53: Terence Mickey
“He made the motion of moving the bowie knife up the body... It was the most shocking and incredibly powerful, dramatic moment I had ever seen on stage and I didn’t know where it was gonna go next...”
About Terence
Terence Mickey’s incredibly diverse life pursuits have one thing in common: storytelling. But, let’s just call a spade a spade - the word “storytelling” has gotten so cliche as to be more satire than flattery. Everyone calls themselves a storyteller these days. We can’t just frivolously bestow the title, can we?
Well, let’s see.
Education. Terence graduated from Saint Michael’s College with a bachelor’s degree in English, declaring war on the oxford comma and forever purging dangling modifiers and double negatives from his lexicon, while casually establishing a campus literary journal.
Higher education. With a solid foundation in place, Terence went on to get his MFA in Creative Writing from UC Irvine before heading to storytelling behemoth The Moth, where he spent six years as a lead presenter, trainer and developer of corporate programs – aka, a professor of storytelling.
Garbage. Let’s not fool ourselves: Terence has more than once been willing to get his hands dirty. The summer after graduating college, his uncle invited him into the family business, which happened to be sanitation – yes, he joined the garbage dynasty…. as the head of PR. So, still storytelling.
Terence has written, directed, and executive produced content for Starz, Blinkist, The Weather Channel, Discovery, and other household names. Among his many notable creations is the critically acclaimed podcast Memory Motel, which focuses on the stories we choose to remember or forget. And he also found the time to direct the award-winning documentary One Billion Orgasms.
Again, like the flags held high by the leaders of elderly tour groups on tourist excursions, the storytelling theme is front and center, clear as day.
These days, from a home base in Berlin, Terence finds himself traveling the globe teaching storytelling at seminars and writing retreats for his company Wayfinder Sessions, which has the kind of tagline that elicits the closing of the eyes and a deep breath: We meet you where you are and guide you to where you belong.
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Max Chopovsky: 0:02
This is Moral of the Story interesting people telling their favorite short stories and then breaking them down to understand what makes them so good. I'm your host, Max Jepowsky. Today's guest is Terence Mickey, whose incredibly diverse life pursuits have one thing in common storytelling. Now, this is something I can get behind, but let's just call a spade a spade. The word storytelling has gotten so cliche as to be more satire than flattery. Everyone calls themselves a storyteller. These days, we can't just frivolously bestow the title, can we? Well, let's see Education. Terence graduated from St Michael's College with a bachelor's degree in English, declaring war on the Oxford comma and forever purging dangling modifiers and double negatives from his lexicon, while casually establishing a campus literary journal Higher education. With a solid foundation in place, Terence went on to get his MFA and creative writing from UC Irvine before heading to storytelling behemoth, the Moth, where he spent six years as a lead presenter, trainer and developer of corporate programs, aka professor of storytelling Garbage, let's not fool ourselves. Terence has more than once been willing to get his hands dirty. The summer after graduating college, his uncle invited him into the family business, which happened to be sanitation. Yes, he joined the Garbage dynasty as head of PR. So still storytelling. Terence has written, directed and executive produced content for Starz, Blinkist, the Weather Channel, Discovery and other household names. Among his many notable creations is the critically acclaimed podcast Memory Motel, which focuses on the stories we choose to remember or forget, and he also found the time to direct the award-winning documentary One Billion Orgasms. Again, like the flags held high by the leaders of elderly tour groups on tourist excursions, this storytelling theme is front and center, clear as day. These days, from a home base in Berlin, Terence finds himself traveling the globe, teaching storytelling at seminars and writing retreats for his company, Wayfinder Sessions, which has the kind of tagline that elicits the closing of the eyes and a deep breath we meet you where you are and guide you to where you belong. So, yes, I think it's fair to call this man not just a storyteller, but a story listener, a story collector and a story teacher. Terence, welcome to the show.
Terence Mickey: 2:31
Thank you, Max. That was an incredibly generous and warm-hearted intro. Intros are an art form and you have mastered them.
Max Chopovsky: 2:41
Well, I just am very fortunate to have incredible storytellers share their time and stories with me, and so this is the least that I can do. I appreciate it. So you are here to tell us a story. Is there anything that we should know before we start? Do you want to set the stage at all?
Terence Mickey: 3:02
No, they should know nothing. They should be pleasantly surprised.
Max Chopovsky: 3:05
I love it. They cold open. Let's do this thing. Tell me a story.
