Graham Brown: Welcome to The Age of Audio, my name’s Graham Brown from the award-winning podcast agency Pikkal & Co. The Age of Audio is a series of conversations with thought leaders and changemakers in the world of audio. Podcasts, Radio and Social Audio converging with big data to create engaging and authentic content for a new generation of listeners.
Help us understand what the hell is going on in 2021.
Steve Stine: The mediums for storytelling are old as humanity itself. Literally that fireside chat 3000 years ago is something which has been perpetuated. And even using that very idea to speak to people one to many, a technology like radio is just that. The famous Franklin Delano Roosevelt Fireside speeches during the depression to keep people's hopes alive, to articulate his agenda, to be able to communicate at a very guttural level about what the country was encountering. And I think that there was also, but it was relatively narrow versus today. So this narrow band approach of telling a story of sitting intimately in the room, even the way he named it. He had the whole package around that, so that people felt the President was sitting in their living room, having a chat, he cared. Then we go through this crazy period of social media and television. We'll get back to television, social media and it just blows out. There's no more intimacy. It's all aggressive. This is what I believe, enmity of who's talking, what's real, what's not, fake news. It just became this quagmire of noise and then the visuals across it and the video images. And I think the human brain just has needed, it is just saying time out, hold on, let me get back to trying to connect at some level at some place. And there's two approaches to things that happen. There's been a bifurcation. People who just feed on video and video clips and short clips, as you've seen the data on this, right? Shorter the clip, the better TikTok and everything else is outweighing YouTube and others in so many other ways because of that format. But then you have people who are thinking long form. Long form reading, return of the long form in audio and the opportunity to sit either quietly or to be active and I podcast and I listen when I'm walking. To me that's when I'm most focused. Everyone has their thing. Some people when they're driving, but there is this I think right now between people who really care about listening, listening deeply, listening for the questions, anticipating, warming to the speakers, warming to the conversation, feeling that they're part of it and really delving deep, which has, I think, what audio does is it allows you to delve deep versus the other fraction or faction. I don't know, I won't label them, but others who just want immediate gratification, quick fixes, delight in the little ideas, images that kind of make them smile or giggle or blush whatever the case may be. I think there's just a split. This is the schism of our time. And audio to me is the Vanguard of the future of storytelling. I really believe that. I think there's more to best in audio than ever before. And I celebrate the fact that so many people are responding and responding well to it.
Graham Brown: I was just checking out this app the other day and it was called Curia. I don't know if you've ever seen it. As a journalist, you might've come across this. But basically it curates the articles from Wall Street Journal, The Economist, [inaudible]. And then they get voice actors. So firstly, what they don't do is they don't get those horrible, automated voices reading them. And then they don't serve up the whole podcast. It's not even a podcast. It's somebody reading the article. But like with voice actors. It's done really well. Yeah, try it out. I tried it out and then I ended up spending like a hundred bucks on the annual subscription, but the point isn't that it got me on that, but the point is I was going to pay for quality because my alternative is like that noisy world that you talked about. It doesn't do anything for me, like Instagram or TikTok. I'm there, but it doesn't mentally reward me. So when I'm out for a walk because I know for example, I listened to the Wall Street Journal or the Washington post or The Economist. I know that the quality is high. It's worth my time. And I think that it's a very qualitative medium, isn't it? And I wonder how that translates because the metrics don't add up in terms of eyeballs.
Steve Stine: That's right. Yeah. I'm waiting for fatigue to set in for a lot of people. I think the masses at one point are just going to say enough of the noise. They'll break. They'll find something they like. Something that goes a little deeper. I think in some ways, if you look to what happened with the idea of big screen, small picture to the idea of moving from Hollywood owning that to then the whole television series and the arrival of Netflix and HBO originals and series where you were taken on a journey the way that you will go through chapters in a book or mythologies were told, one step at a time on a hero's journey. I think people are tired of the fast moving, quick and dirty. All you have to do with film, it's fascinating too. You look at the films from the 1920s and 30s. The thirties and forties slow movie, there are pregnant pauses, no rush. Those moments of contemplation, what we would today call awkward silence, were emphatic and important to the development of the story. Now you watch a Hollywood film. Oh my God. If they give you less than half a second to breathe, they're not doing their job. They just drive you through the narrative and you lose something, you lose that contemplative, you lose that nature. There's something that goes missing. And I don't know if you've noticed that. There's a few Hollywood directors who are experimenting with that. Let's just make somebody feel a little uncomfortable in their seat right now. But anyway, I do think the series and I do think that you can draw out a narrative with the Netflix and the HBO and the other, the television series versus a film. I would also say that, I think there's a movement back towards audio books. I haven't looked at the stats recently, but a lot of people have decided I don't want to give up reading, but I would prefer to listen, or I have an option to listen now versus before. So I think the use of the word, if I'm not mistaken a curated approach where, and I think time is the [inaudible]. I know it certainly is for me more than money, more than anything else. It's time, I'm time poor. And so I need to, I feel in my life, at the ripe old age of 60, I need to be very thoughtful about how I spend my time. I spend my time on things which are quality focused, whether it's doing what I do, the podcasts I do. And I try my very best with my limited capabilities. I do what I can to offer something. But also my listening time as well. I do not want to squander that and it doesn't have to be all serious stuff. It could be entertaining. It could be out there. It could be areas that I don't know, but I want to know something more about, it could be just a great conversation and it draws you in. So it's not the nature of what I listened to the way that people create their audio experiences that make you feel like you're part of it. There's an intimacy that I look for in podcasting and audio. I don't know if that's true with others, but it's something that I see.
