E63. Why You Need Narrative with Randy Olson

Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.

Francisco Mahfuz 0:00

Hi everyone, Francisco here. Just before we get started, I wanted to share something I'm really excited about. I recently launched the story powers bootcamp, a course that teaches you everything you need to know about how to find craft and tell stories that work. But it's not just an online course, because you get personalised feedback from me for all the practical activities in three hours of life coaching to work through any challenges, or focus on specific projects. So it's like if you bought a cookbook, but the chef came along with it. So go to story powers.com and click on Course, all the information you need will be there. So please check it out. And if you love the show, and would like to support us, you can go to buy me a coffee.com forward slash story powers. I drink about five coffees a day, so any support would be much appreciated. All right on with the show.

Welcome to the story powers podcast, a show about the power of stories that people who tell them and why you should be doing it too. I'm your host, keynote speaker and storytelling coach Francisco first. My guest today is Dr. Randy Olson. Rain is a PhD evolutionary biologist from Harvard, and a graduate of the legendary USC Film School with three documentaries under his belt. But one day, he got fed up with how scientists were doing such a poor job of talking about their work. Therefore, he decided to join his Hollywood skills with a scientific background to uncover and teach the abt framework, which has been called the DNA of story. There's now got five books on the subject, including Houston, we have a narrative, why science needs story. And his latest narrative is everything abt framework and narrative evolution. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has also been the director of operations at Microsoft micros leg productions in Azerbaijan for the past 51 years. But I have a feeling I shouldn't take that part of his story too seriously. Ladies and gentlemen, Randy Olson. Randy, welcome to the show.

Randy Olson 2:08

Good morning, Francisco. Thank you very much. Great to be here.

Francisco Mahfuz 2:13

Yes, I, I have a feeling you noticed what I did there. With that introduction.

Randy Olson 2:19

You did the A, the B and the T the whole package.

Francisco Mahfuz 2:23

So we are going to obviously talk a lot about the the abt abt framework in this conversation. But before that, can we just talk about what is the biggest problem with communication, and the problem that got shut down this road? And it was just the other day, we had a quick chat and you share with me an article by James Carville. So should we sort of talk about that, and what got you into this whole mess to begin with?

Randy Olson 2:51

Putting it simply probably the single biggest problem with communication is the failure to listen. And that's kind of universal and ubiquitous. My first book, don't be such a scientist, got really nice reviews, but the fellow who reviewed it for Science Magazine, which is the most important science publication, knighted states, said great book, but he failed to address the single biggest problem for scientists and really, for anybody comes to communication, which is the in ability to listen. And the further you go with this stuff, the more you realise that's at the core of big problems. Nowadays, a lot of people come to me for help. And if they're doing something really super duper important and awesome and interesting. I say to them, you know, I'll give you some help for free no charge, I only asked two things. Number one that you listen to number two, the you experiment, and that's as much as it takes when people are listening, experimenting, you're starting to get smarter, you figure out things. But there's so many people I've made that deal with them verbatim. And then after a few months, you guys a person is not listening to anything. They really got it in their head, like I know how to do this. I'm really good at this. And then at that point, you kinda have to pull the plug, like why bother? So yeah, listening, I think is the single biggest problem. And you see in the United States, for example, societies become so polarised the two sides aren't listening to each other. They're just off on their own thing. We're right. We're right. No, you're right. No, we're right. Everybody's right. So yeah, listening.

Francisco Mahfuz 4:19

But after you get past the point of listening, I think we can both agree that there's also another big problem, which is even sometimes when you have people's ears, the way you're speaking to them, is just not helping you. It's not Dr. helping drive your message home. So in the in the article, James Carville, who is a well known political strategist. He's in his a Democrat, and he's talking about how Republicans are very good at messaging, and Democrats are terrible at it. And so not to go into the whole politics of it. But one example he uses, which which you quoted me when we talked was about climate change. How

Randy Olson 4:59

should I Should I just read the quote, I've got it right here and read it it is such a powerful quote. It's a good, perfect starting point. So this is two weeks ago in Vox, James Carville, Democratic Party strategist gave an interview. Five, six years ago, I teamed up with him for a while and tried to have some impact on Hillary Clinton's campaign using the abt framework and we hit a big brick wall there. The one fun thing that came out of it was he had me come speaking his course at Tulane University. And he's an amazing guy, amazing communicator, has very deep narrative intuition. So in this interview two weeks ago, here's the bit let me read it to you. The interviewer asked him, Republicans aren't just more comfortable lying. They're more comfortable with slogans and sound bites, and that's partly why they're more effective at defining themselves and defining the Democrats. James Carville said, let me give you my favourite example of Metropolitan over educated arrogance. Take the climate problem, do you realise that climate is the only major social or political movement that I can think of that refuses to use the emotion? Where's the identifiable song? Where's the bumper sticker? Where's the slogan? Where's the flag? Where's the logo? We don't have it. Because with faculty politics, what you do is appeal to reason. You don't need the sloganeering and soundbites. That's for simple people. All you need are those timetables and temperature charts. And from that everyone will just get it? Well, that's not how the world works. That's not how people work. And Republicans are way more disciplined about taking a thing and branding it. Elites will roll their eyes at that. But I'd ask quote, how's that working out for you? Most people agree with us on health care and minimum wage and Roe v. Wade, and even on climate. So why can't we leverage that? So that's what you're talking about there. And yeah, that is a really powerful and sad, profound quote that gets to the heart of it all. And it's a fundamental divide. There was a, there was a study done 2019 In Denmark, by a group of linguistics folks. And they what they did was they looked at the language of political speeches from around the world. And they examined over a third of a million political speeches from the right and the left. And the title of their article tells their whole conclusion, which is liberals lecture conservatives communicate. And that's exactly what Carl was talking about there. Liberals lecture conservatives communicate. And I love liberals, you know, I voted Democrat my whole life, I support their goals. But they can just be a waste of time. They're their own worst enemy. So often, and they are communicating right now, some of these issues on on such an elite up in the clouds level. And that's in the other part of that interview that was widely quoted, what he talked about Carville talked about was, the term he developed was faculty lounge, communication, basically, that these folks are addressing these issues, even issues of race, and immigration, all those sorts of things that are such broad and relatively simple issues in terms of the masses being involved with them. And they're addressing them in language that is so complex and obfuscated and erudite, the public just isn't hearing them, just like what in the world are you talking about? Come down to our level. And that's the crucial thing. And that's what I learned. Many, many years ago, when I left my position as a professor, I was a tenured professor, marine biology. So I'd done the whole career as a scientist and felt that I was very, very smart, and decided, well, that was easy. Conquering that world, I guess I'll go conquer the world of filmmaking, moved to Hollywood, and within a few months, got my ass handed to me by an acting teacher more than anybody else. But you know, plenty of other instances. But in particular, an acting teacher who just ripped me to shreds the first night in the acting class in front of all the students, and said, she said, I don't even want you in this class, because I know you're tight. You're an academic, and you do not listen. And I can't do anything with you. If you don't listen. You can't make somebody act if you don't acting. One of the fundamental phrases in acting is acting is reacting, where you have to be in the class or in the scene and in the moment, and you have to be looking at everything around you taking it all in and listen to it. Because the audience wants to know How are you going to react? They don't want to watch you give some big prepared speech. So that was the beginning of this journey that it's 26 years later, and I have, I think, listen to a few things, learned a few things. And if there's any one thing I learned more than anything else, it's when I've gone back to the academic world and tried to relate to them what I've learned, all you get from them is Shut up. Shut up. You're wrong. You're stupid. You left the ivory tower, you're outside there. You don't understand our world, you boba. So a lot of brick walls, but that's the journey.