Terence Mickey: 3:10
Okay. So when I worked at the Moth I supported two programs the corporate program, which involved teaching executives at a portion of Havendra companies, and the outreach program, which included teaching everyone from at-risk youth to addicts and recovery to people with mental health disabilities, and these two worlds can be further from each other. Until one day they weren't. A typical week would look like Monday through Wednesday. I could be in some far-flung city teaching workshops to a corporation, and it always had a very particular purpose, like selling a product or working on some internal problem, and was very intellectual, and I loved it, because I'm a story nerd and organizing information was something I'd love to do. I always am an element of problem solving, but it was very much storytelling for a particular purpose and very much in the head. And then every Thursday at this point I would be going up to the Bronx, schlepping the train up there and going to Star Hill Addiction Treatment Center. It was the largest addiction treatment center in New York and it was like a big castle on this hill and the director, dan, had started a program there that I had taught once before and his vision for the program was to teach people who were overcoming addiction storytelling ostensibly to just kind of feel like they have another skill set. But there was also a kind of hidden agenda in that he found that people who were in this class tended to complete the program at a higher rate than other people who weren't attending any similar class. So it was a good retention rate, like 90% of the people. And it was very fraught because you had to be careful that you weren't re-traumatizing somebody. So you kind of danced carefully around what people could share or what people couldn't share. So both kind of it was a very bifurcated week for me because there was very much like the strategic, intellectual aspect of storytelling and then this deeper level. But it was also limited because I couldn't go anywhere. And there was one student in this class at the Star Hill, alfred. He was a very tall, lanky man and one pocket he had changed, the other pocket had his keys and he was with his hands in his pockets. He's just jingle jangle throughout the whole class. He had a lot of energy and he had a lot of nerves and the story that Alfred was convinced that he wanted to tell was the time that his ex-wife found out that he cheated on him and hit him over the head with a metal pipe Every class, I would convince Alfred that this is not the story you want to tell. And basically you didn't change Alfred. There's no arc for you, there was no significant transformation. I don't think it's the story you wouldn't tell. And at this point storytelling had become too much of an intellectual exercise for me. It was very much about what's your first line, how do you get there, and often people are so anxious they just want to know how to do it. So it wasn't that transcendent experience that I went to storytelling in the beginning, like for me. I was 16 years old. I read a check-off story in English class and I felt such a profound sense of emotion that I wanted to understand how it worked. So storytelling for me was always the intersection between the heart and the mind and I felt like I was spending too much time in my mind at this point. So Alfred, every week, would come to class with the same insistence that this was the story he's going to tell, and he'd even shared details about where he was, what the pipe felt like, and he really wanted to sell this story and I kept saying no. I kept saying no and we were getting really close to the show. It was like a week before the show was going to happen, where they present to the whole center, where people from the outside come in, and I said, alfred, you're not going to tell that story, so you have to pick another story. He's like no, I know what story I'm going to tell. And I said, ok, let's share the details. What do you have? And he's like no, I'm good. I'm good. I was like, well, alfred, I need to know at least somewhat what it's about. And he's like well, it's about my experience in the Vietnam War. And I said, ok, alfred, you've got to just give me a little bit more so we can go over. And I don't want to say no to you because I don't know what it's about, but I also don't want you to go up there and just say anything. And it was really important at this point just that everyone's included and that everyone kind of gets up there and tells their story. So Alfred was hemming and hawing and he said just trust me and I'll do you good. And he says his phrase. So the night of the show comes on and I'm really nervous because I don't know what he's going to tell and I don't know how it's going to impact the audience. And it was a real risk to take to just go blind with Alfred, especially since the story that he kept insisting on telling was the one of his wife hitting him over there with a lead pipe. So he's up there, he's kind of nervous. She can hear the change jingling his pocket and his keys jingling his pocket and he tells the audience that when he was 18 years old he was in the Vietnam War and he was under Colin Powell and he remembers kind of flying over the country and kind of bombing different areas and having a real abstract sense of the war. But then at one point they were in the kind of on the ground and his job was to wait on the perimeter of a base that was hidden and he was kind of cross legged in the jungle and as soon as he got to this point in the story he was stone cold like just like a stone statue. He didn't move and he was just back there in the jungle as an 18 year old kid basically, and his job was just to not make any sound, make any motion, and he was just to watch the perimeter and kind of only do something if something was kind of alarming him and there could be anything out there from like animals that could devour him, snakes, Like. It was a very tense, precarious position to be in. And he says one day he was kind of there. And again I'm watching him and it's the one thing I've learned about storytelling is that our stories are in our bodies, like the body really remembers what happens to us, so someone's physicality can transform on stage when they're really in the flow of a moment. And I could tell that Alfred was back there and I started to get a little anxious because I didn't know if this was traumatic for him or not. But he continued and he said that he was there one day and it was silent and then all of a sudden he heard this rustling and he thought it was just an animal at first, but then it kind of came closer and closer and closer and then he could see that it was two Viet