THE SYNCREATE PODCAST: EMPOWERING CREATIVITY
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY,AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
EPISODE 1: AUDIO STORYTELLING WITH PODCASTER
AND ENVIRONMENTALIST MICHAEL OSBORNE, PHD
CLICK ON THE EMBEDDED PLAYER BELOW TO LISTEN:
Podcasting has become such an important medium of creativity, carrying on a long tradition of oral storytelling that stretches back to the beginnings of human history and culture. But what makes a successful podcast and how do you create one? Today’s guest, Michael Osborne, PhD, stumbled into podcasting while working on a PhD in environmental science at Stanford, and never looked back. Over the last 12 years, he’s hosted and produced several very popular and critically acclaimed shows with themes ranging from humans’ impact on the environment and big data to dead celebrities and how to live a meaningful life. In this episode specifically, and in the show more broadly, we explore the creative process itself, as well as the multidimensional nature of creativity and innovation.
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full audio episode on youtube:
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episode transcript
Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate, a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. We view creativity broadly, and one of our primary goals is to demystify the creative process. I'm Melinda Rothouse and I help individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life.
Today on the show, Mike Osborne.
Mike is a podcast producer and marketing consultant who parlayed his scientific background into a career in podcasting. He helps people develop and grow podcasts, including this one. Mike first started podcasting back in 2011 while in graduate school at Stanford. At the time, he was studying to become a climate scientist, but he was struggling with imposter syndrome.
Mike told me a story about how one day as a last resort, he decided to go by the Stanford Career Counseling Center. A woman there welcomed him into her office where he sat down and said to her, “I really
Michael: don't know what I'm doing here. You know, I feel like I'm underperforming. I don't know where this is heading,” but she said, have you ever thought about starting a podcast? And something clicked. I walked out of that office; I don't know what it was, but it was a nudge and it feels like, and you know, looking back on it, it does feel like a moment of divine intervention to me. That somebody saw me in a vulnerable place and had an inspired thought. And she when I've asked her, where did that suggestion come from, she said something like, well, you had a resonant voice and you were talking a lot, so maybe that's all that we needed. So anyway, at that moment, I had permission to start a podcast, but I didn't have a concept. And around that same time, there was an article in the Economist, a front page article. Welcome to the Anthropocene. And I remember reading that article, this was a few weeks after that meeting,
Melinda: and define for us what Anthropocene means.
Michael: Yeah, right. Uh, so, okay, the geologic timetable, Jurassic. Yeah. Pleistocene, so forth. Okay. There's this idea batting around the earth sciences that we've entered a new geologic age based on the global footprint of humankind. So the way to think about this is, pretend you could travel a million years into the future and look back into the rock record. What would you see? What is the physical evidence that humans have been here and are changing the planet? And so it's a debate within the earth sciences, whether or not we have entered a new geologic age.
But it's also a metaphor, right? It's also the idea that something fundamental and profound has happened on the earth's surface. And it's the idea that humanity has become a geologic force, which is, there's a scientific argument, but there's also a philosophical argument there, you know, we are as gods, right? And climate change is only one piece of that. It's biodiversity loss, deforestation, ocean acidification, urbanization. I mean, the list goes on and on. And all of this was pretty well captured in that Economist article I mentioned a second ago.
So, yeah, I basically I had this idea of like, okay, that's a good concept for a podcast. And the way I got it off the ground was I taught a project-based course where I had students conducting interviews with Stanford faculty about this idea. And really, you know, so much of like my journey as a podcaster and as an audio producer has been brute force experimentation, including in that class. I mean, that class really was, you know, it got me thinking like, okay, how are we gonna make this interesting and compelling and good? Like the core concept is there, but what's the story and how do we organize interviews? And so I've been working as an audio producer ever since.
Melinda: Yeah. Okay. That's great. That gives us kind of a nice background, and I love that you mentioned experimentation because in the world of creativity, we say that you have to be willing to experiment. You have to be willing to fail and pivot. And try again and keep trying until you get something right. That's what separates successful creatives from unsuccessful ones, from a certain point of view. So I'm curious, you went on then to also start another podcast, Raw Data. And then you finished your PhD, came back here to Austin and then kind of did another pivot for yourself of becoming a creative entrepreneur, podcast producer, creative consultant. So I'm really curious about your journey in that pivot from the world of academia and climate science to the world of podcast producing.