Graham Brown: Yeah, we're seeing it on me. We are seeing in the more popular podcasts that they have hit upon that whether by design or by accident, that they feel like you say, you're just sitting around a table and you're part of it. And then, obviously Joe Rogan format has really established that.
Steve Stine: Great example. Two and a half hours, video, audio and it's like, people are gripped and Joe Rogan, say what you want but he's a good interviewer. He draws people out. He does not rush it. It's not like he's trying to push for the answers, which is very much of that hard hitting journalist style that I think, hit a wall at one point because it had to have cut out, carve out space for the advertisers. So we got to get to the point, get to the point fast. Rogan could give a shit, they give him a hundred million dollars to feature on Spotify. I'd say, you do whatever you want. And that'd be nice.
Graham Brown: Absolutely. And if you think about that deal as well, they did a hundred million. And ever so often they'll never make the money, but the day they announced that deal, their share price went up 10% and that was an extra $2.7 billion in valuation. You tell me that wasn't a smart move, for the CEO. So yeah, I'm really fascinated by some of the things that you're throwing out there. And I know this is something that you've not studied, but you've written about as well, but mythologies and, you've mentioned the hero's journey and you referenced the cave paintings and all these kinds of things. We're going way back to prehistoric time. What do you think the natural connection is between let's put all these on the table, see if these add up - Mythology. So let's talk about the modern myths and the big stories and these primal stories and audio and the third one leadership. Let's put all of these together. Do they form like a... what's in the middle of that intersect to the Venn diagram if there's something?
Steve Stine: Oh, what a wonderful question. And you're just, you're plucking my heartstrings, buddy. This is where I love to sit and where I love to spend my time and my energy, because I'm absolutely smittened by myths and by mythologies and by great stories. And, Joseph Campbell is being the great mano mythologist who brought a lot of this learning to our attention. And of course, the very famous series of interviews done by Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell called the Power of Myth and anybody who hasn't seen it. And you can view it or listen to it. It's a six or eight part series, I think an hour conversation each. It's brilliant and it breaks down the origins of our storytelling traditions. And it goes right back to the origin, to the very beginning of why humans need to tell stories and Yuval Harari and his very, award-winning book Sapiens. So the one great differentiating factor between the Neanderthal and the homosapiens was the homosapien's ability to craft stories, create narrative and by virtue of doing that create more of a collective approach to problem solving. So they were able to basically group and the optimal level is 120, 150 people and form tribes informed collectives. And with those collectives, they were able to then shift the whole balance of power in the world, if you will. So the idea of stories and being able to narrate and then obviously look to the cosmos and try to understand our place in the universe. Jo Marchant has written a beautiful book called The Human Cosmos, which I recommend to anybody who hasn't read it. It talks about the awe that we've always felt and our place in the universe. These are the heartfelt, you know right in the gut, when you hear a great story or you see a great film or you read a great book, something resonates and that something Carl Jung the great psychologist would say is archetypes. We have these common sets of symbols and understandings that exist through all societies and all cultures that we all identify with. It's the thing that makes us human. And if we tap into those elements of what all makes us human and makes us feel like we're part of something. We can actually then build and create and use stories to move ourselves forward socially and societaly, and that is a powerful force. It's not fully appreciated. In the time of technology we've in fact, I think offloaded many of our thoughtful approaches to the importance of mystery of the universe. And the right brain issues. It's all about the left brain and what's empirical and clear and understandable now we've given up on the mystery. And that to me again, to bring this full circle, it brings us right back up to why forming great narratives and using audio and using storytelling styles is and will forever be a great format for delivering important thoughts. To come to that last point of leadership. Every great tale has a hero. And I'd say in our modern context, the hero is a leader, the corporate leader, the organizational leader, the political leader. I think we're going through a period of failed leadership. I think for the last 30, 40 years is a demonstration of that. But I think we're starting to get it back because people are waking up by virtue of COVID to the fact that we haven't listened, we haven't paid attention. We haven't looked at the signals and the symbols and we've lost sight of them. And now there's something that's moving and changing I believe both politically and in the world of for-profit, which says we need to own this. And therefore we're seeing a shift in the leadership paradigm, which I'm very hopeful is the focus of a lot of what I do with the podcast right now. And the Asian Corporate Leadership Council is focused on corporate leaders who are thinking about people and planet and are not just about the quarterly results and profit margins. That's a shift and it's definitive and it's all wrapped up with narrative, and it's not just telling people things, so they'll go away and be quiet. It's telling people things that hit a certain cord and allow them to move the agenda forward. You have to be authentic in doing this. This is what great leadership looks like. So it does come together and there are lines crossing there and there's a whole world of literature that's popping up around this subject right now, which is again, I'm very hopeful about that, Graham .