Cong soldiers that were just roughly younger than him by a year or two and they were gonna head right towards him. So he stayed there and he stayed there and as soon as like they came close to him, he had a kind of Bowie knife and on the stage he just kind of made the motion of taking one of the soldiers and kind of covering the mouth and just move the Bowie knife up the body and then he kind of did the same thing to the other boy and it was the most shocking and incredibly powerful dramatic moment that I'd ever seen on stage and I didn't know where he was gonna go next, like if this was something that was gonna traumatize him or something that was gonna liberate him. And what he said after that moment he says you know, I've been kind of seeing the war from a very abstract angle and kind of lost my sense of humanity and the human scale. And this was the moment where I felt most terrific but also most human and I wanted to tell this story, to kind of to share my humanity. And for me it was a moment of watching someone who was kind of on the fringe of the group and not really wanting to contribute a story and not really kind of coming to class but not being kind of belonging. And after that story everyone kind of brushed the stage to kind of hug him and just embraced him in this incredible sense of belonging Like you're one of us, you're part of us. And for me, I realized that, you know, what drew me to storytelling was the transcendent moment where we reveal our humanity, where we become our most human selves. And in order to do that, it's not about the intellectual. This is the first line, this is the last line it really is. What is it about you? That may not be the most shining moment in your life, and maybe something that's very shameful and difficult, but if you could reveal it and share it, you'll feel liberated and feel close to everyone in the room. And after this moment, you know, going back to the corporate work was really difficult because I said, okay, you know, here's I'm teaching storytelling, but what am I actually doing? And there was an occasion where it's like a couple of weeks later and it was at Vanguard and it was their global meeting. It was a hundred leaders from around the world meeting in Pennsylvania and they were at a point where they were just becoming a real global company. So they really wanted to get everyone in the room together and connect and really tell the stories about Vanguard and get to some DNA about this company. And it was very high stakes. It was a very you go on stage and you don't want to say the wrong thing because it's costing them, you know, scads of money. And in these instances I'd usually everyone kind of workshop the story and then you go through the room and you pick stories that are going to be presented at the end. And so I talked to all the people that were helping me and there was one table and I asked you know what's the stories here? And she says there's a woman here who when she started Vanguard she was, you know however, much money and debt and she would get collectors calling her while she worked at Vanguard. So here she was supposedly helping people save and manage their money and meanwhile she was getting harassed by debt collectors. And normally I would have been like, okay, let's pass on that story because I don't know what it's going to do to the room, and I was a little cautious but I was like that sounds like a great story. That's volunteer her to tell the story. So, similar to kind of watching Alfred, I was kind of anxious about what's going to happen and she told her story and it was incredibly moving of just the sense of shame and the imposter syndrome and all this daily going into work and just feeling like why am I, how can I really be here and she kind of told the story about overcoming her debt and the CEO at the time, after she finished her story, he got up on stage. William Knab, great guy, got up on stage and says this is exactly what we need. This is who our customers are. These are people who are anxious about money, anxious about their future. If we can understand them and we have empathy for them, then we will be better at our job. And she was like standing ovation, and here's a woman that was deathly nervous to tell the story and just totally raised the roof. And so after that moment for me I was like, okay, I can't just go in a room and say, all right, you can share whatever you want here, it's a safe space, go for it. And in these companies. But I also realized that most of the problems or challenges that companies have it starts with feeling disconnected or just isolated. And like if everybody's on the same page and if everybody's connected, then anything is accomplishable and can be overcome. And so I really started to just learn to just embody listening, like being a presence of somebody who's going to listen. Because Alfred, after that story he told, I said, alfred, I had no idea you're gonna say that and what possessed you to kind of go up there and tell that story, after all these other attempts to tell the X, y story? And he said in that group I felt like I was actually being listened to and I felt like you guys would hear me and so I felt like it was the right place to tell that story. And I tried this out at a very difficult gig where it was 60 executives, not a diverse room, not a warm room, a Ritz Carlton banquet hall, and they had a problem kind of there was a lack of mentorship in the company, so there's a disconnect between one generation and the next. And I really just put on my listening, kind of embodied listening in the way that I can, and I'll never forget there was one gentleman who volunteered in the whole room. He was the first person to go and this company had lost people in 9-11. And he had been in that building and he had kind of gone against the what was the conventional wisdom of staying in the building and led his total floor down through the building and they all escaped safely and he did a blow by blow of what happened during that day and no one in that room had heard that story or even bothered to ask him kind of what that day was like or what happened, and that room was transformed. And for me, storytelling is a skill set and it's a very important skill set to learn. But it's also this alchemical, magical mystery that is so potent and so powerful and if you really allow it to be what it wants to be, I think dramatic change, dramatic breakthroughs, connection can happen. And for me that kind of realization came from Alfred and just his courage and bravery to say something that could have been very off-putting or difficult or triggering for people, but it really just showed his humanness, which is why we share and tell stories.
