Samantha Nutt: The real harm of the global arms trade @ TED Talks Live

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 Samantha Nutt that reveals the damage caused by global arms trade.

Creating a concise narrative about a global issue is difficult due to the fact that the problems and solutions are far reaching, affecting millions if not billions of people across multiple continents. In this case there is a contrast between the countries that are selling arms around the world, and the countries which are experiencing the consequences of those arms sales.

Watch Samantha’s TED Talk. If you’re are developing an impactful story about a far reaching social issue, note how she frames the problem and solution. The credibility comes from the fact that Samantha has lived in the middle of the violence. You can find additional information on her website: War Child USA.

Transcript

(my notes in red)
Some of you may have noticed that my last name is Nutt. And if you did, you are forgiven for wondering how a Nutt managed to end up in a war zone. I actually was offered, right out of medical school, and accepted a volunteer contract to work with UNICEF in war-torn Somalia, that was worth one dollar. And, you see, I had to be paid this dollar in the event that the UN needed to issue an evacuation order, so that I would be covered. I was, after all, heading into one of the world’s most dangerous places. And by now, some of you may be asking yourselves, and I just want to reassure you, that I did get half the money up front.

A common way to begin a story about an important social topic is for the speaker to provide critical background which will set the stage for what’s to come. Samantha tells the audience that 1) she had just graduated from medical school, 2) she accepted a contract with UNICEF, and 3) she was heading to war-torn Somalia. Though it’s serious topic, she takes the opportunity to wrap it in a bit of humor.

But you see, this is how, with 50 cents in my pocket, I ended up in Baidoa, Somalia. Journalists called it the “city of death.” And they called it the city of death because 300,000 people had lost their lives there — 300,000 people, mostly as a result of war-related famine and disease.

This statistics story block states that 300,000 people had lost their lives in the city of Baidoa, Somalia. That’s a startling number for any city, but at the time of this talk the population of Baidoa was around 800,000. Would the impact be different if that second number had been mentioned? That’s something to consider whenever you’re quoting a statistic – quote it alone, next to another number for comparison, or with a range of numbers to illustrate a trend.

I was part of a team that was tasked with trying to figure out how best to respond to this humanitarian catastrophe. It was right on the heels of the Rwandan genocide, and aid money to the region was drying up. Many aid organizations, unfortunately, had been forced to close their doors. And so the question that I was asked to specifically help answer, which is one that aid workers ask themselves in war zones the world over, is: What the hell do we do now? You know, the security environment in Somalia at that moment in time — and nothing has really changed too much — can best be described as “Mad Max” by way of “A Clockwork Orange.”

She paints an overall picture of a dire situation – humanitarian catastrophe, aid money drying up, lack of security – then shifts to a specific experience in the next story block. That’s a common storytelling technique. Think about films you’ve seen that start with a wide shot of a scene, then zoom in to a tighter shot that’s personal and action oriented.

Instead of simply saying the security in Somalia was chaotic, she uses an analogy, comparing the state of security to a pair of chaotic and dysfunctional movies. Samantha knows that the audience in front of her is familiar with the style of these two movies, as they are well known in the Western world. But half the world may not get the reference. That’s not necessarily a bad decision, when to use an analogy is the storyteller’s choice, but I do recommend that storytellers consider their audience whenever they use analogies.

And I remember very distinctly a couple of days after my arrival, I went up to a feeding clinic. There were dozens of women who were standing in line, and they were clutching their infants very close. About 20 minutes into this conversation I was having with this one young woman, I leaned forward and tried to put my finger in the palm of her baby’s hand. And when I did this, I discovered that her baby was already in rigor. She was stiff, and her little, lifeless hand was curled into itself. She had died hours before of malnutrition and dehydration.

I later learned that as her baby was dying, this young woman had been held for two days by some teenage boys who were armed with Kalashnikov rifles, and they were trying to shake her down for more money, money she very clearly did not have. And this is a scene that I have confronted in war zones the world over; places where kids, some as young as eight — they are this big — and those kids, they have never been to school. But they have fought and they have killed with automatic rifles.

From 300,000, a large number that is hard to fully grasp, Samantha tells the story of one woman and her baby. She then explains why the baby died and brings the topic of weapons into the narrative. Note her use of a simple hand gesture to signify the height of an eight year old. The audience knows that eight year olds are shorter than adults, but seeing her hand next to her body provides a visual reinforcement that she’s talking about kids. Is there a point in your story where a hand gesture can add emphasis?

Is this just the way the world is? Some will you tell you that war is unavoidably human. After all, it is as old as existence itself. We say never again, and yet it happens again and again and again. But I will tell you that I have seen the absolute worst of what we as human beings are capable of doing to one another, and yet I still believe a different outcome is possible. Do you want to know why? Because over 20 years of doing this work, going in and out of war zones around the world, I have come to understand that there are aspects of this problem that we, all of us, as people occupying this shared space, that we can change — not through force or coercion or invasion, but by simply looking at all of the options available to us and choosing the ones that favor peace at the expense of war, instead of war at the expense of peace.

Samantha now shifts the focus outward again, this time to include the entire world. The issue she’s addressing extends far beyond Somalia. She’s been to ‘war zones around the world’, so we have a sense of her credibility, her knowledge of the crisis. It’s at this point she mentions the fact that there are things each of us can do to address the problem. We’re engaged with the story in a new way. We’re not just learning about an important issue, we have been invited to be part of the solution.

