Anne Hamby: Dreadmills, Tater Tubes, and the Stories We Tell

A great story doesn’t just entertain, it changes what we believe is possible. I sit down with Boise State marketing professor Dr. Anne Hamby to unpack why storytelling is so powerful, how it works in marketing and education, and why the most persuasive narratives often sound less like a sales pitch and more like a real human confession.

We start somewhere unexpected: ultra running. Anne explains the “exercise in extremes” behind 50Ks and 50-milers, the mental trick of moving from mile 10 to the next aid station instead of panicking about the miles ahead, and the strange joy of fueling with gummy worms, cookies, and whatever your body suddenly demands. That endurance mindset becomes a bridge to the bigger theme: stories help us persist through discomfort, uncertainty, and change.

From there, Anne shares the career pivot that shaped her scholarship, quitting graduate school and then managing a youth development program in South Africa. Watching a narrative-based curriculum outperform traditional lecturing led her to study storytelling, narrative persuasion, and social marketing focused on consumer well-being. We also dig into imposter syndrome as an internal story, research with STEM students using Story Collider training, and why authenticity and “narrative transportation” can open people up to new ideas while inauthentic messaging triggers resistance.

If you’re a teacher, parent, leader, student, or anyone trying to influence change without lecturing, you’ll leave with concrete ways to use storytelling more intentionally. Subscribe and share this with a friend who loves a good narrative.

Transcript

Welcome And What We Explore

Chris 0:00

Welcome to On a First Name Basis, a podcast where we dive into the stories behind Boise State scholars. I'm Dr. Chris Saunders, but please just call me Chris. I'm a faculty member here at Boise State, and I'm excited to share with you some of the amazing stories of my colleagues, their journeys, the challenges they've overcome, and the connections they're building right here in our communities. Supported by the Boise State Division of Research and Economic Development, this podcast is all about getting to know the people and their work. Join me as we explore the human side of the innovative blue turf thinking happening at Boise State. Let's get to know each other more on a first name basis. On this episode of the podcast, I would like to welcome Dr. Anne Hamby from the Department of Marketing and the College of Business and Economics at Boise State University. Welcome, Ann.

Anne 0:51

It's great to be here.

Ultra Running And Training Extremes

Chris 0:53

So the very first episode that I that I did of this show, the the guest was Owen McDougal. And one of the things we learned about Owen is that Owen rides his bike almost every day, almost 30 miles. And in talking with him, he talked about how that was so important in terms of that's where he did a lot of his thinking about scholarship, and that was a lot of his his balance. And I don't know a lot of people that put in 30 miles, but in our earlier conversation, you also do a whole lot of miles, not on a bike, but running. So how many daily miles do you do?

Anne 1:30

Well, that's what's kind of funny about training for an ultra event. Like during the week, most of the runs are very reasonable, you know, like five to eight miles an hour or so. You know, a lot of casual runners will do that. And then even early on in the process, like the weekend runs aren't a lot. But then eventually you do scale up to you'll run a 50K for a training run, which it might take six hours. So it's really kind of an exercise in extremes.

Chris 2:03

So so you said like five to eight miles per hour or five to eight miles total. Total. Total.

Anne 2:08

Yeah. Like reasonable morning run.

Chris 2:11

I five to eight miles does not sound reasonable to me, but I'm I, you know, a five to eight miles sounds reasonable to you, fan. Fantastic. I I I myself, I the farthest I have made myself run was a 10K distance. And after that, I was going, I don't know why anyone would want to go any farther than that. That was that was enough. So so what is the what is the farthest distance you have ever run, training or for a race?

Anne 2:34

So I have run 100 kilometers.

Chris 2:37

What is that in miles? I should know this. I'm a scientist, I should be able to convert this. What is that in miles?

Anne 2:42

It's around 62 miles.

Chris 2:43

62 miles. Okay. Trying to think, what is 62 miles away from Boise, Idaho? You could run, you could run past Caldwell.

Anne 2:52

So in theory, right? I also do want to take this opportunity to dispel a myth. You know, when people say they run these distances, these ultra-running distances, oftentimes these are mountainous races where there's a lot of walking, there's a lot of hiking. Really? Yeah.

Chris 3:08

Really? So it's ultra just moving at the power of your own two feet. Yeah.

Anne 3:13

Ultra locomoting, but it sounds ultra running, sounds more intense, right?

Chris 3:16

Like ultra-locomoting, though. That that has a nice ring to it. But but then now that now that sounds almost worse. So you're going up it right now. You have elevation changes. So if you run, you're just gonna collapse. Does then everyone run downhill at a at like a breakneck pace?

Anne 3:32

So that that's one strat. There's all kinds of strategy here. You can do that, but then again, sometimes you're running downhill through rocks, and then you know, you might face plant if you go really fast. So yeah, people have different strengths. Some people some people are really good at going fast uphill, some people are good at fat going fast downhill, some people just aren't fast, and they just are glunts for punishment and they can just persist.

Chris 3:52

It's it's or it's like the tortoise and the hare. They just keep they just keep they just keep going.

Anne 3:57

They just keep going.

Chris 3:58

Yeah, I none of that sounds good to me outside of walking around in the mountains. Like I'll I'll take that at a at a at a leisurely pace. So so you uh what was the most recent race you you said you did what uh 50K not too long ago?

Anne 4:12

Yep, I did a 50K in Almo, Idaho, near the City of Rocks National Monument, I think is what it is.

Chris 4:18

It's beautiful, beautiful place. Oh, yeah. If you've never camped there, you should go camping. Check it out. It's it's awesome. Lots of places for kids to climb the rocks. So what's the next race?

Anne 4:29

Okay, so I have a 50 miler coming up here in a few weeks in Moab. And I'm excited but nervous because there's lots of rocks there, and I have a history of twisting my ankles on rocks. So we'll see how this goes.

Chris 4:42

How many people do is it pretty common then that people just don't finish for those kind of reasons? Like they start, but then they something happens. Because that's a that's a long distance. A lot can happen in running 50 miles.

Anne 4:52

Amen. Yes, there's a lot of DNFs. Did not finish. Okay.

Chris 4:56

DNFs. Tried, but but didn't didn't didn't quite didn't quite get there.

New York City Versus Boise Life

Chris 5:02

So now you over oh you have sorry, you have not always had the benefit of running in the beautiful areas that we have here to run, because you come from Boise from more most recently New York City. And how do you run that distance in New York City?

