Interview: Samara Bay

Leela Sinha 0:01

Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. Welcome to another interview episode of Power Pivot. The podcast where we talk about power, leadership, community, intensives, and how we can build a better world.

My guest today is Samara Bay, I hope I said that right? She is this powerhouse, amazing, amazing person with a long history of helping people find and use their voices. And she has recently published a book called "Permission to Speak," which I read just the last few days. So we're going to be talking about that a lot. We'll also probably be talking about what does power sound like? And how can we change what the cultural script is around that. I'll let her introduce herself, and then we'll go on.

Samara Bay 0:47

a big "a-ha" in the summer of: 2018

in question in the summer of: 2018

And, you know, that was a, that was a moment in American history. We were two years into our former president's term. And we were hurtling towards our first midterm that fall. And we were beginning to see- I mean, it just all felt like, can we change the narrative? Do we have it in us and,

you know, my activist friends were getting burned out. And that terrified me.

And I was getting burned out just from, you know, going to protests and writing postcards, and we were getting inundated by the pictures of the kids that were getting separated at the border. And, you know, our empathy meters, were getting fritzed.

And in the midst of that, when I also had a comical amount of downtime, because as it turns out- for anybody who's seen Wonder Woman Two, the DC sequences, the part I was responsible for, there's a lot of flying, sort of stunt work. There's no dialect needed during stunt work. So I just had a dumb amount of time to sit around and think.

And in the middle of that, I got this call from moveon.org. A friend had put me up for it. And they, you know, collect incredible would-be candidates for office and then offer them resources. And sometimes that's money that sometimes it's public speaking training. And in my case, they just wanted to throw me in and give me a bunch of women, first time women candidates.

And I said yes, and was thrilled that I could, you know, do something, something perhaps more useful than just, you know, marching. And my whole life changed, my whole life changed. I started coaching these women, and I realized that so many magnificent people are holding themselves back because of all kinds of societal scripts, as you say, messaging, conditioning, about what powerful people are supposed to sound like. And that I can help.

And a podcast came out of that. A book came out of that, and coaching came out of that, and a big ol '"power pivot" in my career came out of that. And, you know, I sort of unearthed in the working with those candidates, and then in the, in the, you know, layer peeling with my entrepreneur friends, and ultimately with a lot of corporate types- I unearthed that what we're really talking about is voice biases that exist in our culture, and, and their alternative, which I named voice justice. The idea of unlinking how we sound from how we get treated.

Leela Sinha 4:15

Which is so incredibly powerful. So powerful. My father is from India. And so his accent reflects the fact that he didn't come to a predominantly English speaking space until he was 20 years old. Came over on a boat. And then a plane, from India, as a graduate student. As one of the first generations of the brain drain. From India to North America, in the late 60s.

There was this moment where we changed our immigration laws. And it was suddenly possible- easier- for smart students from India to come over and from some other countries to come over and be student immigrants, essentially. And so my father was in the first couple of years of that. And my friends tell me that he speaks with an accent. I cannot hear his accent. Even though we now live on opposite sides of the country and we don't talk that often. I cannot hear his accent. But he knows he has an accent, because when he hears himself on tape, he can't understand himself.

Samara Bay 5:29

Ah! That's an interesting aspect. Also, probably because he's been told, and, you know, it's been reflected to him.

Leela Sinha 5:37

Right? Right. And so I have this- I have to tell you, your book, has made me more self-conscious about the way I sound than I've ever been in my life.

Samara Bay 5:51

That's sort of heartbreaking, it's like part of the process, right? Like, getting curious means we start to notice. But ideally, we start to notice with enough compassion that we get to step into a more powerful mode of choosing. Picking and choosing and loving on the habits we have that we don't want to change. Rather than just, you know, staying in the place of like, now suddenly, I hear myself, I can't not hear myself Oh, no.

Leela Sinha 6:19

I have to say the best thing I ever did for hating hearing myself was get a good microphone.

Samara Bay 6:25

How interesting.

Leela Sinha 6:26

absolutely the best thing I ever did, because my voice has this polyphonic quality to it. And so most inexpensive microphones don't pick up most of the pitches of my voice. And so I don't sound like myself. But this microphone, the first time I spoke into it, I had to sit down.

Samara Bay 6:49

Hmm. Wow. I imagine that there's also an element. I mean, I know from personal experience, that the more we listen to ourselves, there is some exposure therapy involved here, right? The more we listen to ourselves, the more it just becomes communication.

Leela Sinha 7:04

That's true. That's true. And, and so my father's experience of language and voice and presence. Fortunately, he's an engineer. So they didn't care, mostly, that he had an accent. They just cared if he could do his math, and he can do his math very nicely. So that was fine. But I grew up with this very. Un-fraught, accnt. I know that that's one of the places where I carry privilege, is in my accent. And it's really odd to be juxtaposed with someone whose accent is so much different, whose accented language experience is so much different from mine.

Samara Bay 7:48

Yeah.