How so? Well, I want you to consider this: there are at least 800 million small arms and light weapons in circulation in the world today. The vast majority of civilians, like that young baby, who are dying in war zones around the world, are dying at the hands of various armed groups who rely on a near-infinite supply of cheap, easy and efficient weapons to rape, threaten, intimidate and brutalize those civilians at every turn. How cheap? Well, in some parts of the world, you can buy an AK-47 for as little as 10 dollars. In many places in which I have worked, it is easier to get access to an automatic rifle than it is to get access to clean drinking water.

And so now the important part: Can anything be done about this? To answer that question, let’s take a look at this map of the world. And now, let’s add in all of the countries that are currently at war, and the number of people who have either died or have been displaced as a result of that violence. It is a staggering number — more than 40 million people. But you will also notice something else about this map. You will notice that most of those countries are in the Global South. Now, let’s look at the countries that are the world’s top 20 exporters of small arms in the world. And what do we notice? Well, you see them in green. You will notice that those are mostly countries in the Global North, primarily Western countries. What does this tell us? This tells us that most of the people who are dying in war are living in poor countries, and yet most of the people who are profiting from war are living in rich countries — people like you and me.

Two statistics open this section of the narrative – 800 million small arms, and AK-47s going for as little as ten bucks. Frightening indeed. But to illustrate the next two numbers – 40 million people affected and the top 20 exporters of small arms – Samantha uses a visual aid to illustrate the point, and she takes the opportunity to boil the numbers down to the conclusion that rich countries are supplying arms to the poor countries where most of the people are dying. If you’re using numbers in your story, is there a way for you to bring those data points to a logical conclusion?

And then what if we go beyond small arms for a second. What if we look at all weapons in circulation in the world? Who does the biggest business? Well, roughly 80 percent of those weapons come from none other than the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany. It’s shocking, isn’t it?

A majority of people (in my opinion) will know that most of the worlds weapons come from a handful of countries, and a similar number may even know which countries are permanent members of the UN Security Council, but few have made the connection between the two. It’s not uncommon that people are aware of certain facts, but the interrelationship is not obvious to them. Revealing facts in a story can be impactful, but revealing correlations even more so.

Now, some of you might be saying at this moment in time, “Oh yeah, but OK, hang on a second there … Nutt.” Grade school was spectacular for me. It was, really, a wonderful experience.

When to inject a touch of humor? Sometimes in the middle of a serious dialogue. The key is to keep it brief, as you don’t want to completely break the flow of your narrative, and in this fashion, Samantha quickly returns to the subject at hand.

But you might be saying to yourselves, You know, all of these weapons in war zones — they’re not a cause, but an effect of the violence that plagues them each and every single day. You know, places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where they need these weapons to be able to maintain law and order, promote peace and security, to combat terror groups — and surely this is a good thing.

The opposite viewpoint story block is often used to address questions or different perspectives that may be on the minds of some audience members. Some speakers avoid going there, but in this case, Samantha puts in on the table. As you’re crafting your storyline ask yourself whether some audience members might be thinking, “But wait a minute…”

Let’s take a look at that assumption for just one moment, because you see there has been a boom in the small-arms trade since the start of the War on Terror. In fact, it is a business that has grown threefold over the past 15 years. And now let’s compare that to the number of people who have directly died in armed conflict around the world in that same period. What do you notice? Well, you notice that, in fact, that also goes up roughly three to fourfold. They basically go up and end at the same point.

Statistics related to different situations can be confusing to any of us. It can be hard to get a clear picture of what the speaker is saying, which is when a chart, such as the one that Samantha uses, can bring the correlation to light. But numbers and trends can be deceiving, and another level of explanation may be needed, which is what Samantha does next.

Now, we can have a circular argument here about whether this increase in fatalities is a response to the increase of small arms, or the other way around. But here’s what we should really take away from this. What we should take away from this is that this is a relationship worth scrutinizing, especially when you consider that small arms that were shipped to Iraq for use by the Iraqi Army, or to Syria for so-called moderate opposition fighters, that those arms, many of them, are now in the hands of ISIS; or when you consider that arms that were shipped to Libya are now actively drifting across the Sahel, and ending up with groups like Boko Haram and al Qaeda and other militant groups. And therein lies the problem. Because, you see, small arms anywhere are a menace everywhere, because their first stop is rarely their last.

Everyone know about second hand markets for many of products – cars, electronics, even clothes – but how many of us have given much thought about such sales channels when it comes to weapons? While the initial sale may be legal, the second or third may not be. Often tossed into the category of ‘unintended consequences’, is there an aspect of your story that is similar? A situation whereby the original intent is not how things turned out, or where the consequences ripple out.

Spending on war per person per year now amounts to about 249 dollars — 249 dollars per person, which is roughly 12 times what we spend on foreign aid, money that is used to educate and vaccinate children and combat malnutrition in the Global South. But we can shift that balance. How do we do this? Well, it is essentially a problem of both supply and demand, so we can tackle it from both sides.

Samantha previously stated that small arms trade had tripled in the past 15 years, but now she provides another way to view the issue. At first the statistic of $246 may not seem like a lot of money, but it becomes significant when we hear that it’s 12 times what is spent on foreign aid. When you quote a number, is there a way to provide the audience with another way to look at it, to see that number through a different lens?