Max Chopovsky: 18:17
That was incredible. Thank you for sharing that. One of my favorite parts about that is it was very meta. It was a story about stories. I would expect no less of you. One of the things that I feel like it demonstrated is the power of listening when people might not open up unless they feel like they're really being heard. I think that's pretty underrated. I mean, the conversations that I have with guests on the show is why should we do the show? One of the reasons I give them is because I don't know how often this happens to you, but you will actually feel like you're being heard. I think that's sadly. That's underrated. It doesn't happen as often as we like. I want to ask you what ended up happening to Alfred. Did he end up graduating, leaving the program? What was his story arc?
Terence Mickey: 19:24
Yeah, he graduated and left the program. He actually told that story a few times in other venues. That often happens as people in a very off-field workshop. That's not about performance, they have no interest in performing, they'll get the bug and just have this story. Life where this is one of the stories they'll tell. He became somebody that shared that as a teaching and gave him a sense that he could do something with a very tragic and dark part of his life that could help other people.
Max Chopovsky: 20:00
It's such an interesting comment that he made that the war was so abstract to him when he was flying over and dropping bombs, and yet it went from that to probably as personal as it could get, which is hand-to-hand combat, and what an interesting story arc. In fact, I feel like there are so many story arcs within the story that you told. There's the story arc of Alfred from telling this, from lobbying you to be able to tell this story, about the ex-wife in the pipe, and the story arc of the woman at the Vanguard meeting of going up and telling her story. And the story arc of the CEO, the story arc of the meeting with the guy from 9-11 because nobody had bothered to ask him. But I think what's really interesting is your story arc because all of those, especially Alfred, they informed your trajectory as it relates to how you perceive storytelling. I mean, with Alfred, the tension is kind of your loss of control, because it was such a tenuous situation where, hey, I don't know what he's going to tell. I mean, this guy's got a track record of being out there with the kind of story he wants to tell, but you leaned into that. You were like, okay, I'm going to go with it. So there's some tension and then, as you realized hey, you know what, sometimes I have to give up control you applied that to the corporate gig, to pretty positive results, and so I just think that that's fascinating what stories do and you know, this is at the end of the day. They serve to connect us, to reveal our collective humanity, and what I find so fascinating is if you feel like somebody is listening, it helps you to open up and to be more vulnerable. Right, but the very last part of your story about the guy that led his floor to safety on 9-11 flips that paradigm on its head and says actually, sometimes, if you go out on a limb and you are vulnerable before people are listening, you can transform the room and then they start listening.
Terence Mickey: 22:50
You know, I think listening, you know there's a lot about storytelling and how to tell a story and how to have these certain points and organize, but the real way to become truly good at storytelling is just to listen to other people Like you'll learn so much from what, where people go, what they share. And I think you know, in that instance, with the 9-11 hero, he knew that someone was listening. You know, maybe the whole room was a little bit off, but he knew that there was at least one person that was going to get it and it was an opportunity to share it. I think you know what you said about opportunity for your guests to come on and be heard. Since it is so rare, even if it's just one person, we're kind of going to go for it because there's so much that we in our daily lives don't get to share or don't really kind of talk about. So when there is the opportunity there, I feel like anyone will go for it because it is rare. And so, as somebody who's trying to help people tell their stories, you know listening is the best way to get them to really yeah feel safe and courageous enough to go to that place, and then it transforms, yeah, everybody who hears it and everybody around them.
Max Chopovsky: 24:06
What do you find is the biggest obstacle to getting people to open up and be vulnerable?