Francisco Mahfuz 9:55

Something you mentioned earlier, or James Carville mentioned when you talked about Reason and an emotion. There's this quote from Donald calm, who's a neurologist, which I think exemplifies that perfectly. He says, the difference between reason and emotion is that reason leads to conclusions and emotion leads to action. And I think that's, that's one of the big problems. I talk to people about this all the time. And I talk about corporate communication and why meetings are so boring, and my presentations, send everyone to sleep. And why it's so difficult to pay attention to them is this issue of whatever they're doing with their communication is only appealing to our rational brain, not our emotional brain. And it's not engaging enough, enough of our brain to hold our attention. But though something, I hadn't really thought of it in those terms, perhaps up until now, but it's really strange how there's this idea of how it's not going to say moral, but it's, it's beneath some people to resort to more emotional communication. So when you're telling a story, or appealing to people's emotions is somehow beneath us, which we should just communicate in this strange way that no human being has ever communicated. And that doesn't work. I think you call this I'm not sure if you're referring to this particular phenomenon. But you You call this story phobia?

Randy Olson 11:23

Yeah. It You're right. It's a very big problem with the, with heavily educated people, they they believe so much, in Reason, reason, they think that reason solves everything and evidence based decision making and things of that sort. You're making me think of 1985 Man, that was a long time ago, um, I went to I back when I was a coral reef biologist, I was working in Australia and went to the international coral reef symposium in 1985. Coral reefs were still pretty healthy around the world. And the scientists were studying them. 95% of the scientists, were studying the science of coral reefs, very little involvement with environmental issues. Back then, people didn't even quite grasp yet that there could be any threats to coral reefs. They seem like a boundless resource. And one of my friends, was a woman who had been working in, she was American, but she worked in Japan and Okinawa for many years. And she gave a talk at this meeting, among all the scientists, and she was a coral reef scientist herself. But she gave a talk about this local community there in Okinawa, and how they had all these parades and ceremonies and things like that, where they celebrated the the ocean life around them, and Ted tributes to him signs and everything like that. And yet, the majority of the things they celebrated, didn't live in the waters around Okinawa anymore. They'd all been fished out and ravaged and eradicated. And she pointed out that this is the overfishing is so bad. It's spread throughout the Ryukyu Islands there. And that if it keeps going like this, there'll be nothing left. And her presentation was very humanised. And it was about the people. And it was very emotional. And oh my god that night at the big dinner. All of a sudden, I heard this fractious going on over in the corner. And there were some of these aihole scientists, these older white male scientists just ripping into her. There's no place at this meeting for that kind of garbage. You sitting up there and getting emotional in front of us over coral reefs. And you know, all you're doing is distorting the whole picture. And she ended up you know, screaming back at them, you understand. That was my first little dose of the intolerance in the science world at at times for the more humanised approach. And again, it's their own undoing what they've done exactly what Carville said there about the climate movement that's been the bane of their existence. And to give you a bit more in depth version of what he talked about there. In 2002, I was just getting involved with the issue of overfishing campaign, I ran for about four years, four or five years called shifting baselines. And one of the first things I did was, went to Seattle, and gave a talk at the University of Washington where I'd been an undergraduate by coincidence, but I was just went there because I was invited by some friends. And the talk was about overfishing. But afterwards, I end up doing a session with a whole bunch of professors that were marine biology professors, there are ocean science professors. And I remember in a conference room, like 20 of them, it was just more of a discussion with them wasn't a talk. And they said to me as a group, this was 2002. They said, we're very concerned because we're being told now we need to start educating these students on this issue of global warming that people are starting to say is going to be a problem. And what concerns us is that global warming, the science of global warming, is biogeochemistry. It's about carbon cycles and oxygen cycles and nitrogen and all these sorts of things. And that's the most boring stuff in ecology. And I knew exactly what they were talking about, because I'd taught ecology for a bunch of years. And when you teach ecology at least back then you put all the interesting stuff, the interspecific interaction stuff about competition, and predation of all these different creatures and mutualism, and all these fascinating, fun stories. That's what you go through through most of the course. And you try and stick that biogeochemistry stuff at the end of the semester, in hopes that you can stretch out the other stuff and never even get to it. And you look at most of the textbooks, textbooks back then it was at the back of the textbook, the stuff is so dry and dull and boring. By definition, it's inorganic chemistry, it's not organic chemistry. It's hard stuff for people to learn. Well, as soon as the global warming issue began to emerge, the scientists took the stage front and centre, and basically said to the environmentalists, step aside, you don't understand the science here, we're dealing with very complicated science, we're not going to win this issue, if we don't get the science out there for it's got science has got to be number one. And the environmental is pretty much yielded to them. And by 2005, or six, producer named Laurie, David began making a documentary about global warming, she felt that it was very urgent, important issue now, probably around 2002, or three, she started it, because for three or four years, she was working on this documentary, and she did the responsible thing, she put together a team of scientists as her advisory board. And I know this because one of them I interviewed for one of my films later, he told me all the stories over lunch one day, and they did their conscientious job, as scientists, they looked at versions of the film, and the outline early on all these sorts of things. She interviewed all of them. And they began going through draft after draft, giving all these notes and you know, wanting the thing to be exactly right, and accurate and evidence base, yada, yada, yada. And they bog the whole process down. And it gotten the point of three or four years to get this one documentary done for HBO. And eventually, by 2005, we had the summer of five major hurricanes in the United States, is it four or five, I think was five was one of the last ones being Katrina that devastated New Orleans and in a very public way. And basically, as this one scientist said it to me, he said, we were still in the middle of editing this documentary trying to get a finish to air on HBO. And it did eventually are called too hot not to handle. And he said Laurie, David finally came to us and said, Okay, now we want to thank all of you for your efforts on that documentary. But it's now a crisis, we've now had a summer of four or five hurricanes. And global warming is here. And I was in Hollywood that summer. And I heard those stories going around people, I was at environmental events, and everybody was saying, Oh, my God, it's already here. The climate has already changed. This is what they were warning us we're going to get every year now we're gonna have five of these giant hurricanes that are going to devastate the landscape. And so there was an urgency that emerged out of that urgency that fall, she ended up grabbing Al Gore, who'd been out wandering the countryside, giving us his sad, lonely slideshow about global warming, and putting him on a stage that sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood that was just down the road from my office at Raleigh Studios. And three of my friends went to the I think they had two or maybe three performances that they filmed, and then edited all that together into outdoors movie, or what came to be known as the outdoor movie, but it was really Lord David's movie, An Inconvenient Truth. And she had basically said to all the scientists, you know, this is too urgent, and we just can't afford to have you in the room this time around. So we're going to go do this damn thing, and we're going to have it out immediately by next spring. That's what they did. They made their movie, Damn the torpedoes. You got to admire her for bullheadedness to get something done like that certainly had the impact. But it came at a price, which was it had very poor narrative structure. It did not tell a good compelling story was not humanised the way you would like it to be on a broad human level, in interviews with the director, Davis Guggenheim. He said, You know, he talked about we tried to bring out to life because Al Gore was a boar Gore the boar. And he it was season in escapable bore, you know, nice guy, one of my closest friends worked for him in the 90s when he was the vice president. And she kept saying to me that by about 98. She was saying it's the beat. It's the Veep he's gonna be the next president. And I heard this from so many different people who all said he was really a dynamic speaker live, people go to live events, and Al Gore was great. But that didn't translate into film.

