Category Archives: Uncategorized

ICYMI: Story Collecting: The Y Shows How

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In this newsletter article from November 2013, Goodman Center alum Celia Hoffman introduced our readers to the Rye Y Story Project. 

Now entering its second year, “The Rye Y Story Project” offers a useful model for nonprofits that want to collect stories from their members.

Recognizing that stories are uniquely powerful communications tools is an important step for nonprofits, but it’s only a first step. Once organizations realize that stories can add a turbo boost to advocacy, fundraising, recruiting and more, they have to find ways to gather them – from staff, members, volunteers, donors, and others.

In 2012 the YMCA of Rye, New York launched a new project to capture stories from its members, and the response was so positive that the “The Rye Y Story Project” enters its second year this month. The challenges the Y encountered and solved along the way provide a helpful example for good causes that may be considering story collection efforts of their own.

Denise Woodin and Lisa Tidball

“We really struggled with finding stories and putting them together in a meaningful way,” Communications Director Lisa Tidball said during our telephone interview. She and her colleagues had attempted to solicit

member stories through videotaped group interviews, via a form on their website, and by asking staff to periodically gather them. But they had trouble creating a collection of stories that felt cohesive and really exemplified the depth of the Rye Y’s community.

When Denise Woodin was hired as Director of Community Outreach and Social Responsibility last year, she joined the team trying to solve this problem. A long-time fan of StoryCorps, the personal history-collecting project, Woodin thought the method of one-on-one, in- person interviewing might be the key to drawing out the members’ stories the Rye YMCA sought to uncover.

Woodin, Tidball and additional staff members formed a committee to create an event solely focused on story collection via one-on-one interviews. They ultimately decided to hold the event over a three-day period and to call it “Voices of the Community: The Rye Y Story Project.” A select group of staff members were asked to conduct the interviews and were briefly trained on interviewing techniques.

To prime the Y’s members for this first-time project, the committee used several tactics. Ten days prior to the event, details were posted on the Rye YMCA’s website, and as members passed the front desk they were handed a flyer detailing both when and why their stories would be collected. Additionally, Tidball interviewed several staff members and posted their stories at the front desk – each accompanied by a picture – to give members a better sense of what the project would entail.

Everything was in place for the event except one crucial aspect: where the interviews would be conducted. The committee wanted a location that would be highly visible but would also create a sense of privacy for the storytellers. A member of the maintenance staff suggested standing gym mats on their sides and bending them into three-sided compartments. Once a small table and two chairs were put inside the gym mat “story booths,” the project was ready to commence.

The Rye YMCA “Story Booth”

Though the event was cut short a day due to Hurricane Sandy, it was still a great success. “I was surprised how easy it was to interview people. Right away, members really opened up and talked earnestly about themselves,” Tidball said.

“They stepped into the booth because they wanted to tell their story,” Woodin added. (You can read some of the 27 stories that were collected here).

Ultimately, collecting the stories was only part of the Rye YMCA’s goal. The other part was sharing, and to do this, the committee set up an exhibit of stories and pictures throughout the halls of the facility. Viewing the stories as a collection helped people to fully appreciate the wide and continuing impact that the Rye YMCA has. “When we eventually exhibited the stories, people stopped and really read them. There was a buzz in the hallways. I think it really got people thinking about how special our community is,” Woodin said. “It helped our members form new connections with each other. After reading someone’s story, if you saw them in the hallway, you felt like you knew them a little bit better,” said Tidball.

As the Rye Y Story Project enters year two, Woodin and Tidball are excited both to collect and display more stories. “We could throw out statistics all day long, but it doesn’t mean the same thing as the intangibles–the person who ran their first triathlon as a member here, the senior citizens who find friendship here–and that’s conveyed through the stories,” Woodin concluded. “It’s as important for us to tell those stories as it is for us to hear them.”

Ten years later, you can read an update on this impressive story project here.

Talking About Poverty? This Report Can Help

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Read no further than the first line of the report, “BROKE: How the Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sectors are Talking About Poverty – and How We Can Do Better,” and you’ll hear a loud and alarming wake-up call: “Our research shows that organizations in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors are reinforcing repressive, victim-blaming narratives that shift fault and responsibility for poverty from greedy corporations and unfair laws to ordinary people.”

