Here Be Tygers: Your Storytelling Guide

Hey all,  We’re sharing the rest of our conversation with Kate from “Ignorance was Bliss” today. At first, we’d thought about having it all in one ep, but there was enough of significance, impact, and quality to warrant a different time for the rest.  Above all, “The Stories We Tell Ourselves” is a reflection on the ones that we choose and the ones that we let: how much of our life is decided by t...

Hey all,  For our second convo in the lead up to the “Seven Great Rules” miniseries, we invited Kate Wallinga, a former forensic psychologist, crisis clinician and host of “Ignorance was Bliss.” In our earlier talks with Kate, the notion of how we make sense of our world in order to “get by” came up quite a few times.  So we decided to record a few episodes on the stories we tell ourselves: about...

Hey all,  We’re continuing our lead up to the miniseries on the ‘Seven Great Rules’ that I teach to both creatives and entrepreneurs alike, so that they tales they tell will be true, sincere and come fully to life. With that I mind, I invited facilitator, addiction coach, and author of “If Not You, Then Who?”, Jesse Harless, to the show.  As both an addiction survivor and tireless entrepreneur, he...

We’re returning this week with our current guest, Matt S., for the second half our conversation on what it means to be a storyteller and why “legacy” —what you provide and where that helps them to arrive—matters for those who create. You’ll also hear us speak quite a bit about your tribe, or ‘those who provide’. These are the folks who are with you for life. Who will go with you on that journey ag...

Hey all,  I had to take somewhat of an unexpected break last month. As you may know, my father had been quite ill. And on the 8th of last month, we received word that he had passed away. It is still difficult for me, fully, to articulate what these past few weeks have been like. But I did promise myself that I’d return to the show. That I’d continue to write and to be your guide. So here we are to...

Hey all,  Today’s episode is somewhat of a companion piece to the previous one, so if you haven’t listened to that yet, I suggest you give it a go. For those who have, we’ll be continuing our chat with philosopher and medical ethicist, Stephen Herman, about the worlds we perceive, the different lives they allow us to lead, and why we imagine in order to define truths or close to them, reach.  So j...

In his book, The Origins of Creativity, biologist E.O. Wilson argues for a new way forward: one that embraces both the sciences and the arts (the possible with the conceivable) as a means to achieve a better life in this, and potentially other worlds. So with that vision in mind, I decided to invite my friend, philosopher and medical ethicist, Stephen Herman onto the show.   With the hope, or perh...

Hey all,  This is the second half of my conversation with music and audio producer and coach, Steven Leavitt, for his show The Language of Creativity. In the last episode, we talked about the stories we create and how we so often attach ourselves to them and why, in our work, play and everyday life.   So for today, we’ll continue from that note into not only the tale that I write, but how I learn...

Hey all,  For today’s ep (and the next), we’re going to change things up a little by sharing a conversation I had with my friend Steven Leavitt on his show, The Language of Creativity.   Steven and I both work with a number of creatives in our everyday life. So we wanted to dispel a few myths about what that can be like, from where and how ‘art’ is derived, to the ways that our stories emerge—fict...

We often talk on the show about how and when things begin, so I thought it would be useful today to discuss where they end: when all the truths of your tale lead to a certain place, when all the work that you do helps folks to arrive where they’d like to—in their work, in their life, in their play—and in a better state.   But what makes an ending ‘good’, makes it right, makes you and your market,...

Hey all,  This was a somewhat surreal episode for me to return to after we recorded it in what seems such a long time ago (back in 2016). I usually save these for later in the season, but Covid as of late has been cruel to my family and my dad’s back in the hospital with leukemia, so...it’s put me in bit of a reflective state, I suppose.  I mentioned before, in season one, that I’d have my longtim...

Joining today: storyteller, game developer and Head of Marketing and Community at Multiverse, Lisa Trott  Hey all,  A fan of the show introduced us to Multiverse, an online video game platform, a few months ago. Since then, we’ve worked with the development team on a number of episodes; which reflects our shared interest, I think, on how stories are told, the means to create, and why worth follows...

Hey all, We’ll be back soon with an incredible season full of new guests (plus those that you’ve met before), fantastic tales, and some dedicated time to questions, ideas and insights on how to use storytelling in your work, play, and everyday life.  Oh, and don’t forget to follow us at our new home on @csuiteradio. -J Support the show (http://www.patreon.com/herebetygers) Learn more about your ad...