On the supply side, we can push our governments to adopt international arms transparency mechanisms like the Arms Trade Treaty, which makes it so that rich countries have to be more accountable for where their arms are going and what their arms might be used for. Here in the United States, the largest arms-exporting country in the world by far, President Obama has rightly signed the Arms Trade Treaty, but none of it takes effect, it isn’t binding, until it is approved and ratified by the Senate. This is where we need to make our voices heard. You know, the curbing of small arms — it’s not going to solve the problem of war. Increased control mechanisms won’t solve that problem. But it’s an important step in the right direction. And it’s up to all of us who live in those rich countries to make change here.

Samantha presents a partial solution to the problem – the Arms Trade Treaty – and makes an explicit call to action – make our voices heard – in order for this solution to be implemented. Social issues always have a connection to legislation. It may be awaiting approval, or in some cases, laws already exist, but are not being enforced. Your story can raise awareness to such situations.

What about on the demand side? You know, there are generations around the world who are being lost to war. It is possible to disrupt that cycle of violence with investments in education, in strengthening the rule of law and in economic development, especially for women. I have personally seen just how incredibly powerful those kinds of efforts can be around the world.

Samantha states that it’s possible to disrupt the cycle of violence by way of education, rule of law and economic development, and that she’s personally seen how powerful these efforts can be, but she doesn’t provide an example to illustrate her point. It left me wanting to hear about at least one of her experiences. This is a common occurrence.

If you’re speaking out on a social issue, and are offering a solution, can you provide proof that your solution works? Something along the lines of, “Here’s a case where my idea was implemented, here are the positive results, and if we can replicate this solution into other locations or processes, more people will be helped.” This approach takes a hypothetical solution and makes it tangible. Something people can grasp.

But here’s the thing: they take time, which means for you as individuals, if you want to give, please, by all means do it. But know that how you give is just as important as how much you give. Regular contributions like monthly contributions are a far more effective way of giving, because they allow humanitarian organizations to properly plan and be invested over the long term, and to be present in the lives of families who have been affected by war, wars that many of us, frankly, all too quickly forget.

While the first call to action was political – ratifying a treaty – Samantha brings up a second option – making regular contributions to humanitarian organizations. The advice sounds logical, yet once again, I was wanting to hear an example of how donations of this type result in reducing the level of global arms trade or violence.

When I first got on that plane for Somalia as a young doctor, I had no idea what it means to live with war. But I can tell you that I know what it means now. And I know what it means to lie in bed in the pitch-black night and listen to that haunting “pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!” of automatic gunfire, and wonder with absolute dread how many minutes I have left until it will be right on top of me. I can tell you that it is a terrifying and agonizing fear, one that millions of people around the world are forced to confront each and every single day, especially children. Over the years of doing this work, unfortunately, war has killed far too many people close to me. And on at least a couple of occasions, war has very nearly killed me as well.

In circular fashion, Samantha takes us back to the beginning, when she became a volunteer after medical school, and didn’t know what it felt like to live in a war torn city. With emotional detail, she describes what she experienced, and felt, and the audience is there with her. The reason most speakers are on the stage talking about a social issue is that they’ve been in the middle of the problem and want to share their experience. Others experience the world through your eyes.

But I firmly believe, which is why I get up and do what I do every single day, that we can make different choices here. Because you see, war is ours, as human beings. We buy it, sell it, spread it and wage it. We are therefore not powerless to solve it. On the contrary, we are the only ones who can.

In a final call to action she brings everyone into the picture with the basic reality that ‘we’ are causing the problem, and only ‘we’ can solve it. This is true of all social issues. Society creates such problems – injustice, poverty, discrimination, climate change – and only society can create the needed solutions. If this is the kind of story that you’re working on, define the problem(s) and solution(s) clearly. There is an emotional side of the story, but also a logical side. Weaving them together is something Samantha does well.

Thank you very much, and I want to wish you the greatest success.

As you watch Samantha’s TED Talk, listen intently and think about what parts of the story worked for you, and whether there were any places where you wanted to know more, or you became confused. Review your own manuscript in similar fashion. And when you rehearse, ask those listening the same thing. How deep you go is always limited by time constraints, so choose your words wisely as you reveal as much information and emotion as possible.

[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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Juan Enriquez: We can reprogram life. How to do it wisely @ TED Talks Live

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 Juan Enriquez about reprograming life, and our role in managing / influencing the process.

Crafting a narrative that takes an audience inside an advanced scientific topic is difficult when those listening are members of the general public, rather than a bunch of PhDs who work in research labs. In this talk he explores the topic of reprograming life. Something that our species better get right.

Watch Juan’s TED Talk. If you’re preparing an experience-driven talk, think about whether there is a science story block that can be part of your narrative. If you’re working on an idea-driven story, especially one based on how science may affect our future, pay attention to how Juan presents a very challenging subject.

You may want to watch the talk once and take your own notes as to how the story flowed, how he used examples, and how he made a very complex topic understandable. Then read through the notes below and watch it again. There were many beautiful moments, but also times when I wanted to hear more.