The report, a collaboration between The Center for Public Interest Communications and the Radical Communicators Network, analyzes the language, framing and narratives around both poverty and wealth – or, in plain language, why the rich get rich and the poor stay poor. Its conclusions show how nonprofits, foundations and others working in this area have unintentionally made matters worse, but the report also offers recommendations on how they can start improving their communications immediately. Download the full report here.

6 Commitments for More Ethical Storytelling

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Since 2011, Define American has been telling the stories of people who have made America their new home so that they will be recognized first as people before they are demeaned by a label like illegals. Earlier this year, Define American released the report, “American Dreaming: The Roadmap to Resilience for Undocumented Storytellers,” culminating two years of research into the experiences of 40 storytellers from the immigrant rights movement.

For any organization that collects and shares stories of people whom it serves, the report offers practical advice for ensuring those stories are told in a fair, respectful, and ethical manner. You can download the full report here, and this month we’re pleased to reprint six commitments which Define American recommends making to anyone with the courage and generosity to share their story with you.

We will ask: Is now a good time to share your story? How have you been since we last connected? We will offer ways to scale down the work or provide a way of stepping away from the project if necessary.

We will ask: What do you feel comfortable sharing now? We will use the answer as a guide for healthy boundaries in our collaborations and will not ask for additional details or efforts.

We will ask: Have you shared your/this story before? We will facilitate training and give guidance to lay a foundation for good health and well-being in the storytelling community.

We will offer a scope of work, compensation, and a timeline for involvement, and ask if it feels in line with your expectations.

We will design ways of seeking feedback and suggestions for nurturing storytellers’ mental health and well-being within our work.

We will hold others we work with, particularly in the media, accountable for honoring your contributions:

  • For pronouncing and spelling your names correctly
  • For honoring your gender identity and pronouns
  • For being forthcoming and transparent about when conversations are “on the record” or “off the record”
  • For including you in the decision-making process around your stories
  • When possible, sending you a draft of the story write-up before it publishes or being open to edits after a story has published if you, as the storyteller, feel uneasy about story details
  • For following up with a link to a written/recorded story once it is published
  • For simply thanking a storyteller for their time and vulnerability when sharing their story

(Special thanks to Define American and especially report authors Sarah E. Lowe, Adrián Escárate, and Valeria Rodriguez for permission to reprint these recommendations.)

A Label Past Its Expiration Date?

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If you use the term “vulnerable population” to describe an audience you serve, Rashad Robinson has a word of advice for you: don’t. Robinson, the President of Color of Change, was the opening speaker at the Southern California Grantmakers conference in Los Angeles on September 20th. The theme of the conference was “Narrative Power: Reframe Stories, Redefine Culture,” and Robinson had some reframing of his own in mind.

Search the word “vulnerable” on Thesaurus.com and the most common synonyms listed include defenseless, weak, and liable. Are those terms that you would want to be associated with? And I’m guessing that the people we’ve been labeling as such would be equally offended. Robinson recommends that we should stop denigrating these people and soft-peddling the systems and policies that have placed them in challenging circumstances. Instead, he recommends, call them what they are: exploited or targeted. The conversation that proceeds from there, Robinson promises, will be very different, but much closer to the truth.

Rashad Robinson

ICYMI: How to Avoid Brainstorming’s Hidden Trap

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In Case You Missed It: This article is from our October 1999 edition of our newsletter “Free-Range Thinking.” It is a timeless lesson about effective brainstorming and contains one of our favorite stories.

 You have a tough problem to solve, so you gather your organization’s most creative minds for a full-on brainstorm. You find a comfortable venue, allow plenty of time, eliminate interruptions, and follow all the rules for brainstorming — but when the session is over, your list of possible solutions isn’t worth the easel paper it’s written on. What went wrong?

All too often, even the best-planned sessions fall into one of brainstorming’s hidden traps: starting with the wrong question. It’s an easy mistake to make, and it can be very costly.

Consider the example of The Paradigm Arms, a 10-story apartment building in San Francisco. (Okay, some names have been changed to protect the metaphor, but the numbers that follow are real.) A single elevator served the building’s tenants who openly speculated that theirs was the slowest elevator in all of California. Eventually, snide comments in the lobby turned into an angry letter to the building’s owners, and the time for action was at hand.

