Carri Twigg on How Storytelling Can Effect Policy Outcomes

Carri Twigg: You already are a storyteller. Everyone's a storyteller.  Every time you introduce yourself to someone, every time you go on a date, every time you write in your diary, every time you pray to God, you are telling a story  whether, and it can be a true one or it can be a very fictitious one.

So often people get in their own way and stop themselves, and think that oh, I can't do this until I have a degree, or until this person recognizes me, or until my work is as good as this person who's at the end of their career, which is a wild way to think about anything. Just start doing it and it will clarify itself.

Don't be your first, no. The world's gonna tell you no all the time. Like you can trust that, but you don't tell yourself no. And then the yeses will start to stack up more and more and more. the world tells us what we tell ourselves.  

June Neely: Welcome to Story for Good, the podcast where entertainment meets impact. I am your host, June Neely. March is Women's History Month, And what a great way to round out this month and with my next guest, Carri Twigg. Carri previously worked in the White House under the Obama administration and is now the co founder and head of development for Culture House Media. In this episode, we dig into the importance of  representation and how storytelling can inform and change government policy. I can't wait for you to hear this. So, let's get into it.   Welcome to the show.

Carri Twigg: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

June Neely: So I always like to start off with you are as a person. So how did you get your start in your career and what brought you to the entertainment industry?

Carri Twigg: Well, those are three really different questions, right? who I am as a person and what I do for work are really, really different But I got my star. I'm actually relatively new to entertainment. I started working in the entertainment officially in 2018 with the founding of the company. Before then, I was in politics and government for about 15 years.

So this is very much my second career. and I feel like a real baby in it in many respects. I am really lucky to have two extraordinary business partners who are longtime filmmakers. And so between the three of us, we have a trifecta of things that have made the company really successful in a relatively short period of time, depending on how you wanna measure success.

But, I came to this work. Largely because I'd had the experience of working in the White House with the Obama during the Obama administration, and, you know, he was the most famous man on the planet. And still, no matter where I went, people couldn't repeat back with much accuracy what we were working on, and what we were passionate about and why things were a particular way.

There was this really kind of massive gap that in many ways persists, between what the public imagination thought. We were doing and thought was possible versus the reality of what's actually happening and what's actually possible within the context and the confines of the White House or the legislative process or whatever.

And so I left the White House in the spring of 2016 and was really fascinated by this idea of like, how do you bring our civic life and our popular culture into more of a dialogue? And started figuring out how things got on television. And I started working with a bunch of media companies.

And to be honest, like I hadn't even watched that much television up until that point. I was just on a whole other thing. I was in a whole other world. And so if I was watching tv, I was watching the news. Or like if Beyonce put something up. Other than that, it was like I didn't watch anything. I like maybe a couple episodes of Scandal.

So I was really starting from the bottom and starting from the sort of TV 101 of how things get on tv and I met my business partners about a, I moved up to New York. In 2016, met my business partners in 2017 by 28. This is a short version. By 2018, they had a production company together before and they were re-imagining what it could be like, what it could look like.

I met them as they were undergoing that process. And by 2018, the three of us had coalesced on a vision of what we could build, altogether, and sold our first series Netflix, which would ultimately premiere in September of 2023. As ladies First, the story of women in hip-hop.

June Neely: That's amazing. When it comes to like the process of going from the White House to Hollywood, are there similarities in their process? Was it more difficult?

Carri Twigg: kind of spiritually, they're very much the same. Politics is a storytelling exercise. A candidate for office, whether they're running for dog catcher or sheriff or president. Has to find an audience that is receptive to the story that they're trying to tell about who they are and what their vision for the future is.

And so many of the things I had learned in campaigns helped me understand how you craft something in order for it to be resonant, in order for it to be heard, there's 50 different ways to tell every single any story. And so you have to think about. We don't have to, but one of the things I think is important to think is to think about if you want it to have impact in the culture, is how it will be received and who will be receiving it and what will they hear.