Michael: I mean, there's a lot in there. I'll say this: As soon as I started podcasting, I fell he head over heels in love with it. Part of it was I started to meet people around me. It was a license to introduce myself and say, Hey, I've got a show and I'm interested to learn more about you. There was also a piece of it that was learning via conversation. Some people learn by reading, some people learn by writing, you know, it's not an either or thing, but I learned via dialogue.
I learned in conversations with people, so as soon as I started doing this, I felt like I had found my thing. Something really deep and fundamental clicked into place. But pretty early on, I started having people coming to me saying, Hey, I'm interested in maybe getting a podcast going too. You seem to have some traction with what you're doing. How does this work?
And when I created the second show, Raw Data, which you mentioned, it was a different format. It was more scripted audio, and sort of more like Planet Money. As I experimented with different formats, I started acquiring more skills, how to write for audio, how to bring in music, how to bring in archival tape.
But I really only saw myself as a creator until around 2020, when I met you and I said, I think I'm ready to professionalize these conversations. I think I'm ready to build a business out of this. I keep getting inquiries about how to start a show. But I don't know how to go about doing that, how to turn those conversations into opportunities and into paid gigs.
So that was a big learning curve for me. I don't know if that answers your question.
Melinda: Yeah. I mean, it brings up so many interesting things I want to ask about, but moving along that thread, moving from creator to creative entrepreneur, I'm curious what the business of creativity side of things has been like for you.
Because personally, I believe that creativity and entrepreneurship go hand in hand. You know, as an entrepreneur, you're constantly engaging. Creative process. So what was that piece of it like?
Michael: I mean, I think I am really, really in on audio. Yeah. You know, and I'm really in on it as a creator, but also as a consumer. As a fan. It’s interesting, I didn't initially think of myself as a creative, but as soon as I started Generation Anthropocene, I had to grow into those shoes in a way. Because I never thought of myself as a creative person, or at least engaged in a creative profession, because I’d been an academic more or less, right?
So there's that piece of it. Then, once I kind of embraced this role as podcast creator and host and producer, I think that there was a kind of, I don't know, an immature attitude of like, well, I'm never gonna sell out, you know, or something like that. Like, I knew I needed to make money and have a job, but I didn't think about the practicalities of what the paycheck would look like, and so then, the growth for me into creative entrepreneur was honestly just a little bit of growing up. I think maybe in the back of my mind, there was a fear that. going out just in the pursuit of money would challenge the integrity of anything I was creating.
Melinda: And a lot of artists feel that way, and struggle with that. You know, they want to share something, express something, create something, but then they stumble when it comes to, how do I put it out in the world without feeling like I'm selling out? Or I don't want to deal with the business side, or I don't know how to market myself.
Michael: Yeah. Or you know, I used to have a joke with a friend. I'm like, I think I'm ready to sell out, but I'm not sure who's buying, right? Or exactly what they're buying. Right. You know, cause it got to a point where I obviously needed to make money. And I, it should be said, was in a privileged position and have been for a while that some of these choices that I've had the freedom to make.
Melinda: Right. So, I want to kind of tease out a little more of this thread of the seeming dichotomy between science and creativity. In creativity studies we talk about divergent thinking, which is ideation, making connections between seemingly unrelated things. It's the seed of all imagination and creative thinking, what we think of as traditionally right brain stuff (which is an oversimplification), and then we have the linear, logical, get it done kind of side. So we talk about both of these different types of thinking and being, and we've come to understand that in order to get from start to finish on any creative project, you need both. Think of all the people that have a million great ideas, but never follow through on them versus the people that, you know, get shit done. But they can't really think out of the box, you know? So, and I think it's important and also somewhat rare to find people that straddle both of those. So you've got the science background, yet you've moved into this more creative field really with an emphasis on storytelling, which I think is really interesting. And also, you know, in academia there's such emphasis on publication and generation of knowledge, but to my mind as an academic as well, all of that's kind of useless if it doesn't get communicated to a broader audience. And so what I see you doing is taking these scientific ideas and bringing them out into the public forum.
Michael: First of all, I just want reiterate that I was a pretty shitty scientist. You know, it's funny, I mean, earth sciences are sort of unique because a lot of earth science is storytelling and storytelling about the earth. And so I guess some of the flexibility that exists in the life sciences lent itself to storytelling and to creativity. That said, I don't think I quite took to heart the nuts and bolts of storytelling. You know, what it takes to create compelling characters, find drama, find conflict, find resolution. Like how do you chart this out? And then more specifically, how do you do that in audio? And so that's the experimentation.