The Paradigm Arms was managed by two brothers, Travis and Fred. Travis, the more traditional thinker of the two, immediately saw the straight line connecting problem and solution. He solicited bids from elevator repair companies to modernize the building’s machinery and increase the elevator car’s speed.

The estimates ranged from $150,000 to $200,000 and Travis, nodding to tradition once again, picked one in the middle. For a tidy $175,000 the Paradigm Arms elevator would receive a brand new motor, controller, hoist machinery, brake, guide rails, counterweight rails, and a spanking new buffer (that thing in the basement which keeps the elevator from crashing through the floor and descending into the center of the Earth.)

The machinery was installed, and Travis used a stopwatch to confirm the elevator was, in fact, a few seconds faster from floor to floor. After allowing two weeks of demonstrably improved service, he surveyed the tenants to ensure satisfaction and was stunned by their responses.

Without exception, the tenants saw no difference in service. “Slow as ever,” was the commonly heard response. Travis was stupefied. His stopwatch didn’t lie, and neither did his bank statement which clearly showed $175,000 less in the building’s account.

While Travis stewed, Fred – the free-range thinker of the two – solicited another round of bids. Within a week, the work Fred had ordered was completed, and now the Paradigm Arms had full-length mirrors on either side of the elevator doors on every floor.

Fred circulated a memo to the tenants advising them that technicians had tinkered with the new motor in the elevator. He assured them that the elevator car was moving faster than ever and solicited their comments. No mention was made of the mirrors.

The tenants comments were once again unanimous: “A vast improvement,” they agreed, with some estimating that waiting times had been cut in half. While Fred beamed, Travis began to think he had crossed over into the Bizarro World.

He took out his stopwatch and confirmed that the elevator car was moving no faster than when the new machinery was installed. He pulled Fred aside in the building’s lobby and demanded an explanation. “It’s simple,” Fred explained. “The question wasn’t ‘How do we make the elevator go faster?’ It was ‘How do we make time pass faster for those who are waiting?’”

Fred gestured toward the elevators where a man stood staring into a newly installed mirror, inspecting his suit as he waited. The elevator car arrived, and the doors open and nearly closed before the man realized his wait was over. Travis finally understood, but he had one more question.

“How much for the mirrors?” he asked. “Five thousand, two hundred and sixteen dollars,” Fred replied, unable to conceal a smile. “And that was the high bid.”

Special thanks to Star Elevator in Redwood City, California and Goldon Windows & Mirrors in Troy, Michigan for providing the estimates.

The Best Way to Recover from Mistakes When Presenting? Improvise!

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“Oh, no!” you think as you glance at the screen midway through your presentation. “This is the wrong slide.” Suddenly, you are keenly aware of all the eyes that are on you and the slowly expanding silence in the room. Your pulse races while your brain comes to a dead stop. The only thought you can muster: “Please, let this be a dream.”

Nobody’s perfect. Mistakes happen to all presenters, but what distinguishes the best from the rest is how they recover. This is where skills from improv can be very handy. I’ve been studying and performing improv for half of my life. I’ve honed my craft at some of the most famous improv houses, including the Upright Citizens Brigade and The Groundlings Theatre. At my current home, Impro Theatre here in Los Angeles, we improvise full length plays in the style of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Jane Austen, Tennessee Williams and other distinctive writers. I was even fortunate enough to land a series regular role on a fully-improvised comedy, “Ten Items or Less,” that ran for 3 very fun years on TBS.

I love performing improv, and I’ve come to appreciate how an improvisational mentality has benefited the rest of my life. I apply the rules and ethos of improv to everything I do, and they are particularly useful when I’m facilitating workshops and presenting. So, I’m delighted to share three rules from improv that will help you handle presenting mistakes with humor and grace.

Let’s begin with an all-purpose recommendation: breathe! When your presentation runs into any kind of pothole, take a moment for a full, deep breath. Your brain needs both the oxygen and a moment to reset. Now you’re ready to start improvising:

Tip #1: “Yes, and…” Yourself

Let’s begin with improv’s most famous rule: to “Yes, and…” in an improv scene means to accept whatever your scene partner has said (or done) and to build on it. For example, picture two actors, whom we’ll call “A” and “B,” walking on stage for an improv scene. The audience has been told only that they are pirates. Actor A begins the scene by miming swabbing the deck of a ship:

A: “We must swab the deck or be forced to walk the plank!”

