Latest / 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project / Nichelle Carr: The Stories We Love Most Can Hide the Truth — Storytelling, Power & Systems

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Nichelle Carr: The Stories We Love Most Can Hide the Truth — Storytelling, Power & Systems · 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project

• Paige Williams: Welcome to 100 Stories, the Narrative Intelligence Project. I'm your host, Paige Williams. Come along with me as I build the emerging field of narrative intelligence by learning from 100 thinkers, creators, researchers, leaders, people whose lives have been shaped by profound change. Together, we're exploring a question at the center of how we become who we are. How malleable are the stories we live by, and what does it take to change one? Across these conversations, we're examining the stories we inherit, the stories that become identity, and the human capacities that allow us to recognize, question, revise, and live beyond them. What I learned through this series will help shape the field of narrative intelligence and the foundational book that I'm writing about it. This is 100 Stories. Today I'm speaking with Nichelle Carr, who is a storyteller, a technologist, an activist, an attorney. I invited Nichelle to 100 Stories because we have deep experience working with one another in storytelling and technology. we worked together at AudPop She was my chief content officer, and together we were able to award over $10 million to diverse filmmakers, and Nichelle has a wide array of experience in storytelling and not only that, but AI and entertainment and law and crossover between so many different segments where narrative intelligence directly lands. And so Nichelle thanks for being here and joining me on this conversation. Nichelle: Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here and great to see you. Paige Williams: You too. Okay, we're just gonna jump right in. Tell me about the work that has most shaped how you see yourself in the world. Nichelle: I gotta say it's the work that I'm doing now, specifically the storytelling work. It's because it is the culmination of of all the things that I've wanted to do. It is work that is focused on changing the world, as you and I like to say, a story well told can change the world. I do believe that. Have been believing it for a long time, and when you said it, I was like, nah, I know we're gonna be friends. So, 'cause we're very like minded in that. And so I have been moving toward storytelling for my entire career and life now that I think about it. And all of the other work has been about feeding into that well of experience. I do think that what I bring to storytelling is a real life, like a life that's been lived all over the world, in different professions, that doesn't have anything to do with storytelling directly, but it feeds into the nuance of storytelling. it feeds into understanding tough stories and not shying away from those. And I think a lot of the stories that I tend to be drawn to and want to tell are the tougher stories that that we all need to to take a a long look at and that can make us better. Paige Williams: Yeah, and since we do have such similarity in that belief, I wanna ask you, what did you learn about story growing up? Did it influence that belief? Nichelle: Growing up, so I was one of those kids who was a voracious reader. Like I was an early reader, I was an early talker, early reader, and it was the one thing my parents let me splurge on. So, you know, came from a very middle class, like middle middle class family, not upper middle class, middle middle class family. And the one thing and I never wanted for anything for sure, I was an only child, so some would say by definition, spoiled, they don't know. but the one thing my parents would let me splurge on was books. I could get as many books from the little reading list that we would get in school, the scholastic reading list. I could get as many books as I wanted to every time. So I don't even I don't know that I understood that I was learning about story as I was reading these stories, you know, but I was just reading, reading, reading constantly. and another thing I got really into was mythology, ancient mythology. And my parents used that. So we go on road trips. And they would have me read aloud from my mythology books while they were driving. So I became like a good aloud reader, but it also just reinforces I've been reading these stories over and especially mythology stories, I'd be reading them over and over and over again. So I think story was kind of ingrained in me without me knowing it. And even now when I talk to my family and they're trying to tell me something, I'm like, no, you need a beginning, a middle, and an end. What do you what do you try to tell me here? This doesn't make sense. Beginning, middle, and end. so I think story is kind of just in me. It's how I think. my god. Yeah, yeah. Another another friend I just came to me, she was telling me she's like, You're a natural storyteller. She's like you speak in story. She what did she say? She like, You're a storyteller. She's like, You weave theory, you spin, you know, theory and story. And so people thought I went to law school and everyone thought I would be a trial lawyer 'cause they're like, you can tell a story to the jury. But that is not alas, not what I do, not what I was interested in. Paige Williams: Tell me a a transformational moment from your life and how that story has maybe changed over time, if it has. Nichelle: You know, I think for me it was it was more than a moment, it was one long moment. It was when I lived overseas in Dakar, Senegal, which I did right after college. And so I started college early, again, early talker, early reader, a lot of early stuff. And I'd graduated from college early and I knew