Because as, we all know, just from being human beings, moving through the world. Just because you say something doesn't mean that's what people hear you say. Just because you think you're communicating something doesn't mean that's what's being heard. And so figuring out that, that puzzle of like, how do you speak or tell a story so that the intention that you are putting into it is the intention that is being received.

You do the same thing in politics as you do when you're trying to find the audience for a television show. And so in my mind they were extraordinarily similar. I think there's. A lot of, there's technical jargon. There's an entire different artistic and creative expression lens that is present in entertainment.

That obviously isn't. maybe some policy makers would debate me about that. I think there actually is a lot of creativity that has to go into trying to solve a problem for 350 million people, like the number of people that live in this country. So there is creativity and policy work, but it's obviously not concerned with whether or not we're gonna have a magenta gel on that light, or if it's gonna be saffron, right?

And what that would communicate emotionally. Like none of that is happening. So a lot of that I've. the aspects of visual communication have been a real area of learning for me.

June Neely: So this podcast is mostly about like social impact entertainment and creating stories that have this impact. what does social impact look like to you?

Carri Twigg: social impact, not to create a definition that uses the words being defined, but it's about does it impact society? social impact is about, or projects that have social impact or about are they advancing or moving in an idea through a culture, right? And that's either affirming, a presently held belief, introducing a new concept.

Building a coalition, coalition around an idea, expanding a coalition around an idea, raising consciousness around that idea. I really think about all of our projects on that spectrum. With one end being raising consciousness and one end being coalition building, and both are equally valuable. It is important to let affected communities have their moment and to be at the center.

And there's also a really important role for stories that are introducing the experience of the impacted to a new audience who is perhaps not impacted and seeing if you can get them motivated or galvanized around that idea.

Both are equally valuable. Both have an important role to play in social impact and so social impact storytelling exists somewhere on that spectrum where it is inciting within its audience by design, by intention, emotion, intellectual framework, a kind of cultural nuance or value that is directly connected to the material real world, in the present moment.

June Neely: and I think that, this is one of those things I can just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk about. But I think I'm just gonna land the plane and end there. No, because what you said about it has to have an impact. do you think there is, an important intersection between, you know, storytelling and like politics and, affecting policy?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think without a question. Human beings are storytelling animals that we don't do anything without a story. And if you want to have a successful political outcome or a policy outcome, there has to be a story that scaffolds the reality for that to exist. These civic ideas have to exist in the imagination of a citizenry before they can become legislation or policy or law.

Carri Twigg: and you can compare and contrast the difference from various administrations over time, like taking two from the Obama era. You compare and contrast the difference between the public reaction to the policy introduction of the Affordable Care Act, right? There was no story, there was not enough storytelling about what that actually was in the public imagination that had preceded the introduction of that, right? So you had some of the country who was down, but it was still like 40, 50, 60% of the country was like, yeah, healthcare, that's great. But it was soft. That was a soft number. And so few people had any sort of, anything that they could point to that felt tangible, like oh, this is the change you're asking me to make.

What's on the other side of me accepting this change is. What is X, Y, or Z? There was this vacuum and that vacuum got filled up by Sarah Palin telling a story about death. And so if you leave all this white space to like use your imagination, human beings don't do change. Well, none of us do on an individual level, and society is just a bunch of us gathering around doing the exact same thing at the exact same time.

There is no allegory for us to be able to attach, to. Imagine someone coming up to you today and be like, guess what? You're moving today. You'd be like, excuse me, no, I'm not. Where why? Who? Who will be there? How will I do that? What will be on the other side of this change will be so resistant to it because you can't imagine it.

But if you had a little vision board and someone's like, guess what? I'm moving you into this exact house on your vision board. You would be the first person to pack your stuff. You compare what happened at the ACA to something like what happened with marriage equality and repealing.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Repealing don't ask, don't tell. If you guys remember there was all this public commentary like the military. Will the military stage a coup? Will they revolt against the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Gets repealed. Absolutely nothing happens. And it's not just because the military is used to following orders, it's also because the military had been the recipients of tens of thousands of box set DVDs of the hit show, of the era Will and Grace.

