Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello, everyone, and welcome to no hold bar, the podcast about the art of telling stories. I'm Brigitte.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: I'm Joan.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: And today we're talking about the motivation of telling stories.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Yay. Yay.
Our first real episode.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Right.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Our first in depth episode.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. I find it mildly amusing that we set up this outline and there's literally, we're really only answering one question.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Yeah, one question question with seven. Seven subtopics. And then. But, yeah, it's. I was just telling Brigitte that it's, this topic we chose for our first episode is very broad. We could go down a lot of rabbit holes. But I think it's a great first one for this because, I mean, that is, I think, one of the most important questions, like, why do we tell stories?
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Why do we tell.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: To begin with?
[00:00:54] Speaker A: It sets the foundation.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: For everything.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: So where do you want to begin? We can go numerically or we can jump around.
Let's just make it chaotic right off the bat.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Let's make my editing that much harder.
Well, let's see. I'm going to start with, why do we tell stories? Why do you think we tell stories?
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Why do I think we tell stories?
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Because it's fun.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Okay. Because it's fun.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: No, I guess from, like, an educational standpoint, if you want to go that direction, there's actually quite a bit of research into the science behind why we tell stories and its impact on cognitive development, social development, emotional development. So there's actually, like, really practical reasons, more or less, to tell stories in addition to, like, sharing information, sharing histories. But I think people just enjoy stories.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: I feel like it brings sense of community together. It creates shared experience. Even the telling of the story creates a shared experience.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Yes, it creates a shared experience. And it also helps you empathize with other people, even if you don't have that shared experience. So it kind of has both effects.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. So you touched briefly on the cognitive, social, and emotional development.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: And.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we learn about how to interact with our world. We also learn about what our place is in the story.
You eventually touch on archetypes, but stories commonly have different archetypes that people can relate to. Yeah.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: And just the basics of a story. So, like, what makes a story a story? Rather than just, like.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: I don't know what to compare, like.
[00:02:41] Speaker B: An essay or a. I don't know.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: It starts something else. It started to say news report, but sometimes even a news report can feel like a story. Well, and, I mean, you have. Oh, lord, I've lost the thought, personal interest stories in journalism, it's literally telling someone's story.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I think journalism could fall into the story. Like, it doesn't have to be fiction.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: Oh, it does.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: But I think. I think that, you know, a story just needs to have a plot and then you have characters. Like, those are similar foundations. And. Yeah, it's through plot and through characters that we kind of learn about the world or our place in it, especially as children. You know, children we always think of. Kids have a. And just these active imaginations and all that. And that's through stories. Like, I don't know. As a kid, for me, I was constantly making up stories. I mean, I was just talking to my sister the other day and she was like, oh, my gosh, I remember you would always make us act like characters in these little stories you made, I think. Yeah, that sounds about right.
But, yeah, we just were. It's. Oh, yeah, it's second nature for us.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: I remember my sister would read stories to me when I was really young because my sister's three and a half years older than me.
In fact, I think part of the reason why I was actually reading before I got into school was because my sister basically taught me how to read.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: And she did not realize she was doing it. She was sitting and reading the book to me that she read to me.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Well, actually, she had not read it to me before, and she changed it. Oh, interesting. And I went, no, no, no, that's not right. Yeah. And she said, yes, it is. And I said, no, it's not. That's not what that word says.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Because you started to associate. Yeah, well, that's part of the, some of the studies I was looking at, which maybe we can close in the, in the bio, this episode. But there is a correlation between storytelling in language development.
Not always necessarily spoken or. Sorry, not spoken, but written word. But I mean, as in your example. Yeah. Sometimes just the act of listening to stories and engaging with stories can impact your ability to read language. Absolutely understand language.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: And she had read me the same books over and over again, and I'm watching the words on the page as she's reading to me. And there were several times she would change the story.