B: “Aye, matey! And we, the only crew the captain has not yet murdered.”

As you can see, not only has B said “yes” to the premise that they are pirates swabbing the deck, he has added more information about what is happening on the ship.

But what if there is a mistake? A few months ago, I was performing in an improvised play, “Jane Austen, Unscripted,” that was staged outdoors, which required all the actors to wear microphones. During a scene, one of the microphones cut out as the actor wearing the microphone was in the middle of a speech. All of us on stage could see the audience leaning forward, struggling to hear his un-amplified voice. This was not the kind of unscripted moment the play’s title had advertised.

But that’s the beauty of the “Yes, and…” training, because another actor broke into the speech, declaring, “Cousin! My hearing is very poor, and I need you to stand next to me and speak very loudly into my lapel!” The audience understood what was actually happening – one actor was telling another to use his working microphone – but the request had been weaved into the story. The line earned a big laugh, and the awkward moment became a display of improvisational skill, which is exactly what the audience came to see.

Now let’s return to your awkward moment: the slide that appears at the wrong time. If you “Yes, and…” yourself, you might say something like: “Okay, this slide actually comes a little later in my presentation, but the point it wants to make is so important, it couldn’t wait any longer, so it jumped into this position. So let’s talk about it.” Or, if it’s too early to make that point, you could say, “There are several important points I want to share with you today, but some of my slides get impatient and can’t wait to be shared, so please forgive this slide for jumping ahead.” Then you can turn and face the screen and scold the slide directly: “Get back where I put you, and don’t do that again!”

As with the faulty microphone, the audience will know what’s actually happening, but they will appreciate your command of the situation – not to mention a little bit of humor – and what could have been an awkward moment will reassure them they are in good hands.

Tip #2: Don’t Let Ramone Drive the Bus

Stephen Kearin, a genius improviser and one of the best teachers I have had the privilege to work with, taught me about “Ramone.” Ramone is the name Stephen has given to his inner critic. Stephen envisions Ramone skulking around, smoking a cigarette and passing judgment dismissively of everything Stephen does on stage.

Naming your inner critic and giving them a persona may sound silly, but it works. It allows you to see yourself as separate from that pesky voice of fear and judgment that pounces when you are less-than-perfect. Notice that Kearin doesn’t give his students a trick to make the inner critic disappear. That’s never going to happen. As Kearin says, “Ramone is gonna be on the bus. I just don’t let him drive.”

When things have taken a wrong turn, our inner critic can’t wait to get behind the wheel and drive us over a cliff of despair, panic and self-doubt. If you make a mistake in your presentation and that voice comes in shouting, “You are an imposter. I knew you would make a fool of yourself,” just acknowledge the voice and then tell them they aren’t in charge. “Thanks, Ramone, but you are in my seat. You just hush up and move to the back of the bus.” Then you take the wheel. You got this.

Tip #3: See Mistakes as Gifts

Tina Fey says that in improv, “There are no mistakes.” At Impro Theatre, we say it a little differently.  “Mistakes are gifts.” Years ago, I went to an audition for a part in a comedy. I was nervous. Every audition is hard to come by in Hollywood, so I rehearsed my lines to death and worked with a friend to coach me through the scene. I was epically prepared.

When I got in the room with the casting director, I started the scene. Immediately, I could tell it wasn’t going well. I felt stiff and the casting director looked bored. Then, a miracle happened: I fell off my chair. I was so nervous and shaky, I just slid right off it. The nightmare of nightmares, right?

As it turns out, this mistake woke me up from the zombie-like performance I was giving. I couldn’t help but laugh at myself a bit and relax. Suddenly my senses were alive again. I was back in the room, not inside my head thinking about how badly I wanted this role. The casting director sat up, too. She was now rooting for me. I had a real human moment, and it probably didn’t hurt that it was funny to watch. This was comedy after all. That casting director cast me in the role and called me in for other projects for years.

Your presentation isn’t a comedy audition, but if you can start seeing mistakes as gifts, as opportunities to be human and to bring yourself back into the moment, then if won’t be so terrifying when you make one.