Francisco Mahfuz 19:40

It's an interesting example of the sort of the democratic approach to communication and the public anon whereas when you have when you have all Gore running against George Bush, one of them seems significantly more concerned about not saying anything that is not completely correct, but boring people While doing so, whereas Bush, we all know he wasn't a liar. I think he just got very confused. He suffered from the same problem his father did where sometimes just word salad came out. But he was a much more charismatic figure, we we kind of forget that now. But compared to our Gore, he was the guy you wanted to go out for a beer with.

Randy Olson 20:21

That was that was the whole catchphrase in 2004? Who would you rather have a beer with? Exactly. By the way, as I get going, these long winded stories, jump in and interrupt these guided however you want. I'll go on and on.

Francisco Mahfuz 20:34

You mentioned something about your god movie that the one of the problems of the Al Gore movie, which I think was already probably miles ahead of anything the scientists would have had had they had their way with it was the lack of, of narrative structure. So there's a few different things you talk about when it comes to narrative structure. I wanted to start with the smallest one, which I thought was fascinating, which is the Dobzhansky template. I don't know if I'm pronouncing this incorrectly.

Randy Olson 21:00

You could be like the undergraduates that call it the Bob Jansky.

Francisco Mahfuz 21:06

Zelinsky I think it's close enough,

Randy Olson 21:08

or I think Parkhouse now calls the dz. So that's his Abraj. Everybody has Dobzhansky, but that's right. Keep going,

Francisco Mahfuz 21:16

gentlemen. Okay. Okay. So what is the Dogen? Skid Plate?

Randy Olson 21:20

Yeah, great question. It's, I think it's very deep. Because for starters, I think I have fairly deep narrative intuition, going back to my childhood, and I don't know that I'm a great writer. But I have some sort of sense for narrative structure. And the proof of that is five books that I've written on it. And

Francisco Mahfuz 21:41

really just a second, because you've used this term twice. Now, what did you What do you define as narrative intuition?

Randy Olson 21:46

Oh, yeah, great. Thank you very much. This is your job to stop me. Don't let me get going too fast on things I explained divine. In Hollywood, the great screenwriters and the great screenwriting instructors talk about what they call story sense. And great screenwriters have got this intuitive sense for how to tell a story. They're not sitting there following a recipe, they have got a basic structure in their mind. But once they've got that structure down, then they're telling story through their own intuition. So I took that term story sense. And in my Houston, we have a narrative book, modified it into the realm that I'm working into the term narrative intuition. And what that means is that you've got such a good gut feeling for the three fundamental forces of agreement, contradiction and consequence, that you can shape a narrative over time. Intuitively, you're not following a recipe book or something like that. And this is what you get a lot of students like, why can you give us all a template for a 10? page paper? No, you can't, at some level, you got to have this intuition stuff. It's got to be driving you. And we worked now for seven years in our narrative training programme. And now 1000s of people, we worked with this abt structure with an ABTS and but therefore, has you opened the whole segment with and what you see over time, is you begin to get a feel for people who have deep narrative intuition from the outset. And those who don't. Most people have kind of a moderate amount, there are some strange people that have absolutely none. They don't know what we're talking about. They just never pick it up. And then there are some people that walk in the door that just have got it kind of a rhythm and how they talk and explain things. So narrative intuition is important in nowadays, I believe. It's kind of like three different elements to it. I think there's a genetic component. That's one thing I think that kids early on, some of them are just able to regurgitate things, and make structure of the world and others don't. They just, you know, the vast majority of them, not so much. There's an environmental thing, if you're raised in a, like in the deep south of the United States, it's a culture of the tradition of storytelling or out. I grew up in Kansas, and there were some of these farm boys that grew up on farms. And they clearly just sat there with nothing in their brains other than telling stories all day long, and it shapes the brain, I think. And then I think, thirdly, there's a developmental element of the neurons being formed in the brain over time. And if you're incubated in a storytelling environment, you are developing neurons that probably after age 25, can't be redirected and restructured. That's just my hypothesis. But I think I think I'm the guinea pig that test that idea, which is I tried to reprogram my brain at age 38. And I definitely did some improvement, but I never, you know, it's not like I could go back to square one. The 21 year olds in my film school class ended up being far better storytellers than I did. And part of the reason for that this is something that someday I hope the science world will listen to me and somebody investigate this. I firmly believe that when you become a scientist, there's sort of a fork in the road around age 15, where you start to study science books, chemistry, math, physics, all this things, they're all non narrative, they don't tell stories, they're all just information back, back, back, back, back back back. And I think you're stimulating certain brains in neurons in your brain that are growing still up to age 25. And you're hardwiring yourself in a non narrative direction. In contrast, people in the humanities are reading hundreds to 1000s of novels during the that decade from ages 15 to 25. And I think they're developing their neurons in a different direction, who knows, in probably 20 years for anybody can test that. But that's, I think, what goes on. But to get back to narrative intuition. My first year doing my PhD in evolutionary psychology, being a teaching assistant in the evolution course, we had this big fat textbook, and every chapter began with a quote from somebody famous, and one of them began with this quote from Theodosius Dobzhansky, the great geneticist, and it was an essay he'd written in the 1970s, titled nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution. And the point of that essay was that, as a biologist, you can go out and look at all these different weird shaped creatures and giraffes and platypus. And they're all these bizarre shapes and forms. And none of it makes any sense at all, until the day comes, that you learn about evolution by means of natural selection. And in an instant, when you learn that, that is the story of change in the world of biology. And suddenly, it all makes sense to you. And that's what's really fun in learning evolutionary biology, suddenly look at all these skeletons laid out on a table of different creatures. And you see, oh, my goodness, they've all got the same basic body plan. They've just taken these different bones and stretched and shaped them in different directions. But at the core of the skeletons all have a spine, they all have four appendages, all these sorts of things. And so you see that evolution is the story of change for the world of biology. And that one sentence stuck in my mind, that would have been 1978. When I first learned it.