Transcript

(my notes in red)

So, there’s an actor called Dustin Hoffman. And years ago, he made this movie which some of you may have heard of, called “The Graduate.” And there’s two key scenes in that movie. The first one is the seduction scene. I’m not going to talk about that tonight.

It can be tempting to begin a science story with something that’s related to the scientific topic that the story is about, and Juan gets there soon enough, but in a counterintuitive move, he opens with humor. It’s a reference that the audience is familiar with, so it gets a laugh, but it also has people wondering where he’s going next – it’s a combination of humor and mystery in a matter of seconds.

The second scene is where he’s taken out by the old guy to the pool, and as a young college graduate, the old guy basically says one word, just one word. And of course, all of you know what that word is. It’s “plastics.” And the only problem with that is, it was completely the wrong advice.

Let me tell you why it was so wrong. The word should have been “silicon.” And the reason it should have been silicon is because the basic patents for semiconductors had already been made, had already been filed, and they were already building them. So Silicon Valley was just being built in 1967, when this movie was released. And the year after the movie was released, Intel was founded. So had the graduate heard the right one word, maybe he would have ended up onstage — oh, I don’t know — maybe with these two.

Juan spends moment on a more serious note based on his reference to silicon – the early days of silicon valley – and once again we think the talk is going to get serious, but he pivots back to humor with a slide featuring Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Note that he refers to them as ‘these two’ and doesn’t mention their names. You can often avoid saying something that a slide says for you.

So as you’re thinking of that, let’s see what bit of advice we might want to give so that your next graduate doesn’t become a Tupperware salesman.

So in 2015, what word of advice would you give people, when you took a college graduate out by the pool and you said one word, just one word? I think the answer would be “lifecode.” So what is “lifecode?” Lifecode is the various ways we have of programming life. So instead of programming computers, we’re using things to program viruses or retroviruses or proteins or DNA or RNA or plants or animals, or a whole series of creatures. And as you’re thinking about this incredible ability to make life do what you want it to do, what it’s programmed to do, what you end up doing is taking what we’ve been doing for thousands of years, which is breeding, changing, mixing, matching all kinds of life-forms, and we accelerate it.

Now we see why Juan opened with a reference to The Graduate. It’s because the iconic scene in the movie was all about one word – plastics – and now Juan is ready to use that same theme to introduce the word that will define his story about genetic modification – ‘lifecode’. That’s a creative use of the callback technique.

It’s a word that few in the audience have heard before so he offers an explanation as to what it means. In doing so, he relates the programming of life (something the audience knows little about) to the programming of a computer (something most everyone understands, at least at a basic level). He also makes reference to the fact that humans have been doing this for a long time, though using nature to do it. This is a way to normalize something different.

And this is not something new. This humble mustard weed has been modified so that if you change it in one way, you get broccoli. And if you change it in a second way, you get kale. And if you change it in a third way, you get cauliflower. So when you go to these all-natural, organic markets, you’re really going to a place where people have been changing the lifecode of plants for a long time. The difference today, to pick a completely politically neutral term is — Intelligent design

In this section he offers up a specific example of how one thing – mustard weed – can become three different things. And in this situation – broccoli, kale and cauliflower – are things that everyone knows about. The science is no longer abstract, it’s something we put on the dinner table.

It’s also a good example of using a short historical story block when he says, “And this is not something new.” Providing a historical reference helps an audience think about past, present, and future. It puts the topic in perspective. The beautiful slide that Juan uses provides even more detail to what those changes were, and the visual representation of the three vegetables reinforces our sense of familiarity.

We’re not even at the 3 minute mark in Juan’s story, and yet he’s built a solid foundation for where he’s taking the audience on the next phase the journey.

We’re beginning to practice intelligent design. That means that instead of doing this at random and seeing what happens over generations, we’re inserting specific genes, we’re inserting specific proteins, and we’re changing lifecode for very deliberate purposes. And that allows us to accelerate how this stuff happens.

Juan now pivots toward the science and connects the idea of ‘intelligent design’ to the previously mentioned ‘lifecode’. Note the use of ‘random’ and ‘deliberate’, connecting ‘inserting’ to ‘changing’, as well as ‘generations’ to ‘accelerate’. Condensing what could be hours of discussion on a complex topic into minutes on stage requires this type of word choice to allow a public audience to follow along. We often understand through contrast.

Let me just give you one example. Some of you occasionally might think about sex. And we kind of take it for granted how we’ve changed sex. So we think it’s perfectly normal and natural to change it. What’s happened with sex over time is — normally, sex equals baby, eventually. But in today’s world, sex plus pill equals no baby.

And again, we think that’s perfectly normal and natural, but that has not been the case for most of human history. And it’s not the case for animals. What it is does is it gives us control, so sex becomes separate from conception. And as you’re thinking of the consequences of that, then we’ve been playing with stuff that’s a little bit more advanced, like art. Not in the sense of painting and sculpture, but in the sense of assisted reproductive technologies. So what are assisted reproductive technologies?

Assisted reproductive technologies are things like in vitro fertilization. And when you do in vitro fertilization, there’s very good reasons to do it. Sometimes you just can’t conceive otherwise. But when you do that, what you’re doing is separating sex, conception, baby. So you haven’t just taken control of when you have a baby, you’ve separated when the baby and where the baby is fertilized. So you’ve separated the baby from the body from the act. And as you’re thinking of other things we’ve been doing, think about twins. So you can freeze sperm, you can freeze eggs, you can freeze fertilized eggs. And what does that mean? Well, that’s a good thing if you’re a cancer patient. You’re about to go under chemotherapy or under radiation, so you save these things. You don’t irradiate them. But if you can save them and you can freeze them, and you can have a surrogate mother, it means that you’ve decoupled sex from time. It means you can have twins born — oh, in 50 years?