I wanted to go to law school, but I thought I would go to law school not to practice, but to then become like a magazine publisher. I had done magazines and stuff when I was in college and I was like, Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna shape media. I'm gonna kind of shape how the world thinks and what have you. and then I thought, well, I'll be a federal prosecutor. And then I went to so I was all over the place. And then I went to live overseas in Senegal. And living in Dakar was great. It was I had studied French, so I wanted to use my French, and it's a very international city. Dakar was the capital of the French West African colony. so it's a very international city with a lot of kind of NGOs, a strong international presence, and it's incredibly culturally rich. I got really interested in in international economic development. Like what I noticed is that there wasn't the resources there. And that's that's part of what drew me there is I wanted to see how modern day Africa was currently. I had been hearing, speaking of story, I've been hearing all these stories. If you think about traditional Afrocentrism, it's this idea that we're all descended from kings and queens and Africa is this like beautiful kind of paradise motherland. And I was like, Wow, that can't be true. But it also can't be all of the war and famine and terror and the only thing I see on the mainstream news. Like it can't be the story that I'm being sold by mainstream media. It can't be all that either. So I wanted to know. what it actually was in the day-to-day. And so going there was great because I got to see how how modern and how up to date they are. Like they were so much more aware of world affairs and current affairs than Americans are. Like so much more worldly. Not only in their understanding of news and politics, but even in their taste. Like that's when I finally got exposed to world music in a real way, was over there. But at the same time, they didn't have regular sanitation, regular, you know, electricity reliably clean water. And I was really focused on fixing that. I like, you know what, I'd love to have a conversation about human rights and political rights. But unless we have the absolute basics, like you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, until we have like food, shelter and water, we can have a conversation. about all of those other rights because the first human right is food, shelter and water, right? So I got really focused in that on that and I realized that the folks who are in charge of the money are the ones who get who get to have a say in that and I wanted to be in the room for that. So that trip, that year living abroad, which is my first year living on my own. after graduating from college. I went to a very small college where you're quite taken care of, you're quite sheltered. So all of a sudden I was thrown into a big city and I'd tell people, it's like imagining landing in New York and someone says, Go figure out your life. Go. Like you speak the language but you've got nothing else. You don't know anybody, just figure it out. it helped me understand what I wanted to do in the world and the difference that I wanted to make in the world and I've kind of come at that at different angles. It helped me to understand the role that money and finance plays in that world. it set the stage for all the things that I've been doing since. Paige Williams: And from there, like how did that transform you into the storyteller that you are today and and the pieces in between of like going to law school and then working overseas in law and then coming back to LA and beginning your studio production company? How did Nichelle: I think well I thought I thought I was gonna be like I said, I thought I was gonna be working from top down, making a difference. Like I interned I came back and went to law school and immediately knew I was gonna do finance, like I said. So I started, you know, taking all the corporate and finance classes you can possibly take. I happened to go to law school when the 2000 election happened, then September eleventh happened, then the run-up to the Iraq War, all of this happened while I was in law school. So a lot of just really intense world events were happening and we were telling each other stories about them, right? The world. the country was telling each other stories about them. and so I was thinking a lot about that and I wanted to I wanted to be in the room. So I while I was in law school I also interned for Human Rights Watch and got to act as a delegate for them, like a lobbyist at the UN and it was great. And I would go into these rooms And I, you know, I would just lobby these ambassadors from other countries to, you know, kind of understand our case, understand our side, and then I'd watch them go into a room and someone close the doors in the United States, sign some like coerce them or what have you into some bilateral agreement that undid everything, all the good intentions that would be in those nations' best interests, right? So I saw a lot of that happening, so I knew I wanted to make a difference, but I still thought I would be able to do it from top down. And then I went into a major law firm, like I worked in big law for many years and realized then that I wasn't actually helping anybody. I was making rich people richer. Like I am inherently impatient. Just That is my worst quality. Everything bad about me, you can boil down to impatience. and so I want to have the biggest impact as as much as I can, help the most people as possible, as quickly as possible, I realized I was just making rich people richer. And I was like, all right, well, maybe I can move people to action through storytelling, because I had always loved that. But I never went into it. So it took me kind of working in the belly of the beast of kind of I want to say corporate