Welcome to Storylisteners! Did you just look that term up in the dictionary? It is not there. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/storylistener?utm_campaign=sd&utm_medium=serp&utm_source=jsonld) We want to change that.
We are a research podcast. Based in the Department Journalism and Media Communication at Colorado State University, we are sharing both segments of our interviews and the first attempt to make sense of the themes that emerge from them.
Make sense out of what?
We interview people whose vocations spur them to listen for the stories (https://medium.com/story-listeners) of their clients, patients, sources, in order to serve them better. We call it Narrative Listening and we explain more about what that means, and what we are learning about it, as the podcast goes along.
If you are a healer, leader, server, teacher, seeker, advocate, and much more, we know you already do this work and we believe a community of storylisteners could, and should, form to help each other hone this vital skill.
If you want to learn more about the theory behind this project, go to storylisteners.us (http://storylisteners.us).
Publisher
The Storylisteners Team @ Johnson County Community College
In this fourth and final episode, Rich looks at his present and future and he talks with Michael about the themes that can be derived from a life richly lived.
29 Jan 2025
Rich Feller Timeline: Building a Life
In this third episode, Rich speaks with Michael about building his reputation as a trailblazer and leader in the career development field. He talks about continuing his education in both traditional and not-so-traditional ways, including seeking some of the leading thinkers in America to learn from them directly. Then he takes us on a journey, both personal and professional, to understand how he went from a learner to a teacher of thousands around the world. More important than all of that, however, is the chance to become a husband and father. He talks about the ends he would travel to be a good one.
29 Jan 2025
Rich Feller Timeline: College and Beyond
In this second episode, Rich speaks with Michael about college life in the late 1960s, including the role of being a college basketball player, which forged lifelong friendships. And the role of politics and activism that would form his life as a citizen. He also discusses the decisions and insights that led to his career path and the love interests of his youth. One student he knew back in his early years of college would later become his life partner.
29 Jan 2025
Rich Feller Timeline: A Childhood
Timelines are long-form narrative listening projects that walk through a whole life of one person. The purpose is to both demonstrate narrative listening as a conversational technique, while also celebrating the lives of extraordinary people.
This series features the life of Rich Feller, a beloved and influential professor, speaker, and leader in the career development field. From 1980 until 2013, Rich was a faculty member of the Department of Education at Colorado State University. In 2007, the Colorado Career Development Association honored Rich by naming a leadership award after him.
After retiring, he has continued his work with partners such as YouScience and NASA as well as speaking and consulting around the world.
In this first episode, Rich talks about his childhood in a working class area of Cold Spring, New York, where he learned to love sports. He carefully observed the lives of his mother and father, and other adults in his life, who all would cultivate many of his interests, including his passion for understanding the meaning of work. He speaks with Michael Humphrey.
24 Apr 2024
Storylisteners for Democracy: Steve Weiss and Jesse Grace Ventured into The Eye of a Democracy Storm
When Jesse Grace and Steve Weiss were asked to make a documentary about mail-in voting, it seemed like a straightforward assignment. Until COVID struck, and the 2020 presidential election turned into a referendum on mail-in voting, filled with conspiracy theories, death threats to election workers, and ultimately, an invasion of the U.S. Capitol. What resulted was the hour long documentary Democracy vs. The Big Lie: The Truth Behind Mail-In Voting. Grace and Weiss are both members of the Journalism and Media Communication faculty at Colorado State.
How did they make the switch from informational storytelling to coverage of a historic moment of crisis in our democracy? And just as importantly, what shaped them to become the storytellers, and storylisteners, that they are today?
24 Apr 2024
Storylisteners for Democracy: Ryan Claycomb Asks What We Have Learned from Verbatim Theater
Dr. Ryan Claycomb remembers the night he found the subject that would animate and define his life as a literature and theater scholar. It was the first night he had ever seen a verbatim theater production. Verbatim theater has a unique relationship with democracy, because in many ways it is democratic. As Dr. Claycomb describes it in his new book, In the Lurch (https://press.umich.edu/Books/I/In-the-Lurch2), verbatim theater is, “socially engaged performances whose texts rely on word-for-word testimony. Performances such as Fires in the Mirror, The Laramie Project, and The Vagina Monologues have at their best demonstrated how to hold hard conversations about explosive subjects in a liberal democracy.”
Still, the book is not a celebration of the artform and his career. Rather, it looks critically at its effectiveness in the face of a hard move toward illberal ideologies around the world, and he does not spare himself in that investigation. What role does art and testimony play in the shared experience, political and otherwise? At the heart of that question is a concept critical to both narrative and listening: empathy.
Dr. Claycomb is both a Professor of English and Theater as well as an associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts.