Leela Sinha 7:50

So I have already gotten us off track. I love. I loved reading about your move-on origin story. And I love that you put it in your book. And it got me thinking, What? What do you think? Why do you think origin stories are so important as part of the narrative that we bring to the stage. Especially if it's like a politician, where the person is part of the brand?

Samara Bay 8:18

Yeah, I learned so much during that era about this exact question: origin stories. When moveon.org threw me in to work with candidates, they gave me literally no advice, and no framework and no anything. Which is kind of perfect for someone like me, who doesn't really like a boss anyway. Tell me what to do, and I'll do the opposite.

But the one thing they told me was absolutely genius, and has completely impacted not just my life, but like, everybody I've probably ever coached. Ever. Which is this idea of an origin story. And, you know, there's one definition of an origin story that is where we come from. Or in the superhero world, you know, what set us on our path? Yes, yes. But particularly in the case of move on, in the case of politician, and maybe in the case of every single one of us, who is a personal brand- that's relevant, right? The context of how we grew up is not irrelevant. And we get to tell as much of that or as little of that as we feel good telling in public.

But the thing that is so special is a different definition of origin story. The origin of your a-ha moment, when you thought, "oh, fuck, it's me." Like, oh, my neighbor is not going to run for office, and that friend isn't going to run and that "Oh," and the in breath, and the- what you did next. And maybe it's not that I run for office, right, but it's a product that needs to exist in the real- "Oh, fuck, I think I think I have to be the one who creates it."

In the case of of my book, right. I had that I had that and I had it alongside those, those first time candidates for office because the idea of that in breath, and that "oh fuck" is actually so revealing of our character. What makes us have that profound of a moment of care? "Oh, God, I care about this," linked with, "oh, God, I have to take personal responsibility" linked with "and it's hard." So then I have thoughts on the inside, linked with and then what did I do?

Leela Sinha: 10:32

Right?

Samara Bay: 10:34

You know, I said it that way, it's the first time I've ever really said exactly like that. But like I said it that way, because, you know, we have all been indoctrinated in to the epic narrative of the hero's journey. And it means that for many women, for many nonbinary folks, for many people who feel different, whether it's their sound or not, we- they- have often linked it with "my story isn't good enough," or "I don't want to take up too much time," or "it might not be relevant."

And I know from having a front row seat with so many folks at this point, that when you have just the tools and the loving nudge and the solidarity, to move through that to the other side, there are so many ways we can activate. We can like hug- love- on tiny stories in our life that are actually huge. A moment someone said something to us and what we did next. And I don't know if Joseph Campbell would give that the hero's journey stamp of approval, bless.

But the reality is we get confused, I think by this sort of epicness of you know, the Star Wars trilogy. Big adventure, lots of mishaps, fights. Wisdom gained by gurus. And we forget that the epic of our internal mind, our heart, counts. You know, I like to tell the story, I'm going to tell a quick story.

Leela Sinha: 12:06

Yeah.

Samara Bay: 12:07

Because this feels so revealing, right? When I was like two weeks postpartum- I have an eight year old. Two weeks postpartum, I hadn't left the house except to go to the like, doctor to, you know, make sure he was thriving. And I got myself to a breastfeeding support group. A woman had recommended it. It was a drop in class and no, like long term responsibility. I popped in, and it was me and like 20 other women sitting on the floor with our newborns, being you know, messes.

Our newborns were being you know, inconvenient. And the conversation, right, that's totally the jump. The conversation flowed from basics, like literally, you know, why isn't my baby latching on my boob, to these much deeper existential questions that inevitably come up during that era. Like, why do I suddenly hate my spouse or can't handle their snoring?

And the lactation consultant, who was the facilitator was, in retrospect, a master facilitator, she was so good at knowing when to step in, and when to just let us answer each other.

And this woman asked this question, one of those early sessions, she said, "help me feel less alone. Because I'm up at 3am. It's pitch black, the neighborhood is silent. I have this baby attached to my boob. My spouse is fast asleep, and I'm looking out at the moon. And I've never felt more alone in my life."

And the lactation consultant said, "Yes... yes, and- you can choose to look at that same moon in that same dead of night. And instead, see in your mind, the millions of other women who are looking out at that same moon at that same moment, and you are alone, but you're not alone."

And that has stayed with me, because I think that's actually how doing a speech-work, works for us, right? We may be going into a room that was not made for us, with a whole goal of showing up weird and wonderful anyway. And we may feel alone, but there's actually someone a few doors down, a few halls over, reading the same book, having the same conversation with their hand on your back. And they're not there, but they're there.

But the other reason I tell the story is that is a story I love to tell. It gets me every time. And it's a story about a woman who asked a question, and another woman who answered it in front of me. I'm not even the hero in that story. Right? But is that story worth telling? Well, I've never heard anyone else tell a story about a thing that happens in a lactation room. We need those stories in the world, right?