Because that was the favorite show on bases across the world, because there had been Rosie O'Donnell, because there had been Ellen DeGeneres, because there had been Queer Eye for the Straight Guy because there had been all of these social interventions that had allowed people to not fall into the traps of a empty space in their minds, right? And so they could be like, oh, what we're talking about is Jack. What we're talking about is, Will, what we're talking about is this story or that story. What's on the other side of this change? And it seems fine. It seems okay. And so the intersection between stories are how we galvanize ourselves as individuals and as families and as communities and as a society.

And that is a natural and almost mandatory precursor to introducing any kind of large scale policy, that will be accepted and not incredibly resisted.

June Neely: Yeah, will and Grace is the one that I immediately think of. 'cause it, it did change a lot of things for a lot of people and how they viewed, because they, people loved Will, and people loved Grace. People loved Jack. So it definitely affected policy, just like you said. you mentioned, starting Culture House, sometime after leaving the White House.

How did Culture House get its start? 'cause you mentioned you had the two partners, but like, where did you build from there?

Carri Twigg: so me and my brain's partners, Raeshem and Nicole, the three of us met, they had a production company together. They were with adifferent third partner. They were winding that down and taking a step back and imagining what their future would be with, you know, and if they start a new company, what it would look like.

At that time, I met them on a friend date. I met Raeshem first on a friend date. And, I had been consulting for, a couple different Viacom properties in Refinery 29 and doing a couple other things. And somebody at Refinery 29 told me that I really had to meet this girl Rae. We meet, we hit it off. We, at our very first time we meet, come up with the what would ultimately become Ladies First, a story of women in hip hop and just sort of we're just like talking about what projects do we find interesting?

And Rae is a big hip hop. Had you grew up in Detroit? And I am always fascinated by the way that, what we see women in hip hop go through really mirrors what black women and women of color experience in everyday life, across the economic spectrum. And so we just started, we just really hit it off and started talking and, ultimately developed out that idea for a series about women in hip hop and sold it in a kind of roundabout fashion to Netflix.

And that's how we started the company.

June Neely: It's amazing. And then you guys also do, consultancy too, right?

Carri Twigg: Yeah, so we'd sold our first three TV shows, Ladies First, The Hair Tales that Is on Hulu and Growing Up a series for Disney Plus. and then, 2020 happened and everyone was falling all over themselves to figure out what they could make and how they could make it, and is this racist and blah, blah, blah.

And both Rae and I, our phones just started ringing off the hook and people were asking us to read things and read scripts and review casting notes and help them find Black. DPs and crews. And so you're happy to do that once or twice for friends, and then you're just I gotta charge you cash for this.

what are you talking about? Like, y'all asking for a lot. And so, we started a consultancy out of that and helping, to, make sure that. Opportunity is equitably, allotted throughout our industry and that stories that we want to love are culturally productive.

 I love movies. I love tv. It's such a bummer when you watch something and you're just like, why would you do that? That's so harmful. And often it's not because people don't care. they just don't know what they don't know or they don't see it in the same way.

Or they, again, back to what I was talking about earlier, what they think they're saying is not what's being heard, and there's a disconnect there. And so we want the broader storytelling universe to improve and you know, it takes a long time to make a show. we've only made three. We're at four now shows.

There's hundreds of shows. And so if we can help on things that, improve the overall storytelling ecosystem, we will, whether we're making it or not. yeah. So we do film, we do tv, we do commercials. The consultancies definitely a part of what we do. We also do live immersive experiences, so we are a full kind of service, company.

June Neely: And then when it comes to your development process, are the projects that you do, are they projects that you love, like Ladies First? Or is it stuff that's brought to you? Is it. Kinda like a blend of that.

Carri Twigg: we only do things we love, whether they're brought to us or whether we develop them. you make a show, it takes three, four years. Like am I honestly gonna talk about like I don't want to do something that I don't love or find interesting, have to talk about it every day for four years? What a bummer.