24 Apr 2024
Storylisteners for Democracy: Andrea Purdy Translates Democracy Across Language and Cultures
What power does language hold in a democracy? From deliberation experts to linguists to journalists, many experts will tell you it sits at the critical center. So when Adrea Purdy became a founding member of the Deliberative Journalism Project in 2021, it was to ensure the whole conversation did not occur in just one language. An Associate Teaching Professor of Spanish, Purdy is a native of Parral,Chihuahua, Mexico, Purdy received my Ph.D. in 20th Century Spanish American Literature from Texas Tech University in 1987. Her many areas of interest include: contemporary Spanish American prose, issues in culture, the teaching of reading and writing skills, and of course, translation, so important in a time when language can help, or hurt, our understanding of facts, truth, and each other.
17 Apr 2024
Healers: The Wrap-Up
In this final episode, we talk about what we learned as we spoke to nine healers who use narrative listening as a way to better serve their patients and clients. We also discuss how to define storylistening, how it might be used in journalism, and how the experience of meeting and discussing storylisteners changed us.
10 Apr 2024
Healers: Ron Holder, Healthcare Leadership through Listening
In this episode, we delve into the world of healthcare administration through the lens of an experienced professional. Ron Holder, COO of the Medical Group Management Association discusses resolving conflict through effective communication, using the "ladders of inference (https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/negotiation-skills-daily/the-ladder-of-inference-a-resource-list/)" to tailor messages for each person, and the differences between hearing and listening. We also explore generational communication gaps and the importance of face-to-face interaction for active and effective listening.
3 Apr 2024
Healers: "Patient Lee" Listens His Way to Changing the Medical Industry
We speak to Lee Tomlinson, also known as “Patient Lee”, who after a battle with advanced throat cancer, began a speaking and writing campaign inspiring healthcare professionals to place compassionate care at the forefront of the modern healthcare system. He talks about experiencing a lack of listening and empathy during his own illness, the role that kindness plays in listening to another person, and how he has grown as a listener in his own life. He spoke with our executive producer, Katie Mitchell.
27 Mar 2024
Healers: Trinity Wilbourn, Spiritual Healing by "Getting on your belly"
We speak to Trinity Wilbourn, founder of Arkitekt (https://www.arkitektcircles.com/), which guides and facilitates community circles for women seeking self-exploration, community connection, and spiritual growth. She talks about the revelations that grew from the ashes of personal trials and loss, what it means to be truly listened to, and how she creates spaces of trust for spiritual and narrative healing.
20 Mar 2024
Healers: Sarah Mitchell, Coaching and Healing with an Intuitive's Ear
Sarah Mitchell is a life coach and medium based in Northern California. She talks about the value of finding a mentor and truly being heard, how she transformed her innate intuitions into an empowering and healing coaching practice, and the importance of listening in a safe, deeply honesty and clear space. Our reporter this week, Alexis Austere, also reflects on having a session with Sarah, where she rediscovered the power of her grandmother's love.
6 Mar 2024
Healers: Shannon Darling, Listening for New Ways of Healing
Our healer this week is Shannon Darling, a psychiatric nurse practitioner in Fort Collins. Using listening to provide wholistic mental health care, she offers ketamine prescriptions and ketamine assisted therapy for appropriate clients. We discuss why ketamine is an effective tool in therapy, what offering wholistic treatment entails, and how to interpret and diagnose the right psychiatric treatment for each patient. We also discuss the power of group therapy for first responders and why Darling has focused her practice on women, children, and adolescents.
28 Feb 2024
Healers: Jody Engel, Listening to Pets By Getting on Their Level
Veterinarians must listen, diagnose, and treat patients who can’t express themselves verbally. They do this while creating trust with both the pet and client. Our healer this week is Jody Engel, Owner and Veterinarian for the Meadows Veterinary Center in Windsor, Colorado. (https://themeadowsvetcenter.com/) We discuss non-verbal listening, negotiating trust, and how team listening fosters support in stressful and emotional environments.
22 Feb 2024
Healers: A Therapist Who Listens with Curiosity
In this episode, we speak with the therapist of one of the podcast team members. The therapist asked to remain anonymous. He talks about the ways he breaks (at least some people's) rules of therapy, his own opinions about listening and narrative, and how a life less travelled led him to healing.
14 Feb 2024
Healers: Rachel Pearl, The ER Doctor Who Listens
The faces of the ER for patients are the emergency medicine doctors who are responsible for diagnosis, referral, and treatment of patients in an environment where time is at a premium. This week, we are joined by healer Rachel Pearl, an ER doctor for Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, California. We discuss mental preparation for the ER and how she has developed a style of listening that’s not taught in medical school. We also discuss the influence of genetic trauma and the value of medically-guided psychedelic therapy for healing psychosomatic issues.
6 Feb 2024
Healers: Xenia Copeland-Fuentes and Meet the Staff
We begin the podcast by listening to the first person you see when you walk into a medical facility. Xenia Copeland-Fuentes is the Front Desk Coordinator at a low-income health clinic, the first line of care. How she hears patients' stories plays an important role in their healing experience. We also tell the story of how we started the podcast and introduce the staff.
Music by White Records.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
Spotify
4.0 / 5
3 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 18 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
23
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
31
Contact Storylisteners
Guest appearances
Books guests
Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.
Host of Storylisteners?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