We need to normalize them. We need to like "No, it's okay to have an inconvenient baby and still leave the house whatever, right." And so as I was really teasing out what that genius thought was that the move on folks gave me, I think it is that when we tell a story about a tiny moment, and how it impacted us, it is actually the most revealing thing of our character we could possibly do. Where we come from does not win over what we did in hard moment.

Leela Sinha: 15:19

Because there's details, those details draw you in.

Samara Bay: 15:24

Well, and also because we have agency, we don't have agency about where we grew up.

Leela Sinha: 15:29

That's true.

Samara Bay: 15:33

Now I have the requisite blowing of the nose.

Leela Sinha: 15:35

So so when we talk about- when we talk about this- when you talk about this, what I hear from my perspective, as someone who was in parish ministry for a number of years, someone who went through seminary, what I hear is a "call story." What I hear is the story of a call to something larger.

minister from Harvard in the: 1700

And when we have that experience, it often makes no sense. None. It doesn't go along with anything. It's not convenient. It's a pain in the ass. And it's- and we- and there's actually there's a whole trope in seminary where we talk about the refusal of the call, it's not just for fantasy novels.

Samara Bay: 15:45

Right?

Leela Sinha: 15:56

The biblical quotation that goes with it is there's this moment where this one guy is like, "here, my Lord, take me" but we all joke about "here, my lord, take someone else."

I know that that path is difficult. And I said, No.

Samara Bay: 17:12

This reminds me of a rabbi very early on in my book launch, who asked me on live, on Instagram: if I were the burning bush, and I were telling Moses that he had to go and like, represent the Jewish people. And Moses said, "No, I don't feel comfortable doing that. I have a stutter. I, you know, I declined."

Leela Sinha: 17:33

I'm not qualified...

Samara Bay: 17:34

I'm not qualified. My brother Aaron's like super super overqualified, you definitely send him instead. And the rabbi said, "so Samara, if you were the burning bush in this story...." I'm like, "are you casting me as God in this story? Hold on." But his question was lovely, which was, if I- right- if the burning bush was actually coaching Moses in that moment, what would what would I say?

And I said, quite honestly, I would ascertain whether he was demurring because he was scared, or because his deep instinct was no, not me. Because if he's scared, I can coach that. If his deep instinct is no, not me- there are some calls that are not ours.

Leela Sinha: 18:17

There are. And there's a whole other joke going around the internet right now about Your call is trying to contact you about your call's extended warranty, right? Like there's this, this thing where the call will chase you down and beat you over the head with a stick if you don't respond to it. And it is your call.

Samara Bay: 18:36

Yeah.

Leela Sinha: 18:36

And many of us have had that experience of trying to turn away from the call. And then having everything else in our lives fail. Every single thing and sometimes spectacularly. Usually, you get a couple of gentle nudges. And if that doesn't work, then like just everything explodes at once.

Samara Bay: 18:54

I also want to honor though, as you say this, that like, sometimes we misread the call. Or sometimes we you know, I grew up desperately wanting to be a Shakespearean actress on the regional stage.

At age 10. I decided that was it, I had gone to an incredible Shakespeare production of an outdoor redwood forest, with the fog of Northern California falling and the lights hitting it and the actors in modern dress who had been jobbed in from New York and San Francisco. So you have to imagine they were like the best of the best. And I was like this, this, this is what I want to do.

And you know, 10 year old me had to evolve and, and refine what the call might have been inside of that. Because it turns out what I really love is humans together, breathing as one, on the same page, feeling tender. And like it turns out, I didn't have to be an actress to enact those moments.

Leela Sinha: 19:52

Yes, and here I'm going to share something that when I was thinking about going to seminary, when I was deciding my Call, a mentor of mine sent me to talk to a friend of hers who was a minister and, and I talked with him for a while.

And he said, Here's what I believe. I believe you can't be called to ministry from life, you can be called to seminary. And then you can be called out of seminary to ministry- maybe. And so I've developed this idea of like a ladder call, like maybe your 10 year old call was to move as close as you could toward that Shakespearean fog shrouded acting moment. And then as you moved through there, as you moved into that, the next piece of your call became clear. And then the next.

Parker Palmer, who wrote a book called- gosh, what's the title? We had to read it in seminary, it's about six inches by five inches, and it's called, Let Your Life Speak" maybe? Anyway, there's a story that he tells in there where he says that the Quakers have- the Quakers have this image of take one step and the way will open. Which is basically: you don't need to be able to see the other end of the tunnel, you just need to be able to see the next step you can take in your flashlight.

Samara Bay: 21:14

Which is just so realistic.

Leela Sinha: 21:16

Right?

Samara Bay: 21:17

Like who can see out out of the tunnel when you're in the dark? No.

Leela Sinha: 21:20

there's absolutely no way I could have predicted this conversation from when I was 12. No way.

Samara Bay: 21:27

Exactly. Exactly. And to be clear, when I was telling the lactation consultant story, I partly brought that up, because, you know, there are the big stories, there are the calling stories, right? The origin story, the I'm going to run for office, so I need to tell people my Oh, fuck moment. And then the reason I told that one is because there's also all the other ways in which we tell stories in life, and we dodge stories, because we don't think that they're good enough. And I just love to sort of normalize storytelling, even if it's not the big, "what was my call?" Just a moment that actually had an impact?