Melinda: Exactly. I mean, you're kind of anticipating my next question, which is: Why podcasting? What makes it unique as a genre, and how do you tell a story in a way that that creates a successful episode?
Michael: Yeah. I mean, so much to be said about that. I would say what distinguishes audio and podcasts from other media, the defining characteristic is intimacy and authenticity. When people fall in love with a show and with a host, they really feel like they're connecting with that person. And I think part of the reason podcasts have become so popular is that we are all alienated and alone, partly driven by smartphones and late stage capitalism and all that stuff. Audio is a real counter to that. You know, it's a place where people connect and you hear them connect.
Melinda: It strikes me also that in some ways, podcasting almost feels like a throwback to the old days of radio and we have all these new technologies and yet it's so popular. You know, especially with young people. So popular. And then I think, you know, if we really take a step back, you know, storytelling is probably the oldest creative medium available to us as humans.
Michael: Right. Or all storytelling in particular.
Melinda: Yeah, exactly. So there's this through line, speaking of the Anthropocene, throughout human history, of verbal storytelling. And then here we are with podcasting.
Michael: It's how we make sense of the world. I also think that I've really come to understand podcasts as long form social media, and that anybody can do it and everybody can participate. But the long form piece of that is what differentiates it from other forms of social media. That if you look at, you know, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram tends to be very bite-size and very distilled down. One of the things I love about audio, I mentioned earlier, that there seems to be room to explore in a way that other social media really is actually like guarding against, like you lose context in most forms of social media. So part of what remains exciting about podcasts is it's do-ability, it's accessibility.
Melinda: Yeah. One of the questions that I'm wanting to ask people around creative process is: What advice do you wish you had received early on that maybe you didn't, or asked another way, what kind of advice would you give to your younger self or someone just starting on their own creative journey.
Michael: Yeah. I dunno. you know, it's a hard question, Melinda. I don't know that there are major categories of regret and most of what I would have to say to answer this question, I worry that it falls into kind of clichés.
But I would say that following my curiosity has really opened doors. You, mentioned entrepreneurship and creativity are coupled for you. Curiosity and creativity are coupled for me. And that's easier said than done. Like really paying attention to, you know, what is catching my eye? What is catching my ear? What is catching my attention? And how can I engage in more of that in a way that feels self-affirming? Right? And that's what's exciting and awesome about engaging in a creative project. Is that ultimately it is life-affirming.
Melinda: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that brings up so much for me. You know, if we look at the Big Five personality factors, the one most highly correlated to creativity is openness to experience. And that is creativity, that is curiosity. And then also personally, I have a theory that our creativity is fundamentally connected to our life force energy. So you spoke of kind of stumbling into this thing that you ended up being really passionate about and how that's really carried you forward.
Michael: And there is a spiritual element to that, not religious necessarily, but I don't know, I mean, there are moments in anybody's life where you feel like there is fate and transcendence and maybe something bigger, mysterious is involved in your destiny. And I felt that way in that conversation with the career counselor and I feel like I'm on the beam, whatever the beam is and whoever built the beam.
Melinda: Yeah, it sounds like that was a real turning point. Makes me think of the Jungian psychologist James Hillman, who has a theory that from when we're born, we contain the seed of everything we are to become, and yet we can't know the story of what that seed contains until we are looking back. And it sounds like there was some almost element of fate in that moment.
Michael: You know, to answer your question, what advice would I give to my younger self? I don't know that I questioned that feeling of fate. But if I ever did, if there's anything I would tell my younger self, maybe it's take an honest look at the fear to the extent that I had reservations about embracing a career as an audio producer. I do think that those reservations were probably built around fear and not honoring intuition that there was a fate or a destiny to this work.
Melinda: Yeah, Pema Chödrön, the Buddhist teacher says, “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”
Michael: Oh, that's good.
Melinda: Bam.
Michael: Yeah, that's really good. Yeah.
Melinda: So I know we're just about out of time. I have two quick ones and you can just make it a very succinct answer. First, just from your perspective, given everything that we've been talking about, your interest in the environment and climate science, et cetera, what do you think is the most pressing issue facing us today as a species?
Michael: Oh God.
