Episode 33: Holding the space for a multiplicity of colour and opinion

Welcome in, pull up a chair and grab a warm beverage for episode 33 of Hello You Podcast! How have you been? – it feels like an age since we last waved you in and we have things to share …

First up – Louise’s impending move to Portugal and the melting pot of emotions, adventure and logistics of it, including a surprise tandem.

Neil, on the other hand, has been Story Slamming in Bristol and we chat about what it’s like to own our stories in new ways. Neil talks about sharing his story of working on the Shoreham Airshow disaster in 2015. (Trigger warning: in the podcast, we don’t talk about the details of what happened. However some people lost their lives that day. If you’d like to find out more, this Wikipedia entry is a useful resource and here is the book of condolences.)

We get interested in the process of creating a dialogue with the audience when telling our stories, listening, speaking and staying alive to the audience’s experience. And we follow a thread of how we grow (as people) as we own our stories. Neil points to this video Louise created recently, the first of a kind for her and we chat about the process of aliving our way into new stories & owning our power, with a lovely dollop of encouragement and appreciation from each of us to the other. That’s friendship, folks, being delighted to witness newness in someone you know well. That and appreciating Neil’s hair being on fleek (is that still a thing people say?!? let us know …)

[As an aside, while trying to find out how much ‘on fleek’ is still used, we found this article on it’s first use by Kayla Lewis, adoption by the Black community and how this was then erased and the word culturally appropriated by big brands. We’d like to share that side of the story here]

Is delighting in another’s growth and development a form of love? Louise drops the definition of Love shared by belle hooks in ‘All About Love‘. Neil asks if we talk enough about love in work & business? For Louise it’s a resounding yes and she refers to Helena Clayton’s work on love in leadership and Helena’s free online workshops ‘Acts of Love in Tough Times‘.

Talk turns to We Are Warriors, an art installation Neil experienced in Bristol’s Redcliffe Caves. It uses light and sounds (the voices of 130 Bristolian women were recorded) to hold space for all those who have ever been silenced. There’s an ironic twist in this tale, which we’ll save for the recording itself, nonetheless the installation is deeply evocative. This leads us to the power of quiet, listening and holding space.

To finish, we dive into another podcast tangent on why our minds just aren’t ready for AI. We do love ABC podcast All In The Mind and this episode opens our minds to the challenges we’ve got when we give AI similar motivations to ourselves. We’ll get into the detail in the next episode.

Listen to HYP33 here and please drop us a note on this blog, on Spotify or on LinkedIn to let us know what landed & resonated with you.

Episode 32: The universe is in the correct place, we are aliving and wonderful!

Welcome to Episode 32 of Hello You Podcast!

We start by talking about the universe that hovers over Louise’s head, alongside a mini menagerie of printed creatures. Louise, the treasure trove of ornithological awesomeness that she is, takes us into a deepcut about Goldcrests (and an RSPB link here) – because, well, birds are very cool. Neil, meanwhile, chats away about the Cognitive Bias Codex which folks on camera can now see as he’s turned his desk 90degrees.

We relatively swiftly move into wonder and walking. Louise has been walking in the rain within a group, uncovering hidden thoughts and ideas as she did so – including a fascinating jump into permitting distractions to leach into our awareness.

Somehow, a world erupts between Louise leaving the house and a man jumping in a pond. Neil breaks, minorly, momentarily as we decide that it’s all Jane Austen’s fault. It does make sense, in a HYP way, we promise…

Back to birds, Louise has been beautifully beset by skylarks up on Mount Caburn. Which leads to a whole new world: ALIVING.

This is a stunning addition to the English language – Thank You Louise! Neil vowing to try and use it in every possible context – and we dive into why for a while. It’s simply glorious – and thoroughly aliving.

In a semi-planned way, we sashay into a wonderful piece written by Lauren Hug, exploring how sharing human things helps us to connect with others (even in a business context). This leads us back to birds, and then out into a wonderful video by Monica Parker for Big Think about wonder – and why it’s more important than happiness.

