The Story of Change: Recent Episodes
thestoryofchange
Hosted by Rod Francis, The Story of Change weaves expert opinion with cross-cultural perspectives and remarkable stories of change from everyday folk, blending the magical and the mundane into a rich, evocative tapestry of learning and discovery. Rod’s aim is for the tales themselves to speak their own meta-story of what change means for us as humans, what it takes to create change and what works. The program is initially broadcast on NPR at WUTC 88.1 on the second Sunday of every month.
This episode we’re exploring a very current aspect of social change in how so many societies are fragmenting and polarizing along political fault lines. Even families and sometimes marriages themselves are sadly fracturing due to beliefs and opinions, and these rifts seem insurmountable and ever widening as individuals choose their in and out groups and solidify around their views. My guest today who is Prof. Jennifer McCoy, a Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University and nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research explores the causes, consequences and solutions to polarized societies around the world, including Venezuela, Turkey, Hungary, Thailand, Hungary, Greece, Bangladesh, Philippines and the United States.
What does it mean for we humans to change our appearance if not our very bodies? As long as humans have been around and in all cultures we can find some version of body modification yet the popularity of forms such as tattooing and piercing in recent decades is really quite unprecedented. Today's guest Alex Binnie has been collecting tattoos for over 40 years and making them on others for over 30 and has been at the forefront of change in the body art and modification scene in both the USA and the UK. I met Alex in the mid 90’s when by chance I lived above his highly influential shop Into You in Clerkenwell Central London. We explore change through the lens of the body as canvas and what changes in us—artist and canvas—in that process. We discuss Alex’s rather remarkable life as an artist, musician and performer both here in the USA and in Europe, plus we explore how the field of tattooing and body art itself has changed as an industry over that period.
Dr Julia Kolodko is a Behavioral scientist and organizational consultant specializing in change implementation and culture and is one of the leading experts in applied behavioral science in Europe. She offers us a perspective informed by the most current science of human change and perhaps more importantly, how that research is actually implemented both at organizational and individual levels and also what the implications are for broader social change as well. We discuss how neuroscience suggests that we are accessing less than 5% of our cognitive capacities for decision-making, the impact of unconscious biases and more importantly, how we might better negotiate these tricky realities.
How can organizations change and why would they? In today's show Prof Bill Brendel from Penn State University and I explore how change happens in organizational culture, leadership, motives and behaviors and what it might mean for companies and for the wider social fabric. Bill's work focuses on the intersection of ancient practices (in particular mindfulness) and organizational growth and change and he offers us fascinating insights into new paradigms for organizational culture and broader benefits for all society. We explore how these shifts are particularly vital as we collectively face yet more radical disruption from the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
My guest Sarah Chayes has so many feathers in her life cap that it's no easy task to capture them in a simple paragraph: historian, war reporter, NPR Paris correspondent, founding a soap factory in post Taliban Kandahar, special advisor to international commanders in Kabul and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, contributor to leading news journals such as The Atlantic and The Washington Post and leading author. Frankly, this still doesn't do justice to Sarah's breadth of experience, interests and work in the world. Here we explore the nexus of all these themes and even weaving in our mutual fascination with myth.
Today's guest Grant Thompson has been described is as an award winning cinematographer and film-maker, guest lecturer at UC Davis, a Berkeley grad in Celtic philology yet to me these don't do justice to the breadth of Grant's interests and work in the world. We explore the mysterious intersection between land, story, language and identity among so many other fascinating topics, and how these manifest in the through line of Grant's multifaceted work and life story. We've recently been exploring themes of indigenous loss of place and identity and here we explore something of what we Europeans traded and lost in their own rush to colonize far off lands, and the Devil's bargain that change that has wrought on we their descendant's sense of place, belonging and identity.
I'm talking with my colleague and friend Ray Basset about his extraordinary multi-decade career in national broadcasting including how the move from analogue to digital has impacted on broadcast media. Ray is host and producer of Scenic Roots on WUTC following two decades in New York with CBS and the Associated Press, one of which was as executive producer for the late broadcast legend, Charles Osgood.
In the final episode of our Trail of Tears series we now speak with Dr Brad Lieb, Director of Chickasaw Archaeology at the Dept. of Culture and Humanities of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma. We hear much about the richness of Chicasaw life and culture prior to European arrival, how the incomers impacted on life, culture and survival and also about the extraordinary capacity of the Chicasaw people to adapt and flourish under such terrible circumstances.
In our next edition of the Trail of Tears series exploring the forced relocation of indigenous people from the US south east we now speak with Jake Tiger, historian with the Historic Preservation Department of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and hear the Seminole perspective on what happened and how the impacts play out to this very day.
Continuing our exploration of indigenous forced relocation from the south-east we're hearing from RaeLynn Butler and Melissa Harjo of the Historic and Cultural Preservation Department from the Muscogee Creek nation.
Continuing our series on the forced relocation of indigenous peoples in the southeast known as The Trail of Tears we now hear from Will Chavez from the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. The Cherokee people were one of the largest of the nations back in the 1800's and their lands covered much of present day Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina and more.