Melinda: And you know, in our society at this point in time, right? We're living in this incredibly complex and divisive time.
Michael: I do view the environmental crisis as being symptomatic of a bigger crisis, and it is in my mind on some level of spiritual one. I created Generation Anthropocene largely around the environmental crisis. My second show, Raw Data, was very much around the role of technology in our lives and the feelings of alienation that I think that permeates my more recent show, Famous and Gravy. Which sounds like a silly thing because it's all about quality of life, one dead celebrity at a time, which is actually a response to the mental health crisis. Now, what we're trying to ask on that show is like, what's it really all about? And what does it mean to design your life and what kind of life do we all really want to have? And the reason I go there, when talking about where are we and what are the grand problems of the world, something that's really come out of Famous and Gravy for me is the importance of relational wealth above all else. That show is built around friendship. And what it means to be a creative, but also be engaged in meaningful relationships with other people. Which, which has a spiritual dimension to me.
www.famousandgravy.com
Melinda: Yeah. And I love that term, relational wealth, you know, at Syncreate, in our book and in our coaching efforts, we talk about the power of relationships when it comes to creativity, the power of collaboration, the power of community. So, one last thing is the tombstone question. When I talk to my coaching clients, one of the first things I ask them is: How do you want to be remembered? What do you want your legacy to be?
Michael: Ooh, I should have a good answer for this, since I'm having so many conversations about dead celebrities, I mean there's no question that I care much more about the people who are proximate to me, my wife, my children, my friends, my family, so forth. So I don't know that this is a question about how they would remember me, because I think what they would have to say about who I am or who I really was or whatever, that has a whole different answer. To me, the question is actually really like, what do you want your great service to be? To the world? And that's a hard question to answer ‘cause I gotta take my ego out of it. But if I tried to do that, I think it really would be centered on the idea of curiosity and storytelling. And as somebody who tried to make that doable for others. I mean, you know, I really like the shows I've created. I really like helping other people tell their stories. ‘Cause stories again are sense-making technologies in a way. It's how we understand the world and we're all engaged in, you know, a very confusing project of living a life. And so the more I feel like I'm helping people make sense of themselves and the world around them via curiosity and storytelling, the more I feel like I'm being of service.
Melinda: I love that. It's beautiful and you know, you are doing so here today with me helping me get this project off the ground and figuring out what is the story of creativity. Yeah. So, so thank you so much. It's been wonderful.
Michael: This has been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me, Melinda.
Melinda: Absolutely. Thanks again to Mike Osborne for the conversation. His most recent show is called Famous and Gravy, a conversation about quality of life, one dead celebrity at a time. You can find out more about his work and his services at 14th Street Studios.com. This episode was produced by Mike Osborne with Production Assistance by Brandon Burke. Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn, where you can also find out more about Syncreate. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
Today on the show, Mike Osborne.
Mike is a podcast producer and marketing consultant who parlayed his scientific background into a career in podcasting. He helps people develop and grow podcasts, including this one. Mike first started podcasting back in 2011 while in graduate school at Stanford. At the time, he was studying to become a climate scientist, but he was struggling with imposter syndrome.
Mike told me a story about how one day as a last resort, he decided to go by the Stanford Career Counseling Center. A woman there welcomed him into her office where he sat down and said to her, “I really
Michael: don't know what I'm doing here. You know, I feel like I'm underperforming. I don't know where this is heading,” but she said, have you ever thought about starting a podcast? And something clicked. I walked out of that office; I don't know what it was, but it was a nudge and it feels like, and you know, looking back on it, it does feel like a moment of divine intervention to me. That somebody saw me in a vulnerable place and had an inspired thought. And she when I've asked her, where did that suggestion come from, she said something like, well, you had a resonant voice and you were talking a lot, so maybe that's all that we needed. So anyway, at that moment, I had permission to start a podcast, but I didn't have a concept. And around that same time, there was an article in the Economist, a front page article. Welcome to the Anthropocene. And I remember reading that article, this was a few weeks after that meeting,
Melinda: and define for us what Anthropocene means.
Michael: Yeah, right. Uh, so, okay, the geologic timetable, Jurassic. Yeah. Pleistocene, so forth. Okay. There's this idea batting around the earth sciences that we've entered a new geologic age based on the global footprint of humankind. So the way to think about this is, pretend you could travel a million years into the future and look back into the rock record. What would you see? What is the physical evidence that humans have been here and are changing the planet? And so it's a debate within the earth sciences, whether or not we have entered a new geologic age.