How many years later would 2005 be when I was making my movie flock of dodos. And in the last segment of dodos, kind of the like the last quarter is where I kind of went philosophical. They're trying to synthesise everything that the whole film had been about the controversy around the teaching of evolution versus intelligent design. And in that last quarter, I use that, and I said, we can modify Dobzhansky famous quote, to apply it to today's world, which is that nothing in today's society makes sense, except in the light of the information explosion. And I honestly believe to this day, that is the narrative of my life's experience, which is that I was brought into a world in the 60s and 70s. that all made sense, you know, everybody felt like they had a handle on the world. It was all great. And then in the 80s, suddenly, information just began to go exponential. And I got to live through that. That was when I was doing my PhD. And I saw the transitions happening, where people began to shift from conscientiously trying to keep up with the information in their field, to beginning to get neurotic and nervous, like, Wow, I can't keep up. And then it turned into comedy. And it turned into everybody laughing at parties about you know, I've given up, I don't try and read the journals anymore. There's just too much. But there was a time when people felt that they could really keep on top of the information, their field, that transition happened in the 80s. And by the 90s, it was laughable. And so that changed everything, not just in our society, but it changed people's psyche, their being, their attention spans their ability to laugh, to feel grief and sorrow, everything human changed as a function of the information explosion. And then as a result in that was 2005. When I used it in the dodos movie. Then in 2013, I wrote the connection book with my two workshop co instructors, Dorie Barton and Brian Palermo. And in that, I modified that Dobzhansky quote into what we now call the Dobzhansky template. And I just tossed it out there. And I said, you know, look, here's an interesting little tool, this one sentence, just fill in the blanks, nothing in whatever your topic is, makes sense, except in the light of what you think is the really driving factor. And lo and behold, people began using it, especially in our story, circles narrative training programme, where we gave them the abt is the central tool. And then after two or three years, I began interviewing some of these groups on their experience. And over and over again, they said the same thing, which is, the abt is really powerful. But you know, the one tool that over and over again, we would have these moments where it just brought everything in clarity is the Dobzhansky template because you sit around the room, the five people around the table, and everybody takes a shot at it, and swing in the dark. And then an instant somebody says the right word, nobody thought of everybody. Oh my God, that's it and to bring that to life. As a matter of fact, in a few hours, I will be doing my podcast, abt time, and we're doing a special little feature today, in which it's called Fire. above and below, gonna have a fire conservation expert from California talking combined with a fire expert from Melbourne, Australia, about the issues of wildfire and they call it bushfire down there. And so last Friday, we very conscientiously got together for an hour of discussion. And there's also Jen Martin is my co host from Australia, so the four of us, and we began working on the stuff. And I brought out the tools, you know, you bring out the toolkit, and I said, Alright, let's go to work on what we're going to talk about, because I don't want it to be just, you know, an hour and a half of rambling about fire, I want this to be a journey that we're gonna take the audience on and build to a climax. And then we came, I pulled out the Dobzhansky, and said, let's give this a shot. And it was it was perfect. It was a perfect three or so minute long exercise where we started off, and you and the guy from Australia, so it was like nothing in the history of fight dealing with fires and issue makes sense, except in the light of what and his shot at it was ignorant arrogance. And we all soak that in and you know, and well that's, that seems a little dismissive. And then we had two or three other ones. And then finally, Jen said, misguided, misguided confidence. And bingo, we all just did. That's exactly what the whole history of is both in California, and Australia, it's a story of misguided confidence, where over and over again, they've thought they know how to manage this stuff. Alright, we're going to do this and everything they do makes it worse. And that just

Francisco Mahfuz 31:26

let me throw that back a second. Because Because I'm just afraid some people might have been lost and not caught exactly what we're talking about. We heard of jazz skin template. So the idea here is, you're just you're essentially trying to find what's the most important word or you know, two, three words about a subject. And if you if you haven't got that, there's a very big chance that your talk or your presentation or your paper or whatever you're doing is just not focused enough on what actually matters. So for example, I could if I'm, if I'm giving a keynote, and trying to convince people why they should tell stories, I could go with something Jansky template for me would be something like nothing in effective communication makes sense, except in the light of stories, or except if I want to be more granular, except in the light of emotion, you don't have emotion if you're not dealing with