Hey all,  This episode was mostly a lark with a few fans of our shows, who wanted a little reprieve from this year and the ways that it sometimes goes. So we decided to watch some movies, games and television shows that were great (and others less so) while we were waiting for new audio gear... And to share a little bit of the levity for which both our end-of-the-year episodes and sibling shows, T...

Hey all, As we wind the year down, we wanted to give you a taste of what some our future episodes will be like.  Starting in Season 2, we’ll provide you with three different kinds of conversation on how you can use storytelling to teach, entertain and guide the folks in your work, play and everyday life. During our Interview or Teach episodes, we’ll talk to Creative Entrepreneurs about how to reac...

Hey all,  This is the second half of our conversation on the ‘four essential beats of narrative’: namely, the sad, funny, beautiful and weird. They’re not the only beats that matter, of course. But they often give, direction, flow or a shape to the moments that hold us captive or impact us the greatest. And though we may start with a fairly deep exploration of one of our favorite storytellers, Hay...

Hey all, What you’re about to hear is the first half of a much longer conversation on the four essential beats of narrative and how storytellers have used them both now and in the past to compel, inspire, repulse or attract.  As you listen, I invite you to think of your favorite stories—fiction or not—and why they’ve had such an impact. Then consider the most powerful moments you’re reminded of, a...

Joining today: two of the three Brothers Herman, engineer Dave and medical ethicist & philosopher Steven, with all of their knowledge combined  Xenobiology. Astrobiology. And all of the fictional kinds. The worlds we imagine, define, are teeming to full with strange and unusual life: beings who either don’t follow the rules that we know—or out of necessity create new order in their time.  But how...

Joining today: intuitive healer, animal whisperer / human guide, and host of Motivational Addict, Julie Saillant Although animals feature prominently is many of the stories we tell—as fully detailed characters with their own folklore and lives, as other peoples or tribes within the world(s) where we dwell, and even sometimes as a proxy for ourselves—we often find it hard, ‘in real life’, to know w...

Joining today: engineer, pop culture critic, and host of Odder Worlds, Dave Herman Why do we stop? Cease to continue with the things that we love, that we create? That keep us up in the morning, at odd hours, throughout our everyday?  Confusion. Inertia. Fear of what’s still to come—or yet may. If you want to create, as a hobby, profession, form of personal expression or as the eminent biologist E...

In the first half my conversation with Dave, we talked about the four elements of narrative pacing: the premise, your beats, what the audience ‘sees’ and where those should lead. Today we’ll take a deeper look into the heart of things, or rather, ‘the heart of the scene’: that moment from which all of your beats will drive to or flow. This ‘heart’, as we’ll show, usually taps into what a character...

Joining today: humorist, game maker and the host of Odder Worlds, David Herman There’s a moment in every story’s life where it will go a different way than the one you had in mind. When that’s done well, it can lead to a great or even wondrous surprise.  But sometimes the premise, the beats, and the end destination just don’t align: what you expect doesn’t lead anywhere, the moments that should ha...

Joining today: filmmaker, documentarian, and Executive producer of Alive Inside, Michael Rosatto-Bennett I’ve held on to this interview for awhile. I had plenty of reasons: it was old, it was too noisy, it was live; I wasn’t sure of where it would go—none of them ‘right’.  But that’s the funny thing about grace. It doesn’t come when you’d like, just in the moments between; when you listen, you wai...

Joining today: William Howell, Senior Creative and Multimedia Producer for the Institute for Human & Machine Cognition, and Mark Daniel, a research associate at IHMC and their exoskeleton pilot Earlier this year, I had a chance to meet with two remarkable people: IHMC’s Mark Daniel and Billy Howell. They’d just finished speaking at the Podfest Expo in Orlando, where they presented a machine—a part...

Joining today: practicing evangelical, Masters of Divinity in spiritual formation, and the host of Halfway There, Eric Nevins The words around ‘faith’—that belief in numinous, the eternal, the ethereal, the strange—are often fraught with our own experience of how others would frame it. There are dogmas and proofs, liturgies, claims; but the journey we take is a personal one—sometimes with great st...