Nature continues to create wonder – and who knew that cicadas have a 13 or 17 year emergence cycle? Lots of people, by the sounds of it – but it’s incredibly wonderful to dig in and find out more!

Finally, we move into a chat about leadership embodiment which is based on the principles of Aikido. Louise has been on a number of workshops, seeking to deepen understanding about how our physical selves react before our mental selves. It’s a fascinating way to think about how we are in the world, how we show up for ourselves and others – and how we adapt to the needs of any given situation.

What a place to round up! From aliving to embodying, via the wonders of nature – this can only be a glorious unfurling of a HYP episode! Listen in here – and don’t forget to let us know what you think!

Episode 31: a chain reaction involving lions, zebras and invasive ants

Well, it may sound like an entry from a bizarre caption competition (think Have I Got News for You) but the lions making fewer zebras kills, all thanks to some invasive ants comes together in a ripple of interactions and dinner right at the end of the recording. It can only be episode 31 of Hello You Podcast!

Louise begins with how she’s starting the year and welcoming slowness, which can feel like a radical act. That leads us to ponder self-care as “fixing ourselves” vs exploring and adventuring, and we think about the plant kind of, cyclical, growth vs the economic, never-ending growth. Neil drops in a connection to the improv idea of ‘Yes, and’ which swiftly brings us to the emerging theme of the episode: experiencing the world as systems and relationships. We muse on being part of, rather than directing or controlling the world around us.

In that vein, Neil drops this awesome book recommendation: The Book of Householder Koans.

Up next: Poor Things. We’ve both seen it and there’s no way we could not talk about it.

Louise: “it’s very surreal and at the same time it’s not abstract.”

Neil: “I have no idea what that [the film] was, but it’s fantastic.”

SPOILER ALERT: we chat about the film from 20:00 minutes in up til 30:00 and we can’t promise we don’t give away important plot details. We talk about progression and following a life path, an important theme in the film and how the sound design invites us into a world that is decidedly off-kilter, among other things. Neil also mentions the sound design in Zone of Interest and we explore the idea that all actions create a ripple of impact, even if they’re not seen or witnessed directly.

“You can have a conversation in a closed room with no one listening and the fact of it having happened ripples out into the world.” says Louise.

Next up, a beautiful article on kinship as a verb or “kinning.” Neil draws out the piece on listening with our entire bodies, picking up on what’s unfolding physically and emotionally, not just what’s said and we continue to make the most of the imagery of rippling.

As so often happens we meander towards poetry, how it affects us physically and Neil shares the idea of using poetry to crack open different kinds of collaboration among leadership teams. (A wonderful and useful resource for exploring how we live with & inhabit poetry is Kim Rosen’s Saved by a Poem).

We settle into the notion of gratitude, which comes from the kinning article, with it’s observation that

“in gratitude you can’t be anonymous”

and Neil ponders the different connotations and meanings of thank you and gratitude. For Louise, this brings up the difference between saying thank you and sharing appreciation, something she learned in the Thinking Environment. Neil vows to go off and research the etymology of thank you, we’ll share the results with you next ep.

And finally, after contemplating dinner (we’re recording in the evening), Neil drops this gem of an article about unexpected interrelations between lions, zebras and ants. Could the zebras have reason to be grateful to the invasive ants? And how did Neil manage to tie up the final article, suggested by his Mum as a very HYP-like topic and the approaching dinner hour? It’s all in the system …

It really could only be HYP. If we’ve piqued your interest with these show notes, please do settle into a comfy chair and join us for Episode 31 – listen here.

Episode 30: We’re available and curious (researchers – we’re here for you!)

Episode 30? THIRTY? Yes, dear listeners, Hello You Podcast has officially reached the big 3-0. And here it is, for proof!