But it's also a metaphor, right? It's also the idea that something fundamental and profound has happened on the earth's surface. And it's the idea that humanity has become a geologic force, which is, there's a scientific argument, but there's also a philosophical argument there, you know, we are as gods, right? And climate change is only one piece of that. It's biodiversity loss, deforestation, ocean acidification, urbanization. I mean, the list goes on and on. And all of this was pretty well captured in that Economist article I mentioned a second ago.
So, yeah, I basically I had this idea of like, okay, that's a good concept for a podcast. And the way I got it off the ground was I taught a project-based course where I had students conducting interviews with Stanford faculty about this idea. And really, you know, so much of like my journey as a podcaster and as an audio producer has been brute force experimentation, including in that class. I mean, that class really was, you know, it got me thinking like, okay, how are we gonna make this interesting and compelling and good? Like the core concept is there, but what's the story and how do we organize interviews? And so I've been working as an audio producer ever since.
Melinda: Yeah. Okay. That's great. That gives us kind of a nice background, and I love that you mentioned experimentation because in the world of creativity, we say that you have to be willing to experiment. You have to be willing to fail and pivot. And try again and keep trying until you get something right. That's what separates successful creatives from unsuccessful ones, from a certain point of view. So I'm curious, you went on then to also start another podcast, Raw Data. And then you finished your PhD, came back here to Austin and then kind of did another pivot for yourself of becoming a creative entrepreneur, podcast producer, creative consultant. So I'm really curious about your journey in that pivot from the world of academia and climate science to the world of podcast producing.
Michael: I mean, there's a lot in there. I'll say this: As soon as I started podcasting, I fell he head over heels in love with it. Part of it was I started to meet people around me. It was a license to introduce myself and say, Hey, I've got a show and I'm interested to learn more about you. There was also a piece of it that was learning via conversation. Some people learn by reading, some people learn by writing, you know, it's not an either or thing, but I learned via dialogue.
I learned in conversations with people, so as soon as I started doing this, I felt like I had found my thing. Something really deep and fundamental clicked into place. But pretty early on, I started having people coming to me saying, Hey, I'm interested in maybe getting a podcast going too. You seem to have some traction with what you're doing. How does this work?
And when I created the second show, Raw Data, which you mentioned, it was a different format. It was more scripted audio, and sort of more like Planet Money. As I experimented with different formats, I started acquiring more skills, how to write for audio, how to bring in music, how to bring in archival tape.
But I really only saw myself as a creator until around 2020, when I met you and I said, I think I'm ready to professionalize these conversations. I think I'm ready to build a business out of this. I keep getting inquiries about how to start a show. But I don't know how to go about doing that, how to turn those conversations into opportunities and into paid gigs.
So that was a big learning curve for me. I don't know if that answers your question.
Melinda: Yeah. I mean, it brings up so many interesting things I want to ask about, but moving along that thread, moving from creator to creative entrepreneur, I'm curious what the business of creativity side of things has been like for you.
Because personally, I believe that creativity and entrepreneurship go hand in hand. You know, as an entrepreneur, you're constantly engaging. Creative process. So what was that piece of it like?
Michael: I mean, I think I am really, really in on audio. Yeah. You know, and I'm really in on it as a creator, but also as a consumer. As a fan. It’s interesting, I didn't initially think of myself as a creative, but as soon as I started Generation Anthropocene, I had to grow into those shoes in a way. Because I never thought of myself as a creative person, or at least engaged in a creative profession, because I’d been an academic more or less, right?
So there's that piece of it. Then, once I kind of embraced this role as podcast creator and host and producer, I think that there was a kind of, I don't know, an immature attitude of like, well, I'm never gonna sell out, you know, or something like that. Like, I knew I needed to make money and have a job, but I didn't think about the practicalities of what the paycheck would look like, and so then, the growth for me into creative entrepreneur was honestly just a little bit of growing up. I think maybe in the back of my mind, there was a fear that. going out just in the pursuit of money would challenge the integrity of anything I was creating.
Melinda: And a lot of artists feel that way, and struggle with that. You know, they want to share something, express something, create something, but then they stumble when it comes to, how do I put it out in the world without feeling like I'm selling out? Or I don't want to deal with the business side, or I don't know how to market myself.