In their book, Life Unscripted, Dan O’Connor, a brilliant improvisor and director, and Jeff Katzman, a professor of psychology, share a game for getting people to be more comfortable with mistakes. “In this game, we ask participants to think quickly of something that went wrong this week, some way in which they failed. When they’re ready, we begin a celebration. One by one participants come to the front of the group and announce their failure with great enthusiasm while taking a circus bow – throwing their hands up in the air (and acting like they just don’t care) and then bowing deeply… everyone [else] claps and responds with wild enthusiasm… This game cultivates the general spirit that mistakes and failures are inevitable, we embrace them and we even applaud them.”

So embrace your mistakes. See them as opportunities to improvise. Applause will follow!

When Presenting, Observe the Platinum Rule

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Effective presentations give your audience what they want in the way they want to absorb it, which is why we’re firm believers in The Platinum Rule of Presenting: “Present unto others as they would have you present unto them.” But how do you know precisely what audiences want? Fortunately, we asked on your behalf – twice!

In 2006, we conducted unprecedented research across North America, surveying 2,501 professionals at nonprofits, foundations, government agencies, colleges and universities, and mission-driven businesses. We asked them to talk about in-person presentations: what works, what doesn’t, and why. The results were published in our groundbreaking book, Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes.

In 2020, when almost all presenting moved online due to the pandemic, we updated our research, gathering the newest best practices from over 4,400 respondents in the US and Canada. We published those findings in our report, “Unmuted: What works, what doesn’t, and how we can all do better when working together online.”

You can download both of these publications here and see all the results for yourself, but we’ve also combined the learnings from both reports in a new two-hour course. “The Platinum Rules of Presenting” will take you through 10 audience-driven rules that can help you become a more effective presenter whether you’re working face-to-face or screen-to-screen. Course curriculum includes:

  • Top-line research results from both reports
  • Audience-driven guidelines for structuring your presentation
  • Tips for slide design
  • Adapting presentations and delivery specifically for virtual audiences

Sound like what you need? Click here to register now.

The 21st Annual Summer Reading List

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The warm and lengthening days of summer are upon us, and hopefully they bring with them some free time to curl up in the shade with a good book. If your interests tend more toward escape than work, start with

The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music”(Dey Street Books © 2021) by Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl.

You’ll meet iconic rock stars through Grohl’s eyes, and even if a who’s who of the music industry doesn’t necessarily appeal to you, Grohl brings such a sense of delight and child-like wonder to every tale that you can’t help but be swept along by his anecdotes. What I loved most, though, was the first section, where he shares short personal stories from his life. As advertised, they paint a “real, raw and honest portrait of an extraordinary life made up of ordinary moments.” You’ll catch yourself grinning as he learns drums by beating on pillows and share his awe at being invited to jam with Iggy Pop. And all the while, I have a hunch you’ll also be learning how to tell stories better.

Of course, if you’d like your summer reading to be a little more on point, we have 3 more suggestions for you.

How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from the Moth (Crown Publishing © 2022) by Meg Bowles, Catherine Burns, Jenifer Hixson, Sarah Austin Jenness, and Kate Tellers

Between live shows, podcasts and books, The Moth has made invaluable contributions to the art and tradition of storytelling, and their latest work is no exception. Billed as a how-to, this book delivers when it comes to guiding aspiring storytellers through the steps the Moth team has used so successfully to cultivate and share personal stories.

They illustrate their concepts with excellent examples and helpfully sum up key points at the end of each chapter. I was practically up on my feet cheering through the first chapter that talks about the power of true stories and what happens to humans when they hear or tell stories.

The writers will guide you through structuring your story so that it opens strong, makes sense throughout, keeps the listener engaged using stakes and cliffhangers, and sticks the landing. Their StorySlam how-to poster alone is worth the cost of the book. Here’s an excerpt:

 “What we do want: Hook us in. Make us care about you. Paint the scene. Clearly state your fears, desires, the dilemma. Make us invested in the outcome. Introduce the conflict. Make us worried for you. Impress us with observations that are uniquely yours. Rope us into the moment when it all goes down. Conclude as a different person: Triumphant? Defeated? Befuddled? Enlightened?…CHANGED.”