America, but it wasn't corporate America. It was corporate Earth, because I was overseas doing international deals. It was corporate planet that I realized that wasn't that wasn't gonna be for me. And so I went into entertainment thinking I would eventually move over to the creative side and really finally started my production company. Paige Williams: Wow. And then how do you decide which stories to tell? Nichelle: So for me, I like to tell the stories of those who who are overlooked, their stories are untold, undiscovered, and maybe go against the grain of the mainstream narrative. Like obviously marginalized people, obviously, people of color, black people specifically, black women even more so. I feel like even amongst people of color, Black women, their stories are untold and their stories are so pivotal and so impactful. you can kind of uncover any story, like scratch it, and under the surface will be a black woman who was involved in some way that we don't know about, that we're not fully aware of. here's black women at the bottom of the totem pole. And you know what? From here we can see everybody's ass. And I was just like like literally that's what I know I like, exactly. That's exactly it. We see the truth at all times. You know, this this idea of like trust black women, I think that's great because it's true. So those stories I like to tell because I think they're so important. Like You know, there's a story about this black woman who in nineteen twelve bought beachfront property in the most expensive part of Los Angeles in nineteen twelve and established a beach and a resort and a lodge for black people to enjoy when beaches were segregated. And of course, that couldn't stand, that couldn't last. She was run off the land and things like that and eventually became the subject of the first restorative justice land reparations case of its kind in American history. So that's amazing. but there's stories like that. There's still this idea in America that, you know, black people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. And what I want to reinforce is again and again, this is not isolated. Tulsa, not isolated. Rosewood, not isolated. Wilmington, North Carolina, which a lot of people don't even know about, which was an actual coup against a city that was run and power was shared between blacks and whites. And there were certain whites who just didn't like that and like burned the city to the ground and ran all the black people out. those are not isolated incidents. Black people have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. The problem is, unlike many other populations in America, when we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, we get firebombed. Like we're just not allowed to prosper. And then we're looked at generations later, like, why haven't you prospered? And it's like, I bet I can show you exactly how and why I didn't. You know what mean? because we were. We did prosper, and whenever we did, we were the ones targeted. And those are the stories that get buried. So those are the stories I want to uncover. And not to shame anyone, not to make anyone feel guilt, but to let folks understand that there's a reason why we got here today. and we can change it. You know, it doesn't have to be this way, it didn't have to be this way. We know what what America could be and should be and we just need to do the work to get there. And we also need to understand that it doesn't have to be a zero sum game. So those are the stories that I wanna tell. stories that are that haven't been told, that need to be told, and again will make us all better in the telling and give us a blueprint for justice, a way to move forward. Paige Williams: I have this deep understanding that we need to listen to black women in order to know how to heal the world because they are the origin of life. Nichelle: True. It's true. Paige Williams: Do you remember that conversation? Nichelle: I don't, but that is true. I mean I you know, I w I I don't wanna overly fetishize black women either, right? Paige Williams: Yeah, yeah. Nichelle: 'Cause it can veer that way. but it's we are so much kind of the backbone and the workhorse of, you know, so many societies that that it it does make a lot of sense. And it's true. We are literally the origin of life. Like Eve, you know, actual Eve from Africa. Yeah. And these stories need to be lifted up. And if we don't do it, who's gonna do it? It's a that's a point of self-determination, right? Like we have to be telling our own stories if we want them to be told correctly and thoroughly and with the love and care that they deserve. The way that others tell their own story, why can't we be in charge? And that's a political act too, just being in charge of your own story, you know, being the teller of your own story. Because often we are not the tellers of our own stories. So just taking that mantle and taking charge of that is a political and revolutionary act of its own. Paige Williams: And what might happen as a result of that like scaling? Nichelle: the more that we can integrate these stories into who we are and understand that this is the fulsome of who we are. So to quote a great, great writer and scholar, we contain multitudes. I think it's true for all of us. We all contain multitudes. And if we can get comfortable with that, like hearing these stories and getting comfortable with that and learning To see the world through the eyes of others. Like that's what storytelling really does, right? It allows you to see the world through the eyes of someone else. It allows you to empathize so that you can then see a perspective that's not your own and understand someone else's experience. And if you can do that, maybe you'll be inclined to do right by that person, you know? and doing right by another person only makes you better. It really does. Like, you know, the