I don't work that hard to live that life, So, so it's a combination. a lot of things we develop in-house and then other times we develop things with, partners. It sort of depends. It's really just is it something that we love? Are we excited by the person behind it or the producer or the director who's bringing it to us?

We're a little agnostic about the way the idea comes and much more focused on the supply chain behind the idea. does it meet with our values, our ethos, our way of, presenting work to the world? And,do we love it? Do we think it's interesting? Do we think it's viable?

June Neely: Do we think it adds something new to the canon? And I think that's important to note that development takes a really long time in Hollywood

Carri Twigg: It does,

June Neely: and you do need to love it because. You're gonna be in it for quite a while.

Carri Twigg: or at the very least, find it interesting. I always reach a stage where at some point I'm just like, I hate this. Like I hate this. this is terrible. I think this is a bad idea. I think it's interesting though. like it's interesting until I'll be able to stay engaged, but like, I hate it.

I think it's dumb. I don't think anyone's gonna watch it. and then you're just too close to it and then you take a break for a couple months, you come back to it and you're like, oh my God, it's great. So

June Neely: I feel like most creators can feel that. 'cause I like when it comes to writing scripts or stuff, there's sometimes where I just have to put it away. 'cause I was like, this is the worst thing I've ever written.

Carri Twigg: Oh, absolutely.

June Neely: and then I come back and I'm like, oh, it's actually pretty, pretty good. Wow. I did pretty decent on this.

I just need to, zhuzh it up in a bit. For both Hair Tales. And Ladies, First, you have these amazing interviews with some big names from Hollywood and music. what was the process of building these shows and bringing all these big power players together?

Carri Twigg: every time we've done one, I'm like, I'm never doing a celeb show again like this. Wrangling is hell. but everyone's so great. Like the thing is, it's scheduling is a nightmare, but they themselves are so great. And the reality is that both of those projects, the Hair Tales and Ladies First Women want to talk about, like, they want to tell their story, they want to get into the topics that we are talking about.

These shows are organic extensions of conversations that women and black women are already having amongst their peers and amongst their families. And so getting the opportunity to do that on a show is actually quite exciting. And or, Oprah called and asked and so no one said, no, I, it's just, or Tracy called asked and so they didn't say no.

But I think it's also in just how we approach things. I think we're black and brown women. We are the way we run a set, the kinds of questions we wanna ask, how we approach I. interacting with their team and setting the whole thing up. I think we are clear that we are doing things our way for us, and that makes people want to be a part of it, you know, and we've been really lucky and people have been extraordinarily generous with us, with their time and their stories and their insights, and so I, hopefully we make everyone feel really valued and appreciated.

And that goes a long way. it's a small industry and a small world and people talk, and so if people have a shitty experience with you, then that gets around fast. And I think if people have a great experience and everyone's dancing and rapping and having a great time at the end, like they'll, next time you ask them for something, they'll say yes. If they can.

June Neely: Yeah, I feel like there's a, A bit of openness that you have when you are on a set where majority of the people there look like you.

Carri Twigg: Totally.

June Neely: cause I, I experienced that for the first time on an all Black set and I was like, wow, this I feel like this is like a piece that I had been missing for a while.

Carri Twigg: yeah, for sure. We've had so many experiences that would've o that were only possible because of the dynamics that we created on the set, and they're some of my favorite times and experiences in this, in the business.

June Neely: Yeah, I kind of wanna talk about, that those moments, 'cause there was a lot of great moments, in the series in itself. one of my favorites was, the juxtaposition you had of. WAP versus like Snoop Dogg song versus his like hypocritical statements. 'cause I, I was watching and I immediately sat up 'cause I was like, wow, this is so subtle, yet so loud.

'cause it speaks so much to, what these women have had to deal with in the industry and I'm sure on set there was a lot of great moments while filming. was there a specific moment that stood out to you?