And after that first time she did it, she would do it occasionally to see if I could catch it. Condi and I were precocious children.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Really? I would have never guessed.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: We were extremely precocious children. We were both the type of child who was speaking in full, complex, compound sentences by the time we were two. That kind of kid.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: So it wasn't surprising that I was learning how to read before I even got in with him. A garden. Yeah.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Yeah. No. Storytelling definitely has a great impact on our development and social development, too. I was trying to find the exact quote in this research paper, but I'll just summarize. When children or adults, anybody read a story, whether it's fiction or nothing, you are interacting more or less with these characters and with this location. And the same parts of your brain that interact with people in real life are the same parts of the brain that are stimulated when you're reading a story, fiction or not fiction. So really fascinating that it's the art imitates life or whatever you want to think about.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: But, yeah.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: And I think that goes into, like, why do we tell stories? It's all of this. But storytellers have a pretty big responsibility society, if you think about all these impacts storytelling has.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Absolutely. And when you look back on oral tradition, any society that had oral tradition, the people who were the storytellers were the keepers of knowledge. They were the keepers.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: They were the keepers of how that society worked. Right. They were the people who shared information from place to place. They were basically the ones who spread the news. Yeah. 100%. They were the ones who were responsible for remembering what all things happened. And their role was very important in celtic societies. The bards were extremely important because it was understood they were the keepers of knowledge.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Right. Well, this is another kind of goes into what we mentioned in our very first episode of how we're going to cover, like, different mediums of storytelling. Like, we focus a lot on verbal stories or written stories. So books, fairy tales, whatever. But if you think of it like, ancient cultures that didn't leave a written record, they. Their stories are preserved in textiles or in paintings. There's still a lot we don't know. But you can see their stories were passed on in those ways.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Oh, sure. When you look at the cuneiform tablets from ancient Sumeria, they tell stories. When you look at the egyptian hieroglyphs, when we finally found the Rosetta Stone and understood, we realized they were telling stories. They were leaving historical record, and they were telling stories of their time.
I found it very interesting. I was for the last crown tournament praise poetry project. No, not the last one. Before that, I landed an assignment with someone who has a pictish Persona in picture part of ington, Scotland. Brief explanation. This is for the Society for Creative and Acronyms, because we're both in that. And I went hunting for information about pictish poetry. Style, because I like to write in this style. And I am just now starting to learn Iron Age and bondage poetry styles. That's awesome. Which are a lot more complex than people realize.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: And I was looking around, trying to find a new thing, and I discovered that most of what they know of the pictish language is there are huge stones, kind of like the Rhinestones. Yeah. In scandinavian countries. And they have a bunch of symbols on it. The problem is they haven't found the language key. Right. For the pictish language, so they have no idea what it says.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: I also, unfortunately, found out that the closest you can find to pictish poetry, the first time poetry about the Picts even really shows up is in Wales.
Because you have the top of Wales, and then you have the pictish. Right. Then you have the pictish area of Scotland right north of it. So I went with a welsh style because I couldn't find anything. I know a rabbit hole I really want to go down.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. That's fascinating.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Maybe someday we'll crack the code. I'm hoping someday we find their quote unquote Rosetta stone and can actually find out more information about that society. Yeah, that'd be really interesting.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: Well, just to think that, like, here in 2024, you know, we're like. The stories of people who lived thousands and thousands of years ago are still relevant, whether we really know the exact story or not. Still relevant, still interesting. We were just talking about, like, the epic of Gilgamesh earlier, too, and how we still study that, like, kind of a timeless way to preserve history and culture and. And, of course, the entertainment aspect is always there. I always like to think of how did ancient cultures, like, entertain themselves? That's always a fun thing to think about.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Like, you know, when you don't have tv and radio, what do you do with your egos stories in some way.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: The bards, like you said, or.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, storytelling. Part of the reason why more bardic activity started happening in the sca was because at the end of the day, feast is done. Some people might do dancing, but what are other people going to do? A lot of musicians started saying, you know what? We want to sing songs and tell stories. Yeah. And that's what we started doing. Great. And one of the big things, as Lucia has often commented, one of the biggest purposes of bards in Usca is the difference between bards and music performance. And music performance is largely recreating what existed in the time period, like instrument songs. Yeah. And the music that we can find and that kind of stuff. But for bards, we are telling stories.
We are telling the stories of things that happened in the time period of history that we are creating from the 17th century.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: Four stories of the sca.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Exactly. And we are telling the stories of the history of the sca itself. Because the sca is almost 60 years old. Right. In 60 years, you compile a lot of history, and it's good to. It's good to document this.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: People have put a lot of their time and a lot of their lives into this hobby, and it is a hobby. Sometimes some of us have a hard time remembering that.
But when you have something like this, you end up building a culture and a history, and it's good to record that history. And that's one of the motivations we have for storytelling, is to keep that knowledge moving forward.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's when we ask the question, why do we tell stories? I think the passing along of information and history has got to be up there as one of the most important. As a music teacher, sometimes I run into this challenge with teaching is a lot of people question the value of the arts in education, and not just. Not just the students. Students are going to complain. I love them to death. But I teach middle school, and I remember being in middle school myself and just being a little grumpy with everything.