randomly. I just thought of one of the times when I was living in in Dakar and I was living off less than a dollar a day. Like, you know what I mean? Like 'cause you don't think about it. Like it's really, you know, exchange rate, what have you, but I was living off d less than a dollar a day. And I know you hear about that in the commercials about famine, but truly, you can live off of less than a dollar a day. And I was doing that. And it's not I won't say it's comfortable, but that's what I was doing. And and I remember at one point I felt exceedingly broke. Like I was so broke I would joke that the native Dakar residents would look at me like I was a drain on the system. They'd be like, American, let us feed you. Let us help you. You're doing you're on hard times. You're doing rough. Like I was literally a starving student, right? and I was thinking around that time and as I got more and more stress, like it is very stressful to feel yourself running out of money. Like literally, I have not a sense. I don't know where my next meal is gonna come from. Like da da da and I remember when that really really took hold that feeling really really started to bite my response was you need to let go. This is when you need to start finding something to give to somebody. Give of your time. Whatever little sense you have, you need to give it away. Because I was like, I'm going to lose my sanity unless I start giving. Like that was my response. Because you know, like I said, a feeling can bite and it can really really take you down. And and I don't know. I mean I guess I'm very lucky or you know, God was looking out for me 'cause here I am a twenty one year old and I understood that when you feel that truly starved and impoverished and destitute, the response is to start giving. Like I just started giving up my time, giving whatever money I had, just like I needed that was the only way I could respond. And still be whole as a person was to just start actively giving, giving, giving, giving, giving. And that helped. That's what brought me out of it, you know? And eventually and I did fine. I did not starve. I'm here today to tell about it. So so for me, that's that's the response. And I think that that's what storytelling can help us do. It can help us at our rock bottom understand how to be our best selves. Paige Williams: Mm. That's beautiful. how did serving in that moment of desperation change you or help you? Like what happened as a result and how did you know that, I feel destitute, I should serve others? Where did that come from? Nichelle: know. maybe it's my ancestors because I come from a long line of like church going women who serve, you know, my mom teases that so it's not even a tease. My great great grandmother passed away two days before I was born. And my mom was really close with her. So my mom is the one who was close with all the relatives, all the ancestors, and she had me late enough that they were all gone by the time that I came. And so our family has a lot of Native American heritage and blood in us. And so there's folklore that, you know, the elders of a Native American tribe will leave when they know the younger are coming. And so that's essentially what my great great grandmother was doing. She passed away and so my mom feels that she can sense like my great great grandmother, her great grandmother's spirit in me all the time. And she was a very active woman of service. Like she was like president of the church and did this and did that and all things. And I'm one of those overextended, I used to call it when I was in school extracurricular girl. So I think I knew about service. still in that moment, how I knew it must have been her, you know, speaking through me and her guiding me in that moment. I cannot think of how I knew that I needed to let go, but I just knew that that was the only answer was I needed to absolutely let go and start giving. Because I felt like I was, you know, you're when you're like white knuckling it, like I was holding so tight. And again, that feeling it just really, really bites, you know. And the only way for it to go away was to let go and start to serve. I do not know where that came from. It obviously was her and God, you know. Paige Williams: Can changing the stories a culture tell actually change the systems underneath them, or do systems have to change first? Nichelle: Both. I so in my mind I think of this kind of chain reaction and I did not make this up. Someone else thought of it, but in my head, either someone else thought of it or maybe maybe I've put it together in a way that's unique to me. But there's this idea this is not new, the idea of the thought, the word and the deed, right? And for me, I think they actually go both ways. So you think something, you speak it into existence, and eventually you start to do it. You know what I mean? You're like conditioning yourself and kind of training yourself to get to the destination you're trying to get to. So you think about it, then you speak about it, you know, you say it to people so they can help to hold you accountable. You reify it by speaking it into existence. And then hopefully you get to the point of doing it. So I think they work both ways. And so think that's it's the same for me with kind of like culture and systems and like customs or reality, right? Like we tell stories, we start to think a certain way, we start to speak a certain way, right? We're thinking and we're speaking a certain way and then we start acting a certain way. And so same. It flows both ways for the good and for the bad, right? Because there are many negative stories that are told about marginalized people. And it's in the action of putting them in circumstances that limit and restrict them. When you put them in those circumstances and they're limited to certain types of behaviors, certain ways of being because they're