Storytelling for business and activism

Welcome. You're listening to Words and Actions, a podcast about how language matters in business, politics and beyond. Hello everybody, welcome back to Words and Actions. Today we're going to look at storytelling. We're going to look at storytelling in a bit of politics and business, but also stories told by climate activists. So quite a range. Our hosts of the usuals, I'm Veronica Coller. I record from Lancaster. Hi, I'm Erica Darych. I'm calling in from Aston University, Birmingham, UK. Hello, I'm Bernad. I'm calling in from Gantz, Gantz University. Nice to be here again. So, Eric and I were both located in the UK. And as you may or may not have noticed, there's this thing going on in the UK called Brexit. So for those of us who are politically interested, we listen to the news a lot, sometimes pubs, too much, even you can't get too much of a good thing, can't you? And the other day I was having some parliamentary debate on Brexit on in the background. And Erica, don't you think, I mean, when you turn on the news, it's like a acoustic wallpaper, isn't it, really? It's unbelievable. Parliament TV is now the soap opera for many families and they would sit down in the evening with a ball of popcorn to get their daily dose of adrenaline. You would never have thought that really. It's not just in Britain, it's even beyond Britain. I know that from France and Austria, you know, who follow a particular life ticker, you know, just for watching parliamentary debates in Britain. And in Belgium, we have our own problems with our government formation. So we have, you know, two topics Brexit and Belgian government formation. So, you know, well, that's more than we have. We have only one. Who does to us? Yeah. So the other day I was having parliament TV on in the background and the usual people were saying the completely predictable usual things. But then just after half past eight in the evening, I suddenly gave it my full attention. I had been sort of looking at my computer, my phone or whatever and suddenly one MP and independent got up. And I suddenly dropped everything else, looked at the telly and listened to him. And why was that? Because he was telling a story. He got up and he said, I rise in support of a particular motion. And then he said, on the morning of 7th February 2017, I woke up in an isolation room at King's College Hospital, while I was receiving chemotherapy. My blood counts were rock bottom and the chances of an infection high. Week as a kitten, I got dressed. My friends and parliamentary neighbour, the Brexit Secretary, who was then a government whip, met me at the entrance to the ward with a hospital porter in a wheelchair. He took me out to the chief whips car and we were driven to parliament so that I could vote for the article 50 bill. And then he goes on to say what he did since. So he was telling a story. He was giving us the setting. When was this? He introduces the main actor, himself and then later a friend. And he's also telling a very personal story. On our block, we have a screenshot of him and you can see his facial expression. You know, this is very personal how he starts. And this really got my attention all of a sudden. It's not surprising that you pay attention and everybody in the chamber because stories be connected to stories at a very deep emotional level. Stories really are important ways of making sense of our experiences and our reality, right? Absolutely. There's an interesting account from a professor of medical sociology, Catherine Riesman, which I quite like in which she tells a story again about how she realised the power of stories. She was going around collecting accounts of why people got divorced and she was expecting them to give her brief answers, you know, several points of reasons or whatever. But what happened was that when people were asked about reasons for getting a divorce, they started this long story and it was always the same pattern. It started off how they met each other, how they got to know each other and went on and on. So stories are a really powerful way of making sense of our experiences, of our personal social and cultural reality. Yeah, but in a divorce situation, can imagine that, you know, the other party wants to talk about his or her side of the story as well. And that's an important aspect too. That stories are not just constructed by someone, but in many cases they are co-constructed and that is something we will have to address as well, I think. Or perhaps in a divorce case is constructed against each other. Exactly. Two sort of competing stories, really. Yeah, absolutely. But what I found interesting about this research was that the research had categories. He wanted people to talk to categories and they couldn't do that in categories. They could only do it in terms of relating their own personal experience and that is an ever-tipply story. So one person who has researched that for a long time is social linguist William LeBoff. And he has talked about oral narratives of personal experience. He started in the, I think it was the late 60s even really. He came up with this model of how these personal experience stories like divorce stories or stories where I wasn't, somebody wasn't great danger, et cetera. How they seem to have a sort of prototypical structure, you know, where you first lay out