Leela Sinha: 22:06

Yeah.

Samara Bay: 22:08

I feel like all of us just need constant reminders, that we get to tell those.

Leela Sinha: 22:14

And those moments are everywhere, in all of our lives.

Samara Bay: 22:17

Yeah.

Leela Sinha: 22:19

And when we remember that we are storytelling creatures, fundamentally. Oral tradition is actually the tradition. And all this business of writing stuff down is colonialist overlays.

Samara Bay: 22:31

Mmm-hm.

Leela Sinha: 22:31

When we remember that we are fundamentally storytelling cultures and people and, and intersections of ways of being influenced and layered together. Your story about that lactation consultant might recall for me, a story that another friend of mine told me about lactation consulting, or about latching or not latching or, or something entirely different. A moment when somebody you know, the moment when I was lying on my back in a barn in rural Maine, trying to milk a ewe because she wouldn't suckle her lamb. Right? Like, who knows where I'm gonna go with it, but it links us and helps us stitch ourselves together.

Samara Bay: 23:21

Yeah. It makes me think of the quote from the top of the final chapter, Toni Morrison, who says, "from my point of view, which is that of the storyteller, I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting, and ready for you to make it art."

Leela Sinha: 23:39

Yes. And so how does- I'm gonna loop us back to- I think it was chapter three. How does that artfulness emerge, when we are able and willing to reveal our emotion? Because that chapter, just like I had to just sit down and be like, hello- I've been in this habit of reading really slowly, which is not how I usually read. Usually, I read very fast, get sort of sunk into a book. And I recently finished Braiding Sweetgrass, about six months ago, after having spent two years listening to it, because I had to stop after every chapter and digest it for like two months. And then I would go to the next chapter.

And, and I had that same feeling with chapter three, that if I were not reading on a deadline, because I wanted to absorb your book before I talked to you about it- that I would have just stopped after chapter three and let it sink in. This idea that we, that we need to suppress ourselves, that we need to shield the world from our emotions is such an intensive experience.

It's so real for those of us who are intensive because we move around through the world, and everybody is telling us that we're too much and we're too painful. We're too loud. And if we could just tone it down, not only when people take us more seriously, but we'd stop hurting people so much with our existence.

Samara Bay: 25:19

Yeah. I really came at public speaking from a such a sideways angle, right? Because I have an acting background, which in a way is just saying a humanist background. What makes humans connect? Right? Actors get a lot of flak, but ultimately, they're just artists who go for connection over protection. Professionally, right? So they have to work on how to open up that much how to be vulnerable on cue. And by vulnerable, I don't mean, you know, for those of you who are like, Oh, how do I be more vulnerable in public, right?

Sometimes that gets twisted to mean cry more, sometimes it gets twisted to mean share more of your hardest things. And I only mean it, I only use it to mean, "say whatever you're going to say. But say it like you actually mean it."

And the alternative to that is what those of us who maybe don't have the acting background, have been habituated into, which is saying things that are close to our heart, but managing ourselves so carefully, that we don't sound like they're close to our heart. And as I say this, you can imagine, there's a pretty great reason why, right?

It's risk management, it's making sure we don't come across as "too much." Or trying at least not to. Or not seem inconvenient or not seem intimidating. But we learn from like toddler onward, what makes the people near us, who we deeply rely on for care, turn toward us versus turn away from us. And we're constantly micromanaging ourselves. And to get really literal about this, it's our throat.

So we can have whatever beautiful ideas in our mind. And in a platonic ideal of speaking, it connects to just the right amount of breath, from a lowest place in our body that breath could possibly be. You know, sort of like behind your belly button. So a thought connects to the right amount of breath, and it comes out of our mouth, and our mouth shapes it into meaning. And the sound waves find the listener's ear, and the listener gets the meaning and voila! right. This is the platonic ideal.

But in reality, that platonic ideal, which didn't use the throat at all, which just offerred the throat as a passive passageway between breath and sound- suddenly, in the real world, our throat- not suddenly the opposite of suddenly: over many, many, many, many, many, many years, we have discovered, each of us, how to engage our throat muscles, to not get in trouble. Defined as broadly as you want.

Leela Sinha: 28:15

"How to engage our throat muscles to not get in trouble." There is so much in that phrase.

Samara Bay: 28:23

Right? It's like, Oh, of course, like, of course, of course, when we want to shout something, when we want to cry, when we want to laugh in the face of somebody who's saying something absurd. And then we don't because we are 'civilized.' So in a way, we have civilized ourselves out of having a totally open relationship to our emotions.

So like, let's take a second, a no-shame second to honor that. Wow. Wow. Wow, we are so good. We humans are so resilient, we are so evolved- to navigate complicated, nuanced other people-and-power dynamics. Go us.