Now we begin a series on a particularly challenging period in history in the south east of the USA —the forced relocation of the great tribes from their ancestral lands known generically as The Trail Of Tears. It's not a pretty story but it is an important one to be told. In the series we'll hear from a number of indigenous voices about what happened and how the effects of this mass trauma still play out to these present times. In this show I’m talking to Deanna Byrd, Sue Folsom and Ryan Spring from the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
In this episode I’m talking to Joe Jenkins from The Brave Effect about his incredible life journey including all the change he's both experienced and also now manifests in others lives. Joe's journey took him from being labelled the 'worst of the worst' following his time as a drug dealer, into incarceration and eventually ending up facing life in the federal prison system. Fortunately for all of us that was not to be so!
This episode we're exploring change through the theme of return from incarceration. We do so through hearing from a number of professionals working to support this in the community. We have Troy Rogers from the mayors office in Chattanooga as well as Bettie Kirkland and Larry Craig from Project Return, plus we hear from Joe Jenkins who not only spent 13 years in federal prisons but now works as CEO of The Brave Effect a project supporting returnees to successfully re-enter society.
This episode I'm speaking with Tina Tinsley founder of the Earthsong intentional community based outside Athens, Georgia in the USA. Therapist, wilderness activist, traveler and so much more, Tina was born in the south in the 1940’s and her extraordinary life has taken her across the globe, training with shamens in the deep Amazon through living wild in Alaska to working towards the evolution of a new human to meet these increasingly challenging times.
Once again we're back exploring stories of change of country and culture. Yes it's still the topic of immigration and this episode we hear from four US citizens who've moved abroad and listen to how that has changed them and their perspectives. We have Kimberly a designer and entrepreneur who's now resident in Shanghai, China, Stephen a teacher and choreographer living in London UK, Patrick a psychologist and researcher living in Stockholm Sweden and John a wilderness guide, teacher and carpenter now resident north of the border in Canada.
We're now exploring change through the theme of immigration. Many of us for all manner of reasons undergo the geographic and socio-cultural shift of leaving home environments for places new. Why? What are the reasons? And importantly what happens to us when we do? We explore this through four stories of immigrants to the USA: Aaron originally from Australia, Isabel originally from the Dominican Republic, Majida originally from Morocco and Tsambika who while born in the USA grew up in Greece and relocated back here in her late teens.
In this episode we hear a remarkable story of change from a young gawky Aussie kid called Aaron Cash growing up in semi-rural Brisbane whose talent takes them across the great stages of the world plus we hear how one negotiates the changes forced upon any professional athlete when the body begins to say enough. And it surely does. Aaron’s worked with many of the leaders in the entertainment industry, covering an extraordinary range from Kenny Ortega & Paula Abdul, was a featured dancer for Cher for many years, performed in the company of contemporary dance legend Twlya Tharp and alongside the great Baryshnikov, has graced stages and screens across the globe in films such as Titanic, was a judge on So You Think You Can Dance, performed his own one man show on Broadway and at leading arts festivals, was original cast on Tap Dogs and now choreographer for the smash Ballet Revolucion and all that barely scratches the surface!.
Now we now shift to hearing from some academic voices regarding the topic of agency, change and decision-making in relationship to culture, society and environment—how these factors impact on one's perspective of agency and choice in life. We hear from social psychologist Prof. Michael Varnum who heads the Culture and Ecology Lab at Arizona State University and my other esteemed guest is Professor Chandra Ward of the sociology department at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga.
Now we shift focus to explore socio-cultural perspective on change and agency by hearing from a variety of voices this time from within the USA. We hear from Howard a retired lawyer living in the south; Bijal, a consultant and organizational psychologist from Colorado; Troy an African American man also living in the south; Margaret an indigenous American woman from the mid-west; and James, a military veteran living in the DC area.
Our focus shifts to socio-cultural perspectives on change and one’s sense of agency in life choices. In this show we hear five very different views and experiences from speakers living and growing up outside of the USA. Katie an Australian woman; Nobantu a South African woman; Aaron a Chinese male; Charlotte a French woman & Hassam a Pakistani man. Each are asked the same set of questions and their varied responses allows a rich, vibrant picture of socio-cultural influences to emerge.
This show is devoted to exploring the life of senior Buddhist teacher and former monastic Kittisaro. Born and raised in Chattanooga TN, Kittisaro graduated from Princeton as a Rhodes Scholar.and then studyied at Oxford University in the UK. In 1976, he moved to Thailand ordaining with the Buddhist Forest Master Ajahn Chah, and subsequently founding Theravadan monasteries in Chithurst and Hartridge in the UK. Since disrobing in 1991, he’s taught meditation internationally in the States, Europe, South Africa, and Israel often alongside his wife the former nun Thanissara.
Rod lays out the territory of the programs and we hear perspectives from behavioral scientist Dr Julia Kolodko on personal change & from a speaker who has been described as ‘a seasoned guide of adventurous journeys through the mysteries of nature and psyche’, leadership expert Dr Julian Norris from the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business on organizational change.