But sometimes it is challenging to get people to realize the importance of the arts. And this really goes into it. There was one lesson I did where I was talking about music history in some context. I don't quite remember what it was. I had a student ask me like, this is music class. Why are you talking about this? I was like, we don't know. Yeah, this is music class. Why we're talking about this. So we can't really separate stories, the arts from history.
It's tied together. Both are necessary.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: And I think one of the things that we as a people in general have moved away from, kind of moved away from the understanding that storytelling helps us remember this history. And yes, we report history in an extremely academic way. But the storytelling aspect, the music, the art, the storytelling, the poetry, it not only reports the history and series of history, it shares some of the culture. Oh, yes. And you cannot teach. You can teach culture in an academic sense, but it's at that high level that doesn't quite sink down into the bones. Yeah, you can talk to me all day about the poetry, but I'm not.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: Going to feel it's about experience.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: What Kerouac felt when he wrote his poetry without reading it without hearing someone recite it. Yeah.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: Engaging in it and experiencing it. And I think this actually also made me think of how storytellers, musicians, artists have always kind of been like, kind of on the fringe of society, so to speak. Not necessarily, but I think storytelling is also about truth telling, even if it's fiction, you know, that goes in the whole philosophical discussion of truth versus reality or whatever. Fiction. Yeah, but even fiction is. Is rooted in truth. And, you know, storytelling. Yes. Is to preserve history, but sometimes it's speaking out a truth that is not being acknowledged. So it's a very loaded question. Why do we. Why is storytelling. It is a very loaded question.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: That's why I really wanted to do it.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I'm having fun with this. And.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Quote from Aristotle.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, the quote from Aristotle.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: What is the imitation or nemesis of an action and imitates the persons primarily for the sake of their actions? He quoted this, he wrote this in poetics, which was the treatise on dramatic theory. Yep.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: In the fourth century BCE.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: So.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: Well, a little bit of time has passed since. Basically, it's the. The concept of art imitating life, like Larry talked about. And plot is what drives a story.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: I think that's why we connect so much with stories, because we're living, actively living our own stories, and we don't know how it's going to end. That sounds morbid, but it's like stories give us hope and all that.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: And the plot is the life and the trust of the story. So without plot, you don't have a story. Yeah.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Well, what else are stories good for?
[00:15:57] Speaker A: Teaching lessons.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: Learning morals.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: Teaching lessons, definitely. For so long, educational theory was rote. Memorization was the way to go. But I always discovered I had a teacher who was sometime in middle school, it was a history teacher, and he told us stories about things that were happening in history. He told us stories around the ancient Greeks and around the Greek and Sumerians, and that actually helped us learn better. An old friend of mine used to do the same thing in his classes as well, where instead of just talking about spanish colonialization, he literally one day walked in, sat down at his desk, slammed a copy of the spanish flag onto his table, and said, I claim this space in the name of Spain.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: And they all kind of looked at.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: Him like, what are you doing?
[00:16:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: And so he started telling the stories of some of the comquistadors, and it helped them learn.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: I mean, it's just. Just more interesting. I mean, we can go into the science and all that, but at the end of the day, it's like, I'd rather listen to a story than a lecture. You know what I mean? Yes. And we do learn better that way because it, you know, it engages our brain in the same way as if we're actually there. And that kind of experience is more suitable to learning. Yeah, for sure.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Exactly. And there's an art to blending storytelling and rote teaching. I remember in the movie Mona Lisa Smile, one of the italian professor, they show a scene of him. He had been in world war two. This is set in the fifties. Okay, so he had been in World War Two, and he's telling his class in Italian. He's telling his class about a mission he had been on, and he had been doing this. And he's telling this story. And one of the, one of the kids asks, was it a trap? But she got the con, she got the conjugation wrong. She got sitting towards, okay, and I. He corrected her and then went to the blackboard and showed them the difference. And that's a really good blending of telling a story. And we're teaching at the same time, for sure. And that sounds almost more like technique. But the motivation is behind motivation behind that is by telling them a story. You're taking that language and you're putting it into practice. And one of the best ways to put a language into practice is reading or telling stories. Right?
[00:18:31] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. It's a great way to learn, learning academically and learning like social or like moral values.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: You can go with fables, even with fairy tales. A lot of fairy tales, very light, darker, and I love them so much. But, yeah, we covered this in spill tea.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: We have episodes on Grimda that are coming up that are.