In this story block Juan mentions two widely known processes – in vitro fertilization and freezing eggs – but explains them in a new way by stating that humans have separated the act of sex from conception and baby while also decoupling sex from time, thus allowing conception and birth to happen into the future. When I spoke with audience members after the talk their comments were similar. “I never thought of the technology that way.” That’s an important aspect of impact. Seeing the world and our future differently.

In a hundred years? Two hundred years? And these are three really profound changes that are not, like, future stuff. This is stuff we take for granted today. So this lifecode stuff turns out to be a superpower. It turns out to be this incredibly powerful way of changing viruses, of changing plants, of changing animals, perhaps even of evolving ourselves. It’s something that Steve Gullans and I have been thinking about for a while.

Let’s have some risks. Like every powerful technology, like electricity, like an automobile, like computers, this stuff potentially can be misused. And that scares a lot of people. And as you apply these technologies, you can even turn human beings into chimeras. Remember the Greek myth where you mix animals? Well, some of these treatments actually end up changing your blood type. Or they’ll put male cells in a female body or vice versa, which sounds absolutely horrible until you realize, the reason you’re doing that is you’re substituting bone marrow during cancer treatments. So by taking somebody else’s bone marrow, you may be changing some fundamental aspects of yourself, but you’re also saving your life.

Often times there is a dark side of change. What happens if things don’t go as expected. Some speakers choose to focus only on the benefits of their idea or invention, but that can leave an audience feeling that you did just that, that you intentionally avoided the possible negative impacts.

And as you’re thinking about this stuff, here’s something that happened 20 years ago. This is Emma Ott. She’s a recent college admittee. She’s studying accounting. She played two varsity sports. She graduated as a valedictorian. And that’s not particularly extraordinary, except that she’s the first human being born to three parents. Why? Because she had a deadly mitochondrial disease that she might have inherited. So when you swap out a third person’s DNA and you put it in there, you save the lives of people. But you also are doing germline engineering, which means her kids, if she has kids, will be saved and won’t go through this. And her kids will be saved, and their grandchildren will be saved, and this passes on.

Shifting from the overarching storyline, Juan introduces a story block about a specific person. It illustrates how the technology can work. Going from the more general to the more specific is how a listener/viewer/reader comes to better understand on multiple levels.

That makes people nervous. So 20 years ago, the various authorities said, why don’t we study this for a while? There are risks to doing stuff, and there are risks to not doing stuff, because there were a couple dozen people saved by this technology, and then we’ve been thinking about it for the next 20 years. So as we think about it, as we take the time to say, “Hey, maybe we should have longer studies, maybe we should do this, maybe we should do that,” there are consequences to acting, and there are consequences to not acting. Like curing deadly diseases — which, by the way, is completely unnatural. It is normal and natural for humans to be felled by massive epidemics of polio, of smallpox, of tuberculosis.

When we put vaccines into people, we are putting unnatural things into their body because we think the benefit outweighs the risk. Because we’ve built unnatural plants, unnatural animals, we can feed about seven billion people. We can do things like create new life-forms. And as you create new life-forms, again, that sounds terribly scary and terribly bothersome, until you realize that those life-forms live on your dining room table. Those flowers you’ve got on your dining room table — there’s not a lot that’s natural about them, because people have been breeding the flowers to make this color, to be this size, to last for a week. You don’t usually give your loved one wildflowers because they don’t last a whole lot of time.

In addition to benefits and risks, advances in science (and changes of most any sort) also presents questions, or quandaries. Answers are not always clear. Vaccines clearly save lives, and we enjoy the flowers on our dining room table, but the fact is, both are ‘unnatural’, which is to say that humans have intervened. And this topic of intervention is something that everyone who is crafting an idea-driven narrative needs to consider. What are all the consequences of your proposal – both positive and negative?

What all this does is it flips Darwin completely on his head. See, for four billion years, what lived and died on this planet depended on two principles: on natural selection and random mutation. And so what lived and died, what was structured, has now been flipped on its head. And what we’ve done is created this completely parallel evolutionary system where we are practicing unnatural selection and non-random mutation.

Sometimes story blocks can be a couple of sentences, and in this case, Juan scans back over billions of years to highlight the way things have historically worked, up until humans came on the scene and started changing nature intentionally.

So let me explain these things. This is natural selection. This is unnatural selection.

While a number of the previous slides used were unnecessary, in my opinion, the one used here is informative, visually interesting, and it happens to be funny. Read the text below without the benefit of the slide. The words are still informative, but they only provide a factual description. That’s not bad, but notice how the same words can be received differently when using an image. You decide how you want to do it, of course, but realize there are options.

So what happens with this stuff is, we started breeding wolves thousands of years ago in central Asia to turn them into dogs. And then we started turning them into big dogs and into little dogs. But if you take one of the chihuahuas you see in the Hermès bags on Fifth Avenue and you let it loose on the African plain, you can watch natural selection happen.