Carri Twigg: Yeah, my favorite moment of the entire process was that we had Kash Doll, we were interviewing Kash Doll and Kash Doll is sitting down. She looks fly, as you can imagine. I. But she was like touching her neck. And Rae, my business partner was directing that, that interview, and we're like, sitting huddled behind the camera and Kash keeps touching her neck and we're just like Kash. you keep touching your neck. What's going on, girl?

And she was like, she had, and this was in the news, so I'm not telling anything that, private, but her home had been broken into the night before, two nights before, and her home had been burgled and all of her jewelry was stolen. And so she just didn't have any necklaces on and she was like, I just feel so naked.

Like my cha, you know, I just, don't. she was still reeling as I think we all would be if someone broke into our home and stole all of our jewelry. But the set was all Black and brown women. So my business partner's Indian girl, and so we are just dripping in gold. there are more gold chains on the set than you can imagine between Black girls and Indian girls, right?

And so we all take off all of our chains and we give them to Kash. She's wearing Rae's wedding ring. She has a ring that I usually wear, she has our chains on. And so we're literally adorning cash in gold from all the women on the set. And it was that moment of just we got you. Like no matter what, and that to me was such a powerful moment.

And even looking back and seeing her interview and watching how she. did become even more vulnerable, right? Like she showed up and was like Big KD, and then from that moment she was like, no, like I am. Oh, I get where I am. And I get like the fact that you all are willing to, A, notice that I'm not fully comfortable and then B, help me fix it.

I will tell you the real story. I will get into the complexity and the nuance of some of my like, private thoughts around some of this stuff. I will be Arkeisha as well as being KD. And that was that, by far my favorite sort of moment.in the process, it was also really amazing.

Watch Queen Latifah roll up to set in like a baby blue convertible Rolls Royce. That was pretty fly, but you would expect nothing less. Yeah.

June Neely: Nothing less for the queen,

Carri Twigg: Yeah.

June Neely: but what a, a beautiful moment that you had with Kash Doll. especially with her having just gone through that experience, like it, it helped her almost mentally. It helped her heart, kind of heal because that's traumatic.

Carri Twigg: yeah, super traumatic.

June Neely: so you have a new project that is coming out soon that's actually gonna be at South by Southwest this year. Can you talk a little bit about that project?

Carri Twigg: I can't talk much about it. it is called Black Twitter People's History. It's based on a Wired article by Jason Parum, of the same name, I think the name is Inverted. So people's history of Black Twitter that came out in the summer of 2022.and we worked with Wired Studios and Conde Nast and Onyx Collective out of Hulu, to do a three part series about black Twitter, not how it came to be and really how it became this extraordinary vessel to move ideas through culture. And that was directed by an executive producer, by Prentice Penny of Insecure fame, who's an absolute G. and he put it on this extraordinary sort of coming of age narrative that was really brilliant and yeah, we're really excited about it.

June Neely: Because I'm, obviously on Twitter and I, and I partake in Black Twitter and I read the articles 'cause I saw that you guys are doing this project and I was like, wow, this is gonna be really cool to see how this all comes together.

Carri Twigg: Yeah, it's pretty dope.

June Neely: So it's pretty exciting that you guys are premiering that at South by Southwest.

Carri Twigg: Yeah. So then it should, then it'll be up on the on Hulu later in the spring.

June Neely: Oh, fantastic.

June Neely mid-roll: You're listening to Story for Good. If you like the show, please follow and subscribe to keep updated when new episodes drop. And if you're looking for more social impact goodness, but in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter at storyforgoodpod.com./

June Neely: So Culture House has done, some amazing projects already. and obviously you guys are just getting started. are there some things down the pipeline that you are looking forward to? Not necessarily projects if you can't talk about them, but just, where you see Culture House going.

Carri Twigg: Yeah, there's a lot that I'm excited about that I can't talk about. We are moving into scripted, which is super exciting, and are putting together our first scripted series, which I'm really looking forward to. We've mostly been an unscripted and documentary so far. And then last summer we launched a live immersive experiences division in the company called Culture House Immersive.

