Right, Azuri?

And, really, that we’re all just one shard of bone away from seeing the world anew.

Bringing a camel on stage is not something that many of us could pull off, and it’s done for dramatic and humorous effect in Latif’s story, but he uses the visual of a live camel to bring home his message once again – that we can see the world anew.

Thank you very much.

Note Latif’s facial expressions, use of his hands and sound of his voice. All are expressive, which adds emphasis when he’s being serious, as well as when he’s being humorous. You can also see his head turn from side to side in order to address the entire audience. He doesn’t need to move about the stage, or even across the red circle. His connection to the audience is brilliant.

[Note: all comments inserted into this transcript are my opinions, not those of the speaker, the TED organization, nor anyone else on the planet. In my view, each story is unique, as is every interpretation of that story. The sole purpose of these analytical posts is to inspire a storyteller to become a storylistener, and in doing so, make their stories more impactful.]

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Mark Lovett

Zaria Forman: Drawings that show the beauty and fragility of Earth @ TED Talks Live

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TED Talks Live were held at The Town Hall Theater in NYC, in November of 2015. I had the pleasure of attending all six nights to hear speakers present impactful Ideas Worth Spreading. This post is an analysis of a talk by Zaria Forman, about the effects of climate change on the planet.

She does this, not by way of scientific research, but by way of her art. Art that is drawn from personal experiences around the world. Art that documents what’s happening to our planet. Art that can inspire others to act.

Watch Zaria’s TED Talk. I found it to be surprising short, considering the amount of information it contains. But a great deal of that information comes from the images and video that Zaria includes. It’s as though those images are speaking alongside her.

Transcript

(my notes in red)

I consider it my life’s mission to convey the urgency of climate change through my work. I’ve traveled north to the Arctic to the capture the unfolding story of polar melt, and south to the Equator to document the subsequent rising seas. Most recently, I visited the icy coast of Greenland and the low-lying islands of the Maldives, connecting two seemingly disparate but equally endangered parts of our planet.

Consider how engaging Zaria’s opening sentence is, with ‘life’s mission’, ‘urgency’, ‘climate change’, and ‘my work’. She says it in a matter-of-fact way, yet her passion is obvious, and the topic is one that concerns everyone in the audience. She could have followed this opening with a direct statement about her work, such as, “I’m an artist…”, but the image behind her tells that story. Images often reinforce what you’re saying, but they can also be a substitute for words. Think about how images can add to the story you’re telling.

Zaria uses a contrast between Greenland and the Maldives, along with the phrase ‘equally endangered’ to illustrate the global nature of climate change. She also says ‘icy coast’ and ‘low-lying islands’ to amplify the contrast beyond location, allowing the audience to better visualize those places. Are there such contrasts within your story that can help explain differences or diversity in regards to the topic that you’re exploring?

My drawings explore moments of transition, turbulence and tranquility in the landscape, allowing viewers to emotionally connect with a place you might never have the chance to visit. I choose to convey the beauty as opposed to the devastation. If you can experience the sublimity of these landscapes, perhaps you’ll be inspired to protect and preserve them.

The expression ‘out of sight, out of mind’ applies to many important subjects. If we don’t see it, or experience it, these subjects can fade from our memory. Great stories take people into places or experiences, and art can do the same, which Zaria brings to our attention. The point is to have the audience feel, think and experience as though they were there with you.

Behavioral psychology tells us that we take action and make decisions based on our emotions above all else. And studies have shown that art impacts our emotions more effectively than a scary news report. Experts predict ice-free Arctic summers as early as 2020. And sea levels are likely to rise between two and ten feet by century’s end. I have dedicated my career to illuminating these projections with an accessible medium, one that moves us in a way that statistics may not.

Using a statistic story block can be a powerful way to highlight an aspect of your story, but visuals are an alternative. With climate change, a picture taken after a hurricane, flood or drought can convey more emotion than the numbers behind the cause of climate change. While Zaria’s medium is visual, in this case she has chosen to focus on beauty rather than destruction. Either approach is an option. In some situations, you can use two images that tell very different stories. One positive, one negative. Or a before and after comparison.

As to the science Zaria references – ‘behavioral psychology’, ‘studies have shown’, ‘experts predict’ – there is always the question of whether sources should be sighted. Zaria has not done any of this research herself so we’re supposed to accept it as common knowledge. I usually lean toward sighting the source of scientific information, but you will find plenty of talks that don’t. It’s another judgement call for every storyteller.

My process begins with traveling to the places at the forefront of climate change. On-site, I take thousands of photographs. Back in the studio, I work from both my memory of the experience and the photographs to create very large-scale compositions, sometimes over 10 feet wide. I draw with soft pastel, which is dry like charcoal, but colors. I consider my work drawings but others call them painting. I cringe, though, when I’m referred to as a “finger painter.” But I don’t use any tools and I have always used my fingers and palms to manipulate the pigment on the paper.

