Meeting the Other Side of Storytelling
Or, how I learned to stop worrying and embrace an audience mindset
This Anthro Life turned 8 years old in October 2021. That's a long time for a podcast. When recently invited to share what I've been working on for the latest NAPA newsletter (which you can find here, fall 2021), TAL's 8th birthday got me thinking about what I've learned working between anthropology and podcasting for almost a decade.
I've fancied myself a public anthropologist for a while, but it has been podcasting, and working in an unusual medium (for anthropology) that has taught me some of the most important lessons for what public anthropology actually is.
I just want to share a simple truth today. Something that’s taken the anthropologist in me the better part of a decade working as a podcaster and audio producer to internalize:
how we tell our stories is just as important, if not more so, than what we tell.
Storytelling is how we bring people along on a journey with us. It’s how we share truths and meaning. And, in a business context, how we convey why someone would want or need a product or service. In a design context how our target user experiences a problem and how we can solve for it.
But podcasting taught me a step further:
storytelling also requires listening and understanding who you’re telling a story to.
And if you listen deep enough and long enough, the story you tell begins to change, to be shaped by listeners.
Anthropology has taught me the power of reflexivity and in understanding one's place in the story. How being there changes the course of things. And podcasting has taught me to get real about audience. A famous maximum from the design world is that if you design for everyone, you design for no one.
This is what podcasting taught me about how to do public anthropology. And honestly, I believe we can tell a better story about public anthropology together.
So now I turn it to you. What do you think about storytelling, audience, and how these shape the way we have impact, do business, or create community? How do you shape your stories for work, clients or community? Who is your audience?
Thanks as always for listening and sharing!