limited. Then that's how everyone's talking about them. That's how they're talking about themselves. And all of a sudden that's how everyone's thinking about them. And that becomes who they are. So it can work for the worse or for the better. so I think we need both. We need we need culture to tell us stories about who we were, who we can be, and then we need systems that can put the mechanics of those stories into place and make them practical. Like, you know, we get out of the theory and get into the practice of it. so we need systems that allow us to practice it. But we can't even imagine those systems without the culture. But we also need to recognize that those systems can limit our imagination too. Paige Williams: Right, right. How do you when an organization says it wants a different culture, right? I'm thinking about companies, what stories does it usually have to stop telling about itself before anything can really change? Nichelle: It has to stop telling the stories that it loves the most about itself. You always have to start with the ones you love the most. Those are the ones that have to go first. Cause in my mind, when I think about that, I think about America. Like I think about America. And the story we love the most about ourselves is our founding, right? This idea of founding fathers and democracy and the pilgrims even before the founding fathers. We love that story. I mean, it's our origin story. We love it, we live it, you know, we we pledge allegiance to it every day. that is the story we love the most. and that's a story we have to let go of. We don't have to trash it. We just need to expand it. We need to broaden it. and I think that's the hard part because again, it's really about helping people to understand that it's not a zero sum game. Like it's funny, when you when you talk about structure, this makes me think about like this idea of critical race theory and structural racism. And structural discrimination, all this kind of stuff. And it's so funny because people have reacted to that so kind of viscerally and with so much anger. And I'm like, what you guys don't understand is the whole point of critical race theory and the idea of structural racism is to divorce it from this idea of you're a bad racist individual. Like that's the whole thing. The first time that people who are, let's say, not of color learn about race, they start worrying, are they racist? Like you can't even have conversations with certain people because or with a lot of people or with the nation because they start to get worried that they're being called and attacked racists, right? And that's if there's one thing that will piss off a white person the most, it is making them think that they're racist. They will lose their minds in such like d the crash out is un believable and it's tired you can see my face. It's like annoying and exhausting and so predictable. And the thing that is hilarious is that the idea of critical race theory and structural racism is about this idea that it's not about bad, evil people who are racist. It's about systems and structures where all you're doing is acting in your own rational self-interest as a human being. But because the systems and the structures are set up in such a way, racism is perpetuated. Oppression is perpetuated. It's perpetu it's Yeah, it's perpetuated and it's amplified and is reified and it's entrenched. And all you think you're doing and all you actually are doing is just living your life. But it's these structures that we need to change. You're not a bad person. You're not evil. We need to change these structures. That is a new story. That is a story where you don't have to be the bad guy. There is a bad system that we need to dismantle. And even that, people lose their minds, can't handle it. And all of a sudden we're banning books and we're burning books and you know, and all of a sudden education is just like a thing that we may not have in the future. All because after all the different ways that marginalized people, and let's just be clear, black people, because we are the tip of the spear when it comes to racial justice in America, all the different ways that we have like torn our hair out. rent the garments, trying to find a way to have this conversation. after all these different ways of trying to have this conversation, finally people like Derrick Bell understand that look, there are systems and structures that really don't have anything to do with you as an individual. It's not about you as an individual. We are decidedly not calling you a racist individual and a bad person. We're talking about something that is much bigger, and that is something that we should all be able to work together to dismantle. Even that doesn't work. And I think we know why the stuff like that doesn't work, because there are people who do very well understand the structures, right? And want to keep those in place. So when we tell that story, when we shift to a story that could bring us all together, the folks who do see the structure and who do have a modicum of control over the structure are like, my goodness, we can't have that be dismantled. So they just turn it right back around into the same thing. they turn it right back into right back into you're calling my child a racist and and destroy it. Paige Williams: Yeah. I've been thinking so deeply about how narrative in a good way and in a bad way puts us in a container of thought and pathways that we can't get out of and we can't see outside of. And so, like you said, we want to burn the books. Like we literally want to burn the stories so that we don't have separate from our current identity. We don't even realize that we're wrapped in this story of the system of racism. Nichelle: Right. And it's not just racism, like gender, you can apply it to all of the isms, They're all that deep and that long and they've all