Randy Olson 32:20

that. Now. Now, what was my word at the beginning, when you asked me that? Listening, they're Yeah, they're gonna sit, you remember it. Remember that because it boiled down to one simple thing exactly. And that that is exactly what I was doing right there. And actually, the key word I left out in describing this whole thing, the key word is theme. And when you take creative writing courses, and literature and things like that, and really great instructors, this is what they beat over our heads and film school that nothing that you create is going to have much resonance, unless you're working around a theme, you have to have one central thing. And that's what all the great stories that endure over the ages, if you dig deep in them, you'll find you know, this is a story about betrayal. This is a story about endurance, this is a story about loyalty. They've really got one sing, usually, you can boil it down to one core theme. So that's what it's mostly about. And that's the question ask everybody, what's the theme that you're working on? This is just a simple little one sentence template that in the practical sense, helps you find that one word, by putting in this sort of mode of thinking nothing in your topic makes sense, except in the light of what's the one thing but it's really a tool to get to the theme. And as you say, once you've got your theme, then you're you really got a great deal of power. And you can use it in presentations, you know, you don't have to say verbatim, I'm here to tell you about nothing in the world of communication made sense. You can simplify down and just say I'm here today to talk to you about one thing, one thing is listening, you know that if you don't listen, you're never going to communicate well. So let's dive in. And that this is what messaging is about. This is what I've been trying to explain to many politicians, and turns out, first thing you learn about politicians, they're the worst listeners of all, they don't listen to a damn thing. They're unbelievable. Once they get started on their campaign, there's no stopping them, and they think they've got it all figured out. And that's exactly what we found out the Hillary Clinton campaign talking to those people. They're there already. Once a candidate is out the doors on a campaign, they've got the blinders on. They're just like, This is what we're going to do. And they're not listening to anything and people aren't listening, you're not communicating, and then you're wasting time.

Francisco Mahfuz 34:28

So one question I have about the agenda template is this. I agree with the theme. I agree that how much focus it brings to whatever you're trying to communicate to have that one thing. But my question here would be is your contention that there is always when seen, or that you have to choose a theme, even if other things also play a very important part? Because if you don't, it's very difficult to communicate a message that has multiple themes.

Randy Olson 35:00

I think you have to push yourself a long ways. And ultimately, if you really do work hard on think it through, and finally say, You know what, we got three different things here, I can't really wrap it in one thing, then that's fine. But the problem is that most people don't push themselves. And most I mean, the arrogance of your average person who thinks they're so good. One of the things we say, with our training is sort of drawing from the world of Alcoholics Anonymous, their basic principle is, we can't help you until you come to us and admit you have a problem with alcoholism. And so don't come to our support groups and sit there and tell us that you're fine or whatever, you know, don't listen to us, we're only going to work with the people who come in the door saying, You know what, I finally realised, I have a problem. And we've developed that same attitude with this narrative stuff, which is it don't come to our training, if you don't think you have a problem. And we get this. It's unbelievable, we get we get some of these people. Let me tell you about one guy, we run with this abt framework course now for we're in the 14th round. So for the past year, every month is a new round. And without mentioning what government agencies we had around last year, where one guy was in the course of 30 people, and I'm doing my zoom thing, and we have a chat window. And the guy turned into a bully in the chat window. He got in there. And every time somebody to try and pose a question, he would answer it, they would say, question for Randy about this net, and then the guy would type in the whole answer. Now it's like this thing, Mr. No at all. And he ruined the whole chat window. Because after a while, nobody wanted to put a question there. Because they know what happened, this guy would jump in Mr. No at all and answer everything. And then when the whole course is done, like we don't do any evaluations, we have a dozen people that run the thing with me, and we're constantly talking to people and getting our feedback that way. But these government agencies have a standardised evaluation form their best to fill out. And then they insist on sending us all that garbage. And we just kind of glance at it, because it's so sort of boilerplate that it's largely useless. But what was priceless was was this guy, and it had to be this guy. One of the questions in their evaluation form. They asked him on a scale of one to five, how much? What was your level of knowledge of the subject before you took the whole training programme? He's the only guy ever to give himself a five. Yeah, and like, you know, people usually like a two or three, and even us, the instructors, we give ourselves a four you know, you're never done with narrative. And this the only guy ever, Mr. Know, it all gave himself a five. So when you get people like that, there's absolutely nothing you can do with them. They're not listening. They're just kind of bulldozing through. But when you get the people that listen, and they really are experimenting, trying things out, it's really fun to work with them and see how they can start to shape things. So it's a long process.

Francisco Mahfuz 37:44

There was something you said right at the beginning, and I I left it dangling and I should have picked it up there. And then which was you mentioned, I believe this three primal forces of narrative agreement, contradiction and consequence. Yes. Okay. So because that's going to be to finally get to the to the abt but what I wanted to just get it out there. I don't think we need to talk about it in a great deal. But But I think this helps people understand. I love it, that you have sort of three frameworks, you have the extremes of the of the communication expectrum. So the first one I think everybody recognises, which is the end and and framework. So everybody that has children has seen a child tell a story that way. Everybody that has a boring colleague or relative, that's how boring people are, or people who have not been trained to be better storytellers, tell stories. I did this. And I did that. And I did this other thing. And I did this other thing. And what that does is bore people, nothing goes anywhere. And then on the other side of it, you have what you think would be called the d h y, right? Yes. So the despite however, and yet all contradictions, right. Cuz this contradicts that that contradicts the other thing, and it's really hard to follow the plot, which then leads us to the abt which is end, but in there for which, which we'll get or realised out of Trey Parker from South Park, right?

Randy Olson 39:14

That that was my first alerting to it, but then I quickly went to work researching it. And they didn't come up with it. They had picked it up from their screenwriting instructors, the fellow who first articulate as best I can see, his fellow named Frank, Danielle in 1986, he gave a speech and he was legendary screenwriting instructor, I was lucky enough to have his course the year before he passed away at USC, he became professor there. And in the speech in 1986. Right in the middle that speech, there's very simple couple of paragraphs. And the first one basically says, we when we write first drafts of screenplays, but you realise this applies to everything. We fall into the dreaded pattern of and then and then and then it's in the revisions that we begin to change some of those events to butts in their force. That's what turns it from just being a diary entry into a story. And that is so true. And I try to explain to scientists the same thing. You know, when you do your research, you eventually sit down and you put together the first draft, which is and then and then and then and then. And that's fine. That's where you start. It's just having the wherewithal to realise, wait a second, we got to go. We got to work harder than this, that it's almost all this stuff just comes down to work. Are you interested in working or not? Turns out most people aren't. Most people are really lazy. Thus, the title of the new book, the narrative, Jim, this is the entire philosophy that we've developed, which is you and I learned this from the improv actors. They talk about improv acting. Improv is like a muscle that has to be conditioned over time, an improv actor can't just jump up on a stage having not done improv for two years, and expect to do a good performance. You have to get into shape. You have to be working on this stuff. Day in and day out. My colleague Brian, Palermo's a really accomplished improv actor for I've worked with him for 10 years. And for over 15 years, he's in a weekly show, on Wednesday nights that I've been to, you know, probably about 25 times. But he does that to keep in shape. And so don't get paid much of anything for it. It just gets together with five or six fellow actors, you have to stay in shape, you have to take this bring this physical fitness mentality to it, which the academic world just doesn't buy into. They just, you know, that's part of their arrogance. Well, we're so gifted, and Brian, people hang on our every word. No, they don't maybe they did in the 1950s, and 60s, and 70s 60s, and 70s. But they don't anymore, we're in a world of too much information. And you people need to bite the bullet and go to the narrative gym and try and get yourself into some sort of shape. But it takes work that's at the core, nothing in maybe I'm going to revise my Dobzhansky maybe it's not about listening. Maybe it's about work. But getting back to your question,