the whole scenery, the time and the place and yourself, then what happened, one thing after the other. And then why am I telling this story anyway? What is the point of this story and often people finish with a co-dare or some sort of evaluation? He really described stories as a product very well. But more recently, there's also been a bit of a different approach by LeXandra Yagokopulu and colleagues and they've been talking about story telling. Right. So not so much the story as a product, but more the story telling as a process. So what happens when people get together and tell stories? How do they co-construct it? Is it people taking turns in conversation to tell a story or does one person hold the floor like I'm doing right now and talking about something? And why do they do it too? What's going on there? And the why is a very important question because stories have many, many functions from giving a good example to mobilizing people or persuading, telling cautionary tales, how things should be. Absolutely. And since we're talking about business in our podcast, I think we can also relate storytelling to corporate identity, corporate stories, the grand narratives that corporations tell us on their website. And when you have a close look at these websites, you can see how much attention is actually being paid to the story they have to tell. And one of the interesting ones I came across the other days is Ben and Jerry's and I thought maybe that would be nice idea. Oh, the ice cream people. The ice cream people, absolutely. And Ben and Jerry's is an interesting case of stories because when you look at it, you have stories within stories. And there are kinds of stories that people like. So you have the anti-hero, the underdog, you also have the humble beginnings aspect there. And you have a bit of David versus Goliath. Do you know the background of Ben and Jerry's? No, I don't. No, I know that I like it and I'm not getting paid to say that. I like the ice cream, but I don't actually know when and how it started. Well, that's a good thing for Veronica because I'm not sure whether the ice cream itself is the only thing why people like Ben and Jerry's. I think it's the story itself as well. So in a nutshell, before we move on to our interview, we would like to tell you the story. So here we have two guys Ben and Jerry and they have two things in common. They hate sports and they love food. I can relate to that. Sorry, Gordon. And then they thought, you know, we have to do something with this shared passion and they wanted to open up a bagel company, but that was too expensive. So they took this five dollar ice cream course and they started making ice cream. When was that? That was in 1978. Right. So it's quite a long time ago. And the funny thing is that Ben, he actually had a condition. He couldn't smell anything. So he thought, you know, I want to have chunks in my ice cream for a better mouthfeel. So instead of the smell, I want to have chunks. And that is now one of the USBs of Ben and Jerry. So we have this story of two nerdy types. That is how they call themselves a bit, you know, the hippie types, you know, just making fun and developing ice cream flavors. And then in 1980s, and this is the David versus Goliath story, we have a haggen daz. So that was the top premium ice cream manufacturer and they saw these Ben and Jerry guys, these hippies and they thought, no, no, no, they're not going to steal away our ice cream or parts of the market that we have. So they started boycotting them via the distribution. And so the people supported Ben and Jerry's because of that underdog position that they were in. Yeah, because people like an underdog. Oh, they sure do it, especially in the States. Now they were very clever and they used that underdog position as part of the brand identity that they still have nowadays. Yeah, so they still have the free cone day on a yearly basis. They still are very left in terms of political convictions. For instance, they had the hubby hubby flavor in support of gay marriage, for instance, in the 90s. That's pretty early. Yeah, absolutely. And they very cleverly use that image, you know, still very local, still making fun. It's all about love, peace and ice cream as you can actually see it in the slogan. So that's part of their story and I think that is also one of the reasons why their ice cream is. screen is so successful, it is the story that they tell and that they actually exploit it in a way in their business model. And if I just may add that the part of the success may also be that people became part of that story. So this story now was co-written and in the age of social media, these kind of shared stories that Ruth Page calls them shared stories where people co-construct, add to stories, make these stories their own and then of course adding all the stories, individual and corporate stories together, those become really powerful for businesses and for individuals. Oh yeah, I had an example of that just this week end. I was buying my son an ice cream after swimming, not an ice cream. I'm thinking about too much ice cream. A chocolate bar. A chocolate bar. And he opened that, unwrapped it and imprinted on the chocolate itself, on the one side, set the brand name and on the other side imprinted on the chocolate, you had #mybreak. Oh really? Yes. You know, so you really had