Anne 5:17

Well, either you don't, or you run one loop over and over and over again, or you run it on the dreadmill for hours.

Chris 5:25

The Dreadmill. Yes. I can tell by that that you don't particularly care for the treadmill.

Anne 5:31

Yeah, it's its own form of, I guess, you know, people might say that ultra running is a form of masochism, and you know, yeah, it's just a different form of challenging one's mind, perhaps.

Chris 5:44

So it the out the outdoors helps with the like, I'm gonna do this this terrible, awful thing that is gonna be great when I'm done with it, but as long as I can do it outside.

Anne 5:54

Aaron Powell For me, that's the big part of the appeal. It's being able to see varied terrain, getting all over the mountains and places that I yeah, just wouldn't otherwise be able to go. So the treadmill is kind of a this exercise and just repetitive misery.

Chris 6:09

Repetitive misery. I don't think they're gonna as a as a faculty member in the marketing department, I'm I'm pretty sure they don't want to put that on their on their their dread, right, the dreadmill company, right? Dreadmill Inc. So when you came to Boise, was that part of the peel? Because when I first met you, you you you told me right very firmly, Boise is now home.

Anne 6:31

Yes. So this beauty that we have here at our fingertips in Boise, my appreciation of the outdoors. I I always liked the outdoors, but getting here and then getting to experience it, I don't think I could ever leave it. You know, it's it's realizing that you love something once you have it. And so yeah, in New York there are plenty of amenities, right? You can go to these world-class cultural institutions, but it's kind of a concrete jungle filled with lots of trash and lots of people. And I know that really appeals to some people, but for me here, Idaho, Boise, Idaho, just really fits what I have values and lifestyle.

Chris 7:08

And when you came out for your, I assume you came out for a visit or as part of the the really super fun job interview process. And had you ever been to Idaho before?

Anne 7:17

Never, not once.

Chris 7:18

How fast did it take you to be like this, I I want, I want this job so that I can live in this place?

Anne 7:24

It was pretty immediate. I so you can look at pictures online, right? But you you come here, and I think I came, the the weather was was perfect. It was actually during Treefort. And you know, sometimes Treefort can be really great, sometimes not. This happened to be one of these really great years where I, you know, I woke up before my interview, went on a run on the greenbelt, and went, what is this thing? The green belt. This is amaz by the river, and the university is right on it. So it was just so idyllic, you know, seeing people walking everywhere. And so at that point I realized, wait a minute, this the stakes are already high. Now I really better not mess this up.

Chris 7:59

Now it wasn't just uh, I want a job, it was I want this, I want this job in in this place.

Anne 8:04

Absolutely.

Chris 8:04

I I have told many people, right, of like, what's it like to to to work to teach at Boise State? And one of the things I almost always mention is I can walk out the door of my building, and in a matter of steps, I'm on the green belt, I'm next to the river, and if I keep going a mile or two in either direction, I get out of the congested part of the green belt, and it's just me and the water, and and it's wonderful. And you can just keep going, right? You can go up to Lucky Peak and then just keep going, or you can go out towards Meridian and Eagle, and you can just keep going, which for someone who runs ridiculously long distances, that's probably that's pretty appealing. Of I don't have to turn around.

Anne 8:46

I've said that I I'm I'm not an athlete at all. I can't catch a ball, I don't have no eye hand coordination, but I can go in one direction for a really long time.

Chris 8:55

So it's a good skill to have. You must be highly motivated to do it. I don't know how I I could I could not do it. So where has been then, whether it's in the Boise area or other places in Iowa, where has been like the the coolest place that you've ever run? Where you're just like, this is a place you keep going back to or a place that you would actually travel to go run to?

Anne 9:20

That oh man, it's such a hard question because there's so many different biomes, you know, but running in the mountains of Switzerland, it's that's pretty epic. Not only because it's really hard, but it's just gorgeous. It's you know, pristine air and biome and looking down onto the lakes, and then you can finish your run and go get some chocolate and all those other Swiss goodies. But honestly, the the running here in the Boise foothills is pretty amazing too. So one of my favorite runs, I did uh a local race, the Boise 5050. You start down in the military reserve, down in kind of like downtown Boise near St. Luke's, you run up to Bogus Basin, the Simplot Lodge, and you go around there a little bit, and then you run back down. So it's getting to do the full gamut of all the way up to the to bogus basin and down, and you really see a lot there. So that's what I'm saying.

Chris 10:13

That's quite the elevation change too. Too. I I would imagine there were some walking portions. There's some for sure. Yeah. Some walking portions. Yep. Yeah, the whole ridge to river to the trail system, it's so amazing. And now that my son is older and I can take him on more hikes, it's really, really fun of like, okay, what do we, what do we want to try, try this time and kind of explore those, those, those new areas, those new gems. There's always, there's just so, there's so many of them. And I always forget how close they are to the city, right? You're in this urban area, and then suddenly you're not. And you didn't have to drive two hours to to get there.

Anne 10:49

Now I'm such a trail snob. I traveled to different cities and towns, and if they don't have a trail system that's immediately accessible with hundreds of miles of trails, like, what is this place? Quality of life.

Chris 11:02

So Boise has spoiled, which is why now Boise is home and you're like, I don't, I don't wanna, I don't wanna leave. I can't leave it. So it's I don't think it's any stretch of that.

The Pain Cave And Aid Stations

Chris 11:12

I would imagine that there are also barriers to running those kind of distances. Again, I, you know, my 10K, I that that was it. But I remember even just training up to that distance where there are these these moments where you when you question your sanity of why would I why am I doing this, right? I can just I can stop at any time. But you'd have to persevere kind of through those those points. So so what's that like when you're in a race and you're like, I'm 10 miles in and I have 40 miles to go? What do you do you have a do you have a trick? Do you have do you have something that you do, a song that you sing in your head?

