In this episode of the "Be Moved" podcast, host Sally Koering Zimney revisits a favorite segment from her archive called "This Moved Me," where she and her guests share recent experiences that have inspired or moved them. Sally frames the segment as a reminder that speakers must first be moved themselves in order to move their audiences. She introduces guest Amena Brown—a poet, author, and speaker—highlighting her soulful, big‑hearted style. Amena shares two personal "moved‑me" moments: the Gimlet Media podcast Heavyweight, which blends humor with unresolved conflict to create a poignant listening experience, and the film The Big Sick, a semi‑autobiographical romantic comedy that balances comedy with serious themes of love, cultural expectations, illness, and healing. Both examples illustrate how comedy can coexist with emotional depth, a technique Sally praises as powerful for audience impact. The conversation flows with mutual enthusiasm, and the episode concludes with a promotion for the Emerging Speaker Society, a free Facebook community where aspiring speakers can receive training, live sessions, and support to develop their message and scale their speaking business.
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Have you ever had one of those wow moments from an audience? You're sitting in the audience and you're like, wow. Well, that happened to me with this next guest, and I cannot wait for you to hear her share what was a wow moment for her. It's a "this moved me" moment. It moved me, so then I had her on my show, and then she talked about what moved her. It's very meta. Let's do this. Hey, movers. It's Sally Koering Zimney with Be Moved. Let's go create some talks that will move this world. We're going to talk with amazing speakers, share tips, tricks, resources, and we are going to be moved so that our audience can be moved.
This Moved Me.
What is moving you? Well, hello everybody and welcome back to This Moved Me. My name is Sally Koering Zimney, and I'm so glad that you are here on the podcast. You're listening, you're watching, you're here because you need something to fuel you. And that's what I do. I empower big-hearted entrepreneurs and changemakers to leverage this incredible power of speaking so that you can grow your impact, your authority, and your revenue without sacrificing what makes you, you. Because honestly, that's what it's all about. And today on the show, we're going back into the archive, into the library of This Moved Me, and we are sharing with you a moment that I think about from time to time. Now, I've been doing this for years, literally a long time. We are over 300 episodes at this point. And so I thought it would be fun to go back and share with you one of my favorite "this moved me" moments. Now, way back in the day when I used to do these interview episodes— now I still do, not as often, but that's literally all the show used to be was interviews. And at the end of every interview, I would ask my guest to share a "this moved me" moment. Now, my belief is that as speakers and leaders and changemakers, our goal is to move our audience, right? That's what we are all about here. That's what I'm all about. That's ultimately what we are trying to do. And if we want to do that, then we ourselves need to be moved. We have to be really tapped into what moves us, like what's going on in the world. How can we tap into the magic sauce of heart-opening, mind-changing. Because when we speak, we are trying to persuade and influence. That's what it's all about. So if we're gonna move our audience, then we ourselves need to be moved. So I love talking about this. Let me tell you a little bit about Amina before we dive in. She is a poet, an author, a speaker, and I got to see her on stage at the Story Conference years ago at this point. And it was a moment. I was also speaking at that conference, so we had the opportunity to like go to a dinner together and connect a little bit. And I was like, this woman is powerful and she is just soul-driven. Talk about big-hearted. I mean, it's just like up there and open-hearted and, and she's got teeth. What I mean is that I like my content to have some teeth. You know what I mean? Like it's got to do something. It's got to mean something. It's got to have some edge to it. Otherwise it just sort of like, blah, kind of washes over us. And Amina's content has teeth and you're going to hear it in her This Moved Me moment. I'm really excited for you to check this out. Now you're not hearing the whole episode. If you want to hear the whole episode, you can absolutely go do that. I would love it. Head over to the blog post and you'll see the original Amina episode as well.