In this case, no visual is needed. The audience can visualize on their own what would happen if a small dog was set free in a wild environment. We’ve probably seen that in various wildlife documentaries. In fact, an image of any sort might kill the humor (pun intended) and make the audience squeamish.

Few things on Earth are less natural than a cornfield. You will never, under any scenario, walk through a virgin forest and see the same plant growing in orderly rows at the same time, nothing else living there. When you do a cornfield, you’re selecting what lives and what dies. And you’re doing that through unnatural selection. It’s the same with a wheat field, it’s the same with a rice field. It’s the same with a city, it’s the same with a suburb. In fact, half the surface of Earth has been unnaturally engineered so that what lives and what dies there is what we want, which is the reason why you don’t have grizzly bears walking through downtown Manhattan.

In this story block Juan provides additional description of unnatural selection. It’s not so much a story of one person, or even a group of people, but of society as a whole. It also includes a powerful statistic, that half of the earth’s surface has been engineered by humans. There’s no reference as to where that number comes from. On the one hand, I will tend to believe what Juan says, but on the other, I’m left scratching my head, wondering if that number is accurate. it’s something to consider whenever you quote startling statistics. Will the audience believe you based on your personal authority?

How about this random mutation stuff? Well, this is random mutation. This is Antonio Alfonseca. He’s otherwise known as the Octopus, his nickname. He was the Relief Pitcher of the Year in 2000. And he had a random mutation that gave him six fingers on each hand, which turns out to be really useful if you’re a pitcher.

How about non-random mutation? A non-random mutation is beer. It’s wine. It’s yogurt. How many times have you walked through the forest and found all-natural cheese? Or all-natural yogurt? So we’ve been engineering this stuff. Now, the interesting thing is, we get to know the stuff better. We found one of the single most powerful gene-editing instruments, CRISPR, inside yogurt. And as we start engineering cells, we’re producing eight out of the top 10 pharmaceutical products, including the stuff that you use to treat arthritis, which is the number one best-selling drug, Humira.

The nugget that’s revealed here is that the gene-editing technique known as CRISPR was found inside yogurt. That could be a talk of its own. The history of how that discovery happened and what it means to the field of biological research. If Juan was giving a 30 minute talk, or a 45 minute keynote, this might be a topic that could be expanded upon and comprise a detailed scientific story block.

So this lifecode stuff. It really is a superpower. It really is a way of programming stuff, and there’s nothing that’s going to change us more than this lifecode. So as you’re thinking of lifecode, let’s think of five principles as to how we start guiding, and I’d love you to give me more.

He’s about 80% done with his story, and at this juncture comes back to the key word of his talk, lifecode. Though it’s a very complex topic, with dozens (if not hundreds) of things to think about, he keeps the options limited by offering the audience just five principles to consider now that they’ve heard the backstory on how humans are changing life forms. In essence, these are his calls to action.

So, principle number one: we have to take responsibility for this stuff. The reason we have to take responsibility is because we’re in charge. These aren’t random mutations. This is what we are doing, what we are choosing. It’s not, “Stuff happened.” It didn’t happen at random. It didn’t come down by a verdict of somebody else. We engineer this stuff, and it’s the Pottery Barn rule: you break it, you own it.

Principle number two: we have to recognize and celebrate diversity in this stuff. There have been at least 33 versions of hominids that have walked around this Earth. Most all of them went extinct except us. But the normal and natural state of this Earth is we have various versions of humans walking around at the same time, which is why most of us have some Neanderthal in us. Some of us have some Denisova in us. And some in Washington have a lot more of it.

Stating ‘there have been at least 33 version of hominids’ is another surprising statistic with no backup information. Once again, that could be a talk of its own, or expanded upon in a longer version of this story. As to the number, I did my own search and found a range of numbers / estimates provided – 9, 10, 12, 15 – sometimes there were references to speculation that there were many we haven’t discovered yet.

And every reference I could find states that we’re the only one left. So to say ‘most all of them went extinct’, implies there are other versions walking around. It’s just one word, but there’s a world of different between ‘most all’ and ‘all’. I don’t claim to have the answer, but I bring it up to highlight the fact that what you say – every word – matters greatly to the audience. 

Principle number three: we have to respect other people’s choices. Some people will choose to never alter. Some people will choose to alter all. Some people will choose to alter plants but not animals. Some people will choose to alter themselves. Some people will choose to evolve themselves. Diversity is not a bad thing, because even though we think of humans as very diverse, we came so close to extinction that all of us descend from a single African mother and the consequence of that is there’s more genetic diversity in 55 African chimpanzees than there are in seven billion humans.

Using statistics in a comparative fashion can be powerful. In this case, comparing 55 chimpanzees to 7 billion humans within the topic of genetic diversity. That said, I don’t feel that this statistical comparison connects to the topic of ‘choice’, which is what this principle is supposed to be about. And I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but the topic of personal choice when it comes to altering out genetic makeup needs much more time.

Principle number four: we should take about a quarter of the Earth and only let Darwin run the show there. It doesn’t have to be contiguous, doesn’t have to all be tied together. It should be part in the oceans, part on land. But we should not run every evolutionary decision on this planet. We want to have our evolutionary system running. We want to have Darwin’s evolutionary system running. And it’s just really important to have these two things running in parallel and not overwhelm evolution.