They were properly named. Wow.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: Absolutely. But, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's like to teach you a lesson, a moral lesson, which they change at the times, of course, and as society evolves, but remain the same. Yeah, exactly.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: And, yeah, I mean, you have.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: Parables.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: Yes. Thank you.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm like, it's right there.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: And I want to say it starts with an a, but no, that's not right. That's allegory. And that's not my moment.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: I'm kind of proud of myself for remembering that. I'm not gonna lie.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: I've been out of persianity for a long time.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Yeah, parables, definitely.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: And they were, they were really good ways that Jesus was imparting messages and trying to get his philosophy across. Did most of his teaching. He did most of his teaching.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: To tell stories, parables through stories. Yeah.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: Because it's something people relate to. Yeah. I'm going to remember something. I'm going to understand something a lot faster if I can relate to it. And one of the best ways to help people relate to something is through a story. Yeah, definitely. Another motivation for storytelling can be to, to either motivate people or encourage some kind of change. By motivate, I mean advertising is a really good example. You see a lot of stories in advertising to sell a product, to sell an idea. You hear a lot of stories in politics to help sway voters. Right.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: And a lot of it's from personal experience, like the ads you mentioned. Like, I don't know if you're on TikTok or social media, but a lot of the ads on, in video format, I see people are sharing their experiences of the product and usually in story format.
So, you know, story beginning, climax and ending all that, you know, so it's, you know, 32nd story maybe. But I would rather, that's gonna make me more interested in the product rather than someone just being like, here is a product and you should buy it. And this is why it works, because you don't have that connection to it.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: And there are times when it works and there are times, times when it doesn't. I had this happen a lot back when I was still married. And it always came from the republican camp. It never came to that camp. I would get letters because there was a missus in front of my name. Yeah. I would get letters from the wives of republican candidates.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: They were very clearly form letters because I can tell you exactly which font they were using.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: Lucida handwriting.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: I could absolutely name nice. And they were always the same. They always followed the same story. Okay. I met my husband at pick a function. It could be a greek social function of charity.
It could be a hobby that they were both in, or it was some charitable organization, something like that. I met them there when we were in college or right after college, and we fell in love and we got married and we have x number of children and he's such a wonderful father and a wonderful husband. And that's why you should vote for him. Yeah.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: Parents of that lake.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: And you're telling me a story that is not going to meet the purpose of the story because telling me that he's a nice guy and the reproductive equipment works. I'm being nice here. It's not going to give me the.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: Political motivation I need to vote for your husband. Are those the bare minimum qualificate. I mean. Yeah, actually, probably.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: Exactly. And. Oh, good Lord. I personally found them incredibly insulting. Yeah. Because you're going to have to appeal to my intelligence to convince me, and this is absolutely not the way to do it.
And that is a really good example of trying to use a story to achieve a goal and falling far short from that goal.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Well, I guess that's why, you know, stories are subjective and they are subjective.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: But that is a way, that is a motivating way to do it, is.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: To appeal to that emotional.
Yeah. I mean, emotional appeal in politics is definitely huge tactic.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Absolutely a tactic.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: All the ads I see, the campaign ads are, they appeal to that, like, human emotion side of things. More so than anything, actually political sometimes, which is. Yeah, it's effective.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: And religious will do it as well.
We were just talking about the parables of Jesus. Yeah. Some of the better pastors I remember from childhood were the ones who told stories. Yeah. Because they kept people engaged. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I always used to laugh because when I was at about the search in Pocomo, we had a pastor, we called him Brother Max. He was a really nice guy, and he was very formulaic, and that was a really good thing. I could always tell when the servants, when the service was almost over. Yeah. He would start cracking jokes. Oh, my gosh. Yep.
[00:24:30] Speaker B: Yeah. I've known a few priests like that.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: But I really liked him because he told a lot of stories.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: Which, yeah, it's definitely going to keep a younger person engaged.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Right. I can say I had a similar experience, like the priests that. Cause I grew up Catholic, the priests that did more like telling stories, whether it was a personal story or just presenting the scripture in a story telling manner, I just find more interesting and more engaging. Little kids, it's hard to sit through a sermon in general, but if it's at least a little bit interesting to listen to, it almost sounds like gossip.