How to Zoom Your Room: Room Rater’s Ultimate Style Guide (Little, Brown & Company © 2022) by Claude Taylor & Jessie Bahrey, Illustrated by Chris Morris

The authors capitalized on our COVID captivity with their popular Twitter feed, “Room Rater,” where they critiqued the Zoom windows of professional broadcasters and pundits. Now you can follow their tips for making sure your Zoom room is a 10/10.

There is helpful advice about choosing the best lighting and angles, avoiding no-no’s like visible lampshade seams and electrical cords (heaven forfend!), and there are even several pages of recipes from former US Senator Claire McCaskill. (I’m not entirely sure why, but I might make that layered strawberry cake.)

Taylor and Bahrey seem to be telling us: make your Zoom room feel like you, and don’t take it too seriously. Frankly, I don’t think “How to Zoom Your Room” is intended as a front-to-back read, so I’d recommend it for a coffee table or your powder room. That said, the book does have a good-looking spine, so I’m putting my copy behind me in my Zoom window.

The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters (Riverhead Books © 2018), by Priya Parker

Yes, the book is four years old, but now that many of us are finally getting together again, the timing feels right to add this title to our reading list. Priya Parker (who has been popping up on several podcasts recently) is a facilitator and strategic advisor trained in group dialogue and conflict resolution. Her work is all about creating “collective meaning in modern life, one gathering a time.”

Parker reminds us that our gatherings can be memorable and even transformative, but only if we do the work beforehand to examine why we are getting together in the first place. She encourages us in “committing to a bold, sharp, purpose,” instead of just meeting out of habit.

As our organizations, families and friends navigate gathering once again, now is a great time to pick up this book, which was named a Best Business Book by NPR, Amazon, Esquire and more.

It may very well help you plan a gathering where every participant leaves thinking, “Now that was worth going to!”

Kirsten Farrell Named Director of The Goodman Center

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A message from Andy Goodman:

Dear Readers, Clients and Friends,

As The Goodman Center enters its 25th year, I’ve decided it’s high time to “pass the mic,” and I’m delighted to announce that Kirsten Farrell has assumed the role of Director as of June 1st. I’m not going anywhere for the time being and will remain actively involved as Director Emeritus. (I believe “emeritus” is Latin for “Are you still here?”) I will continue to facilitate side-by-side with Kirsten for both in-person workshops and virtual classes just as we have since she joined the company in March 2021.

As our new Director, Kirsten will be taking the lead in facilitating all of our online and in-person workshops, and she will be developing new curriculum to keep our current classes fresh and relevant, as well as adding new courses to our lineup. She will be the lead writer of The Goodman Center’s new blog (coming soon) that will share tools and guidance for public interest professionals to help them better connect with their audiences.

Kirsten will continue serving on the advisory team for The Corporation for Supportive Housing’s “Speak Up!” program where she trains people with lived experience of homelessness to tell their stories and advocate for permanent supportive housing. And in her spare time (which she is about to have far less of), she plays the piano and is a company member of the nationally recognized Impro Theatre, where she does long-form narrative improv.

Please join me in congratulating Kirsten on her new role, and thank you for your continued support and interest in everything The Goodman Center does to help do-gooders do better!

A Story a Day: Healthcare Workers Share Stories to Treat Burnout

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Since 2016, Dr. Emily Silverman has been using live storytelling shows as well as a podcast called “The Nocturnists” to “cultivate the well-being of healthcare workers, enable compassionate patient care, and contribute to meaningful public dialogue about the practice of medicine.”

In March 2022, Dr. Silverman teamed up with Doctors Without Borders for a storytelling event during which doctors across the globe shared personal experiences with COVID-19. After viewing this event and listening to several episodes of “The Nocturnists,” we reached out to Dr. Silverman to learn more about the impacts of her storytelling work.

Whether or not you are directly involved in healthcare, we believe readers who operate in large systems and who are trying to make the world a better place can relate to feeling burned out and weighed down by high expectations. For these ailments, Dr. Silverman prescribes sharing stories. 

Kirsten Farrell: On your website, you talk about starting “The Nocturnists” to answer questions about the disconnect between patients and doctors, clinician burnout and distress, and what it means in the modern world to be a doctor. Could you tell me more about that?