This is an interesting point, and draws applause from the audience. While I agree with the statement, someone else may feel that there should be no limits on how much of nature humans can alter. Another opinion might be that it’s too late, that humans have already overwhelmed evolution with far too much genetic manipulation.

Juan states that it’s ‘really important to have these two things running in parallel’, but why? He uses the phrase ‘overwhelm evolution’, but what does that mean? It would have been nice to hear specifics about the downside, but once again, that would require a longer story.

Last thing I’ll say. This is the single most exciting adventure human beings have been on. This is the single greatest superpower humans have ever had. It would be a crime for you not to participate in this stuff because you’re scared of it, because you’re hiding from it. You can participate in the ethics. You can participate in the politics. You can participate in the business. You can participate in just thinking about where medicine is going, where industry is going, where we’re going to take the world. It would be a crime for all of us not to be aware when somebody shows up at a swimming pool and says one word, just one word, if you don’t listen if that word is “lifecode.”

He describes his five calls to action – take responsibility, celebrate diversity, respect others, protect nature, educate ourselves – then does a callback to the beginning. To the movie reference about one word ‘plastics’, and how the new word to pay attention to is ‘lifecode’. There’s a power and completeness to that kind of full circle storytelling.

Thank you very much.

Overall, I enjoyed Juan’s talk. He was able to take a very technical topic and craft a story in under 15 minutes which makes us think about the technology that is here now, and that will continue to evolve in the future. The point being made is that our decisions will have an effect on what that technology is used for.

My main issue with this story involves the points which needed far more exploration. I would like to hear a one hour version of this talk, but even then there would be many points without full explanations. That’s an issue that virtually all storytellers have to face. Taking a long story and presenting it within a short timeframe.

[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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Pixar Storytelling – It Starts With An Idea

If you haven’t seen a Pixar animated movie, I’ll assume you have been living on a (nearly) deserted island. Their first feature film was Toy Story, released some 25 years ago. After 22 films, $14 billion in box office revenue, and an acquisition by Disney, they’re still creating films that touch our heart and change the way we think about the world.

You can read more about the fascinating history of Pixar, but in short, they are master storytellers. And while it’s doubtful that your personal story will end up in a Pixar movie, the process they use to create their films can teach us a lot about the craft of storytelling – characters, plot, emotion, wisdom, life.

It all begins with an idea.

It’s the first thing I ask someone who says they have a story to tell. What’s the idea, or the point, or the message that is driving your story. If you don’t know where you’re going, how are you going to get there?

Luckily, the creation of your story is not as complex as the Pixar process – no need to hire any simulation technical artists – but a takeaway from this welcome video is the need for revision / editing along the way. Nothing comes out perfect the first time. It’s an iterative endeavour that enriches your story, bit by bit.

The power of story is that it has an ability to connect with people on an emotional level.

Even when creating a fictional story, the writer needs to put an element of themselves into the narrative as a way to convey how they’re feeling. The same holds true in your story. It’s not just a sequence of events. That’s rather boring. The audience needs to know how the experience felt to you.

Check in next week for another glimpse into the world of Pixar storytelling!

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Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row

I’ve spent a lot of time in prison. Not as an inmate, but instead coaching inmates, helping them craft their personal stories. Stories destined to land on a stage at TEDxDonovanCorrectional in 2017 and 2018. Donovan Correctional Facility is a California State prison, located at the very southern edge of San Diego County, overlooking the international border shared with Mexico.

To say that the experience was profound would be an understatement. Many of these men had spent the majority of their adult lives incarcerated, which in the beginning led me to question whether they had much in the way of wisdom to share with an audience. But over a two year period I continued to be impressed by the insights, the compassion, and the empathy that formed the foundation of their stories. If I had been talking to them on the phone, I would have assumed they were college educated.

The Longform Interview

So when I read the description for the Longform Podcast with Tessie Castillo and George Wilkerson, I dropped everything to have a listen. While I had heard many stories from prison, none of those stories had come from inmates on death row.

“I want other people to see what I see, which is that the men on death row are human beings. They’re incredibly intelligent and insightful and they have so many redemptive qualities…I don’t think I could really convey that as well as if they get their own voice out there. So I wanted this book to be a platform for them and for their voices.”
–Tessie Castillo

“For me, writing was like a form of conversation with myself or with my past, like therapy. So I just chose these periods in my life that I didn’t really understand and that were really powerful and impactful to me, and I just sat down and started writing to understand them and make peace with them.”
–George Wilkerson

Instead of the usual format, whereby host Aaron Lammer interviews an author, in this case Tessie Castillo, the twist to this episode was calling death row inmate George Wilkerson to bring his voice from inside prison to the outside world.

As often happens in life (I could never have predicted that I would spend time coaching inmates inside prison) Tessie had no connection to death row or the death penalty when she met someone at a Super Bowl party who happened to be a psychologist working with death row inmates at a prison in Raleigh, North Carolina.

When she found out that the new warden was permitting classes on death row, Tessie applied to teach a journaling class. Her discovery of who these men had become was similar to my own. It would behove you to spend 43 minutes listening to the interviews. You’ll come to view men on death row in a new light.

Essays From Death Row

Beyond the Longform podcast, and the basis for the conversation, was the book Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row, written by Tessie Castillo and death row inmates: George Wilkerson, Terry Robinson, Michael Braxton, and Lyle May.