You know, I was just thinking, I just saw, like a TikTok, I think a friend send it to me of this girl. She's basically talking about, like, how gossip is important. It was kind of like a. Not really a satire video, but kind of like a more humorous video. But I'm like, yeah, gossip, you know, those stories are not always, you know, maybe they have that element to truth, but, you know, rumors and gossip and stuff. And sometimes it is harmless and you need to vent with your friends, and sometimes it turns into rumors and can be harmful. Like you said, the other side of storytelling, the other more harmful side of.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: Storytelling interesting thing about Gotham is originally the way that women shared.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: I think I read about that, too. It is true.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: I mean, by this kind of conversation is how a lot of women have shared information over the centuries. Sharing of not so much common knowledge, but practical knowledge more than anything. Yeah. And that is another thing storytelling is definitely a motivation for, is. Is sharing practical knowledge.
One of the few poems I have found for children, theoretically, from the middle ages, is a poem that is literally telling a child how to get the rest, how to put on clothing, and. Wow, that's cool. You know, poems and stories are good.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: We still do that, like. Like nursery rhymes or just, like, little songs. There's a poem for tying your shoes that I can never remember, and I still tie my shoes in the wrong quote, unquote wrong way. But there's apparently the fox goes under the thing.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: There is, and I don't remember it. Oh, my goodness.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: I could never remember that. And I always was frustrated because that was how my dad tried teaching how to tie my shoes, and I was stubborn, and I would always tie them. You make the two little loops, and then you just make a bow, and I still tie my shoes up.
You know what? Well, most of the time, it works. My shoes do come untied, probably more.
Anyway, the point is, there was a little story that was supposed to help me, and it didn't.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: And it might work for neurotypicals, but it definitely didn't work for itself.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: That's totally certain.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: I think another motivation that we've got for telling stories is it makes us human.
I think we are the only species. Okay, we don't. We don't know exactly how dolphins communicate. They're probably the closest in intelligence to us. I don't know. I don't remember anymore. Well, we don't know how they communicate. We don't necessarily know how other animals communicate. But as far as we know, that.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Should be another episode where we talk about storytelling, like, outside our species, because I got to be studies and how other animals communicate, or just, like, in nature. Oh, my gosh. What are you saying?
[00:28:15] Speaker A: That rabbit hole.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: I know what I'm doing this evening, actually.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: Probably watching.
As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet that does this. As far as we know. And it's what makes us human. The fact that we get together and want to share this knowledge, want to share these stories, want to make these connections. Right. It makes us human. Right.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: Well, and I was thinking about this as I was kind of researching for this episode, like, what?
Just kidding. As I was researching for this episode was a lot of things. I was finding touch on the, like, how stories teach empathy and how to interact with people. It helps us relate to each other.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: Even when we come from different backgrounds, different cultures. Finding the commonalities through stories help us relate to each other. And we'll definitely go into this in more depth in the episodes we do for the different archives types of stories, because, folks, there are, like, five or six different theories, and all of them have different numbers.
Not kidding. I started researching that one, and I'm like, so there's seven different archetypes. And then I see another article that says ten different archetypes, but I saw one that said 34. And I'm like, this is more than one episode.
[00:29:39] Speaker B: Especially, like, if we.
If we start looking at, like, all the different cultures and how they view stories and their techniques and archetypes. So there's a lot we'll get into.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: But I think it is interesting how you say it makes us human. Like, any culture you look at has their tradition of storytelling, verbal, written, whatever.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: Medium you want to choose.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Dance, music, art. Every culture throughout history has told stories.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: It gives us something to do. Maybe call when we're sitting around the fire and doing nothing, didn't they?
[00:30:16] Speaker B: People used to refer to, like, watching. Watching their tv shows, watching stories.
That's what I'm gonna do tonight. I'm not gonna research. Like I said, go watch my. You're gonna watch my crime stories.
That's my soothing way to go to sleep, is I watch crying. I watch you crying.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: I can't say anything. I had Wednesday on the other night, and I was like, you probably shouldn't watch before I go to bed.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: But, eh, I have been rewatching criminal minds because that is my comfort show.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: A good way to wrap up this episode would be to share some of our favorite stories or to tell, or maybe stories you grew up with that helped form who you are. Because that's kind of what we've talked about a lot, is how stories more or less warm us. And I think back in all the stories I read as a kid, I'm like, okay, that makes sense why I'm in the sca Orlando. Or that makes sense of who I am today.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The boxes check themselves off of them.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:21] Speaker A: The same way. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Which ones actually formed you the most? Go first. Because I gotta really think about that, because a lot did.