And that's gonna be really dope. And Is live narrative experiences that, Or again, just another way that you can move ideas through culture. I think that we all know that people learn better. They, ingest ideas better through best through play. that's why recess exists, or it used to, that's why like games are effective ways of people and young people learning things.

The same is true for adults. You don't lose that. You, when you are enjoying something, you learn better. And so. The idea of making substantive narrative work that people can interact with is something that's really exciting to us. and to build community around. I think that there's no substitute for shared in-person experiences that is fundamental to human beings, health and wellbeing, and we wanna be a part of that.

June Neely: So what would you say to a budding filmmaker or a creator who you know, wants to tell stories that matter?

Carri Twigg: do it. You should do it. You're gonna have to narrow it down. But it almost is, it both is and isn't that easy? if you're young, you've been carrying around a camera in your pocket for a decade, You already are a filmmaker, whether you realize it or not.

You already are a storyteller. Everyone's a storyteller. Unless you're unable to function in society, then you are maybe not a storyteller. But otherwise, everyone's telling stories all day long. Every time you introduce yourself to someone, every time you go on a date, every time you write in your diary, every time you pray to God, you are telling a story whether, and it can be a true one or it can be a.

Very fictitious one. It could be something you want to be true, perhaps. Like I say things about myself all the time that make me sound delusional, like I'm a really tidy person.

And then if we widened up this frame, we would see she's lying. Okay, but you don't know that. And so it's, we're all telling stories all the time, and it's so it actually is that simple.

So often people get in their own way and stop themselves, and think that oh, I can't do this until I have a degree, or until this person recognizes me, or until my work is as good as this person who's at the end of their career, which is a wild way to think about anything. Just start doing it and it will clarify itself.

Don't be your first, no. The world's gonna tell you no all the time. Like you can trust that, but you don't tell yourself no. And then the yeses will start to stack up more and more and more. the world tells us what we tell ourselves. And so if you want to do it. Start. Start, make yourself, make a music video today of yourself dancing someone else's song or of whatever.

It's just, it's not, and not for anyone else, just because you want to make it, not to post a TikTok or post to reels, like just start making things. If you want to be a filmmaker, start being a filmmaker.

That's so good. Don't tell yourself. No, that's amazing advice. We are so often our first No, and in any number of scenarios,and it is. Probably the most limiting force of our lives. we wanna blame this person, that person. This systemic reality. That systemic reality. And yet you told yourself no. Before you even tried. before you even gave the world an opportunity to support you.

Before you even gave the stranger an opportunity to believe in you, you told yourself no. And like that guarantees it won't work.

June Neely: Exactly. so with every interview, I do, I. Always end with the same five kind of rapid fire questions.

Carri Twigg: All right. Lay it on me.

June Neely: Uh, they're easy. Don't worry about it. so the first one is name one TV show or film that has had a profound effect on you and why.

Carri Twigg: West Wing, because it made me feel, I had already wanted to work at the White House by the time I started watching the West Wing, but That show just made me fall. So in love with this dream I already had, it made me feel like, yes, that's why I wanna do it. Seeing that is why I want to do this thing.

And it really shaped my life. Yeah. And now I watch it back. And aside from like mourning the a simpler time in politics, I can appreciate it for how extraordinary. It is from a artistic and creative and like craft standpoint, like what a G Aaron Sorkin is. At the time when I was watching it, I didn't, I wasn't watching it for that.

I was watching it for all the emotion, the hope, the purposeness of these people and these characters. And I, was deeply affected by that.

June Neely: was. When you watch it back, is there a difference, In the show and how they run politics versus how it is in real life.

Carri Twigg: Yeah, but he actually got a lot of it. Right. But it's, not just four people making every decision. It's not just like Toby, Sam, CJ, Josh, and the President. Like, how are we gonna run the Republic? it's not like that. it's not that far though. He did a great job. This.

June Neely: The second question, what is the cause closest to your heart?