But what—
for now, what I want you to do is to dive into this beautiful This Moved Me moment that moved me. Here she is, Amina Brown. For a This Moved Me moment, something that has moved you recently that has helped you stay connected to your creativity, your inspiration, whatever it might be. So I'm gonna start since you just did a poem. Okay. My This Moved Me moment is this podcast called Heavyweight from Gimlet Media. I don't know if you've heard of it or had a chance to listen to it. It's so funny. It's really a funny show that gets at serious things. So essentially, it's about taking people back to a conflict that was never resolved. And this really funny, sort of awkward host goes with them and helps try to mediate the conversation. So it's simultaneously delightful and also kind of heart-wrenching because I don't like conflict, but it makes it bearable. And it's so fascinating to watch these people, like, 20 years later, try and figure things out. It's kind of amazing. And he starts every show with, like, a really funny phone call to his best friend, who is always annoyed with him.
It's really funny.
So it's called Heavyweight. It's on Gimlet Media and they just started their second season. And so I'm jazzed about it right now.
That's awesome. Yeah. How about you? I would have to say mine is the movie The Big Sick. Hmm. I am late in watching it. I actually wanted to see it when it was in theaters and my husband and I had a day in. We just, there's food in here, there's drinks in here, and we just stay inside this house for at least 24 hours. And we decided to watch The Big Sick. And oh my gosh, like to your point, actually, I really echo your sentiments about the podcast you were talking about because The Big Sick is a comedy, but there's some plot in there that's not funny at all, but they found this way to sort of embrace even the comedic and awkward moments involved in that. But a comedian named Kamau, it's semi-autobiographical, or it could be completely autobiographical, but I know it's autobiographical in some regard of his life and how he fell in love with his wife. And he's a Pakistani man, so it's awesome to see an Asian man as a leading man in this film. Yeah. And he's a Pakistani man with Muslim parents, very traditional parents who are ready to arrange a marriage for him, and he is just not dealing really well with that and happens to fall in with a woman who is the total opposite of the women that his parents have been trying to hook him up with. And in the middle of his relationship with this woman, Emily, who's a blonde white woman— so she's utterly the opposite here of what his parents want— she gets sick. You are watching throughout the film how they are navigating this, how their families are navigating that story. And it just touched me on a craft level, how beautifully used comedy was in the film, even though there were these hard portions of the story, you know, that were not, you know, for comedic value. And just those themes there of love and recovery and healing and what happens when we end up living a life very different than maybe the tradition that we come from or what other people expected of us. So yeah, I started out what I thought was going to be like an eat donuts day. And then my husband's looking at me like, well, I don't think this is having the intended results.
And I was hoping we'd be like snuggling and I'm crying. Right? Oh my gosh. Okay, I haven't seen this yet, so you might have been late, but I'm really late, so I will check it out.
Yeah, you should watch it, but with a box of tissues because it's a comedy, but there'd be like a little ugly crying probably.
Well, I love that. I feel like that's, that's the powerful combination when you can make people laugh and cry. That's, that's really powerful. Oh my gosh, woo! Oh, bloop bloop. Amina, amazing, amazing Amina. So great. And I hope you enjoyed that. There's a whole library of these brilliant episodes. I mean, I'm not saying that like they were brilliant because of me. I was saying I got to speak with some incredible people. And there are a lot of This Moved Me episodes, a lot of This Moved Me moments that I'm excited to reshare with you. So from time to time, we'll be going back into the library and sharing with you some gems that have happened over the years. Now, here is the deal. Before you move on to your next episode on your list, I hope that you will come join us inside the Emerging Speaker Society. It's a private, free Facebook group that is all about getting you to the next stage of your speaking. So if right now you're like, I'm, I'm trying to, I'm like just trying to get the courage to get out there. Awesome. You're welcome there. I'm going to help nudge you out front. If you're out there and you're clarifying your message, That's what we're gonna do. That's the next stage in your speaking. Maybe you have your message and now you are ready to really make the most of it. Awesome. We will talk all about scaling in there. Almost every week I go live on Thursdays with a free training. Sometimes I go deeper into the episode for the week. Sometimes I just bring you some very special content just for those who are in the the group. So I'd love to see you over there. You can join right here, bemoved.com/ess for Emerging Speaker Society. This moved me, my friends. What is moving you? I'll see you next week.