[00:31:30] Speaker B: There's a few that I same. I was such a bookworm and I still love to read, but, you know, not as I don't read as much and all the time as much as I. But some of the stories I absolutely loved. Well, when I was really itty bitty, it was Amelia Bedelia.
And I think it's because I related. And, you know, I think we've talked about, like, the neurodivergence and all this. I'm not diagnosed with anything, but I think about, okay, Amelia Vidalia, she was. She took everything literally. She was, like, super clumsy, and, like, I related to her so much as a little kid.
I don't know what else that says, but I love those books. Nancy Drew, obsessed with Nancy Drew. The american girl doll stories, red wall. I don't know if you're familiar with the red ball series.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: I'm familiar with red ball series.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: This really shows the age difference.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: That's because I was older when Amelia Bedelia and Red Wall came out.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought Amelia Bedelia was, but.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: I have comparisons to them, though.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Because some of the ones that really shaped me, not so much shaped me, but actually helped me deal with who I was.
There is a concept known as the too much girl, and it is someone who is rambunctious and opinionated. Yep. Mouthy, loud attack. Check. Check. Right. The box has checked themselves off. You know, they. They don't sit still, and they're nothing. Quiet and demure. They're opinionated, and they speak their mind, and they're passionate. Yeah. And for me. For you, yeah. That was Amelia Bedelia. For me, it was Anna Green Gables.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Okay. I was actually going to say Anna.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: Green Gables because I love that this book's Ramona Beasley.
Hippie longstocking. Yep. Long stocking. It's a favorite of mine to some degree. It was Margaret Simon from. Are you there? Vatican Margaret.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: Okay, I haven't read that, but I'm vaguely familiar.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: Are you theragotted St. Margaret actually was part of what led me to questioning my own spiritual belief. Interesting.
[00:33:40] Speaker B: I've seen, I see the book come up every now and then as, like, a recommended read or something, but I've never actually read it.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: You've never read it? No. Oh, it's really good. It's really, really good.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: Check it out.
[00:33:50] Speaker A: But I related to. I very much related to Laura Ingalls Wilder, actually, is another too much girl. The little house.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: Oh. Yep. I ate those books up as a kid, too.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: They were ones I very much related to because that was the type of person I was. Yeah. I was reading a magazine article, and I had forgotten about this. They're talking about the too much world concept, and it talks about, there's this. There's a place in the book, Ramona, where Ramona has gotten in trouble at school, and she's at home and she's laying on her bed, and her mom comes in and she sits down and she kind of rubs her back and she sees, oh, Ramona, what are we going to do with you? And Ramona sat up in bed and she said, love me, good morning, and then got embarrassed and dropped back down the floor, buried her head to pillow.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: Aw.
[00:34:44] Speaker A: And it's love me for who I am.
[00:34:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:47] Speaker A: I had forgotten about.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: Oh, that kind of chills.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: I literally started crying reading this article because I'm like, oh, God, I completely forgot about that. Yeah.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: And maybe subconsciously connect.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: That was exactly how I felt. Right. Because I was. I wasn't, like, really physically active. It's a little fidgety. I have ADHD. It's kind of a given, but. And being a genexer, I have. Being a Genex woman, I have undiagnosed ADHD because only boys had it when I was a kid, if anybody had.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: It at all, right?
[00:35:19] Speaker A: And I wasn't extremely physically rambunctious, but I was mouthy, I was opinionated, I was very passionate. Right.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: And those just came across as, like.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: Inappropriate behavior for a girl.
[00:35:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Undesirable personality traits.
[00:35:34] Speaker A: And I struggled with it for years, decades. I'm only now. Right? Only now in my fifties, am I finally hitting a point where I'm like, you know what? This is who I am. I don't like it. That's all.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: I had a very similar experience and, you know, kind of had, like, hills and valleys of this where, like, as a kid, kind of having that personality, not knowing why it wasn't accepted, and then, you know, getting older and being more aware and then hiding that and becoming that demure, really quiet person because, you know, the consequences of the other. And I think it's like not knowing how to balance because it's like one extreme or the other. And, I mean, trying to find a middle ground that always landing on one side.
[00:36:17] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: So.
[00:36:18] Speaker A: And, you know, I've had this conversation with Thomas, our fellow mentor, our shared mentor, I should say. I've had this conversation with him because one of the things that we really want to work on for my performance is voice protection. Yeah. And I actually shared with him one day. I struggled with voice protection because as a child, I was told I was too loud. Me too teenager.