Anne 11:46

What what like one one hack is to break it up into segments? You know, it's like not I have 40 miles to go, but I've got, you know, six miles to the next aid station. And maybe also fun fact that people might not necessarily know. I think a lot of people are familiar with like road events where there's water and Gatorade, but in some of these mountainous ultra races, they call it an eating contest on foot. And so you get to these aid stations, it's everything a 10-year-old kid would want. There's gummy worms, Oreos, Coca-Cola, quesadillas, and you just you shove it down your face and move along. So yeah, getting to the next aid stations is really one trick. But one thing you said about the perseverance that was surprising to me is it's not a linear experience. So you don't start, you know, full 100% batteries and then drain your battery down to zero at the end. It's much more undulating. So, you know, you start, you feel great, and then you hit a trough, and some people call this the pain cave, you get in your pain cave, and then you know, you have to deal with that, but then you emerge at some point, and who knows why? You just feel great again, and it goes back and forth. So often you if you just hold on and keep going, you'll emerge. I mean, unless there's something really bad, you're you know, like you're you're hemorrhaging or you're like you've you've injured yourself, right?

Chris 13:01

Something is clearly, clearly wrong. Right. So do you look forward to the food? Like, what's your okay? So this this all-you-can-eat buffet that you've described, what is it? What's the thing that you're like, this is what I want to go eat?

Anne 13:13

You know, and this is the funny part. Like, I couldn't even tell you. And it changes in the moment. Like, you could just show up at an aid station, you go like, watermelon, yes, that's the what I need. And then the next one you get to, and you're like, Yes, I need that cookie. So your body tells you it's a very like primal experience in a way.

Chris 13:34

And and as a biochemist, I'm sitting here thinking, like, oh, what's driving that, right? You've not to get too science-y for right, but that used up all of your readily available energy, right? All that, all that glucose, all that blood sugar, that's that was gone a long time ago. Then you've tapped into all your medium-term storage, your glycogen, and then breaking down fat just takes a while. So your body is screaming for more sugar. So out of match, right, those cravings are your body's ways that this is this is what I need right now, in this moment, feed me in my face. Feed me all the things. And it probably is better than that. I again I always associate with ultra runners of the the gel, the goop uh of that I always like that's what see that I didn't know that you had these these treat buffets that you can, these treat stations that you can look forward to.

Anne 14:22

They're better earlier on in the race when you can still handle food. So that's that is another one of these things, like at later distances, so you're however many miles into the race. Sometimes you can't stomach food very well. So the goose, the gloppy things are are good at that point. Quick aside, I have a terrible idea for a product. Here in Idaho, we have potatoes. I think tater tubes, so it's like a potato-based gel for running.

Chris 14:51

Tater tubes.

Anne 14:52

Right? Like, think about it. Heard it here first.

Chris 14:55

Tater tubes.

Anne 14:56

Mashed potatoes with gravy, right? When you're out there on your bike, you need a snack.

Chris 15:02

Starch, it's right. It's starch is the way that plants store the sugars, right? So that's that you're just you're just eating the sugar that they have that they have stored up from you, you know, fresh from the sunshine, making, making it all for for your consumption. I yeah, I don't know. Like, do mashed potatoes sound good to you when you're running?

Anne 15:21

Well, again, sometimes salty things do sound really appealing. And I guess I'm putting on the chemist lens.

Chris 15:27

Your electrolytes are all out of whack, you're sweating, right? All that salt is going out of your body. That's why people, right, Gatorade and all those sports drink. It's just it's full of full of salt. Interesting. Tater tubes. When I see that on a package sometime, and you're like, did Ann come up with this? This is the the the marketing. So so along with that, I I don't think right, so I'm not gonna call you a quitter because clearly you're not a quitter.

Quitting Grad School Then South Africa

Chris 15:54

But one of the first things you told me when we first met was you told me a story about how you were a quitter in graduate school. And and for those of you that have been to graduate school, and for those of you that haven't, one thing that everyone that I've ever talked to that has gone to graduate school has a moment in time where they go, What am I doing? Why, why did I do this? This is this is I can stop at any time. Why don't I just stop? Why don't I go do something else? This just seems right. It's probably like a point in a race. I'm in the pain cave of graduate school and I don't know how to get out of it. So, so tell us your story about how you are a quitter.

Anne 16:33

So, this is definitely not one of those things that you typically see on paper or on a CV. You know, usually it's very linear from point A to point B. People have this coherent sense of self, but that absolutely is not my story. I started graduate school. I started the program I did because I was interested in understanding how to use marketing for what I would say good in quotation marks, right? So how to help people, make people's lives better, help them make decisions that enhance their well-being. But this program I was in seemed like it was very focused on, you know, selling toothpaste, some of these very minute, like how do we make corporations profit? I was not interested in that. I've I've now come around to the idea that, you know, there's there's a lot of different ways to look at marketing. And probably I was adopting a little bit of a myopic view, but regardless, I was disgruntled with my program. I was not finding my assignments engaging, and I had a really hard time envisioning myself moving along in this trajectory for the rest of my life because, you know, you're in this graduate program, presumably preparing you for a career. And I just, you know, when I envisioned that for myself, I I it made me want to pull my hair out. So after sitting on this for a while, I had one of these outbursts, these impetuous youthful moments that I at this point in my life, I'm I'm not sure if I would handle it this way, but hey, maybe maybe it was a blessing in disguise. But I I reached my limit and I went into my graduate advisor's office and I I told him, I can't do this anymore. I want to quit the program. And I marched in there expecting him to talk me out of it or try to anyway. And so I had all these counter-arguments ready to marshal should he try to dissuade me. And to my complete shock, he looked at me, kind of sighed, and said, Well, okay, if that's what you want to do, great. But have you given any thought to what you want to do instead? Because you are not the first person to quit on me today. And, you know, in fact, I had not given any thought to what I was gonna do. I was gonna figure it out, you know, because in this moment of passion, I just I had to stand for, you know, what was important to me, and that was that was quitting at that moment. But he had a grant in South Africa where which was a positive youth development program, development study. And the program manager for that project had just quit. She, I think she was getting married and wanted to go off and actually do something else. And so he said, Well, for the for one year, you could come and manage this program in South Africa and you know, take some time to figure out what it is that you actually do want to do. And I said, All right, that sounds great. Sign me up. So I I picked up my bags and went over, got plugged down in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. It was just me embedded in this nonprofit institution that we were working with. And I was there in charge of the just basically making sure the wheels did not come off the program. You know, people got paid, data got collected, things moved along. And what really struck me as I was there, just sort of, you know, walking around with my clipboard in the school, making sure that everything was was going as it was supposed to, was the fact that, so this was an intervention that was in a school, I guess I should have mentioned that, focusing on health-related behaviors. And there was a control group where one set of the students, they got the standard, well, let's just call it a health education curriculum. And they were lectured at, and you know, I could I could peer in the windows of the classroom and see that these kids were just bored out of their school. Imagine the traditional, you know, teacher up in front of the class just lecturing, lecturing.