Francisco Mahfuz 41:54

I find interesting to mention the 50s and 60s because I I am still baffled by the fact that one of the most watched PBS documentaries of all time, is a six part interview with Joseph Campbell. So on prime time, PBS air this thing, so the series of very, I think hour long interviews or conversations really around interviews with with a journalist and Joseph Campbell, who is the person who wrote The Hero with 1000 faces, which is the person that called the fight the hero's journey. As to some degrees, he is the father of you know, Hollywood storytelling as as we see today. And this was a big success. People were tuning in to watch them, you know, talking about life and the universe and how stories fit into this six hours long of that thing. Whereas today, I find it very difficult to believe that, that that type of show would have a primetime audience, the way it did back then this wasn't cable. This wasn't people specifically tuning in for me. This was a, it was open to VST.

Randy Olson 43:03

I was there I remember it well. Yes, my, I was married at the time, and my wife was obsessed with it. And I I'm sorry, but I sat and tried to watch that I thought the guy was boring. And I still can't make it through any of his books, Joseph Campbell, he was I think he was not a great communicator. But he had a brilliant mind for, for structure and analysis. And that's the place that he plays in history, which is that he came along in the 1930s and 40s. In an era where storytelling around the world was something that had never really been looked at that much analytically. And he posed a very simple question, which is all these different religions and cultures around the world, at the core of their practices are stories. And he asked the question, are there stories all completely different? Or are there any similarities with how they tell these stories? And in the beginning of his book, he says that it's a great little quote, I always use in our course, which is, he said, there are course, countless differences between how they told stories, but this is a book about similarities. And that's what I'm interested in seeing if there's similarities, because that's how we advance our knowledge. That's what science does, you go out and look for the simple unifying theories. And that's what he found was sure enough, as you went around the world, there was a commonality in the structure of how these stories were being told, and they're all about heroes. And that's the title of his book, The Hero with 1000 faces meaning that's the same story, just a different faiths and every one of these different cultures. And that was the core of those interviews, although there wasn't the answer to what you were you know mystified by there was the New Age Movement. Those are the people that got that locked on to Him and His thing was, follow your bliss. And, you know, there was kind of an elemental laziness. I think, in that that catch phrase, follow your bliss, meaning, you know, don't, don't be constrained by the system. Just go and do whatever you want to do. It's sort of like it was a latter day free love and era, something From the 60s, follow your bliss, just go do whatever you want to do. Don't let anybody tell you what you ought to do in life. And I wonder how many people ruin their entire lives by following their bliss? Unemployment broken?

Francisco Mahfuz 45:12

Yes, I, I can see, I can see how that has happened. So let's let's go from the lofty, the lofty peaks of Joseph Campbell, and in the hero's journey and the hero with 1000 faces to to the super practical applications of the abt now for anyone who hasn't caught on to cottoned on to this yet. The abt is essentially just a different way of saying, setup problem resolution is more codified, because you could actually use the words in the abt to structure what you're saying. But it's, and is usually the context. You know, the parts of the story that are in agreement, then, but is very introduced the problem or the conflict, or whatever you want to call it, and therefore are the consequences. And I really like how in the latest book of yours that I read the Houston we have a narrative. I really like how you blatantly said you're going to do it, and then use the abt to structure the chapters. A works really well, then it just gives it that dynamic just works really well. And you've tried it in so many different things now, I haven't Sure.

Randy Olson 46:17

Yeah, exactly. Endlessly. In fact, we're going to try it right this moment, because you're going to tell me the one sentence abt of your professional journey that's brought you to podcasting right, now give me a one off the top of your head, one sentence using and been there for?

Francisco Mahfuz 46:32

Right, so I'll do it about podcasting, because I think that it's slightly broader the journey but but so I spent many years working as a as a financial advisor. And in everything was fine, the bills were paid, the home life was okay. But I bought boards, I didn't feel particularly excited getting up in the morning. And I thought, you know, scattered the more to life than this. And so I decided to follow my bliss, as Joseph Campbell would say, which was telling stories and getting up on stage and talking to people. And at the perfect moment to launch that career, when COVID hit, I started working as a as a professional speaker and storytelling coach,