I was told I was too loud and I knew how to project because I was in theater and I did that kind of stuff, so I knew how to do it, but I got told too many times that I was too loud. And so I quieted my voice and I've lost the ability to be that loud again. And now with performance, I need to learn how to be loud again. And it is a constant struggle. A part of me constantly fears that I'm going to get in trouble.
[00:37:14] Speaker B: I relate to that so well, and it's also part of the, like, fear.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Of being perceived in a certain way.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: But, like, I relate to that exactly. And I'm really so careful and I'm sure I stumble. But, like, as a music teacher, to always build kids up and they're such that they're at fifth and 6th grade, they're such a. They're at an age where the smallest thing that maybe you don't think is.
[00:37:39] Speaker A: A big deal is a huge deal. Oh, yeah.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: I remember being probably was about their age. I was in the church choir, church children's choir, and I. So most people who know me now know I'm very uncomfortable singing in front of people. I don't like it, whatever. As a kid, I loved. I loved I singing. I love performing, you know, putting on little shows for my family and friends. I love to sing. I was always singing around the house. The choir was like the highlight of my Sunday. I was up there in the front row in the choir loft, just belting my heart out. And during mass one day, the choir teacher came up, taps me in the shoulder and she says, you're too loud. You're being too loud. You need to sing quieter. And she did not say in a kind way, the way I just said it was way more respectful in the way she said it. And it was humiliating because she said it in a way where everyone around me heard. She wasn't discreet about it. She could have taken the side and, hey, we just need to blend a little bit more. If you could bring your voice down like you sound great, whatever. Even if I didn't sound right, like maybe I didn't right. It's not about that, though.
[00:38:47] Speaker A: We need a certain volume for everybody to blend. And your volume's a little too loud.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Let's get a bit of blend. I had to do that in class. I had this kid, he's like the class clown. So fun and full of energy and sang his little heart out. But the thing is, he was singing it and giving all his all, and no one else was so there are times where, like, hey, buddy, like, I love the energy, your brains, but we need to get everyone else at the same level. And for this one take, I need you to sit out, and I like it. Make sure they know it, because I can't even tell if they know it because I hear that you know it, and so maybe while I'm doing this, you can go and kind of help them. Just little things like that, like, build them up instead of tear them down. And that one incident, I think, just kind of set off a whole thing in my mind of, like, oh, I'm too loud. And it was something I wasn't even aware of. It's the idea of, like, oh, people hear my voice, and I need to.
[00:39:40] Speaker A: They need to not hear me.
Yeah. Wow. We got.
[00:39:43] Speaker B: We got.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: I got that.
Yeah. I was the same way, but, yeah, but, yeah. The stories as a child that really, really affected me were the ones that encouraged that.
To this day, I am very much an opinionated person. Yeah. I'm very much a person that if I know I'm right, I'm not going to back down. If I know I'm wrong, I'm going to admit it.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: But if I know I'm right, I'm not going to back down. Right.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: That's a. It's a really good quality, and it's. I do struggle with it. There are things that I am definitely very passionate about and opinionated on, but then there's always that voice that's like, well, maybe not like, other people must feel better or whatever. So it's. It's a struggle.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: I was talking with a couple of our friends last night, and I commented that as I'm. As I'm working on this concept of funding through crowdfunding and through my art instead of working a corporate job, sometimes I feel like the response I'm getting from people is a bit above, and I wonder how much of that is really how people feel and how much of that is what's coming from inside my own head, from what I've heard a good portion of my life, which has been, you have to work a corporate job. Anything else is being lazy and irresponsible. Yeah. That's unfortunate. Yeah. And so I struggle with, you know, maybe I need to read more stories about, you know, make it.
[00:41:13] Speaker B: I was just gonna say, like, to tie that in, because even as adults, nonfiction, we need stories that remind us of who we are. And I think that is really why they're so important, because we find ourselves in stories, and when the world tries to tell us one thing and tries to tell us who we are or who we should be. We have those other things in our life that remind us, no, no, no. This is who you are. And I still think back on, I will probably never reread some of the stories from my childhood because it's not going to be the same. You know, they're written for kids. And as a kid, you kind of, God is amazing. And as adult, you're like, maybe not.
It's just going to be a different. So I leave that preserved in memory. But you still go back to remembering the stories and be like, that's okay. It's kind of like a. Helps you find direction.
[00:42:06] Speaker A: I just made a connection.