become structurally entrenched. So it doesn't have to be about you being a bad person. And that's the thing. Like it it's not about you being a bad person. It's not even just about your father or your grandfather being a bad person. They did have advantages. Like it's being able to acknowledge that there were advantages that say your ancestors were afforded that others were not. But guess what? We can work together to fix that. You know what your superpower is, white man? You are literally get to be the superhero because you get to use your advantage. For the betterment of others. Yes, you have all this advantage. Put it to work. Be a superhero. Like that's what you can do. You know what I mean? You can absolutely use all this power and privilege that you have to do the right thing, and it's not a zero-sum game. You won't, you won't all of a sudden find yourself on the bottom. And I think that's the fear, is that folks feel like they're gonna find themselves on the bottom. And you know why they're scared about that? Because they know that at some point in history there were people who were squashing others and putting them on the bottom. They know that, you know, what we're talking about when we unearth these stories is someone had their boot on someone else's neck. during the pandemic there was this woman, I think she's I wanna say her f her name is Kimberly Jones. She did this video where she was like, They're lucky that all we want is equality and not revenge. And that is so true. That's it, like Especially, you know, me as a black person I s I can say what I'm interested in is equality. Like, leave me be. Leave us be. Like you know, James Brown has a song where I was just talking with a friend about it. I don't want nobody to help me wait, I don't want nobody to give me nothing. Open up the door, I'll get it myself. That's it. That is it. But there's this idea that in order to perpetuate these systems you have to tell folks that actually what they do want is revenge. They want to keep they want to put their boot on your neck. They want to kill your children, rape your women, blah blah. So you have to do it to them first. And that is the story we need to get past. Paige Williams: I was thinking about your great-great-grandmother sharing her wisdom when you were at your most desperate. And so if that's true, are Nichelle: Right. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: the ancestors of the boot grinders? Nichelle: when you say that it makes me think about how abuse perpetuates itself. 'Cause remember the folks who came here to America were the ones who were downtrodden in Europe, right? They'd been expelled or they were debtors or they were, you know, they were religious, outcasts or they were debtors or they were prisoners or they were, you know, all these things. So you know, that's that's that is the the mindset that they were coming from, how we break that cycle, we're still struggling with that clearly. Paige Williams: Yeah, that's why, you know, you really hit the nail on the head with why I think this development of the field of narrative intelligence is so important. Because if we understand that we, and by we I mean the collective we as well as the individual me, like if I want to change the world, I change myself. But also, I have a responsibility to look at the systems that I live within. And say, what story can I change here? What belief did I inherit about my identity that still keeps me racist? That still keeps me perpetuating racism. And until we do that and understand narrative intelligence, like that narrative intelligence is just another way to break out of an old story in an old pattern. Nichelle: Right. And I would say and that's the thing, like even when you just said that keeps me racist, I wouldn't I wouldn't say that to yourself. You know what I mean? Like that's that's a kind of harsh self talk that makes it harder to do this work. It makes it harder for people to get to to get past the destructive story. Because again, it's not about individuals being racist or not. Really at this point we live in a an entrenched system that we need to break out of. So, So even so I I wouldn't even I I would say when you're trying to do this kind of healing thinking and processing, I would say don't call yourself a racist. Unless you're an actual like, you if you're a member of the KKK, okay, then you know, wear that. but it's not about individuals being racist, but perpetuating racism, yes. And that's where this whole idea of how to be an anti racist comes in. Like how can we take active steps to try to dismantle or at least in our own sphere of influence, not perpetuate this system, right? Like narrative intelligence to me feels like a strategy, and a method, a methodology for communicating with others in a constructive and generative way. it feels like emotional intelligence, this idea of like when you have emotional intelligence, you can understand others' emotions, you can read their emotions, and you can communicate with them accordingly, And in my mind, when I think and I recognize that narrative intelligence means a lot of things, but for me the first thing that comes up is yeah, having an understanding of story that allows me to communicate with folks in a way that is constructive and generative. And that moves things forward and again changes the world. Paige Williams: Mm. I love that. Thank you. on the legal side of your life and and doing that work, you've been working in AI pretty deeply for like the last five years at least. Nichelle: Yeah, since I mean since it became a thing in kind of the consumer world, right? when it became like a consumer product is when I found myself tasked with understanding it and working in it from a legal perspective. So I very much focus on kind of AI governance, AI literacy, responsible innovation. That's what I'm really focused on. So and