Carri Twigg: It is the cause closest to my heart. I don't even know how to, I don't know.it depends. I am motivated first and foremost bya sense of profound. Rage and enduring rage that the world, but specifically this country that has so much and is capable of so much and has been one of the most progressive forces in the history of, civilization can also be one of the most caustic and damaging and oppressive that contradiction really.

Stirs something in me. and the way that so often children are forced to pay the consequences of that, like the fact that there are hungry children in America is absolutely criminal. It is criminal to me. The fact that we have not yet built a society that values children's education, that values children's safety,is important.

And we will deservedly, be looked at. In history with scorn, as like barbarians for that, what we're allowing to happen with school shootings, we will be judged as barbarians for and rightly so.and so that's something that, that's like an umbrella. I am not someone who can think about issues in silos.

the idea of naming an issue and being motivated by it is really tough for me. I am,an ecosystem thinker and they're all deeply intertwined. And but I think it all starts with you judge a society by the way it treats its children. and we fail on that score by a bunch of different measures.

I am also really passionate about the preparatory justice movement and reparations for, the enslaved of the world. I am passionate about, sustainability and the environment and, the massive leap forward we need to take in terms of making, taking the climate crisis seriously, and changing our manner of consumption and hyper capitalistic kind of modalities that will also repair us on a spiritual level that will also repair, right? like they're also deeply intertwined, right? Like reparations is inherently tied to climate. Climate is inherently tied to racism. All of these things are so deeply connected.

All both of those are connected to children, right?

A long windy answer to a rapid fire question, that ultimately rejects the premise of your question, so apologize for that. But,I am a, convex thinker. it's not convex. I'm a convergent thinker

June Neely: No, I appreciate the complexity of your answer, and it is true these causes, they are intersected.

if you could name one nonprofit that you would love to lift up, who would that be?

Carri Twigg: I'll betray myself by I.my answer on children that I'm the daughter of a social worker who runs a nonprofit called National Youth Advocate Program, run by my mama. so I come about this. Passion. Honestly, it's something we've been talking about in my home the entire life. my girl, Dr Dr. Ayana, Elizabeth Johnson, runs the Ocean Collective. I'm gonna get in trouble. I don't think I got that name right. but she does amazing work trying to save the oceans. One of the only sort of prominent black women in the climate science movement. doing extraordinary work.

She's got a new book coming out, but she runs a nonprofit Ocean Lab Collective. Oh man, if she ever hears this, she's gonna absolutely nail me for this. And then my girl, Nitika Chopra just launched a nonprofit working with people, with chronic illnesses. We obviously have a health crisis in this country. and so delivering kind of, meaningful interventions around how society does and does not, support, differently abled people. Those would be three. I can't nail this. I can't. I've not nailed a single rapid fire. June.

This is crazy. I'm just wandering off topic.

June Neely: No, you're perfectly fine. that's why I say rapid fire ish, because they are, sometimes the question is a little bit deeper than it actually is. Question four, if you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be?

Carri Twigg: I don't have very many. I learned this word the other day, parasocial. I didn't know that's how we describe, relationships to like when you have a one way relationship with someone who's famous or known or whatever, I don't really have parasocial relationships, Working with someone.

As and as your listeners will know, it's like a marriage of sorts, right? and you have to have so much trust. You have to have so much chemistry and vibe and, think, you have to work really well to collaborate on a project together. And I don't know that there's some, creator, there's so many people whose work I admire.

I don't necessarily know that means I would wanna work with them, right? Like Mariah Carey's a legend.

Do you really wanna produce her album? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe she's the best. I don't know. You can sing that well. You might be a little too close to God to work with, like the mortals among us. I don't know. So I,don't know that there's someone that I haven't worked with that I'm like yearning to.

I think that there's, I think that people come into your life as they should. And you work with them for a reason and the people around you, like I would love to do a project with my sister. My sister was the production designer on Hair Tales and that was so much fun and I loved working with her and it taught me a lot about her and it was really fascinating.