Chris 20:10

Don't do this, don't do that, do this because it's good for you. Got it?

Anne 20:15

Got it? Good. Exactly. That's all fun, right? We all love those types of classes. And then the experimental group, you know, on the other side of the hall, they were getting this narrative-based curriculum. And what that was is there were educators in there who were performing skits or getting the students involved in performing skits or telling stories that ultimately would illustrate the points, the same basic knowledge content that was being disseminated in the other class, but in this sort of story-based wrapper. And I'd look in those classes and the students were awake. They were participating, they were raising their hands, sometimes they were jumping around. It was lively. And so I found myself just, you know, kind of pausing and going, huh, that's interesting. What is it about stories that really get these people going? And it's, you know, it's not just these people, it's it's everybody really. But what really made me stop is after the program ran and we looked at the data that we had collected, so not only did the lived experience of the curriculum seem to make a difference, but it was more effective in driving some of these attitudinal and behavioral intention types of outcomes. And so that really made an impact on me because I was sitting here thinking, not only do people's lived experiences of stories differ, but it really shapes the way they view the world. And I'd been sitting here thinking about stories is the most innocuous thing ever, but really it's a very kind of powerful Trojan horse weapon. So I quit my quit program. It's true, but I was quit and then I then was able to crawl back to my graduate advisor and say, So, can I get back in the program? Because I think I've figured out what I want to study. And of course, with a knowing, like nodding, like, all right, okay, we can. Make that happen. So yeah, full circle, I was able to get back into my graduate program and study this thing called storytelling.

Chris 22:08

So so literally your story then this aspect of your story drove drove your your now your scholarly scholarly work, right? So this this this story narrative became it's a very meta thing. Right. Became the thing that you were that that that that you were doing. So so how did then that apply to to marketing, right? You're you're talking about making, you know, convincing or influencing, right? We're in the day and age of influencers, right? Of influencing these kids to to do to make choices that are that are good for them. And that it wasn't so much the choice, at least from what it sounds like, it was less about the choice, and it was more of how the choice was presented to them, the story that was told, rather the lecture that was given, whether they made that that choice or not. So then how do you go back into selling toothpaste? Right? Do you just tell a better story about selling toothpaste? Or how did you how did you merge the the things that made you quit and then the things that made you come back to it?

Anne 23:11

Absolutely.

Storytelling As Marketing For Well-Being

Anne 23:12

So that's a great question. I've heard it said that you we're not Homo sapiens, you know, knowing ape, we are storytelling ape, we're homo neurons. And so storytelling is certainly relevant to marketing, we see it all around us, but we're just we're all storytellers. And so when I was able to wed this understanding that I now had that, you know, stories are so powerful, they really move us in ways that other types of message presentation cannot. You can apply that, certainly you can apply that to selling toothpaste, you can, but you can also apply it to these pro-social ends. So at the time there was this field emerging called social marketing, not social media marketing. We're not talking about Facebook here, but we're talking about taking marketing principles and applying them to pro-social ends. And so I saw this kind of confluence of ideas here where it's like, okay, I can take some of these traditional marketing principles, I can bring in the storytelling angle, and I can really study, you know, how can we take some of these textbook marketing 101 approaches, but apply it in a way that improves consumer well-being.

Chris 24:16

So, so really it's it's marketing, but with Wow, I'm trying to think of a word here that doesn't sound really high and mighty, but marketing, right? Not ethical marketing, but but marketing for good, right? You want to change the world, not in a way that maybe that's too grandiose. You don't want to change the world by just selling people things, or you're selling people on the idea of doing things that are good for them or for the community. Is that agreed?

Anne 24:45

Yeah, there's this group, and you know, it also it does sound grandiose, but the transformative consumer researchers, that's how they like to brand themselves. But yes, absolutely. Keeping the consumer and their well-being at the heart of what is the goal.

Chris 24:57

Interesting. So does that does that overlap? And this is this is I I was just was just reading something about this of a consumer reports on lead in protein powder. And by the time this episode airs, that will be probably old news, but that's fine. But that it right of so you find this, so maybe it's lead and protein powder, it's some dangerous thing in a really popular consumer item, right? Marketing companies have done all this work to get of like, trust us, trust us, buy our stuff. And now you have this other agency that says, well, this stuff is is dangerous to you. So is what you're talking about, then how do you tell that narrative? So you're telling people now, don't buy these things because they can hurt you. Do you have is it almost like countermarketing to that? Or you're marketing to the social good that is that is counter to the buy our stuff?

Anne 25:49

Certainly, right. So I think a lot of us when we think about marketing or promotions or advertising, we think about these big corporate behemoths, right? That want to maximize what they call, quote, shareholder value, you know, pad the bottom line. But really, marketing is just a tool. Uh it's it's understanding your target audience and their motives and what they'll they'll respond to. So it's it's yeah, it's taking this messaging that maybe uh one group is designing to sell products and then another group might be using to try to get consumers to make decisions that will improve their health or at least prevent hurting their health. So yeah, countermarketing. You could you could call it that for sure.

Chris 26:30

Okay. So with with that, right? So I think, and and in talking with you, I have this new appreciation for the word marketing, and that it isn't all about a commercial and it isn't all about selling of it's really this to me now, it's this convincing other people to do something that but this influence, right? Of like whether it's buy my product or do my thing, which which as a teacher, I'm very much in the job of trying to influence my students to do the things that will help them learn what I what I want them to learn. Or as a dad, to influence my child who does not want to go to bed or does not want to brush his teeth, that these are good things to do. And it is very much my experience that lecturing of, you know, we'll do these things because I said so, that that that typically does not work. It I that is typically not with a meta of, oh yes, dad, that makes total sense. But sometimes that narrative, I don't know if I tell I did tell him a story the other day about how I don't always like to get out of bed either. And that seemed to resonate a lot more than I, dude, it's time to get out of bed. We are gonna be late for school. So that that little bit of a story seemed to seemed to help. But I know that you're involved, right, with other, with looking at other types of storytelling. So,

Imposter Stories And STEM Belonging

Chris 27:44

so some of these, right, so imposter stories. Can you tell us a little bit about those? Because I I think that those stories, some of these storytelling, I think people listening will resonate with of like, oh, I I I tell these stories. So tell us a little bit about some of the some of the stories that we that we use and may not think of it in that way.