a hashtag on the product itself. And of course the idea was that you would pay take pictures of it and post on Instagram and said, oh I love my chocolate bar, #mybreak. And thereby build a sort of story and a community around that chocolate bar really. So I was pretty fascinated by that really. And that's how the stories get interconnected. It's now fantastic. Let's hear from our guest about his views on new versions, the new ways of shared stories. Well, our guest for today is Professor David Bojay and oh my god, his CV and list of achievements is so long that I don't even know where to start. He's a professor emeritus at New Mexico State University. He's a professor of arts where he lives, I believe, but he also teaches at Auburk in Denmark and at Cabrini University in Philadelphia. He has over 120 journal articles behind his name, 24 books and countless other publications. But the reason why we have invited David here is for his passion in research for stories and storytelling. Welcome on the podcast David. Thank you. I'm really happy to be here. I'm really looking forward to your story now. Okay, I'll take him up with one. Okay. And I guess we can start with that. You work with stories and you research storytelling for a long time. So can you perhaps finish this sentence for us? Stories are important because. Most people don't know their own living story. They're able to recite a career narrative of, you know, when they were born, where they went to school, who they married their children, etc. But in terms of their living story pathway on the planet, not so much. Tell us about that living story pathway. Well, I met Kaelin Tutree's in the mid-90s. Dakota tribe and she is also an organization scholar. And she taught me that living stories are alive. They have a place where they can be told or not told. They have a time. There's the time of your life on this earth, your connection to your earth and community. And then they have a mind. And that really befuddled me. I understand how stories could have a mind. You know, they're just basically language, right? The way we study discourse. But I came to understand that to be a living story, you're part of a whole community of other living stories. Kind of a web of living stories. So when people start telling about their life, let's say in a conversation with others, people will interrupt and say, oh, yeah, I understand that part. Here's what happened to me. That's similar. And then you'll interrupt your own living story and say, oh, yeah, that was at a conference I met Kaelin Tutree's. It just keeps mushrooming like that. So now you're talking about the individual. So on a micro level, we are having this podcast on language and business and business communication. So I would like you to take it to the next level to stories within companies and corporations. And I would also like to take you back to the 90s. Oh, my goodness. To one of your articles where you talk about Disney, a living story in itself as well. And one of the quotes that you have there, if I may actually quote you now, is organizations cannot be registered as one story. But instead, as they are in multiplicity, a plurality of stories, and here comes the important bits, story interpretations in struggle with one another. Can you tell us what this Disney struggle was actually all about back in the 90s? And it's still very much a life today, I assume. Yeah, I went to a play called Tamara, G-A-M-A-R-A. And it's Los Angeles's longest running play. It takes place in a mansion. So you don't have any seats like in a theater. You walk in the mansion and give you a passport. And they say, "Okay, now you're back in the 1920s and Mussolini's in power." And you're confined to this mansion. And you're going to meet some characters. And they're going to stroll into the room here in the lobby. And then you have to decide which characters you're going to follow. You as an audience. So I was with a finance professor and he went up the stairs with his wife to the bedroom so the aristocrats. You know, me being the lower class, first college student in my family tree, I went down and followed the maid into the basement in the butler. I wanted to see how the lower class lived. Right. And so in each room, there's simultaneous storytelling. So something's happening in a risk of bad rooms and I'm not there. I can't see it. And then I can tell what's happening with the maid in the butler because he follows her into a bedroom and they're laying in bed and I'm a little nervous. I'm going like, "Wow, this is closer to the stage than I want to be." Is that getting a bit wrong? She, let's keep it family friendly. Okay. No, that was nice. They had covers on. You know? I'm right in the middle of the scene with these actors and the scene ends and some of the audience goes out one door and some goes up a hall and some goes up the stairs and I have to make a decision like, "Where am I going to go?" And I go into another room and I learn another part of the story that the butler is in reality not a butler but he's an aristocrat pretending to be something else or a chauffeur that's actually a spy, etc. So all of the characters are transforming from room to room and unless you follow each character from room to room, which is impossible because they're not, you can't follow everybody at once. Right. So depending on what you do, the