Terence Mickey: 24:11
Fear. I mean, how is this going to land? How are people going to think of me in a corporate environment? I mean, you think about it. You got to work with these people. These people are probably in competition with you. There's so much that's fraught there and I think that the unknown like I've never done this before and how am I going to do it? On the one hand, you're trying to learn something that's difficult. Two, what's at the heart of it is something that makes you vulnerable. And three, you're around people who you don't want to judge you. I mean, there's so many. There's really, when I think about it, there's so many reasons not to go and share. And coming into an organization and trying to do that is kind of like a Herculean task. I think what helps me not get caught up in that is I know what the end result will be Like. I know in so many hours, this group will all be connected to one another and the room will change and that kind of gives me a confidence. But when you look at it, on its surface there's a lot to kind of to make people not want to share and not want to tell their story.
Max Chopovsky: 25:18
Like when you think about in corporate environments. They do these ice breakers oh, tell us something, tell us your favorite TV show or your favorite dish and everybody just kind of thinks like, oh, that's kind of cheesy. They kind of look at each other like, oh, here we go again with this shit. But what's interesting is, once they do it, they I mean, it's happened to me before, I used to be in the corporate environment you start talking so much to people at your table after you find something in common with them that the facilitator has trouble getting people to stop talking and move on to the next exercise. You know, I guess I just wonder why people are so fearful of being judged, fearful of maybe being ostracized or not accepted, that they feel like their experience is so uniquely theirs and that they have so little in common with the people around them that they don't want to share. And once they end up sharing, then they realize, hey, we have so much more in common than we thought and it's just mind blowing to me that I mean, I get it. People are afraid of being judged, they're afraid of failure, they're afraid of being left out, but at the end of the day we realize like we have more in common than we think. It's a pretty romanticized way of looking at it, but I also think there's a lot to that, because the alternative to that is isolation.
Terence Mickey: 26:40
Yeah, I mean the irony is that you're starting off from a place of isolation because you're thinking this has only happened to me and it's I'm alone with it. So you're already in a place of like, okay, I don't want to share this because this is just my thing, but so that's the irony is, you're already starting from isolation but you're afraid of isolation. But chances are, if you do share something you'll, like you said, you'll see that you have way more in common with the person next to you than you could have imagined, because and I think you know, for Alfred's story for me helped me. You know I had a lot of tragedy in my family and a lot of things that I didn't bring into my storytelling, like my uncle committed suicide and things that were very, yeah, personal and dark, and that too, kind of broke open my own storytelling to just be more vulnerable with things that I would conceive of us off limits. And the irony was that those things that I shared got the most response, because if anybody's had, like, a tragedy like that in their family, they don't hear that stuff that often. So if somebody is talking about it it's kind of magnetic because, okay, now we can finally discuss that thing and I'm a firm believer in there's a right place and a right time. But I think when the context is right to share something that is very personal and could be seen as something very difficult and tragic, it just helps people around you to not feel as isolated and as alone.
Max Chopovsky: 28:13
Was this your uncle that was in the sanitation business and then opened his own and then it got shut down after six months? Was that him?
Terence Mickey: 28:20
No, that's Jimmy. Jimmy's still alive and kicking. No, my mother is one of 10, so I have many uncles. So it was that uncle's brother, tom. Okay, yeah.
Max Chopovsky: 28:32
So I used to have a video production company and we would do a lot of corporate work and one time we flew to New York to do a video for a big financial services company and we were at their headquarters and we were doing a series of interviews with high-level executives about this workshop that they did that centered on evaluating their childhood experiences and understanding how the trauma from those experiences may make them susceptible to predisposed notions and how it impacts their decision-making. I mean, it was a really, really raw and emotional workshop and we were interviewing the executives that went through that workshop and as the interviewer I would pride myself on eliciting tears out of my subjects, because that meant that the content was real, raw, emotional, authentic, vulnerable. I didn't unnecessarily push them, but if I could coax certain things out of them it would make me feel like it was a more powerful narrative. And there was a senior executive that I was interviewing and in a financial services company like Vanguard, like what you talked about, everybody sort of buttoned up right and whether they're in a room in front of their colleagues or whether they're in an interview where there's people they don't know people from our video production company, maybe a couple of colleagues. They're still going to be pretty buttoned up, but I think it was pretty fertile ground, considering the subject matter right. And so this woman was incredibly intelligent, articulate, just very put together. And then we started getting into this you know the workshop and she just starts talking about how, for the longest time, she felt like she wasn't enough, like she was inadequate, and how that impacted her interactions with her colleagues and how much time she feels she lost as a result of not being authentic, not being vulnerable, how that impacted her family life and how she came home, stressed to her kids and couldn't be a great mom and how that sort of perpetuated this notion that she wasn't enough. And she goes into how this workshop made her feel like she is enough. And she's telling me this and she starts crying