If it were a person, it would be entering its 4th decade of life. Is there a word for this? We know what a teen is, a Tween and several things in between – but is there a specific term for this period when a person’s not in their teens/twenties, certainly not in ‘middle age’ or ‘retired’? 

If there is, please let us know!

Anyway, it’s been another hot minute since we last jumped behind the mics. Louise has been adventuring, dancing internationally and putting the miles on her car.

Which leads us into exploring playlists. Do you make playlists, dear listeners? Music to take you from A to B down literal highways and byways? Or to mediate your experience through music?

As we dig into Louise’s playlists, we discover a mutual love of East Hastings by Godspeed You! Black Emperor (who Neil has seen 2.5 times live and was, to quote, “turned inside out” by them). Louise drops a love of the Secretary film theme by Angelo Badalamenti, because, well, Angelo, and we explore how musical restlessness tells Neil something’s wrong. And let’s not forget someone he nicknamed Murder Gloves at a Boy Harsher gig in Brighton.

Which leads us to something we’d actually planned to talk about – new research suggests that there’s a link between musical preferences and moral preferences. While it isn’t the biggest sample size in the world, researchers have discovered links between not only lyrical preferences (which makes sense), but also the attributes of the songs themselves – eg beat/dynamics or loudness. 

As Proud Generalists, both Louise & Neil wonder what this all means for our playlists and moral value linkages. If anyone wants to repeat the research, we’re here for it! (Just pop a note in the comments or email us – Chat@HelloYouPodcast.com)

Keeping with the musical theme (zipping past Neil’s Three Acceptable Christmas Songs and Louise’s other half’s Trojan Christmas Record), Louise has been dancing at a Jazz club in Amsterdam, on stage no less. Which leads us into an exploration of the transcendental nature of being in the moment, and how music (especially at live gigs) can make this happen.

Excitingly, there’s new research about synchrony among music goers, and how similar physiological responses to music emerge throughout the audiences. We begin to wonder about links with empathy – when we are consciously empathising with others, are we syncing up in important physiological ways (even if we don’t realise)? Are there studies on this? If not, and if there is a research gap here – we’re available and we’re curious! 

Somehow, in a link that makes sense in only the way a HYP link can, we get curious about Glacier Mice (who wouldn’t be) but not before a complete diversion into Fox’s Glacier Mints, gemstone collections and Neil’s memory of his Nan’s massive jar of said mints.

As we try to get back to the Glacier Mice, in another diversion, do Glacier Mice taste of mint? Again, if there’s a research gap here, we’re completely available to go to Iceland on a funded research trip to lick Glacier Mice and rate their mintiness.

Glacier Mice are genuinely fascinating phenomena, which no-one yet understands. It’s rather wonderful, as Louise says, that we also live in a world where there is time and space for this type of research to exist – let’s bask in that moment of gratitude.

From Glacier Mice (which may or may not taste of mint) to mice with tiny VR headsets. Scientists have developed tiny VR systems to see if there are differences between the reactions of ‘free running’ mice and VR-headset wearing mice when they’re shown pictures of birds of prey. It’s a fascinating study and technological advance – which may help to unlock new understandings about how the brain works in a less invasive way than before.

Louise launches a new industry – virtual wellbeing for mice (after they’ve been terrified half to death by birds in VR headsets). No, really, it makes perfect sense…

We also talk about other business ideas around alcohol-free pubs and sober cèilidhs. Is there a link between these events and crowd synchrony? Does alcohol help or hinder synchrony – in another shameless pitch for research funding – we’re here to support the academic corpus (just sent us the grant money, please)!

As we finish up – Louise comes up with the fabulous idea that the owners of Fox’s Glacier Mints could sponsor a Glacier Mint licking research trip, accompanied by a model of Peppy the Polar Bear. Can our listeners’ social graph make this happen? The research challenge is on!

It all makes perfect sense, in the unfurlingly experimental way that Hello You Podcasts episodes do. So pull up a chair, pour something warming and enjoy Episode 30!