Graham Brown: Interesting subject there, isn't it? When we talk about leadership, a lot of it has been reduced to PowerPoint, isn't it? In the previous decades, it's like presenting information, presenting fact and yet when you look at change and making change, the leaders who have harnessed the power of story, whether it's political or in business as well, they have that, what almost is like Jedi mind power to put it into context. So I don't know if you've seen this one, Steve, like Steve Jobs, everybody's seen like the iPhone presentation and stuff like the hero's journey and so on, but there was one that he did, which is just genius. It's amazing. That was his presentation to Cupertino Council. Have you seen this on YouTube?
Steve Stine: Is this the one where, when he was sick or before?
Graham Brown: It was yeah, when he was sick and he needed to get zoning permission for the office, right?
Steve Stine: Oh, yes. Yeah.
Graham Brown: Have you seen that?
Steve Stine: Yes.
Graham Brown: So to put it in context for the audio now, it's basically he goes there and he tells this story and the beauty of that story isn't necessarily the bit about, they need to get a bigger campus, but the bit about where he is a kid and he picks up the phone and pitches, David Packard, or one of the Hewlett Packard guys, and he picked up the phone and he got through to him on the phone and he was a 13 or 15 year old kid. And he said, "Yeah, I'm building a computer and I need some parts." This guy just laughed at him. And he said he got an internship at HP. HP were “the valley” back then. And he went and did this internship and he said, "I was just in here for that summer I worked at HP and I was just like, this was like my dream come true." And the interesting part about it, it's almost like the monomyth played out. It was just like, whether it's Star Wars with Obi-wan handing over to Luke. Now he painted this scene to the council, which was, he was standing on this cherry orchard like ground with, I can't remember which one of the Hewlett Packard, or maybe both of them, one of them there. And he was saying, look, showing them the land. And, he said to the council that HP isn't doing so well these days, and they said that, maybe we could buy the land from them. And I thought that's genius. I don't know, do you think he's conscious of that because he's seeding that vehicle that exists, whether it's the termination scene or the departure scene.
Steve Stine: So in other words, is he intentionally crafting a story?
Graham Brown: Or is it just natural?
Steve Stine: I think it's natural, but I think it's also born up. You know what I think when I hear that story, I think of Moses leading his people out of Egypt and then setting and looking over the promised land and saying, "There it is. You can go. I can't. I will remain." It's almost that idea, any great film where you arrive at the end of the journey and there it is, it's the answer. And it's always pastoral and it always has that feeling of probably even cherry trees. It conjures certain ideas of fruit. And food and sustenance and something beautiful on top of that. So these are probably some people who have a natural ability when they tell a story, it could be just around a dinner table or it could be in front of an audience of a thousand. They just naturally lean into ideas or images or descriptions that they probably have come up with, which is why I think it's so essential for all of us, young people and all, to read and to listen and to not give up on the old tales, the old stories. They're repeatable and they're essential that they're repeatable because it perpetuates the reason for who we are and why we are. It's not just an old story. If there's something that sits at the base of that story, which actually resonates with everybody throughout time and throughout culture. And there are people who get that and they're not exploiting it. They're simply just harnessing. And I think doing something very powerful, important with it, and there's natural storytellers and there are those who are contrived and you can tell the difference, when somebody has a prepared statement and it gets up and the wording just doesn't seem to, it's just not quite right. Obama was a genius in terms of how he could take images and stories and create an idea. Just from the way he told the story, it was just brilliant.