on camera and she's like it made me feel like I'm good enough, that I'm enough and like I'm about to start tearing up, right, I mean I look around me like the producer is crying and I'm just like this is gold, like this is incredible, but not for the sake of sort of showing this off and saying, hey, I'm a good interviewer, I elicited this from her. It was gold from the perspective of. She is giving one of the most authentic, beautiful interviews that I've ever been able to have, and my urge right after this thing is to walk up to her and give her a huge hug and be like I know exactly how you feel. I've felt inadequate so many times in my life and I'm so glad that you shared that. And I gave her a hug afterwards and I just said, hey, thank you so much for sharing that, but I felt so much more connected to her, even though I'm literally just the guy that's behind the camera, just there to get the story right. So we wrap up the filming and I immediately am like this is only going to be a five minute deliverable. At best she is going to have, you know, top billing for this thing. Like I want her on the preview, I want her as the sort of apex of this video. I get an email from her that night and she says hey, I just wanted to thank you for the wonderful interview and I also wanted to ask you not to use the part where I'm crying, and I was like I completely understand your wish is my command. I will not do that if you don't want me to, because that video was going to be screened in front of like 5,600 people, and after I sent that email I was like man, I'm a little disappointed, not just in the fact that the video isn't going to be as powerful without her, but also in the fact that perhaps the story arc is still incomplete, right? Perhaps she still feels deep down as if she can't expose that part of herself to her colleagues because they'll judge her, they won't accept her or whatever. And so I was a little sad because I feel like it's such a missed opportunity, the way that she was able to connect with everyone in our small room when we were doing the interview. She could connect with so many other people, so many moms who feel like they can't balance it all, or so many executives who feel like they always have something to prove, and so I was a little sad about that. But I was happy that in that moment, in that one sort of fleeting moment, she was able to completely let it go and just say here's who I am as a person. It was really magical.
Terence Mickey: 34:01
Yeah, that's a great story. I think that, for me, points out the process. She's so fresh with that emotion and that realization that she had that moment with you and you could create that moment for her. But it's not necessarily that she's ready to share that outside of that room. That's the strange thing about having a camera and recorder and it's such an intimate experience because you're in a small room, especially the microphone, there's no thing kind of pointed at you and you're revealing things that you think you're just telling one person, but if it's going to be broadcast you're telling thousands of people and I think for people it's a process to get to that point. For her, maybe a year later she did feel comfortable when she's kind of understood the emotion and totally processed it for herself. That's the thing that we often say in storytelling is, you don't want to be telling a story too soon after an experience because it's so fresh and so raw that you don't have the distance you want and sometimes you may get a vulnerability hangover because it's still in you. But I think it's important to have those moments because for her, having that experience with you lets her know how she feels and how important it is and hopefully she'll get to that point where it's like okay, now I can share this beyond and change people's perspectives because what she expressed who doesn't feel that? I don't know anyone that doesn't feel like they're not enough or has that negative chatter in their head, and that's why it's important to kind of share those stories to realize we're all on the same page.
Max Chopovsky: 35:43
It really is. It really is. So let's talk about the story that you told. What is the moral of that story?
Terence Mickey: 35:51
I think there's a few morals. For me personally, it's to remember the storytelling is both of the heart and the mind and not just kind of one solo version, and just the power of listening. How listening can elicit things from people and change people, and how that can kind of change everyone who's in the room with you.
Max Chopovsky: 36:15
And I agree with that, because you have to sort of understand structure and story arc and narrative. But at the end of the day, that's nothing but a foundation, it's nothing but a guide. You really can only connect with people through emotion, and so that's where the heart comes in. So, yeah, it really is an art form. Now, you obviously have heard a ton of stories, you've told a ton of stories. Why did you select this one?
Terence Mickey: 36:46
I've never told that story before and I like the fact that it was meta because it was a kind of lesson for me and my own storytelling journey of what are we doing, why are we doing it, and so it was kind of a reckoning for me that I thought people would appreciate, and what do you think makes the story so powerful? I think in all those instances of kind of Alfred, the woman of Vanguard and the gentleman from with the 9-11 story is, here are all people that have been carrying around this incredible burden that they haven't shared with anybody else, and here's this occasion where they're all able to kind of finally unburden that or kind of reveal that story and kind of return. Like you know, I think when we are kind of holding something in ourselves, you can kind of feel removed and distant from people. I mean that woman in your story. She felt like she couldn't be authentic at work, she couldn't really connect with people because she was holding onto the script in her mind of that. She's not good enough. I think we all do that with different parts of ourselves. So when you can kind of remember that for yourself and become a member again in the group and kind of return to the tribe, it's such a potent and such a transformative moment. So I think that's what for me, like those three people in that story, all have that same experience that we all long for. So seeing it happen and seeing people kind of embrace them is such a reassuring, positive outcome.