Michael: Yeah. Or you know, I used to have a joke with a friend. I'm like, I think I'm ready to sell out, but I'm not sure who's buying, right? Or exactly what they're buying. Right. You know, cause it got to a point where I obviously needed to make money. And I, it should be said, was in a privileged position and have been for a while that some of these choices that I've had the freedom to make.
Melinda: Right. So, I want to kind of tease out a little more of this thread of the seeming dichotomy between science and creativity. In creativity studies we talk about divergent thinking, which is ideation, making connections between seemingly unrelated things. It's the seed of all imagination and creative thinking, what we think of as traditionally right brain stuff (which is an oversimplification), and then we have the linear, logical, get it done kind of side. So we talk about both of these different types of thinking and being, and we've come to understand that in order to get from start to finish on any creative project, you need both. Think of all the people that have a million great ideas, but never follow through on them versus the people that, you know, get shit done. But they can't really think out of the box, you know? So, and I think it's important and also somewhat rare to find people that straddle both of those. So you've got the science background, yet you've moved into this more creative field really with an emphasis on storytelling, which I think is really interesting. And also, you know, in academia there's such emphasis on publication and generation of knowledge, but to my mind as an academic as well, all of that's kind of useless if it doesn't get communicated to a broader audience. And so what I see you doing is taking these scientific ideas and bringing them out into the public forum.
Michael: First of all, I just want reiterate that I was a pretty shitty scientist. You know, it's funny, I mean, earth sciences are sort of unique because a lot of earth science is storytelling and storytelling about the earth. And so I guess some of the flexibility that exists in the life sciences lent itself to storytelling and to creativity. That said, I don't think I quite took to heart the nuts and bolts of storytelling. You know, what it takes to create compelling characters, find drama, find conflict, find resolution. Like how do you chart this out? And then more specifically, how do you do that in audio? And so that's the experimentation.
Melinda: Exactly. I mean, you're kind of anticipating my next question, which is: Why podcasting? What makes it unique as a genre, and how do you tell a story in a way that that creates a successful episode?
Michael: Yeah. I mean, so much to be said about that. I would say what distinguishes audio and podcasts from other media, the defining characteristic is intimacy and authenticity. When people fall in love with a show and with a host, they really feel like they're connecting with that person. And I think part of the reason podcasts have become so popular is that we are all alienated and alone, partly driven by smartphones and late stage capitalism and all that stuff. Audio is a real counter to that. You know, it's a place where people connect and you hear them connect.
Melinda: It strikes me also that in some ways, podcasting almost feels like a throwback to the old days of radio and we have all these new technologies and yet it's so popular. You know, especially with young people. So popular. And then I think, you know, if we really take a step back, you know, storytelling is probably the oldest creative medium available to us as humans.
Michael: Right. Or all storytelling in particular.
Melinda: Yeah, exactly. So there's this through line, speaking of the Anthropocene, throughout human history, of verbal storytelling. And then here we are with podcasting.
Michael: It's how we make sense of the world. I also think that I've really come to understand podcasts as long form social media, and that anybody can do it and everybody can participate. But the long form piece of that is what differentiates it from other forms of social media. That if you look at, you know, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram tends to be very bite-size and very distilled down. One of the things I love about audio, I mentioned earlier, that there seems to be room to explore in a way that other social media really is actually like guarding against, like you lose context in most forms of social media. So part of what remains exciting about podcasts is it's do-ability, it's accessibility.
Melinda: Yeah. One of the questions that I'm wanting to ask people around creative process is: What advice do you wish you had received early on that maybe you didn't, or asked another way, what kind of advice would you give to your younger self or someone just starting on their own creative journey.
Michael: Yeah. I dunno. you know, it's a hard question, Melinda. I don't know that there are major categories of regret and most of what I would have to say to answer this question, I worry that it falls into kind of clichés.
But I would say that following my curiosity has really opened doors. You, mentioned entrepreneurship and creativity are coupled for you. Curiosity and creativity are coupled for me. And that's easier said than done. Like really paying attention to, you know, what is catching my eye? What is catching my ear? What is catching my attention? And how can I engage in more of that in a way that feels self-affirming? Right? And that's what's exciting and awesome about engaging in a creative project. Is that ultimately it is life-affirming.
Melinda: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that brings up so much for me. You know, if we look at the Big Five personality factors, the one most highly correlated to creativity is openness to experience. And that is creativity, that is curiosity. And then also personally, I have a theory that our creativity is fundamentally connected to our life force energy. So you spoke of kind of stumbling into this thing that you ended up being really passionate about and how that's really carried you forward.
