In this episode of 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project, Paige Williams speaks with dancer, filmmaker, educator, and movement practitioner Quentin Robinson about the stories carried through the body, the cultural history embedded in hip hop, and the ways movement can reveal what language alone cannot.

Quentin shares how dance helped him move across dangerous neighborhood boundaries, created unexpected connection between people divided by history and conflict, and gave emotion a form when words were not enough.

At the center of the conversation is the story of a student who had been labeled difficult and disengaged. Through a writing and movement exercise, the student revealed circumstances his teacher had never understood. When he reached the word compassion, he stopped. He knew the word, but he could not find a gesture for it. That moment changed the teacher’s story about who the student was.

Paige and Quentin also explore the history and commercialization of hip hop, why movement must be understood within its cultural context, and how the stories attached to bodies shape recognition, opportunity, and power.

Quentin’s contribution to Narrative Intelligence is clear: stories do not live only in language. They also live in movement, memory, culture, and lived experience. Movement can create new evidence, change how a person is seen, and make another story possible.

Take the Narrative Quotient assessment at StoryKeys.co, and subscribe to 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project wherever you listen to podcasts.

In this episode of 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project, Paige Williams speaks with filmmaker, writer, actor, producer, and social worker Joseph Grady about sobriety, adoption, cultural separation, belonging, and reclaiming the parts of a story that were once missing.

Joseph was born Blackfeet and adopted as a child into a white Irish Catholic family during an era of Indigenous child removal and assimilation. He grew up loved, but disconnected from the language, family, culture, and community he came from. Years later, through education, relationships, and the making of his documentary Return to the Blanket, he began filling in those missing pieces.

Joseph also shares the moment that ended nearly eighteen years of alcoholism, the sense of purpose that followed, and why he now sees his life not as a story he would erase, but as one he has learned to integrate.

His contribution to Narrative Intelligence is powerful: reclaiming a story does not require rejecting everything that came before it. It can mean holding complexity, making room for multiple identities, and practicing cultural humility by recognizing how much we still have to learn.

Take the Narrative Quotient assessment at StoryKeys.co, and subscribe to 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can follow Joseph at https://www.instagram.com/joseph.grady.792

In this episode of 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project, Paige Williams speaks with Ann Shoket, CEO and owner of The Li.st and founder of Ten Minutes to Togetherness, about ambition, belonging, community, and the stories that shape what we believe is possible.

Ann reflects on the evolution of her career, from building an early digital publication out of a tiny Lower East Side apartment, to becoming editor in chief of Seventeen, writing The Big Life, and eventually acquiring The Li.st.

Together, Paige and Ann explore why success is not a solo sport, how community expands the futures we can imagine, and why listening to other people’s stories can challenge and revise our own. Ann also shares how her understanding of imposter syndrome changed after listening to people whose experiences of professional spaces differed from hers.

Her contribution to Narrative Intelligence is especially clear: it is not only about the stories we tell, but also the stories we listen to, follow, and believe.

Learn more about Ann at theli.st and 10minutestotogetherness.com.

Take the Narrative Quotient assessment at StoryKeys.co, and subscribe to 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project wherever you listen to podcasts.

What happens when the work you once believed in no longer reflects your values?

In Episode 3 of 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project, Paige Williams speaks with Matt Anderson, co-founder and CEO of Imagination Factory, about the stories that shape our work, our identities, and our willingness to change.

Matt traces the beginning of his journey to one question from a young person aging out of foster care: “Do you even know my story?” That moment led to the documentary From Place to Place, transformed his understanding of expertise and systems change, and eventually forced him to confront what he calls values fatigue: the exhaustion created by the distance between what we believe and what our work requires of us.

Together, Paige and Matt explore what it takes to leave an identity that no longer fits, enter the uncertain space between stories, and build a life that more fully reflects who we are. They also discuss curiosity, humility, courage, the power of a compelling question, and Matt’s belief that our lives can change one sentence at a time.

At the center of the conversation is a defining Narrative Intelligence question:

Can we recognize when the future is knocking, and will we answer the door?

What if your exhaustion is not a personal failing?

Sleep educator and patient advocate Lindsay Scola lived with symptoms of narcolepsy for 19 years before receiving a diagnosis. During that time, she hid naps in public bathrooms, pushed herself to keep pace with high-performing colleagues, and believed needing sleep meant she was less capable.

In this conversation, Lindsay and I explore the cultural stories that teach us to treat sleep as lazy, inconvenient, or something we can postpone until the work is finished.

We talk about:

• The shame Lindsay carried before her narcolepsy diagnosis
• Why receiving the right language changed how she understood herself
• Common warning signs of sleep apnea and other sleep disorders
• The relationship between sleep, creativity, memory, health, and agency
• Why midlife, hormones, and ADHD can change how women experience sleep
• The problem with rigid sleep routines and obsessive sleep tracking
• Why telling her story became part of Lindsay’s purpose
• What it means to rewrite our relationship with rest

Sleep is not what gets in the way of our lives. It is one of the things making our lives possible.

This conversation is part of 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project, an exploration of how the stories we inherit and repeat shape our identities, choices, relationships, health, and capacity to change.

Connect with Lindsay: https://www.lindsayscola.com/

Watch the TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8ykomUh6-Y

In the first episode of 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project, Paige Williams speaks with conceptual multimedia artist Eyoälha Baker about joy, Indigenous identity, cultural memory, healing, and the stories we learn to live by.

Eyoälha shares how her Jump for Joy project changed the way she experienced other people, how a journey marked by repeated eagle sightings deepened her trust, and how she learned to recognize and change the belief that she was not intelligent. She also explores the power of names, language, nature, creativity, and cultural perspective, including what Indigenous and oral knowledge may reveal about the limits of AI.

Together, Paige and Eyoälha ask: How do stories become identity? What does it actually take to change one? And what might Narrative Intelligence require of us?

100 Stories explores one central question:
How malleable are the stories we live by, and what does it take to change one?