Max Chopovsky: 38:27
I feel like it's kind of a spectrum from being a robot and sharing nothing to just being a puddle of drama that just overshares everything. So I guess I wonder how do you know when you're maybe going too far on the sharing side of things? Because I do feel like there probably is at some point. You probably get into the territory of oversharing or complaining too much or whatever. Right, I feel like there's a point where you can go too far. So how do you know when you're approaching that territory?
Terence Mickey: 39:10
I think you always have to have the audience in mind. It's not really for you, even though you're doing it and you're going to have an experience. You are in front of an audience and I think if you care about that audience and think about, okay, what can they either get from this, or how will they be moved by this, or what will they get from it, then you're in a safe zone because it's not about your ego and not about I have to get this off my chest because this happened to me. That's a dangerous territory because you're going to share stuff that maybe doesn't resonate with an audience and is stuff that you haven't even processed yet. I think, if you remember, okay, I care about the person who's going to hear this. What do they need to hear? How can it help them or impact them or entertain them? Then you're in a place where you're not going to go too far, where you're just revealing your guts.
Max Chopovsky: 40:02
You avoid the therapy session.
Terence Mickey: 40:04
Yeah, like you're a host. You're taking someone on a journey. You want to be a really good guide and host and not let them get too scared or feel too lost. You're just comfortable in getting them through that journey.
Max Chopovsky: 40:22
Now, memory is obviously a fickle thing, as you know and have researched many times, and stories change from telling to telling. You even mentioned how you're amazed how people change stories based on their recollection of the story. The further removed from a story we are, the more leeway we take, the more creative liberties and or maybe forced deviations from the original story we take. Sometimes I feel like those deviations actually make the story better, even if less truthful. You add additional drama to it that wasn't a part of the original story and it becomes almost mythological. I wonder with this story I don't know how long ago this was, but have you tweaked it over time? Because sometimes we can tweak it based on memory, based on the accuracy of our recollections. Sometimes we tweak it based on audience input and maybe trial and error around. What lands best. Should we eliminate unnecessary details? Have you tweaked this story over time?
Terence Mickey: 41:33
Since I haven't told it before. I didn't tweak it, but I have told the Alfred story before, just as a separate thing, and it was interesting to go beyond Alfred and talk about how it changed me, Because I think when I told it in the past it was just here was this incredible guy and this is the experience he had and how amazing that was. But in thinking about it as a story to tell you, I was really thinking about okay, how did that change? What was my relationship to Alfred and how did it change me, how it forced me to think about that time, think about that weird bifurcated life I had and then try to find meaning. I think that's the thing that we're meaning making machines as storytellers. That can sometimes be very helpful and also sometimes very dangerous, because we will jigger certain things and change certain things because we want it to mean something. I think that's why it's important to have perspective and why stories change. Maybe the meaning when you're 20 is totally different when you're 40 or 50.
Max Chopovsky: 42:39
Let me tweak the question then. Do you think that if you tell the story again, you will tweak it the next time you tell it, and if so, what would you change?
Terence Mickey: 42:49
That's a great question. I'm a tweaker, so I like to tinker and change things and I definitely will change things with an audience a different audience For me. I'm very conscious of someone's listening and what they're experiencing. My tweaking often happens in the moment. If there's something that's really engaging them, then I'll add a few more details and go a little deeper into that, just to give them that gift. If it's something they're repulsed or recoiled by, then I'll try to do a side step. I often tweak in the moment, but if I were to think about yeah, I don't know how I tweaked that story. What surprised me in this telling was I usually get very choked up in recounting Alfred's story because he's still very. It's like yesterday he went into such a state of being an 18-year-old boy, even though he's a grown man, that it just moved me to no end. I was surprised that I held it together in recounting his story Based on my last story.
Max Chopovsky: 43:53
I think you can tell that I'm a little disappointed that you held it together.
Terence Mickey: 44:00
I know I didn't give you good tape.