1. To get to work with my sister. I would love to do that again. I would love to work with Prentice again. there are people that I've already worked with who I think are just so extraordinary and I had such a good time with, and it's not to the exclusion of new people, it's just like I don't, and I don't think anyone should.

I will be actually super judgy about this. I don't think that you should project. An experience onto someone you haven't met yet. because it clouds your ability to have an authentic connection with that person. If you show up with your own whole world, you've built this whole world about what it'll be like to know this person or work with them, and it just you don't know that person, right?

And you have no idea what their process is. And even if you've listened to every podcast and read every article. You're just setting yourself up for either disappointment or for to not get, not give them the opportunity to show up exactly as who they are. like you're disappointed 'cause they showed up exactly as who they are, not who you imagine them to be.

So I'm done with my TED Talk, but um. yeah, that, sorry.

June Neely: No, you're fine.

Carri Twigg: I’ll never be invited on another podcast.

June Neely: no, I think, I think that's, it's great to note 'cause there's that saying never meet your heroes and I think it's. That saying happens because people perceive their heroes to be a certain way. And then when they meet them and find out, oh, these are regular human beings, they're infallible.

Carri Twigg: Yeah. And maybe they'll be dope and maybe they'll be amazing, but you shortchange both yourself and them by loading up all this space between you with expectations, right? Like you, a, you screw the PA power dynamic from the moment you should show up because you're like, I wanna work with you.

You don't know who I am, but I wanna work with you. So you already have created an imbalance between the two of you. And then you've also put up this. Idealized or shadow version of them that may or may not exist, that may or may not be accurate, and you don't give them the space to get to be exactly who they wanna be and show up in whatever way they want.

 You will constantly be comparing them, even if you don't mean to be against the version of them that exists in your mind. And that's not fair to them. So it's not fair to you. It's not fair to them. I think it's also like on a social level, really dangerous, like the cult of celebrity.

I think we've watched fail over and over and over and over again, and like why we continue to perpetuate it makes no sense to me. But again, Ted talk over and.

June Neely: No, it was great. I think I, I really love your answer and how you put it.so the last question, which is more silly, if you could choose one song to play every time you walked into a room, what would it be?

Carri Twigg: Oh God. What a question.

Track 1: I could choose one song.

Carri Twigg: That's a really tough one. I struggle with this type of thing. I don't have, because I don't have favorites. Like I just am a Gemini, so I'm all over the place. who will she be today? what, who knows?I don't know. I have no idea. What a whack answer. we've done it. I'm at a loss for words. It's finally over. It's finally out of words. I don't know.

June Neely: That's Fanta.

Carri Twigg: I need more time. I need more time. I don't have enough

time.

June Neely: is there, okay, so is there like a, maybe a Go-to song that hypes you up? the name more than one.

Carri Twigg: I was at Pilates this morning and heated came on and it made it less miserable, which was amazing. that was great. Back when I used to run, I used to listen to the Gossip a lot. Beth Ditto has legendary pipes.

It's so mood dependent. Music to me is so mood dependent. is it like, am I walking in a room and trying to be really friendly and welcoming? Am I walking in a room and trying to peacock and intimidate? Am I walking into a room and like trying to go unnoticed? Or am I trying to be sta like, who knows? Who knows? June?

June Neely: you want a whole soundtrack for each time based off of what you're doing.

Carri Twigg: You know what I mean? I need op air sign, baby. I'm breezy. I'm all over the place

June Neely: It's fantastic.

Carri Twigg: refusing to answer.

June Neely: It's perfectly fine. Yeah. Thank you for coming on the show and for this, amazing conversation.

Carri Twigg: My pleasure. Take it easy.

June Outro: Thank you for joining me today on this episode. Story for Good is created, hosted, and produced by June Neely. Editing for this is episode is by Seven Million Bikes. For more information about the organizations or projects talked about in the show, or for media and sponsorship inquiries, visit us at storyforgoodpod.com. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to the show, and be sure to share it with a friend.