In this opening segment of the Pass the Mic podcast (Acorn Oak Studio), host Virginie Glaenzer introduces the episode’s theme—how emotions intertwine with narratives. She conducts a rapid “tour de table” where three guests introduce themselves: Lisa Gill, an organizational self‑management coach who seeks new stories about work to foster more human workplaces and bring whole selves to work; Aditi Khurana, a fiction author with a journalism and entertainment‑marketing background, fascinated by how narrative and language shape social order; and Jonathan Cook, a researcher of commercial culture who studies material culture, rituals, emotions, and the paradoxical truth of stories. Virginie references previous episodes and a TED Talk by Aditi about a mythological hero, Lily, who must shed identities to discover a secret alphabet, highlighting the recurring hero narrative that underpins many discussions. She then poses two central questions for the episode: how are emotions tied to our narratives, and whether those emotions fuel an addiction to our stories.
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Welcome to Pass the Mic podcast, a production from Acorn Oak Studio and music from Benjamin Schleds. My name is Virginie Glaenzer and I'm your host with a million questions. Today we'll be discussing emotion and narratives. Aditi Khurana and our group will explore the power of narratives and how those narratives shape our understanding of the world. For the listeners and viewers who don't know, Pastor Mike, our podcast is about sharing different perspectives on a specific topic, not only to help us expand our understanding of the world, but also to explore new ways of looking at it. Before we start our conversation, let's begin as we always do with a tour de table and have each of you introduce yourself by telling us your name, what you do, and why you're interested in this topic. Try to be brief and keep it under a minute. So why don't we begin with Lisa?
Hi, thank you so much for having me on this podcast. Really excited to have this conversation. My name is Lisa Gill. I am an organizational self-management coach, so So I work with organizations and people that want to work without managers primarily, but really I'm interested in helping people to find new ways of working and being together. So I think my interest in this topic is really about helping people, us, myself included, to find new stories about work and organizing that better serve us. That mean that we can have more human workplaces. And the kind of emotion piece for me is about bringing our whole selves to work and what that looks like and what becomes possible when we can really do that.
Thank you, Leda. That sounds really exciting. Aditi?
I'm Aditi Khurana. I'm an author. I write fiction mostly. I have a background in journalism and also entertainment marketing, and I am fascinated with narrative and language and how it shapes the social order and how it creates the world that we live in.
Great, fantastic. Thank you for being here. Jonathan?
Hi, I'm Jonathan Cook, and I am a researcher of commercial culture. And culture is, I think, material, but it's also all the strange good human stuff, like rituals and like emotions. And the stories that we tell, and most beautifully, the ways that they don't make clear sense, and yet they seem true at the same time.
Fascinating. So that's definitely something we are going to be talking about. Thank you, Jonathan, for being here. Since last November, we've covered many topics in this podcast, from how to be an activist, how to use mindfulness to be authentic, and even how to lead from our hearts. Every time, there seems to be one central a mythological narrative at the very center of all these discussions, something that I've noticed, and it's the hero story, trying either to embrace a new role or to shake off an identity that no longer serves us. I heard you, Aditi, in your TED Talk telling the mythological story of Lily, a hero who must let go of her identities and her roles to find the secret alphabet, a new language that allows her to find her true self through a very emotional journey. So why don't we begin this discussion by trying to answer these two fascinating questions: How are emotions tied to our narratives? And are those emotions guilty of our addiction to our stories?