Dr. Emily Silverman: In the last decade or two, medicine has really changed. I came of age in medicine during a time where the healthcare system was becoming way more complicated and dysfunctional. The electronic health record was coming onto the scene, everything was going onto the computer. The days of the community doctor hanging up a shingle and taking care of patients were on their way out. Big health systems, big hospitals are gobbling up independent practice and the vast majority of physicians in the United States are employed now by these big companies, which are profit driven. They push the doctors to do more and more and more with less and less and less.

I started to feel this as a resident. Why am I sitting on a computer for half the day typing and doing data entry? I thought that medicine was going to be spending time with patients and their families. Why am I running my own body into the ground, and then, in the same breath, telling my patients to get better sleep and decrease their stress? It didn’t make sense to me, and I started to experience a lot of burnout. Even before COVID, physician burnout was a huge issue. A lot of my colleagues were feeling the same way.

Then a friend invited me to a live taping of “The Moth.” And something clicked. I thought, “This is something we should be doing in medicine.” There’s something about that very ancient form of oral storytelling. People together in a room and the magic and the electricity of that live experience.

And so, on my days off from my residency, I would drive around San Francisco and show up at different theatres, walk in and say, “I’m Dr. Emily Silverman, and I want to rent this theatre.”  Finally, I found this place that let me rent a space for $90. That was 2016. I got an audience of 30 or 40 people, and I got eight people to tell stories. It was so successful that 4 years later we are selling out a theatre of 700 people.

It was this magical thing: you walk into the theater and look around and you see med students and nurses and doctors and therapists. There are people from UCSF, Stanford, Kaiser, Marin and Oakland all coming together to have an experience.

Farrell: What have you noticed or heard from medical professionals who tell their stories? What is the effect on them?

Silverman: I think one of the ways the storytellers benefit from the experience is that we give them a practical opportunity to let go, to surrender and to get into their bodies. Our culture tells us, “Oh, you don’t need sleep,” or “You don’t get sick, you can just work 8 hours a week. Take care of people while you’re sleep deprived.”

Medical training really changes our brains. It suppresses the side that is more improvisational and reflective. But as an embodied practice, it can be really exciting for physicians to reconnect with those parts of themselves. We also pair them up with a story coach who can help them unpack their story and maybe make some meaning out of it.

To get on stage in front of an audience of 700 of your peers and tell the story about a time that you experienced doubt or made a mistake is very, very countercultural in the medical world, but if you can do that in a way where it feels safe, then we can laugh and just celebrate our community and not pretend that we are perfect robots. There’s something really healing and empowering about that. To walk off the stage after the story is finished and into the arms of a friend, or family, a colleague and to be embraced and accepted. There’s really a feeling of belonging that comes up both for the storytellers and the audience members.

We’ve also had audience members who have shared that the experience has changed the way they practice medicine.

Farrell: What do you look for in in a great story for your show or your podcast?

Silverman: Physicians and other healthcare workers tend to be very process-oriented and theory-oriented, so they’ll submit what they think is a story. But really it’s 10% story and 90% process. We have to coach people down from 20,000 feet to 2 feet. We ask them, “What day was it? What were you wearing? Who are the characters? Paint a picture. What were the smells?” We want to ground the story in sensory details. So, I’m definitely looking for scenes, images, characters: basic building blocks of what makes a great story as opposed to  a monologue about an idea.

 I’m also excited about how do we generate the most beautiful and compelling and exciting stories possible and then put them to work? How do we actually deploy these stories to transform culture?

Farrell: Changing culture is extremely difficult. What have you learned to help you do that?

Silverman: Until you notice the status quo, you can’t really change it. So, you can use storytelling to explore the culture in all its nooks and crannies, and then come out with the final product and say, “This is what we found.” Is this where we want to be? If the answer is no, or even if we want to keep parts and discard others, then that starts a really exciting conversation: how do we tell a different story? What is the story that we want to be telling collectively?

 The Nocturnists first live show since spring of 2020 will be June 10th at the Brava Theatre in San Francisco. If you live in that area, check it out and let us know what you think. For everyone else, we recommend listening to some excellent storytelling from the podcast, especially episode 8 from  Season 4 (“House Call”) or Episode 1 from Season 4 (“Burn the Map.”)