story keeps on transforming, etc. How does that tie in with Disney then? Well Disney like any organization has many locations, right? Many places. They have many buildings. They're in many countries and there's simultaneous storytelling going on in all the rooms of all the buildings and all the lands. So you as an employee, a worker or a CEO or a creative director, you have to figure out what's going on. I mean, you're always trying to figure out what's going on and you're chasing down what you know happened in your room's urine and you're in contact, I guess, by email or digital or phone or something with other people in other countries and you're trying to figure out well, what's happening to Disney today? Where are the fires I got to put out? So that whole mansion is a bit like an analogy for this multinational company that has different locations and stories and those stories may connect to each other or relate to each other or they may completely be unrelated or they may struggle with each other. Do you find evidence of that? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I'm kind of a critical discourse, critical language person. I don't know what you would call me, but I'm interested in, for example, how Walt never talked about his wife by name. He talked about the characters and the cartoons by name and how he would kind of re-historicize events of history of Disney in his own way. And the Disney organization would put a spin on Walt as a very positive character and yeah, he was a genius and he was innovative and et cetera, but he was also a very tough taskmaster, very much a perfectionist, which can be a good thing, but he did not forgive his employees, the women employees, the men employees that went on strike to get better conditions. And he actually jumped out of his car at the studio gates and started bispikes with him. All right. Now that's why you have those nature films that Disney has because Roy, his brother, sent him down to South America, the film nature. Get him off the studio a lot until he could calm down. So I mean there's another side to the story. Yes, there's one story about this rather combative guy and the story he told about himself, but also no doubt stories that employees told at the time. Question is, you know, so many decades later, what stories have been handed down? Whose version of the story passed the test of time? And for a listener, what can they learn for their own businesses, for their own work environments, about this vision of there's a different story in every room and you can't follow all the stories at once? What does that mean for business leaders? Well, I'm trying to develop something called true storytelling with my colleague, Genslarson and Lena Brun and Denmark. And we're trying to look at how you can isolate out the fake story telling and the fake history, the fake news. And there's a lot of it now in Trump land here where I live. And we want to get it more true stories. But we know we can't. We know that there's no absolute truth because we live in tomorrow, you know, in the play tomorrow. We're in tomorrow land. So what the best we can do is use critical linguistic, critical discourse, critical storytelling analysis and try to sort out, you know, the truth and the untruth. Right. Maybe this is a nice link to your book storytelling in the global age. There's no planet B. And there you're referring to that we need a new globalization practice by indeed focusing on true storytelling. Now, how can true storytelling save the planet? Just to ask a simple question. It's darn sure that fake storytelling is not going to save the planet. No, not in itself. How can it contribute to, you know, what does it mean in the area era of climate emergency that we're living in? Yeah. Well, you know, climate emergency is necessary condition, you know, the extinction rebellion group of the youngsters. They want to have politicians declare a planet emergency. However, the politicians in the US, the UK, Australia, around the world, they're beholding to the people that pain for their elections, you know, so these are large corporations, often that are responsible for pollution. Like 100 companies in the world are responsible for 70 some percent of the CO2 emissions. Yeah, we're not really going after those 100 companies, we're trying to encourage politicians to make new policies to implement new programs. Meanwhile, if you read the climate science, the storytelling that they're giving us is completely different. It's saying, whoa, we have passed certain thresholds of oil availability, of clean water availability. And as we pass those thresholds, including the temperature threshold, if it gets beyond 1.5 degrees centigrade, average global temperature since the industrial revolution, if we don't contain that by 2030 by 2050, if it rolls up to 4 or 6 degrees centigrade increase by 2100, you're talking about 4 to 5 billion people exiting the planet, not in a good way. No, that's true, but what I also read on your website is so apart from true storytelling, you also refer to the fact that people can no longer tell stories. So what I read here, for instance, you know, storytelling has become displaced by beginning, middle, and so way too simplistic, grand narrative, stole by the media, by the politicians and the economists. And now at the same time, you're emphasizing the