Anne 28:02

Sure. Yeah. So I think a lot of us when we hear marketing and storytelling, we think about ads that have stories in them. And certainly those are very can be very powerful forms of storytelling. Next time the Super Bowl rolls around, pay attention to the top ads. I guarantee you they will almost all be in story format. But we also have stories that are inside our own heads that we're telling ourselves about ourselves, about reality, about the way the world works. And then, you know, it sort of becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy. So one of these common stories that I would argue many of us have is around imposterism. I like either I don't belong here, I'm not good enough, I shouldn't be here because I should be doing something else, other people are better than me. We see these a lot in an educational space, especially with hard subject matter. And you know, if you come to college, oftentimes you're gonna be confronting some hard subject matter. And so I think one of one common response is that, oh, because it's hard, I shouldn't be doing it. But that's not it at all. And so I'm working with a group of wonderful academics across the Boise State campus in different disciplines and engineering and education to look at how some of these uh stories that people tell themselves about themselves can be overcome through another kind of form of storytelling. So we have been working with classes of STEM students, and we bring in the Story Collider, which is a nonprofit organization devoted to educating this the world about science and science storytelling. So they have a great podcast, go check it out. It's all in story format, very engaging. But they come in and they teach students basically how to tell stories. So, you know, stories are this creative endeavor, but there is a canonical structure to them, right? You know, beginning, middle, and end. There's a climax. There's some of this, you know, best practices and how to craft a good story. So students learn this story grammar. That's one way to think about it, and then they craft their own story, they get feedback on it over time. And these stories are stories about overcoming. So it could be overcoming a personal problem, an interpersonal problem, or something related to their experience as a STEM professional or a STEM student, you know, taking a class that was really hard, but persisting and then persevering. So they all have that in common. So the students will do that, they'll tell their story, they'll listen to everyone else's stories. And then what we've been doing is looking at, you know, before they have this experience or this assignment in their class, in terms of their sense of belonging, their sense of STEM identity, whether or not they feel like an imposter. So before before the intervention, and then afterwards, how these things change. And surprise, surprise, or maybe not surprise, you know, when people hear these stories about imposterism, they have this realization, oh my goodness, everyone else is having a hard time too. I'm not alone. And hey, look, actually, there is evidence that I have been able to persist, to persevere and overcome. So, you know, maybe there's reason to believe that I actually do belong at this table. And so it's been a really wonderful way to look at storytelling from a different lens, not just the outside stories we receive, but by changing the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, we can then change our behaviors in a way that puts us on a completely different trajectory.

Chris 31:19

So, so right, the students have these internal dialogues, or or I should say we all we all have these internal dialogues. But what you're saying is that by listening to someone else's story that fits this kind of right, of they start telling the story, and I'd imagine, right, the students are like, oh, like this sounds like me, that imposterism. But then by telling about the perseverance of this is how I overcome this, what you're saying is that actually influences the person listening to it to kind of start to realize that their story can be one of perseverance as well. Does it kind of awaken this thing? And then now it's changed their story, that now their story is one of perseverance. Yeah. They're more likely to experience that.

Anne 31:57

Right. Like I could, I could do that too. You know, it's I I think we have all had this experience where we see someone or hear someone's story that's very similar to ours. It started out in a similar spot, but then we look at what they were able to achieve, and suddenly that becomes a lot more attainable to us. So just what stories do, they do many things really well, but they put context around things that are can you like in a decontextualized format might seem inaccessible.

Chris 32:28

Okay. And and I, you know, I when when we've talked earlier, and I I've been thinking about this, right? Of like when do we tell stories to other, to other people, right? And in what context? Because sometimes I always like to say, my, my close family, I'm I'm the oldest of four, and we have our own like almost familial story, right? We have all these stories in these contexts, which allow us to tell jokes that no one else would get because they absolutely make no sense because they're rooted in stories that only that only we know as the siblings that grew up and and we experienced these things. But so so, but like to strangers, right? And so I was thinking of this working on a search committee right now is that right, job interviews. I mean, really what you're doing on paper and in an interview is you're telling your potential employer, this is the story of me, right? At your marketing yourself. This is this is why you should buy my product and the product is me, right? Hire, hire me. So so would you say that that being aware of those stories is important and so that you craft the right narrative, both internally but now externally, to the person that you're trying to convince, like, hey, hire me.

Anne 33:35

Absolutely, right. So we can have these internal stories, but oftentimes we tell stories to perform, you know, to present ourselves as credible individuals in a in a maybe a workplace or job market, right? Like hire me. Oftentimes these behavioral interview questions, which have become a lot more popular, you know, tell me about a time where you overcame a, you know, a challenge or you had to figure out a problem, or where you had to navigate some group conflict, those are all the the correct, I'll put correct in in quotes, responses will be in story format where one can describe, you know, I had this team member and these are the steps that I took to mitigate that conflict. So right, we see them in the context of hiring, we see them in the context of families that you had mentioned before. We can we see them in the broader cultural context in terms of myths, we see them in political advertising, we see them again, stories are everywhere. We're just we're swimming in a story-filled world.

Chris 34:31

We we talked about two of like right speed dating, right? Now you've got to tell you the story of yourself in two minutes to someone who's now gonna make a snap judgment of what I'd like to hear more about the story, right? Of of crafting those nar narratives or or even right not to get into the social media too much. But

Authenticity And Narrative Transportation

Chris 34:48

I think those are also very much these very out there curated stories, right? Of what do I post on Facebook or what do I post on Instagram? Because that's telling a particular narrative, which I don't knowing some of the people, you know, I don't do a whole bunch of social media, but the story is usually on social media. That's like the good stuff. And most of the time there's a whole other context of right. So is is that do you think that's people trying to influence their story? Of if I post all this positive stuff and I get likes and I get reinforcement, does that help build that story? Is there a a danger there of that kind of maybe too much artificial sweetness?

Anne 35:31

Certainly. Yeah, there's a whole field on impression management, right? We try to shape what other people think about us. And we've learned over time that you people respond positively to all of these possible things. We want to present the most aspirational versions of ourselves as possible. But what we also know to be true is that there's a growing mental health crisis, particularly amongst teens and younger consumers of social media. And I'd wager that this is a big part of it because there's this huge disparity between the narratives that people are putting out about themselves. You know, you see that, oh, these perfect narratives of these other people, and then you compare yourself against them, and there's a chasm there. And so, you know, what are the implications for me? So storytelling really is, again, one of these marketing tools or broader tools that can be used for great good, but also can drive a lot of ills.