And I think the moment that we're talking about, the moment people tend to pick up my book is when there is a yearning for something else. Check. I have figured out well enough how to navigate those spaces for least-harm most-safety.

Now what? Do I have a little more power, a little more privilege, a little more platform? How might I spend it? How do I talk about the things that I care about in a way that actually sounds like I care about them so that people will trust me. So that I can make an impact. So like those actors, I can connect and not protect?

Leela Sinha: 29:56

You know, I'm Yes. I'm sitting here thinking about that word civilized. Because, because to me, I talk a lot about this- because there are a bunch of words that are coded language for "not intensive" in our culture. And there's a whole other sort of bubble off to the side where I can talk about the connection between that and racism.

But this idea that the "civilized people" don't have a lot of voice pitch modulation, that there's you know that the pitch range is narrower, that the emotional expression range is narrower- that's really all code for "Would you please be more expansive? Would you please be less intensive? Would you please fit yourself into this little tiny narrow band of existence?"

And for some people, that's natural, that's normal. Not having a call? Also normal. Not everybody has one. And because of that, those of us who are intensive often feel like we have to shout, to get the validity of our call, the validity of our pitch, of our volume, of our large existence, recognized as okay. Or even valuable.

And we feel like, like everybody marginalized, we feel like we have to... we have to be three times as good in order to take the stage. In order to take up that space. So when I think about- when I think about this idea of we are civilized first, and then we have to uncivilize ourselves, we have to unwind what that means or how we are in the world. I, I go straight to- on the one hand, it goes straight to racism, because it's such a big part of that.

Samara Bay: 31:55

Yes. It's this- it's a decolonizing act, and it is a queering act, to start to question the ways that we have normalized and normied ourselves, for safety, for for proximal power, and to love on those instincts of ours to get by, while also getting curious about what else is possible.

Leela Sinha: 32:17

Right? Right, because it's a survival. It's not just, I've figured it out- it's like I've figured it out to not die and to continue to have access to those resources.

Samara Bay: 32:26

Literally. Literally. And by the way, so did our moms. So did our grandmothers. So did our great grandmothers right? We are the living embodiment of a lineage of people who survived.

Leela Sinha: 32:37

Right? Right, and who passed on those survival tactics as the way to survive. And my experience is that the more marginalization you carry- the more types of marginalization you carry- the more places in your life, you've got that same narrative of "just be quiet, just get along, just head down, nose forward, let's go."

Samara Bay: 32:59

That's what I was gonna say, so many, so many people that I that I work with, like, what's deeper, deeper, deeper under the surface is: it's not safe to stand out. Period. And you know, what? It may not be. And if it is, it may not have been. And if it was, it may not have been for your mom, or your grandmother, or mother.

So, you know, as I am on this anti-shame campaign around our long term relationship with our voice, I just really I it's just, it's essential to just name that, because, you know, the concept of ancestral trauma is present in our society right now. But just there, there are other ways it's manifesting, right? And if you quote, unquote, hate the sound of your voice...

Leela Sinha: 33:46

...what do you hate? You might hate your microphone. But if you don't hate your microphone, what is it?

Samara Bay: 33:51

Right? Right? Is it the habits you've picked up that make you sound like your friends? As I say, We sound like who we love, we sound who we spend the most time with. So it's that and then it's also our whole voice story, right? Our whole collection of myths, of half truths, of whole truths that we learned from our parents and onward through society. Which is kind of amazing. I mean, it's amazing, because it also means like, you know-

One, I like to bring up just as an example is interruptions, right? In certain cultures, subcultures, sub sub cultures, people interrupt each other, and it shows love.

Leela Sinha: 34:32

Right.

Samara Bay: 34:32

In others, obviously-

Leela Sinha: 34:34

It shows engagement.

Samara Bay: 34:34

Totally. And in others, they interrupt each other and it shows rudeness, or it signals to some some listener, rudeness, right? And also both can be true because interruptions have different energies. Some interruptions are "oh my god, I can't keep it in. I want to add to what you're saying." And some are, "I'm cutting you down because what you're saying is wrong. And I'm just going to completely bulldoze it." Right.

And we can feel that but there's some gray area when it's just different subcultures butting up against each other. And then people get married, you know, and you're like, oh, we have different communication style!. That's where it often comes out. Or, you know, in the work space, I do a lot of corporate work these days, right?

These conversations are happening all the time. And it's, it's, you know, funny to me, because I got into this because of public speaking because of this idea of what we do when the stakes are high. But inevitably, that leaks- bleeds?- into the conversation of what are we doing when the stakes are low. But honestly, power dynamics are present. And, you know, shits going down. So.

Leela Sinha: 35:37

So let's talk about access for a minute. This is not in your book, but it's related. Because so much of your book talks about what to do once you have access. You have the stage, you have the microphone, you have the audience, you're already talking. And the question is, how do you speak in such a way that's going to carry your message in the way that you want it to.

