Stories Mean Business - Nick Warren

A year ago, I saw my Dad for the last time.

And today, we're taking our youngest to start her university career.

In both cases, I was lucky. I had the time and space to get myself ready for the loss, and enjoy them while they were around.

2,000 years ago, Epictetus, the slave and stoic philisopher, wrote:

At the times when you are delighted with a thing, place before yourself the contrary appearances. What harm is it while you are kissing your child to say with a lisping voice, “To-morrow you will die”; and to a friend also, “To-morrow you will go away or I shall, and never shall we see one another again”?

I'm not a fan of telling your kids they are going to die, but telling them you love them (loudly and often) ... is a big part of what life is about.

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/745-Tell-Them-You-Love-Them

After yesterday's universes, today we focus down on something much smaller ... the gap between frames in a comic.

25 years ago Scott McCloud introduced me to the idea of the audience – the reader – as a critical part of the storytelling process. This is about contrast and closure (a different kind of closure).

It feels like I'm circling an insight here, but I'll get it...

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/744:-Take-It-To-The-Gutter

As a kid, Roald Dahl was my favourite author. From James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, to the heady grown up mysteries of Henry Sugar.

Yesterday, Netflix announced an extension to the deal they struck with the Dahl estate in 2018. Back then they paid (a reported) $100 million for the rights to selected titles.

Now they've decided to spend some real money, and it's easy to see why...

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/743:-Netflix-Gets-A-Mythology

When you control the middle of the squash court, or the middle of the chess board, or the device that people read emails on, or the way your story is told ... you have a lot of power.

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/742:-Controlling-the-Middle

We like to think we are special, but as Steven Taylor knows, we are all powered by the same stories.

Taylor published a book – The Psychology of Pandemics – a couple of months before COVID was first seen in China.

He predicted the empty shelves, the backlash against masks, the conspiracy theories and more.

Because it all happened before, in 1918, with the Spanish Flu.

This is why stories are so powerful. Technology changes all the time, but the fundemental forces that drive us – the stories we tell ourselves and each other – aren't going anywhere.

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/741:-The-Psychology-of-Pandemics

Although the full Hero's Journey has 17 stages, the "Nuclear Unit" of the Monomyth is – according to Joseph Campbell, "a magnification of a formula represents by the Rites of Passage: Separation–initiation-return."

As I've said before on this podcast:

The world changes, which forces the hero to change, so she can in turn change the world.

David Kudler, Campell's long time editor, wrote a fascinating piece on this in which he clarified the importance of this nuclear unit, and its implications for us.

"But at its core, the Monomyth isn’t a blueprint of a plot outline; it’s a description of a psychological process, one each of us goes through every time we’re challenged and have to change and grow. Separation. Initiation. Return."

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/740:-Separation,-Initiation-&-Return

One of the things I've added to my Origin Story Course is this concept of your story as a slope.

Ideally, it should look like this:


But in reality, it often starts by looking like this:


Because parts of our story are irrelevant, unnecessary, dull or complicated.


This is why we edit, and as [[Ernest Hemingway]] famously said, "The first draft of anything is shit”.

Episode home:

Yesterday, Apple launched preorders for the iPhone 13.

I haven't ordered a new phone in years, but I smiled when I saw that the whole Apple Store was down for hours before the launch.

Not just iPhones. Everything.

Twenty years ago I used to laugh at them – how ridiculous for a company to have to take down its whole store just to update a couple of products.

How little I knew.

They are masters of the in-breath.

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/737:-The-Inbreath

When people tell me they can't tell stories, I ask them about times when they are in the wrong.

When it comes to shifting blame, we are fantastic storytellers.

Also in this episode – we return to the difference between looking good and being good.

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/736:-Guilt-Tells-Great-Stories