Crimson Letters by Tessie Castillo

Through thirty compelling essays written in the prisoners’ own words, Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row offers stories of brutal beatings inside juvenile hall, botched suicide attempts, the terror of the first night on Death Row, the pain of goodbye as a friend is led to execution, and the small acts of humanity that keep hope alive for men living in the shadow of death.

Each carefully crafted personal essay illuminates the complex stew of choice and circumstance that brought four men to Death Row and the cycle of dehumanization and brutality that continues inside prison. At times the men write with humor, at times with despair, at times with deep sensitivity, but always with keen insight and understanding of the common human experience that binds us.

Beginning with the journaling class that she started, Tessie frames the narrative from the perspective of someone who has walked the halls and forged story-based bonds with the men. The series of essays that comprise most of the book take you inside the hearts and minds of these inmates, as well as take you back in time to share the trauma of their childhood experiences.

After spending time with these men and listening to their stories, I don’t claim to know them thoroughly or to fully comprehend why they did what they did. Nor do I defend the crimes of any many on Death Row…But I will defend their humanity because I see it every time I walk through those prison doors.
–Tessie Castillo, excerpt from the Raleigh News & Observer, May 2014

It took me back to my time at Donovan, hearing about lives so different than my own, making it difficult to predict how I would have acted in such circumstances, how my life would have turned out. It’s not a matter of blaming others, or wanting a hall pass for mistakes, but the harsh reality is that downward spirals are challenging, even for the best of us, especially when navigating through a turbulent world of drugs, crime and violence.

The spankings had started a year before our mom left. At first it was just a few pops on the butt every couple weeks or so. But as time went on, the slaps hardened and became more frequent, the bruises took longer to heal. Then he began whipping off his heavy leather belt and the slaps turned into punches that cracked bones.
–George Wilkerson

One of the most difficult aspects of spending sixteen years on Death Row is being stowed away from the outside world. Unlike other facilities, Death Row implements a measure of isolation that wedges a gap in the mental evolution of its denizens.
–Terry Robinson

Our culture was built on three main pillars: Fightin’, stealin’, and gettin’ drunk. Fightin’ was a rite of passage and it determined your position in the hood hierarchy. The better you were at fightin’, the higher your status.
–Michael J. Braxton

In prison, night’s hourglass has extra holes in it. When sleep comes, gone are the plodding daylight hours, confining walls, and thoughts of letters. Sleep is relief for most of us. With this blessed comfort comes dreams of love, companionship, and peace. Desires glow so vivid and deep that reality is a disheartening comparison. Sleep cannot be degraded, beaten or chained. In sleep lies our freedom.
–Lyle May

“I believe that little separates people inside Death Row from those outside it. We are all a complex jumble of hopes, dreams, virtues and mistakes. We strive to be better people. We often fail. Being human is learning to rise again – as these me do, despite the odds – to prove we are more than our worst crime.”
–Tessie Castillo

Time to Reflect

While there is a dark sadness within some of the pages, there is also bright joy that comes from these four big hearts. And though it may not be an intuitive conclusion, as I finished the last page the notion occurred to me that these men have learned more about themselves, and applied that learning to become far more compassionate humans than most of us ever will while we blissfully enjoy our ‘freedom’.

Death Row isn’t a place that lacks humanity, like some people say. It is where humanity is rediscovered and restored. On Death Row the meaningfulness of life tremendously exceeds the inevitability of death. We are all human beings and as such we’re prone to mistakes, but many inmates are simply paradigms of the great fall before triumph. Our humanities are not beyond repair and any judicial system that conceptualizes such nonsense is flawed. To give up on a person’s humanity says a lot about our own. We can never fully share in the humanity of others until we have recognized and repaired our own tendencies towards cruelty and unconscious bias. This means forgiveness, accountability, faith, and in many cases a second chance. No matter our personal or collective opinions, no one will ever deserve to die.
–Terry Robinson

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Interviewing From a Historical Perspective

The process of crafting an impactful story often begins with identifying events and insights from your life’s journey, but such stories become more compelling and diverse when they include the experiences of others, as additional voices will broaden and deepen the narrative landscape, allowing audience’s to better understand the point you’re proposing, or the lessons you have learned.

One way to do this is by interviewing people who can offer listeners/readers a perspective that expands beyond yours. As with the disciplines of writing and speaking, interviewing is an art form that one must study and practice. When clients ask me how to conduct interviews I steer them to the On Being podcast, hosted by Krista Tippett.

Her interviews with renowned scholars, writers, poets, scientists, and religious leaders explore the most fundamental and profound questions. What does it mean to be human? How do we want to live? And who will we be to each other? If you’re looking to sharpen your storytelling skills, consider this podcast is an interviewing masterclass.

The podcast recently replayed a timely episode recorded on November 17, 2016: This History is Long; This History Is Deep – it’s an interview with Isabel Wilkerson. By reading the transcript while listening you can identify when Krista is diving deeper into a particular topic, or moving their conversation into new territory.

…our country is like a really old house. I love old houses. I’ve always lived in old houses. But old houses need a lot of work. And the work is never done. And just when you think you’ve finished one renovation, it’s time to do something else. Something else has gone wrong. ~ Isabel Wilkerson

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