But the thing that I encounter and that I think a lot of my listeners encounter in one way or another is before that. How do we get access to those spaces? And often we understand our voice and especially the what you talked about for the end of the book, they language we choose and the phrasing we choose. And are we formal? Are we casual? We, we perceive that as as a primary piece of the gate.

But there's so much more, right? There's how do we dress? Who do we- who are we perceived to hang out with? And this absolutely also happens in the online entrepreneurial world. It's not just in corporate environments.

It's not just me going and living in the Bay Area for six years and not being able to get so much as one conversation with anybody in an accelerator. And finally giving up and being like, well, then I'm not going to bother staying here. It's expensive and nobody's talking to me. And so I left, because it didn't matter that I was there.

So like, how does, how does all of this intersect with access? And what are some of the other things you know about gaining access to the rooms and to the stages? How do we? How do we get people in the position where they're holding the mic?

Samara Bay: 37:20

Yeah. Okay, well, so one part, obviously, is that you're modeling right now, right? An answer is having your own podcast. Or even more expansively, right, posting a video every week on Instagram. Which I do, and I, I jokingly but kind of seriously call it my TV show. Because I show up for a minute and a half every single Tuesday as though I have a show.

And I do because I'm the boss. Right?

YouTube, like the democratization of the internet means on some level, we do all have access. And so then, if we just take that as a given, then the question is, well, what do we create? What content? {laughing} this sounds so like late-stage capitalism.... What content do we create? But I'm getting serious, I'm bringing it back.

What content do we create that makes an impact. That if we have five listeners, or we have 500, they lean in, they feel the physical urge to share it, rather than to just close it. And that's where the work in my book comes in. Right?

Because each of us has the ability to jump onto the internet, if all we have is a device and an internet connection. And then the work begins. Right? How do we bring a version of ourselves onto those platforms that's gonna make a movement, right? How do we move ourselves, move our audience and move our mission.

And often that has very little to do with the accent and linguistic markers for race or class, or gender or gender expansiveness or not from around here, that we are very, very, very understandably worried about.

But a solution, a part of the toolbox of solutions, is to start to notice whose voices you love. Those of you who are listening, right: who do you love listening to? Who do you just love the way they show up in the world. Their way of quote, unquote, being public? In whatever definition you find, right?

And maybe it's, you know, Brene Brown or Adrian Maree Brown or Oprah, right? Somebody who we think of as sort of a public intellectual or a tastemaker. But maybe it's someone I would not know, right? Maybe it's somebody in your circle. Maybe it's a TED talk, or maybe it's an artist. But maybe it's by the way like a local politician or somebody who stood up at a town hall and their question went viral, right?

Get really curious and also really broad in how you define, you know, moments of public speaking, and, and collect them for yourself. Like even make a physical list of like bullet points, 10 bullet points, and put them next to your desk and add to it when you feel the physical urge to send along a, you know, a moment of public reckoning.

Because a really different picture will emerge. A really different picture will emerge. You know, if you Google, how do I sound more authoritative? Google will tell you-

Leela Sinha: 40:39

Google will be wrong

Samara Bay: 40:41

Right? in five bullet points. And Google and Google will be telling you the patriarchal, white supremacist, colonial capitalist playbook. Keep your pitch low. So if your pitch happens to be higher, because you're I don't know, a woman with shorter vocal cords anatomically speaking, you know- fix that would you?

Don't have any sing songy up and down pitch variation, right? Because that codes as quote unquote crazy. Don't go up at the end of your sentences. Because up speak is considered a quote unquote feminine marker that is, you know, indicative of your-

Leela Sinha: 41:22

Heaven bid, we should appear feminine in the public arena.

Samara Bay: 41:24

Exactly! But also the alternative, like no one says, Well, what what would you prefer? Of course, the alternative is that you go down at the end of every single one of your sentences so that nothing is ever open for debate. It's like, okay, okay, I see you.

You know, part of what this, this mission I'm on is is just to call bullshit on the things that we take as truths, that our actually myths. And not just myths because they uphold a white supremacist, patriarchal world we don't want to live in, but also myths because they don't work. And especially they don't work on us.

Leela Sinha: 42:00

And they don't work to engage us. I think that's something I was struck with throughout your work is that you constantly bring the reader, bring us, back to this idea that the purpose of speech is engagement. It's not your- we're not up there to tell it how it is. We're up there to engage our listeners. We're up there. We're here on these mics right now, to engage the listeners. Right? To ask questions. I'm here to ask questions, to invite people to ask more questions.

Samara Bay: 42:37

Well, and you know, for those of you listening, right, you can hear I've been doing this the whole time through talking to you as well as talking to Leela, right? You're not here with me as I talk, but you're here in my heart. I mean, you're here emotionally, like, it's why we're talking- well we're also talking because like, if a long time like date with destiny- I mean, but we invited you all into it, because it matters, right?

Yes, yes. And I think actually, what you're getting at is something I should probably say explicitly, which is that what I discovered when I stumbled into the public speaking industrial complex, is that we've been told our whole lives we're supposed to hate public speaking. That eyes on us equals horrible. That it's like a bear in ancient times, our body goes into fight or flight. We should run, right.