[00:42:08] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:42:09] Speaker A: That I realized when you say adults need to have stories as well, I realized I read the same kind of female characters that I did. Nice. October day, antimony Price, Ali Beckham, Mercedes, Mercedes Thompson. Very strong female characters. And they're still characters I relate to. Yeah. They're the type of characters that I kind of write. To be fair, Phoebe, the main character in what's going to be my first novel, is a strong character. She's not as strong as she will grow in to be because she's just now discovering that and just now remembering that magic is a thing, that it is something that's a part of her life and it's a part of her family, but it's kind of new at the same time. And now there's a certain level of uncertainty because of this function. She is the student then, so she will become the master. But she's already set to be a strong person. She is not. She's not the wilting flower. She's not the damsel in distress. Right. And I'm noticing that those are the types of characters I want to create, and it is because they are a reflection of you. That's so interesting.
[00:43:21] Speaker B: Most of the books I read are, I don't know how the progression got to this. I'm in horror now.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: Right. I.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: And that sort of thing. Which. Yeah. Which is why I want to do.
[00:43:30] Speaker A: An episode at some point on, like, macabre stories. Oh, yeah.
[00:43:33] Speaker B: And all that. We should also do an episode on, like, characters. We've talked a lot. We've kind of talked about, like, how you relate to characters and stories, but that could be its own episode.
[00:43:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: We're giving you spoilers. No spoiler.
But we'd actually love to hear from you guys, too, what kind of content you like. If there's any stories you want us to cover or concepts you want us to cover.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: So, yeah, love to hear their feedback. Let us know what stories motivate you because that would be great to do.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: That would be really cool.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: That would be so cool.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: Before we wrap this up, I have to mention one other book I read as a kid, and I cannot remember the name of it, but it was about hamsters that went on this, like, adventure. And there's this specific scene where they would, like, parachute from the wind. I don't know.
I would also, like, reread books and rewatch the same movie or reread the same book over and over. I was constantly checking this out from the library and I cannot remember the name of it.
[00:44:38] Speaker A: That was the rescuers, but I can't remember if they were hamsters.
[00:44:42] Speaker B: It was not the rescuers. It was specifically about hamsters. And I wish I could remember the exact plot. They were trying to escape from one apartment or house to get back. And I don't know. It involves parachuting hamsters. Okay.
And I was.
[00:45:00] Speaker A: I get it.
[00:45:01] Speaker B: So obsessed with this movie.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: I get it. I get it. There was a, there was a kids show that came out. I want to say I was older child, early teenager, and it was japanese and it was about a family, father, mother, child, and they were robots that turned into rockets.
[00:45:20] Speaker B: Huh.
[00:45:20] Speaker A: I have no idea what the name of this is, but I remember this like, it's.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: So you have this vivid memory, like, no, I know this exists, but you can't find it.
[00:45:30] Speaker A: But I have no idea what the name of it was. If anybody knows what the name of it is, for God's sakes, tell me.
[00:45:34] Speaker B: Robots that turn into rockets and then parachuting hamsters, like, need answers, people.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: We need this information.
[00:45:44] Speaker B: I'm sure if I googled it, I would probably find it, but I don't find it because that seems like such a specific thing. Like how many, how much content is there on, on robots that turn into rockets?
[00:46:01] Speaker A: Maybe more than, right. I think they were robots. I'm not sure.
[00:46:04] Speaker B: I don't remember. Well, I think. No, listeners, if you find one was.
[00:46:09] Speaker A: Gold and one was silver and one was bronze.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: So this gives me wizard of Oz vibes and I can't explain why.
Okay, well, and the moral of the story is?
[00:46:25] Speaker A: The story is you don't always remember the stories from your childhood. Apparently.
[00:46:30] Speaker B: The moral of the story is.
[00:46:32] Speaker A: What's your moral?
[00:46:33] Speaker B: The truth always be reviewed.
[00:46:38] Speaker A: The truth will set you free.
[00:46:40] Speaker B: The truth will set you free.
[00:46:42] Speaker A: Not always.
[00:46:44] Speaker B: We're playing around with our outro.
Okay, well. Oh, you should give it the shout out.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: Oh, yes, I should give it a shout out. Some of our research is done by Laura Mead. She's actually my partner on spill the tea, and she is possibly one of the best researchers I know, next to probably biggie.
Yes. So I will 100% give a shout out on. Considering she's already proved her recent skills are amazing. Remember to follow us on all of our socials and check us out on Patreon and Kofi to show your support and access bonus content. And thank you so much for listening.
[00:47:22] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:47:23] Speaker A: Bye now.
[00:47:24] Speaker B: Goodbye.