Michael: And there is a spiritual element to that, not religious necessarily, but I don't know, I mean, there are moments in anybody's life where you feel like there is fate and transcendence and maybe something bigger, mysterious is involved in your destiny. And I felt that way in that conversation with the career counselor and I feel like I'm on the beam, whatever the beam is and whoever built the beam.
Melinda: Yeah, it sounds like that was a real turning point. Makes me think of the Jungian psychologist James Hillman, who has a theory that from when we're born, we contain the seed of everything we are to become, and yet we can't know the story of what that seed contains until we are looking back. And it sounds like there was some almost element of fate in that moment.
Michael: You know, to answer your question, what advice would I give to my younger self? I don't know that I questioned that feeling of fate. But if I ever did, if there's anything I would tell my younger self, maybe it's take an honest look at the fear to the extent that I had reservations about embracing a career as an audio producer. I do think that those reservations were probably built around fear and not honoring intuition that there was a fate or a destiny to this work.
Melinda: Yeah, Pema Chödrön, the Buddhist teacher says, “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”
Michael: Oh, that's good.
Melinda: Bam.
Michael: Yeah, that's really good. Yeah.
Melinda: So I know we're just about out of time. I have two quick ones and you can just make it a very succinct answer. First, just from your perspective, given everything that we've been talking about, your interest in the environment and climate science, et cetera, what do you think is the most pressing issue facing us today as a species?
Michael: Oh God.
Melinda: And you know, in our society at this point in time, right? We're living in this incredibly complex and divisive time.
Michael: I do view the environmental crisis as being symptomatic of a bigger crisis, and it is in my mind on some level of spiritual one. I created Generation Anthropocene largely around the environmental crisis. My second show, Raw Data, was very much around the role of technology in our lives and the feelings of alienation that I think that permeates my more recent show, Famous and Gravy. Which sounds like a silly thing because it's all about quality of life, one dead celebrity at a time, which is actually a response to the mental health crisis. Now, what we're trying to ask on that show is like, what's it really all about? And what does it mean to design your life and what kind of life do we all really want to have? And the reason I go there, when talking about where are we and what are the grand problems of the world, something that's really come out of Famous and Gravy for me is the importance of relational wealth above all else. That show is built around friendship. And what it means to be a creative, but also be engaged in meaningful relationships with other people. Which, which has a spiritual dimension to me.
www.famousandgravy.com
Melinda: Yeah. And I love that term, relational wealth, you know, at Syncreate, in our book and in our coaching efforts, we talk about the power of relationships when it comes to creativity, the power of collaboration, the power of community. So, one last thing is the tombstone question. When I talk to my coaching clients, one of the first things I ask them is: How do you want to be remembered? What do you want your legacy to be?
Michael: Ooh, I should have a good answer for this, since I'm having so many conversations about dead celebrities, I mean there's no question that I care much more about the people who are proximate to me, my wife, my children, my friends, my family, so forth. So I don't know that this is a question about how they would remember me, because I think what they would have to say about who I am or who I really was or whatever, that has a whole different answer. To me, the question is actually really like, what do you want your great service to be? To the world? And that's a hard question to answer ‘cause I gotta take my ego out of it. But if I tried to do that, I think it really would be centered on the idea of curiosity and storytelling. And as somebody who tried to make that doable for others. I mean, you know, I really like the shows I've created. I really like helping other people tell their stories. ‘Cause stories again are sense-making technologies in a way. It's how we understand the world and we're all engaged in, you know, a very confusing project of living a life. And so the more I feel like I'm helping people make sense of themselves and the world around them via curiosity and storytelling, the more I feel like I'm being of service.
Melinda: I love that. It's beautiful and you know, you are doing so here today with me helping me get this project off the ground and figuring out what is the story of creativity. Yeah. So, so thank you so much. It's been wonderful.
Michael: This has been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me, Melinda.
Melinda: Absolutely. Thanks again to Mike Osborne for the conversation. His most recent show is called Famous and Gravy, a conversation about quality of life, one dead celebrity at a time. You can find out more about his work and his services at 14th Street Studios.com. This episode was produced by Mike Osborne with Production Assistance by Brandon Burke. Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn, where you can also find out more about Syncreate. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
