S5 Ep. 309 The DNA Of Stories

SPEAKER_01: Hi. Welcome to the World Cafe Live Show. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good everything. Wherever you are, listening to me at this very instant. So good to be here again with you. Yep, yep, yep. So good. And outdoors, bringing you, you know, some beautiful scenery and all of that. How are you? How have you been? I'm good. I'm fine. I mean, amazing where I am. Always an exciting moment, you know, coming into this space. Yes, this is the space where we come in to do what? Lean on one and other's experience to forge a positive path. And positivity is what I bring to you today. What are we going to be doing today? SPEAKER_00: I want to look at a subject I call how stories shape the future, the DNA of stories. You know, the DNA of stories. SPEAKER_01: I know I've said this before on the show. We're creatures of communication. Man, human beings, we're creatures of communication. And we're always involved in events and invention. And when these things happen, they boom blow our minds. And when they blow our minds, we our being cannot help it but to express it. And in expressing it, we create this conversation. And the conversation leaves the location and travels far. And it gets to another location, a different location. I mean, carrying human beings. And it's like, is that possible? And it's like, yes, it happened in so-so-and-so area, you know, and all of a sudden you see us, you know, we are inspired, we want to do things. But also have come to realize that stories can be distorted, stories can be weaponized, stories can be told in a different way to create a different effect. Lately I've been going through history, you know, how I've been going through a lot of materials in history. Coca-Cola, how Coca-Cola came about, how Pepsi came about, Sprite came about, how Fanta came about, you know, the beverage drink, uh, how the Nazis, as Hitler and his team, the Second World War, the First World War have been, you know, going through it. And I've heard different versions of the stories, different versions of the stories. But there's something that is so unique about the story, irrelevant of the various versions. It's intriguing. It's like you want to know, like the story of Coca-Cola, how a drink, a beverage drink, so to say, you know, ended up changing the landscape of a society, landscape of a country, you know, I think it, yes, United States, but the particular place, Atlanta, Georgia, you know, how it shaped and changed all of it. And when you look at the the root of it, it started all the way from somebody who had this issue, you know, pain from the war, the American Civil War, and he was looking for a painkiller. The muffins were not working anymore, and he had a sense of chemistry. And on the basis of that, he created this formula, this drink, and Coca-Cola was born. And before you know it, they were hooked on it. But do you know what? The story is not just the drink, the story is now about the people, how they related with the drink, how it affected the nuances around them, how it affected how they perceived reality and all that. You know, in course of one of the stories, how Coca-Cola became unique was even the bottle. If you look at the Coca-Cola bottle, the way it's the original Coca-Cola bottle, it was shaped after the Coca pod. You see where the Coca pod looks like to make it unique, because they had other cola drinks that were coming and were imitating and all that. There were imitations, I beg your pardon. But now, to make it unique, they came up with that. Amazing, isn't it? Then the story of Fanta, how Fanta was born. If you look at that, how was Fanta born in the Nazi Germany when Coca-Cola was moving, you know, to Europe? Because of the war, they couldn't move the syrup to Europe anymore. The person had in the Coca-Cola or whatever brand in Germany. Just like we need to come up with something. And Coca-Cola had a lot of sugar, you know, and they came up with the Fanta drink, an orange drink. What do we call the drink now? They were all seated, you know, the German, uh, what I call it, subsidiary of Coca-Cola. What do we call it? They ended up. The leader just said in German, Fanta, Fantasia. Like, you know, you have to think, you have to go in Germany. And the guy said one of them just said Fanta. Fanta. Because the word Fanta or the drink Fanta came for fantasia. Fantasy, as the case may be. And that was how it was born. Do you want to talk about Sprite, how Sprites came about? The word Sprite, I love the Sprite in you, that is spirit. So you see that stories shape us. These are events that have taken place, maybe as a result of our interaction with nature, creating things and all of that. And boom, these things are born, and we can't help it one generation to the other. You see us sit around a story and build a future out of it. But there are those who have come to understand the power of stories and they now weaponize it. I use the word DNA for a reason, because every thing on earth procreates after its kind. Everything. Everything. Every single thing procreates after its kind. Human beings, animals, and how do you trace that? We've come to realize that from uh biological science, the DNA. You know, the DNA of a goat will tell you what will happen in the future of that goat. The DNA of an animal will tell you the DNA of a human being. So stories also have DNAs. So when these DNAs are distorted, when the stories are told in a way and manner that you clearly see distortion, what will happen is destruction. When the stories are distorted, they give birth to destruction. But when the stories are true, when the stories are kept the way they ought to be, progress is what you see. Prosperity is what you see all around us. And the truth is, no matter how complex a subject matter is, the frame of storytelling makes it relatable. Yeah, makes it very relatable. So you see societies that embrace storytelling as a way of life. You see this progress. And I'm not looking at it from the point of folklore alone. I'm not looking at it from the point of great alone, but I'm talking at, I'm looking at it from the point of progress. How do you influence the future? How do you shift the future? How do you make the future what it ought to be? That impressive and amazing future. Storytelling. We must storytell. We just have to tell the story and tell it in the right way. I love it. I love storytelling. Always, always, always. I love it. From one generation to the other, keeping the tradition, keeping the truth as it were. Have you ever wondered how things remain the same as it were? I'm not saying change doesn't happen, but the influence of it from one generation to the other. And somehow, when you pick up the history books, you come to see that this story has been told over a hundred times through different generations, and the effect is still the same. So that is to say, it carries something. It is a life, it is organic. And when it is transmitted from generation to generation, it brings the effect that it ought to. Oh yes. It is my desire, even as a people, even as a country, even as an identity, as it were, we will embrace storytelling and tell it the way it ought to be. Yeah, I know, I understand when we bring in certain elements of storytelling, you know, in human interactions, when we bring in certain things like figure, figure of speech, metaphors, and all of that, just to drive the message. I understand even sometimes we follow the path of exaggeration and all of that. But listen, storytelling preserves our, what I call it, culture, our tradition. SPEAKER_00: It preserves the truth. It safeguards the future, it entertains the present. SPEAKER_01: That is what storytelling does. All right then, guys, you know how we do it on the show. This is the space where we come in to lean on one another's experience to forge a positive path. And I know this is a positive path. Yep. We are available on all the social media platforms. LinkedIn, we're available on Instagram, Facebook, we are available, yes, even on TikTok. We have a YouTube channel. Have you subscribed? Go ahead and subscribe and hit that notification button so that you'll be the first, yet, yet, yet the first to receive this information when it drops. It's so exciting. You know how we say it on the show. This is so exciting. Well, well, I need to run. I need to run now. But like I always tell you, my name is Amakri. Amakri is away. SPEAKER_00: Bye for now.