Graham Brown: What is probably the scariest villain out there, and I've looked at this with curiosity. Why is it that the scary villains that seem to resurface time and time again, don't have human faces or if they have human faces, they're disfigured. So you've got Sauron on The Lord of the Rings, you've got like the Joker. They are disfigured faces. Because what actually we really fear more than anything is the unknown.
Steve Stine: Yeah, but it's also, you're right. Not just the human faces, but also their agenda and their agenda is absolute chaos. Chaos, not order. And there's this whole question: what do we really want as human beings? Do we want freedom or do we want order? And there's always that authoritarians will tell you it's order, but liberal democracies will say it's freedom and there's going to be an internal debate about that one. But on the other side, no matter whether it's order or freedom, there's chaos. That was Joker. That was Sauron. That was all of these great [inaudible]. That was their realm. So that's a repeatable story. That's a repeatable theme, something which from the beginning of time. We have the forces, the underworld forces, the things that the evil, whatever lurks is looking to destroy whatever freedoms or orders were allowable or what were brought together by the human race. So again, I think that's what Trump represented in my view. It tears it down. I don't care what we leave. We don't need to have a plan. Let's just destroy what we have, because it's not good because I say so. And that, to me, that there is a story there is that it's not so much storytelling though. I would argue that it's really just, it's inciting a visceral kind of very what's the word I want? A very base response from people, which I guess, but crafting a narrative where you use...
Graham Brown: So, I guess now the problem is going to be, this is that I'm a leader or a CEO of some, name your sort of consultancy or energy company or whatever it might be. And now I'm challenged with these multiple issues of one, people are telling me I've got to be authentic and vulnerable. Come on, I've done 30 years of not doing that. And I've been so successful at that game. So that's the first thing. Secondly, I've got to tell stories, like my mom used to smack me if she said stop telling stories, so that's ingrained in a generation and an age group and it's almost if I have to do this, I'm like, I think about, I don't know the analogies, but it's like it's telling David Beckham to go out and train with his left foot. I'm going to be as bad as the rest of them. I'm going to be competing with an intern who's got a data analytics degree. What do you do with these guys? Because they must be vulnerable. They must be worried, concerned that actually I've got to do all these things. I'd keep my head down, see this thing through, make it through to retirement.
Steve Stine: I've been pleasantly surprised as I marched into really embracing this whole corporate purpose area and trying to get to the bottom of it which started a journey for me. That started two and a half years ago and resulted in the creation of the Asian Corporate Leadership Council. And even in my current role, and what I do with the CEO of board advisory work, it's really been about helping leaders reframe what the agenda is about. And it's the idea of purpose and can purpose and profit coexist. We have evidence to suggest indeed it can, so you don't have to trade off. But you do have to trade your behaviors, your method and the way that you actually lead. And you're going to love this, at the heart of it is not the ability to tell people what to do, but the ability to lead with questions to ask to probe. And, Graham as much as and as well as anybody I know, right? Because this is your heart and soul stuff. This is your heartbeat. The power of a question, what it does is it basically it hands over to somebody. I care about what you think. I'm asking you a question. And once you say to somebody and you handover, I care about what you think I'm listening to. That is probably one of the most powerful things you can do as a leader to say, "I'm investing my trust and belief in you at this moment in giving me a thoughtful response. Even if you don't have an answer, it's not like I'm going to punish you for that. But I really trust and believe that you have something to offer right now." Do you see that shift from, listen, I just need you to go and fix this and get that percentage up there and eliminate those 20 people. That telling is just now you're just a cog in the system. Once you ask, what do you think we should do? Or what would be your suggestions you empower. And that's the empowering process through this new leadership paradigm, which is the challenge for many traditional leaders who've been told to just hand down the marching orders and expect people to do it. And if they do it fast enough and well enough, we will profit and our costs will be manageable. Those days are over. You can do both, but if you do not get an organization involved at all levels, frontline, middle management, and top leadership you cannot be a purpose-driven organization. This is the heartbeat of what I do now. As I go in and work with corporations, to help them figure out how to embed those practices, those behaviors in order to achieve shift and the way that their organization operates and the way they profit. So it's very interesting. And this is what, this is the thread. This is what you and I share for years, we've been asking questions. As journalists going way back when you do all of your podcasting work and everything else you've done. There is power in questions. And if people can just see that, I think the world will shift. That's how big I think it is.
Graham Brown: You've been listening to The Age of Audio with me, Graham Brown from the award-winning podcast agency Pikkal & Co. To get access to all the audio conversations and book content for the age of audio, go to www.theageofaudio.com. One more time - theageofaudio.com