importance of storytelling. So how can we help, you know, people save the planet by becoming better storytellers? Because that's basically one of the, you know, main tasks that we seem to have. I think there's a marvelous book they could all read. What's that? All right. By Erika Bringadol and Veronica. We got to want language and business, language and work. And we could get beyond. When I read the book, it's about going beyond the simplistic understanding of language, you know, going beyond the training we get in having a beginning, middle end, for example, in my terms. But in language studies, it's about, okay, we put a brand on everything and then that brand is going to be indicative of what the organization is about. Well, no, the organization is a tomorrow of many, many stories in many rooms. And we have to sort that out more critically. You know, there's a lot of pressures that politicians are under to hide the truth about climate change, to be in climate denial, to not fun professors in universities that are coming out with statements about water and air quality and temperature, etc. You know, because it's a threat to the capitalist economy. Indeed, the media trying to quieten or mute people who speak up like Greta Thunberg, who's talking to be analyzing in our final part of our podcast. Yeah. And I also like the fact that you mentioned that we have to be more critical or train people to be more critical. And that's basically one of the aims that we have with our podcast. We want to, you know, raise people's awareness about language and how it works and what people do with language and what people do with stories and how language and stories shape different versions of the actual truth, because there is not one truth. There are many different truths, depending on who's, you know, reporting on it. So that is a nice way, actually, I think, to round off, perhaps, and to, you know, study critical analysis of the snippet of data that we have on the Greta Thunberg-Ten talk. What do you think? Yeah. Yes. Let's hear a different version of the climate story then. Yes. Okay. The more a positivist approach. David, it's been an honor and a pleasure. So thank you very much, my side. Yeah. Thanks for being here, David. It was wonderful to talk to you. Yeah. Thank you. Bernard and thank you, Erica and thank you, Veronica. I hope that we can find common ground with storytelling and language at work. Have to admit that at first I was a bit baffled because I know David's work from the 90s, really. So all this stuff about organization storytelling, but I don't know his recent work that well. And I was at first a thought, where is the link here? Really? I could see that it was a metaphor that he started out with, the Tamara Land thing where he went into that mention, but I couldn't make out what it was a metaphor for at first. How did you deal with that? Well, I liked it because I think it's a really good way of trying to capture the parallel worlds and the interpretation of these parallel worlds that are happening, whether it's an organization, whether it's a business, whether it's politics, or whether it's our personal lives. And this display where you could choose to follow characters, you get to know different snippets from a bigger story, different versions of the same story. So your choice in choosing where you go and where you look and what you listen to will affect the kind of sense you make of what's happening. I mean, it's like these books you get, you know, where they say, if you want this to happen, go to page 97 and you get like 10 stories within one book or you have it in video games as well, which rely on story lines. That's exactly it. Absolutely. So you choose which level you want to go to. And actually when you talk about companies or think about companies, it's the same thing. You get to choose which story of the company you want to read. So in that respect, his tomorrow land metaphor does make sense, especially in a few of present day stories that we have online or via website or via the traditional media. So yeah, one point for me that was really important that didn't quite come out was, you know, he told these stories about Walt Disney, how he was this entrepreneurial genius, but also very combative and difficult person by the sound of it. And I said, but what stories right test of time and I think that's a power issue as well. This fourth story that an employee back in the 1950s told another employee at their coffee break saying, God, yesterday he was insufferable again. That is not a stop because he did this and that. That is not a story that we likely to hear 60 years later. But it's a story of powerful people and powerful corporate figures that get passed down, not the voice of the little employees somewhere. Right, but had there been social media or Facebook where they could vent and tell these stories about the other side, the dark side of the management guru, the leadership god or the leader god, then, you know, we would have heard as we now hear these stories from about current leaders, you know, people who are often treated as the biggest leader personalities of our era, but at the same time we hear about their other side, their dark side as well. Oh, yes, and there's a nice anecdote I could tell you about leading into our analysis of Greater Thunberg, for instance. We have a similar girl