Max Chopovsky: 44:03
No, listen, I think the story was fantastic, as I think about what resonated with me and if I were to tell that story I would make it even more visceral when Alfred had to kill the two kids that were basically younger than him, which basically you're telling me would make him 17 years old. The way he slit them from bottom to top with a knife. That is such a memorable, visual, horrific image of war that it really cements his statement that this made it so much more real to me because I went literally from the 30,000-foot level down to ground level. When you talk about the Vanguard story and how she said that she was broke, the CEO's story arc is evidenced by his facial expressions and the impact the story had on him. For the 9-11 story, it's almost like again if I were telling a story. I can almost, because I love eliciting emotion in the listeners, even if it means I have to fudge a couple of non-material facts but add details that make it even more real for them. It's like the guy's telling this story and I look around the room and I realize that everybody who was so stoic just minutes before you could tell that they at once started sort of tearing up and also literally couldn't wait to get up and go give him a hug or shake his hand or whatever. The emotional part of it, right? I just think that is. Those are the stories that I remember most, because you paint your own visual picture of that narrative and you add those emotional details. What do you think great stories have in common?
Terence Mickey: 45:58
I think great stories have compelling characters, like characters that have stakes, high stakes. I think stakes are critical. And then transformation. I think when you can actually see someone change in a story, that's the goal. I mean, that's why we kind of come back to stories and it's very hard to do. I mean it's really, it's really difficult when it's your own story, when it's fiction, it's just a really difficult.
Max Chopovsky: 46:25
But when you do it, that's the alchemical magic it's just incredible to be witness to that Totally, which means that either if the transformation happens over a short period of time, that something's been leading up to that singular moment of transformation, or you have to expand the time horizon, because people usually don't change in a moment, so suddenly you have to zoom out and the time horizon has to be longer so you can document that character arc right.
Terence Mickey: 46:53
Yeah, and usually the stakes kind of let you know how big of a story it's going to be. If the stakes are not that high, the attention is kind of only limited. But if the stakes are really high, then you can tease that out for as long as you want. Totally.
Max Chopovsky: 47:08
Now you're what I would call what I think many people would call a professional storyteller. How do you use storytelling in your personal life?
Terence Mickey: 47:18
For me I often, you know, to connect with friends. For me I love recounting, maybe, trials and tribulations in a humorous way to just both kind of get something off my chest of like this really was difficult and sucked, and also just making someone else laugh and connecting with them so that they can hear my trials and tribulations without being traumatized themselves. But it just as a way to deeply connect with people and I love hearing people's stories. Like I'll have a very kind of high attention span for people that want to share what they've been going through. Yeah, so I think primarily just as a way to connect with people in my personal life and it's just fun. I can't get enough of them. Like I just I enjoy it.
Max Chopovsky: 48:07
Like tell me more. So let's talk about books for a second. I'm sure you've read your fair share of some really captivating works. So what are you know one or two of your books that just nail storytelling.
Terence Mickey: 48:22
I love George Saunders. A Swim and a Pond in the Rain. It's a great craft book about short stories and stories in general. He is such an incredible generous teacher and so astute that that's one of my favorites I love it.
Max Chopovsky: 48:41
I love it. Well, last question for you, terrence If you could say one thing to your 20 year old self, what would it be?
Terence Mickey: 48:55
Be kinder to yourself.
Max Chopovsky: 48:57
Yeah, I would assume that your 20 year old self probably would not listen to that advice.
Terence Mickey: 49:03
Yes, yes, I think you're right. I think you're right. My 20 year old self was very stubborn.
Max Chopovsky: 49:09
I think most 20 year olds are pretty stubborn. I was and I was, still am, but I was a lot more stubbornly harder myself. So it's good advice, but I think, as I've said before, I think that we have to go through that time to reach what hopefully is, you know, a glimmer of wisdom in our later years. But we wouldn't be able to get here without having experienced there.
Terence Mickey: 49:38
Yeah, and all those hiccups and mistakes, those are our stories. I mean all that stubborn, you know snis than what it led to. That gives us the material to work with.
Max Chopovsky: 49:50
Yeah, you have to have a character arc, right. Well, that does it. Terrence Mickey, master, storyteller and listener and curator, thank you for being on the show.
Terence Mickey: 50:06
Thank you, such a pleasure. Thank you very much.
Max Chopovsky: 50:09
Of course, for show notes and more, head over to MossPodorg. Find us on Apple Podcasts, spotify, wherever you get your podcast on. This was more of the story. I'm Max Tropowski. Thank you for listening. Talk to you next time. We'll see you next time.