I work in kind of building generative models and also developing products for consumers to use out of those models. So Paige Williams: And as a creator, when you think about AI and authorship, is there anything you're concerned about in the creative process? Nichelle: we should be careful to use AI as a tool to not let it think for us, because AI is generative and it can it comes up with things like obviously generative means it's coming up with things that are technically new, like new in the technical specific sense of the term. But remember it's built upon things it has collected from the past. So it can resynthesize those things, right? I'm grossly oversimplifying here, right? into something that feels new, looks new, what have you. and is new, like I said, is new, but that can only go so far. So I think nothing can beat human creativity. like human originality of thought. And even with AI, and don't get me wrong, like I I use AI, I don't use it as much as others, because being a lawyer, I'm like inherently cautious about that kind of stuff. But I use the tools not as much as others. And I have found it to unlock things that maybe I hadn't thought about that I had overlooked. And that is great when it's a tool because then I'll take that germ that it has surfaced and I'll run with it. You know what I mean? In ways that it can't understand, in ways that it's not thinking about because it doesn't have access to all the things in my head, doesn't access to all my experience. It it has access to what is published on the internet. You know what I mean? It has access to what lives in our digital world. It may be not even published, but it has access to what lives in our digital world. That's it. So AI, scrapes the internet, it scrapes what lives in our digital world, and it generates new things from that. But the more that we have generated content out in the world, the more that that's what AI is scraping as its source material. And so once that kind of continues in a loop and in a pattern, all of a sudden, again, we're looking at a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. What what what is that gonna do for us, right? Like even now, LLMs, they're very good at generating text. And the more you use an LLM, the more you realize, it is generating text. That is what it is doing. And it will continue to generate text as long as you ask it to. And it will give you something that is polished and sounds good. May not be right, but it'll give you something that is polished and complete every time. Just generate text is polished and complete. And when you dig into it, it'll be not at all what you were talking about. I was just looking at something today and I was like, This is cute. You thought you were being smart by putting this in there, but it's entirely irrelevant. And you fit it in and you put it in lovely words and it's polished and it's complete, but it's entirely irrelevant, which makes it inaccurate and which makes it useless to me. So I think we need to remember that AI is a tool and it should remain a tool. And we do need to work hard that that becomes the case. And I think in the creative world, people like writers Coming up with something like AI can write something formulaic for you. If you need something very kind of quick and dirty and formulaic, it can do that. If you want something that's truly original and creative and like very, very good, AI is not there yet. Paige Williams: And in working in the companies that you've been working in without naming them. Is there anyone you're scared for in the creative world? Any jobs you're worried about? Nichelle: I mean certain post production jobs maybe, you know, ones that are very technical that could possibly be automated, you know what I mean? I think that's a concern. Like I think post production could become really efficient, you know what I mean? So that's a concern. eventually we're not there yet, but eventually actors, you know? Eventually. I don't think we're there yet, but yeah, if we can We can replace your face and get out of uncanny valley, which we're still very much in. if we can get out of uncanny valley, then then yeah, actors maybe. Yeah. but yeah, there are people that AI can replace and we need to be very watchful and mindful of that. you know, like say Denzel Washington or Meryl Streep, right, who I think are two of the last, like, just towering movie stars and master thespians, right? yeah, I think those folks will never be replicated. but I think yeah, for something formulaic, for something they don't care about, for something that's simple and easy, like say I don't know, soap operas. Something very repeatable, you know? also something that you need to produce a new episode every day. Why not? And and honestly, and the thing is, we could start to calibrate our tastes. And when I say we, I mean really institutions who are making all this content could start to calibrate our tastes by just not giving us choices, such that all of a sudden we're totally cool watching a show that's just avatars. Like we're not even asking them to look human. Like what if all of a sudden like it's like animation, right? All of a sudden we're just watching shows that are just all avatars all over the place. Like and so they don't even have to get photorealistic with actors. They don't even try to try to recreate the subtlety of facial expression and emotion that actors give us. but yeah, we can get to a world where that's not even required. Paige Williams: Yeah, I like that like the comparison to animation. That makes a lot of sense. you we just get used to a style. What responsibility do storytellers, technologists, and institutions have when they know that narratives they amplify can shape identity, opportunity, and behavior? And you know what? I feel like you've already answered that, but if you have something new to say on that