in Belgium, her name is Anuna the Wave of the Wave. And you know, she was very popular at some stage and all of a sudden people tweeted or posted a picture of her bedroom, which was very messy. It was full of clothes and things like that. Well, that's your average teenage dress bedroom, really. Yeah, that's it. But they were kind of bashing her. Look at her, you know, trying to save the planet and her bedroom is as dirty as hell. Because of that, she lost credibility. Now, this is something that would never have happened, say 30 to 40 years ago, because those are the hidden stories and then they explode in your face. And I guess the biggest lesson here for anyone who listens to this podcast for practical reasons that wants to learn from these insights is that if you want to listen into your own company stories, one version is not enough. It's far from enough. There are different versions of the same story and even more importantly, perhaps if you want to help people make sense of how things are or how things should be, you know, you should provide them with the right versions of a story or the versions which cater for all the audiences, right? Absolutely. Yeah. So different stories for different audiences. True. And that applies to all companies, even including Ben and Jerry's ice cream company, I would say. Okay, so analysis, we have a very interesting text for today. This is from the TED Talk of Greater Thunberg that she gave in November 2018. We will supply the video link to her TED Talk on the blog. And we are going to be analyzing the first two minutes of this TED Talk. But we will be also sharing insights about the rest of her talk on our website. So if you're interested in our analysis, please come and visit the website and also share your thoughts on this talk or other stories on Twitter and on our blog. Right. So this is we heard about, you know, neoliberal narratives of the climate emergency and the interview a bit. But we close this episode with a story of the climate emergency and also a personal story from a very different perspective. From a climate activist, Greta Thunberg, who is, as we recording, this is 16 and started what was known as the climate strike for the future, the school strike for the future where she, one Friday, decided not to go to school but just sit in front of, I think, the parliament in Stockholm and protest and ask for action, which has since become a global movement really of young people and teenagers. And she got famous and her action got famous and spread around pretty fast. And in November 2018, she was invited in Stockholm to give a TED Talk. And it's a thought one, but it has been very, very influential. So she talks to an audience in the room, but she also has a global, very, very diffuse audience. As of last week, 2.9 million people had viewed her TED Talk. So she reaches lots and lots of people. And it's very interesting what she does in this talk because she starts with a personal story. When I was about 8 years old, I first heard about something called climate change or global warming. Apparently, that was something humans had created by our way of living. I was told to turn off the lights to save energy and to recycle paper to save resources. I remember thinking that it was very strange that humans were in animals species, among others, could be capable of changing the earth's climate. Because if we were, and if it was really happening, we wouldn't be talking about anything else. As soon as you turn on the TV, everything would be about that. Headlines, radio, newspapers, you would never read or hear about anything else as if there was a world war going on. But no one ever talked about it. If burning fossil fuels were so bad that it threatened our very existence, how could we just continue like before? Why were there no restrictions? Why wasn't it maybe legal? To me, that did not add up. It was too unreal. So when I was 11, I became ill. I fell into depression, I stopped talking, I stopped eating. In two months, I lost about 10 kilos of weight. Later on, I was diagnosed with a spurgis syndrome, OCD and selective mutism. That basically means I only speak when I think it's necessary. Now is one of those moments. The starts telling us a story about her eight-year-old self from her perspective now as a 16-year-old. How she first heard about climate change and climate emergency and that CO2 emissions were causing a lot of damage to the planet and potentially endangering humanity itself. How for her? She gives us reported conversations with her parents and with teachers, etc. Also, let's us into the thinking of her eight-year-old self. We have a bit of story in the past there. What the adults said and what then happened or didn't happen as a result didn't make a lot of sense to her back to her eight-year-old self in that hypothetical story. Not hypothetical but in this past story space of a younger self. Absolutely. People who listen to the fragments of what you might have noticed is that you have this kind of nice frame setting which we can relate to La Bove's methodology and framework again. For instance, the orientation, that would be the first bit. That is the introduction to the setting of the story. Her very first sentence is, "When I was about eight-year-old, I first heard about something called climate change." The heroine has the micro-level story of