Or as Seinfeld said more recently, all of us would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy. We take- we laugh, because we were like, we take this as truth, right? Of course, we're supposed to hate public speaking.

And, and thus, thus, we have a fear-based approach to it. So even if we're attempting to, you know, gain confidence and overcome our fears, it is overcoming fears. Fears, fears, fears.

And I'm interested in sort of unsubscribing. That entire way of thinking is totally understandable. Right? Love it. Love it. Love it. What if that's not there? What if we just gave ourselves a little respite and said, Let's not think about that for a second.

Let's invite in a more generative thought.

Well, the opposite of fear is love. And often what we're getting up to talk about is something we care about, aka something we love.

So the job may very well be to talk about what we love in a way that makes that love spread. And that's it. And that's why I do this. And that's why I want other people to find the ways to show up in public with their care. To, as I say in the book, care out loud.

now I've done workshops with: 1000

Leela Sinha: 45:22

Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell a brief story here. When I was in fourth grade, I had to give a speech in front of my class. And I was terrified. I never talked in front of people. I didn't talk in groups of more than four people ever, I just didn't. I got through school as a good student by writing a lot and never raising my hand. And I was terrified.

I was terrified of having to speak extemporaneously. About having to say anything I hadn't planned. About saying the wrong thing, about getting it wrong. There are a lot of reasons for that. But that was my entire existence. Me and my voice- my teachers were always upset at me because my voice was too quiet. They couldn't hear me when I would talk.

And... although if I was reading, like it was reading a text, if we were going around and reading sections, I would count ahead and find my paragraph. And then I would put my finger on the paragraph and keep reading because I was a fast reader. And then I would like try to pay attention enough to notice when it was the person before me, do a quick flip back so that I could read the paragraph I was supposed to read.

Samara Bay: 45:31

This is all resonating with me, weirdly a lot. Yep, yep, yep.

Leela Sinha: 46:42

But I was so scared of talking in front of people. I was so scared that that- no, it wasn't fourth grade, it was seventh grade. They wanted us to speak from notes. And I wrote my entire thing out on the index cards. I knew it wasn't what I was supposed to do. But it was the only way I was gonna get up in front of the class.

And I got up in front of the class. And I was shaking and trying not to cry. And for once the seventh graders weren't mean and I read my whole speech off my cards, and I sat down and they applauded.

forest school. This was just: 1980

And so when I started to take on positions of leadership, in later high school, I, I learned to recruit the perky bubbly person to be my second in command. So it was me with the clipboard. And then "Missi with an i" and a heart over the i. And Missi with the i- and I don't say that with any disdain. It was just a radically different way of approaching the world.

And Missi with the i and the heart over the i would be the person that would take my notes and stand up on the stage and say the thing and be like, Okay, everybody, it's time to come into the room. We're gonna hear the rules now. I was running conferences of 200 youth in my church. But I was running them all from backstage. And it was-

Samara Bay: 48:15

Cyrano. Cyrano de Bergerac.

Leela Sinha: 48:20

And it wasn't until- it wasn't until I went to seminary. And at that point, I had been out of high school, out of college, five year gap between college and graduate school. I went to seminary, I took my first preaching class. And I discovered that I loved to preach.

And in that moment of getting up in a pulpit- and I think it was partially that I had been granted an audience and partially that I wasn't trying to be anybody but myself. Because I tried acting. And then I went and worked on tech crew for the rest of my theater time.

I mean, I tried acting once. And it just, I couldn't be anybody but myself on stage. I couldn't, I couldn't. And when I got up on stage, and I had the microphone, and I had the audience and I had some training, and I had some form- some sense of what I was supposed to be doing up there- I discovered that I could, in fact, talk in public. And my life changed.

And I want- every time I hear somebody say, Oh, I can't possibly speak in public. Maybe that's true. But I also tell that story a lot, because maybe, maybe you just haven't opened the right door.

Samara Bay: 48:32

Yeah. I also think about how much better I am now than I was just a few years ago when I was already quote unquote, an expert on this. But I was an expert on coaching other people, right? I actually wasn't doing it myself. And I knew that in order to, you know, live in alignment with my values, I needed to model- I needed to model this for my self. As well as for anyone who actually, you know, required it or benefited from it.

But just this week, this last week, I was in Washington, DC, again, for the first time since the Wonder Woman summer. And I was speaking at the Professional Speech Writers Association world conference. So to speech writers who are the ones who are writing the speeches for some of the nation's most powerful CEOs, as well as government agencies.

And there was a robust q&a afterwards. And some of the questions were so wild, and I was so just enjoying the game of it. And many of them told me afterwards that I think so fast on my feet. And I thought, Oh, well, right, because they wish that their CEOs did right, because they're writing speeches.

But the presence, the presence of mind, and the presence of body I have onstage these days is learned, right? And so I do want to offer as well, that none of us like being bad at something before we're good. I'm reminded of this every day with my child. And what that means is actually we need to find safe spaces to be bad before we're good. Not to not do the thing.