Randy Olson 47:22

perfectly executed right there that I mean, for everybody listening, you just nailed it. You know, that was there was nothing boring. And what you just said it was not the least bit confusing. There's a lot more detail. Now, we could spend the next hour as you go in depth on what you just presented there. But you absolutely nailed it there. And now let's take a look. And this is what we do in the course, is first thing you want in the end and and material is agreement. And you want that first part to have no drama and no conflict, no, no contradiction, nothing that's going to activate the narrative part of somebody's brain. And you did it perfectly, you know, said I was leaving this life, and it was great, and everything was just fine. And you got to the end of a boring story, you know, everything was fine. So you know, that was it, then you flipped it on the word but, but it wasn't enough. And that's exactly what you want. And it's right on that word. But that is your best hope of grabbing and focusing attention in an audience is the word but many of my friends, one of my best friends is speaks a lot. He's one of the world's top experts on medical marijuana. And just about two or three weeks ago, we're having a conversation, he said, You know, I've gotten to the point now when I give these big talks, and I get into q&a, and I if I find myself at all losing my way, all I have to do is say one word, but soon as you say, but the whole audience leans in. But But what but what they're, you can't say you can't end a sentence with but you know, it instantly cues, something's coming, and it's going to be in a different direction. And that fires up the narrative part of the brain. So that's what a lot of this stuff comes down to in the three step model that we've developed. Now that's in the new book, The narrative gym. That is the core of the training programme. Step number one, we've learned through pure experiences, the best thing to do once you come up with your abt that you just did there, then you dive into the middle of it, and you go to the button about statement, that's the statement of your problem. And first thing I would be doing with you if we were doing this live in the course, you would have that abt that you just said to me, it would be up on the screen for us to work on. And I would say Alright, let's go to the but in five words or less, what is your problem in this narrative? And you would answer. Life wasn't fulfilling. There's three words that told the whole problem. That's the driving force of that abt that you gave us. And that's it. You know, that was your problem. Life wasn't fulfilling. Once you identify the problem, then the second step is to go backwards in the abt back to the end, because the end is the setup. And you can't figure out how to set up a problem until you know what the problem is. So you Got to get that problem locked in. And in these we do what are called Working circles as part of the course people get together and five individuals and work on one person's Abt. And one of the rules is you can't go forward until you got a total agreement on what the problem is. Some of these working circles, they'll spend the whole half hour just trying to figure out what the problem is. And that's all they'll do. And they'll end up a half an hour later, like, you know, we're still working on exactly what is the problem? And you find a lot of people you say, you know, what's the problem, this project you're doing, and they'll roll their eyes, and then they'll itemise like four different problems. And there's your problem, right? There is, you know, can you boil it down to the one thing, but then once you've got that problem laid out, then you go backwards to the setup. And now that tells you two main things there, you want to give us the ordinary world, what is the whole thing which is about your life, and then you want to also try and weave in there, what's at stake? What's important, and you mentioned your family in there. And so you already had it, you know, your instincts were really good with how you crafted that thing in a moment's notice off the top of your head with no and by the way, ladies and gentlemen listening to this, we had, he had no forewarning of that I throw that, you know, people out of the blue, you did a great job. And then just mentioning, you know, your family, we could work further on that what's at stake, because that's what makes the but have a big impact is if you've told us about something, you know, and all your life, you just had hoped you would have a happy fun, home life and you've got the family and everything seems to be perfect as your whole life's dream. But when you finally got there turns out that wasn't enough, it's by setting up before you get to the but that you have depth of impact. And these rules then radiate out into the world of literature and all this sort of stuff, you start to see how universal this is all great novels and things like that. Really great novels of over the ages. One of the things I noticed when I was growing up and reading some of these epic novels is that a lot of the best ones have got just page after page and and and stuff, you know, 100 pages at the beginning, just getting the story laid down there. And some of that you got to really plough through, and then it starts to engage and get good like Moby Dick or something like that, you know, you got to lay down all this and then and set up. But if you do it, and you pay the price, then when you start to get to the drama, the contradiction, it starts to get really fun and interesting. So that was perfect. What a great demonstration well done.

Francisco Mahfuz 52:18

I think it must be said in fairness sake that I followed your work for a while have read a recent very recently read one of your books. So although I hadn't voiced it in that exact way, I think it was percolating in my brain to some degree. So it's not as if I've just been introduced to the abt and I'm doing it off the top of my head. But but the one thing I think is really, really powerful about it, because I know that one criticism that you you have gotten before, is how this is sort of a dumbing down of, of narrative or, or, or of anything. And I think it's just people need to realise how that setup of agreement, contradiction and consequence, that I mean agreement, we might call it something I'll normally call that context. But if you have, if there's context, conflict and consequence, that's what a story is. And you can do that in an elevator pitch that lasts 30 seconds, you can do that in a three minute story. Or you can broaden that out to a much larger scene of a movie, or a novel or a paper. Or, you know, you do that in your book, every chapter or most chapters that is have that type of abt structure. And I find it really interesting how a lot of people seem to have come to the Beatty part of it, at least on their own. Because we you know, there was Trey Parker we talked about from South Park, who said that, you know, from reading a script, and there's too many amps, I know it's boring. So I replaced the amps for but, and therefore, I spoke to a different storyteller. Who works in a complete different spaces name is Matthew Dix. And he's probably the biggest winner of all time of the boss is one that thing the story is Lam 51 times. And in his book, he talks about, you know, if your stories are you want to add excitement to your stories, just add button there force, he had later found out that Trey Parker had said the same thing, but naturally just migrated to the same thing.

Randy Olson 54:14

Yeah, this stuff is a it's not that new. And the philosophers in the 16 1700s figured it out. Hegel and Kant and others came up with what was called the triad, which is thesis, antithesis, synthesis, these are the three forces. It's just not that new. And unfortunately, everybody wants things to be new. And so they come up with all this complexity throw on it, and people tend to look down on things oh, that's just old. That's for old people, old fashioned whatever. But it's it's just simply the way that the world works is that communication works. I came up with an abt yesterday in preparation for this little discussion, which from from my world is lots of people work on science communication, and good luck to them, but they don't have a model I do there. For I win, sorry, that's the battle that I've got right now is that nobody else has had a model, nobody else has a model. They're all out there. And what they have is, you know, just boxes and boxes of all kinds of tips and techniques and things like that thrown together. But the abt is a model. And the more we work with it, including today, we'll be doing another round of the course, this round 14 Another session, and what are we at 14 three today. And with every session, we're spotting new elements, but it's basically the end. But therefore, it provides a model on which you can hang these things. So I was just telling you about those elements, you hang in the opening material, which is the ordinary world and what's at stake, but there's all these other bits and pieces that we're learning can slot in there. And it becomes a systematic approach to communication that starts simple, then radiates an infinite complexity. That's a model, nobody else has a model. And so I have a hard time talking with a lot of these other people, because in our model there, I mean, I'm interested if somebody feels they have a competing model, but there isn't any competing model, because as Park Howard said, The abt is the DNA of story. Once upon a time, the early 50s, there were multiple theories models of how DNA was structured. But eventually Watson and Crick show, here's how it's structured. There's four nucleotides, and then there's the double helix. And that's it. And after that, there were no other competing models. There's just one way the DNA is put together. There's only one way that this narrative stuff is put together these three forces agreement, contradiction, consequence. It's not at all surprising. You say that guy that went all the, you know, the math competitions converged on the button, and therefore that's it. It's just, it's just how the brain works. Nature.