an eight-year-old girl and that attracts the attention. Just like the MP drew your attention, Veronica, when you were listening, we're actually not listening at the time, but then you started listening, perhaps. This is what she does here. That's right. She introduces the main character. It's a story about climate emergency but it's also a story about herself, and her reflections. Then she also builds credibility for herself. She says, "This didn't make sense to me really because if emissions are so bad, then we should stop all emissions." That makes sense. The grown-ups weren't doing that. She says, "Well, that really started getting to me and later I was then diagnosed with a spurtless syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorder." In a way, that is something that could limit her credibility or her legitimacy to talk about this, but she turns around. She tells us more about herself. She tells us another story from her past about her diagnosis and how that story actually made her see what's happening around the climate emergency in a different way. Because of that, she actually has a vision. It's still the vision of an 80-year-old when we go back to the questions that she asks. That is something I like very much about that approach in this particular speech as well. We get a succession of questions. If burning fossil fuels were so bad that they threatened our very existence, how could we just continue like before? Why were there no restriction? That's rhetorical questions, of course. Those are the typical questions that a child might ask to the parents. Why didn't you tell me this? Why is this this way? Why is it that way? We have this nice frame that clashes with the adult world and the people who shouldn't know better, but they don't know better. Yes. I guess if you look at the story from a story as a process perspective, what you may find or see is that there is the story world that she creates her 80-year-old self. We have the there and then story world, but this is very important when we think about stories. There is also the here and now of the story world talking to the audience, talking to YouTube viewers or TED Talk viewers. These questions and these conditionals and hypothetical claims about the past are a very beautiful way of linking her there and then story world of the past, but also making an impact on the here and now and on the audience. Because even though these questions are asked by her 80-year-old self, they are still relevant, they are still valid, they are still making us think about the answers. It's a beautiful way of linking. We may say like I said, oh these are rhetorical questions, but I guess to her 80-year-old self, they weren't rhetorical questions. Absolutely. And she's taking us back to that former self, she's saying these are not rhetorical questions, these are actual questions that we should all be asking ourselves even if we're not 80 years old anymore. So that's a good link and I mean we don't have time to go into the whole speech or the whole talk she gives, but she later on in the talk then actually also tells a hypothetical story about the future. She does. She does. When she will be 75 and maybe sitting with her children and any grandchildren and what will the world look like then if we don't take action now? We'll have more to say about that in the companion blog, but she really, it's a very complex thing that she's doing about the three story worlds in the past, in the present and in the future. Really. And of course the whole function ultimately is to mobilize. It's to mobilize people to make them see these questions again as genuine questions, not rhetorical questions and to raise awareness and get people to mobilize people and also to get people to lobby governments to take actions around climate. And what I think was she also does with these different stories. So talking about her past and talking about her future, she's confronting people with the fact that her story still continues while the audience's story is somewhat shorter. She refers to 2005 and that is what most people haven't minded and the audience when they talk about the future and the end of their story. And then she says, "You know, but my story continues and wants my story to be heard." And I thought that's actually very, very clever. Yes, so maybe that's a good point to ask our listeners to think about stories they encountered recently and whether they can see these stories as, you know, how they work in terms of the story world and the here and now and what are their functions and think about stories as processes. And maybe you can share these insights with us on our blog. We would be happy to read your thoughts on stories and storytelling. If people want to share the hug and our story feel free, you know, it doesn't have to be done in cherries. It's always too sad. It's always sad to have ice cream. It's always sad to have ice cream if you want to object. Okay, we'll be back next time, but for today it's by far from us. Thank you for listening, bye. Thank you for listening, bye bye. Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed the podcast, which was brought to you with the support of the Centre of Critical Inquiries into Society and Culture at Aston University in the UK and the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at the University of Gett, Belgium.