Drawing is a form of meditation for me. It quiets my mind. I don’t perceive what I’m drawing as ice or water. Instead, the image is stripped down to its most basic form of color and shape. Once the piece is complete, I can finally experience the composition as a whole, as an iceberg floating through glassy water, or a wave cresting with foam. On average, a piece this size takes me about, as you can see, 10 seconds. Really, more like 200 hours, 250 hours for something that size.

The use of video and time lapse photography dramatically increases the impact of Zaria’s narrative. There’s simply no way that words alone could explain her process to the audience. We see the scope of her work, as well as the attention to detail and the use of her fingers.

She also takes the opportunity to turn the time lapse sequence into a moment of humor. Some speakers are reluctant to insert humor into a serious subject, but it can provide a break in the narrative that engages the audience in a positive way. Zaria resets the tone with a real number before shifting from her work to her backstory. Humor will often happen abruptly, which adds to the fun as the audience is not expecting it, but you also need to consider how you will exit from a humorous moment.

But I’ve been drawing ever since I could hold a crayon, really. My mom was an artist, and growing up, we always had art supplies all over the house. My mother’s love of photography propelled her to the most remote regions of the earth, and my family and I were fortunate enough to join and support her on these adventures. We rode camels in Northern Africa and mushed on dog sleds near the North Pole.

Hearing about the roots of a speaker’s passion for their subject is a powerful connection tool that humanizes the narrative. We get a glimpse into Zaria’s childhood, from the ‘art supplies all over the house’ to her ‘mother’s love of photography’ and the references to riding camels and having mushed on dog sleds. We come away with a better sense of who she is and why she’s so passionate about addressing climate change. Does your narrative help explain you?

In August of 2012, I led my first expedition, taking a group of artists and scholars up the northwest coast of Greenland. My mother was originally supposed to lead this trip. She and I were in the early stages of planning, as we had intended to go together, when she fell victim to a brain tumor. The cancer quickly took over her body and mind, and she passed away six months later. During the months of her illness, though, her dedication to the expedition never wavered, and I made a promise to carry out her final journey.

My mother’s passion for the Arctic echoed through my experience in Greenland, and I felt the power and the fragility of the landscape. The sheer size of the icebergs is humbling. The ice fields are alive with movement and sound in a way that I never expected. I expanded the scale of my compositions to give you that same sense of awe that I experienced. Yet, while the grandeur of the ice is evident, so, too, is its vulnerability. From our boat, I could see the ice sweating under the unseasonably warm sun.

This section could have been told without referencing her mother’s illness, instead focusing on just the expedition, but it would have lost a vital element of both drive and appreciation for what Zaria experienced. Sometimes storytellers leave out such personal components in their story, which is fine for a first draft, but when you go back through the narrative, always ask yourself what you were thinking, or what was important, what was motivating you. Often times you will uncover a thread that adds richness to your story.

We had a chance to visit many of the Inuit communities in Greenland that now face huge challenges. The locals spoke to me of vast areas of sea ice that are no longer freezing over as they once did. And without ice, their hunting and harvesting grounds are severely diminished, threatening their way of life and survival.

This short story block tells the story of someone else, in this case the Inuit communities of Greenland. It helps answer the question, “Why does this matter”, which is something you need to ask yourself throughout the Ideation and Narration phases of writing your story.

The melting glaciers in Greenland are one of the largest contributing factors to rising sea levels, which have already begun to drown some of our world’s lowest-lying islands. One year after my trip to Greenland, I visited the Maldives, the lowest and flattest country in the entire world. While I was there, I collected images and inspiration for a new body of work: drawings of waves lapping on the coast of a nation that could be entirely underwater within this century.

Devastating events happen every day on scales both global and personal. When I was in Greenland, I scattered my mother’s ashes amidst the melting ice. Now she remains a part of the landscape she loved so much, even as it, too, passes and takes on new form.

Among the many gifts my mother gave me was the ability to focus on the positive, rather than the negative. My drawings celebrate the beauty of what we all stand to lose. I hope they can serve as records of sublime landscapes in flux, documenting the transition and inspiring our global community to take action for the future.

Thank you.

Zaria continues the thread of her mother’s influence on her work; to remain positive and celebrate nature’s beauty. Her call-to-action is wrapped within her final message of hoping her work can inspire others to take action. Part of the ‘why does it matter question’ is to ask ‘what do we have to lose’, which is a common element in a topic with implications for society.

Compare Zaria’s talk to one that I recently reviewed by Juan Enriquez about reprogramming life. His talk was focused on the topic, from both a historical, present day, and futuristic standpoint, and lacked the personal history and resulting passion that Zaria included. I will usually suggest that storytellers include some backstory as it helps the audience to connect with them, but not everyone is comfortable with that, or feels that it’s necessary.

One way to become a better storyteller is by hearing / watching / reading a variety of stories and thinking about which narrative styles / formats impacted you the most. Your stories will benefit from the process. 

[Note: all comments inserted into this transcript are my opinions, not those of the speaker, the TED organization, nor anyone else on the planet. In my view, each story is unique, as is every interpretation of that story. The sole purpose of these analytical posts is to inspire a storyteller to become a storylistener, and in doing so, make their stories more impactful.]

Learn more about the coaching process or
contact me to discuss your storytelling goals!

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