Chris 36:21

Right. We can start either comparing our story to others too much and start to realize, like, well, my my story doesn't have the happy ending that their, that their story seems to seems to have. Or it's almost like we're creating another opportunity for imposter syndrome of like, I see all of these positive posts, but I don't have those things. So I don't, I don't belong. Everyone is happy and and having a good time, and it's kind of like not really, right? Life is messy and complicated. It's kind of like it's it's the, you know, you you pass by someone that you know, an acquaintance. I I do this all the time on campus, right? Soon's like, hi, you know, and I'm like, hi, you know, how's we go through, we go through the the script, right? Of hey, how's it going? And usually hear, fine, how are you doing, right? And and in my brain, I'm like, is it really fine? Or when I say fine, is that simply because the default answer? Because I don't want to tell the messy story. Lately, I've been trying to be more honest. I'm like, you know what? It's halfway through the semester. I'm exhausted. How are you? And it always catches people by surprise, usually, and they look at me and they're like, you know what, I'm really exhausted too. And it's kind of like, yeah, we're all ex, we're all exhausted here. We're not all fine. And that's and that's okay. So maybe kind of it's okay to be tired or to be grumpy or to be, you know, to have an off day. I again, the the parental thing, I have to remember that too of I want my son to have a good day every day, but I don't want that to be the expectation because then that's then if he has a bad day, he's gonna feel like, well, I did something wrong. Or we just have bad days. Sometimes there's not a good reason why we have a bad day. It's simply not not the best.

Anne 37:54

This really points to the power of authenticity and the importance of authenticity. And within stories, the the line between fact and fiction is very blurry. And it in fact doesn't really operate like it does in other contexts. So you could watch a fantasy movie that, you know, it's clearly fiction, but there's real quote truths you could take away from it in terms of human interaction. But back to the authenticity, we're really good generally at sussing out like inauthentic stories. So when people are BSing, you know, and so so true, authentic, vulnerable narratives that reveal some degree of conflict or challenge, I think people really do like those because they track what their lived experience too.

Chris 38:40

So from a research standpoint, is there research in are those more potent? Right. So are authentic stories more potent? Is there a potency factor of if you can tell stories authentic? Because I feel like, again, the the danger of the information age is a bunch of inauthentic stuff that may not be, I we we did an episode about this before in terms of disinformation versus misinformation. What is the is someone purposefully telling you the lie or is someone just perpetuating a lie that they think is to be to be to be true? So is there evidence? Do we like the lie more than we like the truth?

Anne 39:17

Well, it depends. So there's this concept in marketing called persuasion knowledge. As consumers, we're not idiots. We come to the table knowing that other people are trying to influence us, right? Otherwise, we change our opinions all the time. So if I perceive that there is a manipulative intent, out of the gate, I go, uh not gonna process this message. I know what you're trying to do to me. You're trying to sell me something and it's not gonna work. So people are more open when they when they perceive that the communicator's intent is to authentically share their experience or to connect, you know, if if they're not trying to hurt me as the as the message recipient, in that sense, people are more open to those types of messages. And so authenticity really does a great job opening the door for people to process messages. Now, when I say process messages, this will relate back to the narrative world because there's this unique form of processing called narrative transportation. And this is what happens when we sit down in a movie theater and the movie comes on and suddenly you're mentally in the world of that story. You're no longer aware of the people next to you chewing on popcorn. So when a message is authentic or a story is authentic, we're more likely to suspend our disbelief. We enter the we're more likely to enter the world of that story. But if we're starting to get signals that this is an inauthentic narrative, then the gates come down and we do not enter that world and we back away hastily.

Chris 40:40

This sounds very much like the matrix of when they created the too perfect world. The humans, right, they wouldn't accept that the world was that good. So they had to make it kind of kind of flawed because it was like, well, this is it can't be all rainbows and butterflies all the time. There has to be some like hardship. Is that kind of what you're talking about, right? We we reject uh or Uncanny Valley, right? It's too perfect. It's it's gotta be, right? The android looks looks too human, it it creeps, it creeps us out when it's when it's too too shiny.

Anne 41:11

Yeah. And I think we are for evolutionary reasons drawn to conflict. So when there's challenge or negativity, we've got this negativity bias. Because once upon a time, walking around in the forest, if there was a snake or something that would hurt us, you know, it really behooved us to go, wait a minute, let me look at that, versus the world is neutral, benign in general. So I think that that that is also a part of it too.

Chris 41:35

We we pick up things that are out of place or are dangerous to us, and and some, right? The manipulation is dangerous to us of there's a nefarious or there's maybe not nefarious is the wrong word, but there's some sort of they're trying to influence me to do something not for my own good, but but but for their good. Is that kind of the the I don't want to be taken advantage of? I want to buy your product because it's a good product, not because it makes you money.

Anne 41:58

Certainly there's that element of it.

Chris 42:00

So another

Pivot Stories And Meaning Making

Chris 42:01

type of story that again, you you you introduced me to all these different terminologies of things of like, oh yeah, I know what that is, but I didn't know that it had a word or pivot stories. So describe a pivot story.

Anne 42:12

So in our modern, very fractured workplace, we see a lot of pivot stories. So someone might start out their career as an accountant, but then get burned out and decide that actually their true calling is baking, and they open a cupcake shop. And so they're they're engaging in a pivot. They're they're changing their professional trajectory. And oftentimes they have to make this make sense to other people. You know, you see this on paper and go, like, wait, what? You know, how what does accounting have to do with baking? And really, under the hood, there's a lot going on. You know, maybe there are some things that will transfer over from accounting. Maybe it's this fastidious attention to detail. Or maybe someone had some big epiphany overnight, kind of like I did, you know, I went, I can't do this anymore, and you know, took a dramatic turn of action. And so really pivot stories to answer your question, it's creating coherence for the listener to help them understand how you got from point A to point B. When on paper it doesn't look like a really linear trajectory.