Francisco Mahfuz 56:40

I guess that what a lot of the problem a lot of people have is that. So there's a few problems that I can see, is it enough? And I don't think we're going to have time to go into them in too many major detail. But one problem is that some people have narrative intuition. In can't quite understand that other people don't know the curse of knowledge and all of that. So I think I do to a great extent, so I write my own stories, or craft them or tell them I'm not thinking about structuring. But what I have learned by teaching this stuff is that even for people that want some people don't have that narrative integration. So they need the framework to hang whatever they're trying to say on because he won't come naturally to them. And chew, even for people that have narrative intuition. They're not going to use it as a structure to put it together. But they can still use it as a diagnosis tool. So you think you know what you're doing? You don't need this, this is dumping it down for you fine. Now that you've done it, go back on it, and check. Okay, have you gotten this? Are all these points there? Are they in a reasonable order? So it flows? Because if not, then your intuition was a bit off there. And I say this with no arrogance whatsoever, because I just did it this morning. So I wrote a story. I put it on social media. And then I looked at it and said, Hold on, I haven't laid out the code, like there is context, but I put it after the problem. So the contrast between where, you know, it was a problem my daughter was having, she was sort of being bullied in school at four, it was like a tiny bit of bullying, but still being bullied. And I hadn't explained how she was. So when I introduced the problem, you don't get that contrast. So I just went and inverted the order in the story. And as soon as I look at it, like, Okay, that's it. Now I've given you a normal kid that is super confident. And now this has happened. And so because of that she's now doubting herself. But we even sort of the natural storytellers, you know, inverted commas, you miss stuff. And if you don't have some sort of framework or diagnosis to you can't catch yourself, because perhaps you're just being arrogant and thinking I never make a mistake. But I think I think any type of structure framework that is basic enough that cannot be applied broadly, is something people should learn. If nothing else, just to check, okay, but that didn't really work. Why? Oh, yeah, I know what I've done. This is not there. That's not there.

Randy Olson 59:05

One of the long term things we've learned in the beginning is sort of following on the the South Park guys, we thought that the basic thing was get rid of the ads and the button that therefore it's you know, that's it's all about the button therefore isn't and get rid of the and avoid the end and anything over time you come to realise the button that therefore that's the easy stuff. That's the visceral stuff. Once you got the problem established, it's obvious what the therefore is going to be. And the problem is kind of there already. The hard part over the long term is the and NSF. It's the context what you say. And one of the things you see is kids are really bad at that when we have kids, high school kids do ABTS, they start with the problem. They don't know the context. They don't know what to put in that blue material that you find in the blue material at the beginning of the abt they're already into the problem. But that is going to result in a shallow experience and older people. That's one of the beauties of age with age. comes experience with experience comes the ability to craft context to understand why these things are important in terms of the big picture. Kids don't grasp the big picture. So there are just simple physiological limitations of narrative that people don't want to talk about. Because most people want to believe that Oh, my God, kids are brilliant, they can do anything. Another camp sorry, hate to give you the truth. There are a lot of things kids can't do yet. They need to gather experience. And with age comes the knowledge and the ability to create to put things into context. And you're right context is the be all and end all eventually.

Francisco Mahfuz 1:00:31

Yeah, and one thing that I've learned and I've been teaching people is that the if you know the end, then you should know what the beginning is, to a great extent, because the beginning needs to be as as much the opposite of the end as you possibly can without just training the truth of what it is. Because that's how you get a narrative arc. Because if the end, you're at the same place, you were at the beginning, then it's, you know, nothing much has happened. Even if a lot of stuff happened in the middle, it will be a very unsatisfying story, if you come back to, if you come back to the Shire, and everything is exactly the same. If look, goes back to tattoo, even his grandparents or uncles, or aunts and uncle are there, and he still has his hand, he hasn't tried to shake his sister, then it's, you know, what's been offered? What's the point of this

Randy Olson 1:01:27

exactly. And simple way to put it is the journey from A to B is great, but a journey from A to A not quite so interesting. never lived anywhere.

Francisco Mahfuz 1:01:38

So Randy, we I did mention your books, I might have gotten the name of the book wrong. So he's your latest book, The narrative, Jim, or is a narrative is everything? Or is it to two different two different types of the same book.

Randy Olson 1:01:50

So this is the book that came out of the course. And the thing I love about it so much is this is the Houston book that you're familiar with. What is so great about the new narrative, Jim is when you look at the thickness of the

Francisco Mahfuz 1:02:03

shorter book,

Randy Olson 1:02:04

it's more much more concise, it gets right to the point, it's more practical. It's the thing that should be on everybody's desk, because it's really the nuts and bolts of how to use the abt framework practically.

Francisco Mahfuz 1:02:13

Okay, so that's what is that one is out now. You mentioned that your podcast is abt time.

Randy Olson 1:02:18

Abt time. Yes.

Francisco Mahfuz 1:02:20

Okay. Expected that's everywhere, everywhere podcasts are found. And I think we're going to get this out in time. So anyone is interested in the course can look at it when when you're doing the course again, or do you have a big event or course coming up? Not long from now, right?

Randy Olson 1:02:35

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Now, the big thing coming up is our narrative Blitz. And we ran the narrative blitz on April 14, and we had 1500 people sign up for it and was tremendous. I was there. You were there. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And did you thoroughly enjoy it? Yeah, it

Francisco Mahfuz 1:02:51

was very good. I think it's just so people have an idea. This is essentially, a whole bunch of people, a lot of them are scientists using the abt in all sorts of different sites, all sorts of different ways. So you can see how you can apply that framework to pretty much every type of situation in from people that are not natural communicators. So this is not a whole bunch of people that are great at speaking, just doing something slightly different is that people that with most likelihood, are horrendous at speaking. And they are communicating their ideas in a concise way.

Randy Olson 1:03:21

Yeah. And it's, it's 24 minute talks in the course of two hours, in which when I pitched the idea to the folks at National Park Service, who were our co sponsors, they groan and said, Don't you realise how sick people are obsessing on Zoom? You're not going to get anybody to stay with you for two hours on Zoom. We ran the event and 80% of the audience was still there two hours later. And why is that because it was all massively abt structured at multiple levels, every single talk on and on, not so so much, so much fun. And people enjoyed it so much wrote a tonne of emails. There. We're just doing the whole damn thing again on June 9. And I don't know, maybe you could put the link on your website or something like that. Yeah. So

Francisco Mahfuz 1:03:58

I think I think I I'll probably this show probably come out around the last week of May give or take, right. So I'll put I'll put all this stuff on the show notes. And when I when I when I mentioned when I put the show on social media, I'll mention a highlight that so if anyone wants to jump on that they could because I did. So I was one of the people that left for the air, but just because of the time difference because it was so late in Europe. By the time I had been in for an hour and a half was like okay, fine. I need to I need to get some hours of sleep. Because unlike you, I'm not getting up at six in the morning to surf six in the morning to handle a toddler. So some of us need slightly more sleep. Yes, Randy, this is this been a great pleasure. I'm really glad we've done it. And thanks again for your time.

Randy Olson 1:04:51

You betcha. It's really great. And therefore let's do it again. One of these days.

Francisco Mahfuz 1:04:57

All right, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. Take care. Have yourselves and until next time

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