Leela Sinha: 49:44

Yeah. And, and it is a learnable skill.

Samara Bay: 51:40

If I didn't believe that I wouldn't have written the book.

Leela Sinha: 51:43

Right. But I mean that we- our cultural narrative is that either you're a good speaker or you're not. That Martin Luther King, Jr. was born weren't speaking like that. Right? He absolutely was not. Nobody was born speaking like that. And, and not only is it a learnable skill, and not only can we practice being bad with friendly audiences. But also, most audiences, not all- politics is weird- But most audiences want you to succeed.

Samara Bay: 52:14

Yeah.

Leela Sinha: 52:15

They are there for you to succeed, and their brains will help you succeed.

Samara Bay: 52:22

Isn't that fascinating? Even like the storytelling side of it, you know, I have this- I reference his TED Talk in chapter eight, about how when we tell a story, it sends these, you know, signals to our listeners, and they reconstruct the story in their mind as though they're living it. I mean, humans are wired for this. Like we like we pair like a Bluetooth.

Leela Sinha: 52:44

Yeah.

Samara Bay: 52:48

The other thing I was gonna say is, for those of you listening, who are like, sure, sure, sure, but not me, I would never be good at this. I want to just lovingly remind you that you were a toddler once. And toddler us had such access to imagination, and to full-throated ease, and then the world had its way with us. Right?

And I'm doing a really fun collaboration right now with a friend and fellow entrepreneur named Katherine Campbell Hirst right now and she has a toddler. And we were talking about how, okay, we're going to tackle confidence, confidence. But the thing about competence is you cannot look at it straight on it is a byproduct. And you know, who's confident? Toddlers. So for each of us, it's about undoing what got in the way from toddlerhood on.

And I don't mean to suggest that in a really heavy way, it's not like we have to undo each item individually. But that the spirit of it is to reconnect to the toddler within. Who was was confident by accident.

Leela Sinha: 53:55

There's a there's a movement, training, un-training, thing that's also like that, I can't remember if it's called fundamental movement, or primary movement or something like that. That is the same. It's, it's also it's the idea is we knew how to move when we were babies. And we forgot.

And if we want to come back to the most ergonomic way, the most comfortable way, the most sustainable way of being in our bodies, we need to take some time to remember how to be babies. And just move around on the floor.

Samara Bay: 54:31

And listen- as you say that? I'm thinking like, you know, the coach in me is like, Okay, but how do I how do I help people? I should do this. I would like to offer like five percent more. Five percent more toddler you. This is not about 100% Right? This is we don't need to make this so difficult.

But inviting in, with a little twinkle in the eye, a little mischief, five percent more of toddler us. It's a permission game. Right. It's a permission game. See what It does. And the goal, I think, ultimately is that that list that I suggested that you make earlier of folks who, whose voices you love, whose ways they show up in public, you love- that your name gets added to that list.

Leela Sinha: 55:18

We all get to love how we are in public.

Samara Bay: 55:22

I mean, that's power. And I don't mean power over, right? I mean, agency. Power to. We get to redefine what power sounds like. And Google will change based on what we do and say. That's power. And, you know, as I love to point out, because I wouldn't be a responsible coach, otherwise- there's no accounting for taste. Some rooms won't get you. Some rooms won't feel safe enough to try. And that is not the room where the revolution will happen. And there are other rooms.

And there's the rest of us, and we have our hand on your back.

Leela Sinha: 56:03

I can't think of a better note to end on.

Samara Bay: 56:07

This was so meaningful. Thank you.

Leela Sinha: 56:10

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being willing to make our first conversation an interview that's being recorded.

Samara Bay: 56:19

That's how I roll.

Leela Sinha: 56:21

Me too. Me too. And thank you for writing this book. Because I think it's really important. And, and its messaging is so clear. There's a whole other conversation I want to have with you about trans identities and trans voices and how that intersects with this. We don't have time to get into it- I started to look at the clock and was like we don't have enough time for that right now.

But, but for the particular audience for which you have written this book, I think this book is revolutionary. And so I am so glad you made it and put it out for the world.

Samara Bay: 57:02

I'm so honored. Thank you. Thank you for saying so.

Leela Sinha: 57:08

So before I ask more questions that gets us going for another hour- Where can people find you? In what ways can they access you and your work if they want more?

Samara Bay: 57:20

The first thing is obviously the book. If you're more of an audiobook person, I did record it myself. And the joke I made when I gave that keynote to the speech writers last week is "although I am not a speech writer by trade, I did write a 288 page speech and then deliver it over eight hours and 59 minutes. It's called my audio book".

And if you want like a five minute warm up, which will also get you on to my newsletter, just go to samarabay.com/goodies. And you can pick that up. Yeah, write me.

Leela Sinha: 57:57

Excellent. Thank you again, thank you for being here. Thank you to my listeners for being here as always. And I look forward to talking with you again soon.

Samara Bay: 58:09

Thanks.