question. Nichelle: think they have a responsibility to tell the truth. They have a responsibility to tell the truth even when it's hard. So it's funny, you know, one of the things that I carry as an attorney and why I kind of keep that in like my bio and my kind of, you know, telling of myself is that I'm is that I'm an attorney is because as an attorney, one of the things that we are trained in is surfacing, acknowledging and incorporating bad facts. Like the truth will out when you are a lawyer either in a courtroom or in a deal. Like at some point the truth will out, and you have got to be able to deal with that, to reckon with it. You can't whitewash it, you can't sweep it under the rug. Like I think a lot of folks who grow up being trained to just kind of do film or creative, like they're given here's the story formula. Everything needs to fit into this story formula, whether it's a three-act structure or not, whether it's the white hat, bad hat, good girl. Bad guy, whatever, whatever formula that they're taught that stories need to fit into, like your here's your protagonist, here's your antagonist. It's all very simple, it's all very black and white. they are often left without tools to deal with nuance. And so they shove whatever story they're given into these buckets that they've been trained. to to work with. Like this is what works, this is this is how story works. This is what audiences respond to. They don't want to hear or see anything else. I think as a lawyer, that is it's the opposite. Like nuance is where we live. Nuance is what we have to recognize and understand and deal with. And again, and with bad facts, like big bad facts, little bad facts, whatever bad facts there are. And by bad facts it means facts that That are negative, harmful, that go against a story you want to tell, that maybe go against your, say, your client, your protagonist, like the thing that is like the fly in buttermilk. That's a bad fact. The thing that's inconvenient. we have to deal with that. And so I think that by having that training and then also combining that with the idea of storytelling and the idea of how we construct drama and all the formula and all the things I just talked about that those creative folks and storytellers are trained in. When you put those things together, cause drama and story inherently is about conflict intention. So for me, I think my special sauce is this idea of incorporating bad facts. And for me, I've recognized and I've really had to I've had like kind of producing story problems that I really had to work through. And I was like, how like I, you know, I learned something that completely turns my story upside down, you know what I mean? And turns my hero into a villain. And I'm like, my God, how do I deal with that? And I've learned to lean into the truth. By leaning into it, I get more of the drama, tension, and conflict that makes a good story. And so I think understanding to not be scared of that. is what I love. And I think it makes for a better story. Like and as soon as I leaned into it, I was like, my God, the story just got way more interesting. Like way better. And so I think for our institutions, when it comes to especially the institutions that have that power to tell these stories that reach far and wide and can really change the culture, they need to learn to do that. They need to learn to lean into the truth. Lean into the truth and go where it takes you. And it's almost always gonna take you to a better story. Paige Williams: Mm-hmm. Nichelle, thank you for being here and for sharing your experience and your deep wisdom with us. Nichelle: Thank you for having me. So much fun. Thank you for what you're doing. We all need this. We need this. Thank you so much. Paige Williams: my honor and pleasure. Before we close, here's what I'm taking from this conversation about narrative intelligence. Nichelle said something I keep coming back to. We have to be telling our own stories if we want them to be told correctly. And that's not just about representation, it is about power. Who gets to define the story of a person, a community, a country, a system? Who gets left out? And what happens when the stories we love most about ourselves are also the stories we are least willing to question? Nichelle made the case that real change often requires us to loosen our grip on the narratives we are most attached to, not necessarily to destroy them, but to expand them enough to hold more truth. She also offered one of the clearest descriptions I've heard yet of the relationship between story and systems. Stories shape how we think. How we think shapes how we speak. How we speak shapes how we act. And the systems we build then reinforce those ways of thinking and behaving back onto us. The movement goes both directions. And that matters because narrative intelligence cannot just be about changing a private story in our own heads. It has to include the ability to recognize the stories embedded in institutions, culture, technology, law, and power. And then there's AI. Nichelle's caution was simple: use it as a tool, not as a substitute for human originality, judgment, or responsibility. As an attorney and storyteller, she also said something I think belongs at the heart of this project. Lean into the truth, even the inconvenient facts, even the parts that complicate the story, even the things that make the hero less heroic and the villain less simple. Because truth, she said, often makes the story better. So the question I'm leaving with is What stories are we protecting so fiercely that it is keeping us from seeing the fuller truth? Take the Narrative Quotient Assessment at storykeys.co and subscribe to 100 Stories, the Narrative Intelligence Project, wherever you listen or watch. And thank you so much for being with us today. If you loved it, please share it with a friend and give us a rating.