Chris 43:12

So is that just making sense for other people to like like so, for example, right, you're you're in a job interview or you're at the bank saying, give me a loan for my cupcake shop? And they're like, why would you open up a cupcake? You were a successful accountant, right? And now you're doing this, right? So you're trying to sell that, right? You're trying to make sense of that narrative. Is there some of that though too internally of convincing, right? Most of us have done something wild and crazy, right? That that we're like, I'm gonna ditch this plan, I'm gonna go do this, and now I have to rationalize it. So one, I can defend it to others, and two, I can defend it to myself.

Anne 43:48

Absolutely. Yeah. So one of these elements of mental health, I suppose, are do we have coherence in our life story? Are we able to make meaning out of potentially adversity? So there's something called the redemptive narrative arc where maybe you got fired from your job, but then it led to this other opportunity that you were able to pursue and that actually made your life better. So the extent to which people are able to impose these redemptive arcs on experiences of adversity has a significant impact on people's like well-being, their mental health, et cetera. So we do this for ourselves all the time internally.

Chris 44:25

Interesting.

A Mentor Story That Lands

Chris 44:26

So I'm gonna, so I we we discussed this before the show to make sure this was a good idea, but but I'm gonna, I'm gonna give an example of a pivot story that I tell that I use when I'm mentoring students, and you all get to listen to then and analyze my story and tell and and tell me and tell you why I tell this story or why that story might be effective. And and what I would encourage everyone listening is to think about well, what are the what are the stories that you tell others? And and we're gonna kind of kind of wrap up the show then of kind of like, how can you use this idea in your in your context? So so the context of this, oftentimes I will, I'll teach upper division chemistry courses, and I can always tell who the seniors are, and they're in their graduating year, and they have a different kind of stress about them. And I remember very, very well the stress that I had at that at that age too. And I usually, you know, talk to them like, hey, you know, you know, are you graduating this year? Yes. And then I ask them the question that none of them want me to ask is what are you what are you doing after graduation? And they look at me with those eyes of, why did you ask that? Everyone asked me that. And I don't want to answer the, I don't, right. I think they're tired of telling, telling the story. And so I instantly go into this mode where I tell this story of, well, you know, I remember the spring semester of my last year of undergraduate. And as a chemistry major, you would have thought I would have taken a lot of chemistry. I took no chemistry classes. I took half a semester of tennis, a semester, Jewish history class, and an ancient Greece class. And I probably didn't do as well in those classes as I should have, but I was so ready for the next step. I remember talking to one of my mentors, my faculty mentors, and he asked, How are things going? And I told him, terrible. He's like, tell me about it. And I go, every assignment is busy work in my brain now. I don't want to do anything that my teachers tell me. I just want to be done. I want the diploma. I want to be on to the next thing. And he's like, Great, we've done our job. You're ready to go. You've learned that you don't need us to tell you how to learn, you know. And but it was kind of also a suck it up, you'll be done. You'll be done soon. But but I remember feeling just this kind of this stress. And I'd always told people that I'm gonna go to graduate school, I'm gonna get my PhD in chemistry. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it, but that's what I'm gonna do. And I told this story so much. And what started to happen was that I started to realize that I was feeling really burnt out and I really didn't want to grad go to graduate school yet. But I had no idea how to tell anybody else that story because it was such, it was such a direct, right? It was like surprise, it was a twist, and I and I and I worried about it. So what I did on kind of hindsight's 2020, what what I what I did was I just let all the graduate school application deadlines go by. And then that way I couldn't go to graduate school, but because I couldn't have, I didn't, I didn't apply. It was, there was nothing that I could do. And once I had reached that kind of point of no return, then I said out loud to myself and to others, I'm not ready to go to graduate school yet. I I want to take some I want to take some time off. And I and I'll never forget how good I felt when I said that out loud. And no one around me was like asked me to justify my story. They're like, okay, that's that's cool. What right? What are you gonna do? I don't know. Now now now I did to to change to something else. And I eventually found a science-y job that was really cool. It was really cool to not be a student for a while. I was like, I don't have any homework and I'm making money and I'm doing science. Like, this checks a lot of boxes. And then I got bored and I'm like, I need to go back to school. And I I then just drug my drug my feet a little bit more. But after a two-year gap, I went to graduate school ready to go into graduate school. And I always think back on that and I think, I don't know that I would have gotten through graduate school, that barrier, right? Of if I hadn't had that time to kind of to reset. And so I tell my students, if you think you need a break, like I felt, it's okay to take a break. You can still be the PhD chemist or the doctor that you want to be on the other end. So I tell that story or versions of that story a lot. So analyze my story. What am I what am I doing there? What am I doing right, wrong, and different, but but what why do I find that students respond well to that?

Anne 48:39

First, amazing. I find myself completely transported into your story and buying it. And I maybe I'll co-opt your story and share some version of it with students as well. So, one thing that you did really well right from the beginning is this emotional vulnerability. So you opened up about how you were feeling. And we can think about the world in terms of the landscape of action, what's happening out there, and the landscape of consciousness, what's happening inside of us. And people don't have insight into that unless we tell them about it, right? So you shared what you were feeling. And then that fosters this process called identification, where I, as a listener, put myself in your shoes and I'm imagining what you're feeling. And then I start to be able to simulate the world as though I am in your shoes, you know, adopting your motivations and goals, and then consequently your emotional reaction to different experiences. And we do this so readily that we don't even think about it, right? Like so, whenever when someone's telling a, I would say a good story, you know, a boring story of like, I got up, I went to work, I went home, you know, don't really identify with the protagonist very much. But when we did what you did, where it's you're you're really sharing what you're feeling in that moment and what's at stake for you, and we start to empathize. Maybe that's a common word that we we have all heard and we understand that. So by putting themselves in your shoes, then they can start to understand your world. So we then engage in mental stimulation where, you know, oh my goodness, it must have been so scary to try to tell people that you weren't gonna go to graduate school. And then wait, what? They didn't even, you know, bat an eye and it was fine. And so then we can extrapolate from your experience, you know, hey, maybe this parallels what I'm thinking, like, I want to go to graduate school, but I don't want to tell people because they're gonna judge me. Maybe it's fine, you know? Actually, maybe it's fine. And then this fear of, oh, I might, if I don't go now, I'll never go. Well, you know, we're we can again do this mental simulation of, okay, here's a world and where that worked out okay. And so it can, it is serving basically as a counter-narrative for the narrative they may be telling themselves. But I think the most important thing is that you wrapped this all in a story format. And instead of just telling them, don't worry, it's okay, you don't have to go to graduate school, you can wait. You know, you you hear that and you go, ugh, all right, fine. But by sharing your story, people really understand that in a different way, and they're more likely to remember that. I've heard interviews with you know, Kaneman and Taversky, the Novel laureates who invented behavioral economics, and these are really smart people. What they came back to, they realized towards the end of their careers is people don't remember anything but stories. So you can like tell them you can sit through a class and learn a lot, and maybe you'll remember some of it. But the it the percentage of stories that people will remember and that impact their lives is pretty substantial. So I think you know, by telling students that story, I'm sure you've shaped a lot of lives and given people permission to take some breaks.

Chris 51:28

To me, I I I when I talk to people about my job, I think very much what we do is is teachers, right? We tell stories. And this is the whole point of this podcast and this show is the importance of of storytelling. And and right, I often liken it too. I even when I teach my students how to do scientific writing, which many of them, right, and just those two words, scientific writing, everyone's saying, oh, the driest, most boring, most technical thing. However, and and I agree, some of it is just we'll put you to sleep, but the best scientific writing is done in it in there's still elements of storytelling into it, right? There's a there's a beginning, there's a middle, right? There's some sort of satisfying conclusion to all of this. I I just and and maybe there's work out there, and again, I don't know everything, and maybe you're familiar with this. I mean, is it simply because we've been telling stories longer than we've been writing them down or recording them? Are we just, like you said, we're hardwired to watch out for the snake? Are we hardwired for oral storytelling? Because back in the day that was our, that was our original way to communicate or pass down information, right? Like I ate those mushrooms in the forest and I had a bad experience. Don't eat those mushrooms, rat, right? Does that is there work that's done on that? Like from an anthropology, sociology, psychology standpoint?

Anne 52:50

Your intuition is correct, right? We are we make causal inferences, right? If A precedes B in time, we might connect the effect of A on B. So, like you said, eating the poisonous mushrooms might lead to sickness, and we can impose order there. So, this is how we learn to make sense of what happens in our world around us. So, and then that ultimately translates into storytelling. Because what are stories? They're cause and effect sequences featuring an actor. So you're you're spot on. You you are an innate storyteller.

Chris 53:20

So is this too like the hero's journey cycle, right? Like people have analyzed all of these works of fiction, right? The hero's journey that here, and and they all follow the exact same pattern. And there's right, you you you had said earlier the redemption arc or whatever, and that's that's what I thought of like, oh, it's the hero's story, right? The hero now has overcome this thing that everyone saw coming a mile away, but they didn't. But it but we we feel kind of comfortable in that realm.

Anne 53:47

We go back and watch Marvel movie after Marvel movie, right? It's like, how many times can we reinvent the same story? But yet we still love it, right? So there is something fundamental about our psychology that finds it appealing.

Chris 53:58

So as we kind of wrap this up, so so as people listening that that hopefully are finding this interesting, but might go, so how does this affect me, right?

Everyday Ways To Use Stories

Chris 54:07

What is the, I always like to kind of what's the local effect, what's the community, what's the personal effect? So, what are some avenues that people can think about how to use this, right? Not not ad agencies or marketing gurus, but like, but just people that right running their own business or right, we talk about parents, like what are what are some ways that these ideas can be useful to think about?

Anne 54:30

Sure. So stories can accomplish a lot of things. One thing is you highlighted learning stories. So parents are trying to get their kids to do something or teach them about the importance of something rather than just lecturing them. You know, kids are they really love statistics, right? Sarcasm. You know, telling a story about your personal experience or someone else's personal experience that illustrates the point is gonna be a great way to both get them interested and to remember it. Stories are also great for bridging divides. So maybe you've got a coworker, a colleague you want to get a little bit closer with, sharing personal stories. This is just sort of the water cooler chatter, you know, before the meeting. Or even starting a meeting with a story that's relevant to the context is a great way to get people's attention. So because we are so fundamentally interested in stories, anytime I'd argue that storytelling is relevant for any time you want to influence someone. So be that in the job setting, be that the the advertising agencies, or be that with your friends and family members. So think about what it is that you want to accomplish and then backwards engineer the story to illustrate that point.

Chris 55:38

And and is it is it more effective when you can tie it to kind of your own experience, kind of like I did of with that story of it's it's not about somebody else, it's about me.

Anne 55:47

Definitely, because of that authenticity piece, right? You are speaking a true personal story and we are suckers for those.

Chris 55:54

It's it's like right, we all like underdog stories. Absolutely. Right, we love it, right? Like right, you that's why people watch Rudy over and over. That's whenever when anyone says underdog story, I always think of I always think of Rudy, right? And you watch that over. You know, you know what's gonna happen because you've watched it, right? But you still it's so You can do it. It's so satisfying, right? Like you have no influence on it, right? It's already happened. It's a it's it's but we we just we just love we love that feeling uh the redemption, the the redemption story. So well, thank you so much. This is to me really, really interesting. And and ever since we we first talked, I I I keep seeing it now everywhere. It's one of those things, right? Of like, what story are they trying to tell? Or what story could I use to convince students to do something? So I've I've actually thought about leveraging it more in my classes of what are those things that I'm really just kind of boring and dry on, and you should do this thing, but I haven't given a story to kind of help them with that. And so, so thank you for that. And I and and it's been a pleasure talking to you. And I wish you the best as you prep. How how soon is your by the time that most people listen to this, the race will be over.

Anne 57:03

So, but but yeah, I'm gonna have to think about the stories I'm telling myself in my head. It's less than two weeks now, so yeah.

Chris 57:11

So you've got the right, so you've got this. You can do this, you've done the preparation, you're gonna have that. You know the pain cave is waiting for you, but you know you've gotten past it. So I look forward to I look forward to hearing you the story of your race.

Anne 57:25

And I look forward to sharing the happy ending.

Chris 57:27

Exactly, right? That's the right zoom. I did that with DF. All right, well, thank you again, Anne. I really appreciate your time.

Anne 57:35

Thank you so much.

Links Thanks And Credits

Chris 57:41

If you'd like to learn more about any of the topics discussed on today's show, please visit boiseystate.edu slash research. I want to give a special thanks to Albertsons Library on the campus of Boise State for the recording space. The theme music for this show was composed and engineered by Boise State graduates Alan Skrivin and Taylor Ross. Thanks again for listening.