The Power of a Human Storyteller with Special Guest - Elise Arsenault

Introduction to Human Connection

0:00there's more need for human connection than ever part of my talk talks about the loneliness epidemic and one of the best ways for us to not feel lonely is by connecting with others so even if someone doesn't have a group of friends that they feel deeply connected to listening to an audiobook that is told by a human is human connection and this is what i see as our resistance to the growth of ai coming in and all that it's doing to not help with a planet all it's

0:34doing to not help with taking power from the wealthiest so i see human storytelling as like a really brave act but it's like the most human thing that we can do

Audiobooks and Human Storytelling

0:45hello and welcome back to the spiritual psychology of acting podcast today we're diving into an area of the industry experiencing somewhat of a boom audiobooks and we wanted to speak to someone who not only understands that world but who's shaping it from the inside our guest in this episode is elise arsenal she's an award-winning audiobook narrator actor coach and entrepreneur throughout

1:19her career she's narrated close to 200 audiobooks as well as providing voiceover for commercials and video games elise is also the co-founder of the global actor host of the global actor podcast and creator of the great audiobook adventure a program that's specifically designed to help actors break into and build thriving careers in the audiobook industry most recently she delivered a fantastic tedx talk titled the power of a human storyteller in the age of ai if you haven't seen or heard it

1:53yet it's a heartfelt timely argument for why human voices still matter so today we're exploring all of it elise's journey her craft the ever-evolving audiobook industry and exactly what role humans still play

Exploring Elise's Journey

2:11in a world that seems to be increasingly full of synthetic voices let's get into it elise arsenal welcome to the podcast thank you how are you doing today i'm great thanks so much for having me it's great to have you with us how are you today john i'm very well thank you and i'm very much inspired to be talking to elise because i think as i told you i'm just in the in the process

Recording an Audiobook

2:41at the moment of recording my first ever audiobook i'm about halfway through so um this is really interesting personally for me you know just how you go about it uh and just also what you know this is an extra way isn't it for actors to get themselves seen and heard well heard certainly so it's going to be really good talking to you and talking to an expert about this so so that's fantastic yeah i'm so excited to talk about it and congrats on working on that audiobook i can't wait to

3:14hear i can't wait to hear it once it's ready yeah it's um it's called good company it's an anthology of sayings from a fully realized man shri shantananda saraswati who's like a big influence on the spiritual part of the course i've been graced with the opportunity to record his books for audio version because they obviously they're originally that the tradition is oral oh that's awesome so

Oral Tradition and Storytelling

3:40it's always been oral so that so the the conversations with him were transcribed and they've been published in part as books but now we're going full circle and making them available in as spoken word in english because obviously he spoke them originally in hindi and then they were translated so it's exciting that it's the first time you know people have been able to hear it an oral tradition but in english i love that you're saying oral tradition because i know later on we're going to talk about the power of our human voice and how storytelling has been a part of our evolution

4:12and how important it is to share stories out loud so i love that connection it's part of what makes us human isn't it it literally is our ability to tell stories yeah there's lots of great things i think to

Acting and Character Creation

4:25to chat about but it would be nice to get a bit more context about you yourself and obviously you've worked in lots of mediums as an actor like screen voiceover stage all that kind of stuff but what was it that first drew you to the world of audiobooks okay yeah so i started my audiobook segment of my career about 10 years ago now and i was working as an actor in theater primarily i had gone through my whole process of working in theater for years um getting various training mainly connected to theater

4:59and then i reached this point where i was a union actor in the u.s a member of actors equity which i had worked up to for a long time to get that status and to have a number of shows each year but i reached this point where i was finally there and i was like awesome well wait a second i still have to wait tables i still have to do all these other random jobs to pay the bills there's got to be another way and so i just did a lot of i've always been a very like strategic entrepreneurial brain like that's

Audiobook Narration Techniques

5:31always been a part of who i am um like i had my own babysitting company like it's starting in like sixth grade which i was like 12 13 i read the babysitter's club books and i was like all right let's make a business like let's find my way to freedom um i'm someone who read like the chicken soup for the soul books as like a child so i always am very optimistic and like what can i do to further myself so audiobooks came about when i was researching voiceover because i just had heard

6:02voiceover was a more lucrative part of the industry and then as i explored commercial voiceover and different voiceover options i noticed there were folks right in my vicinity where i live um in the providence and boston area who were narrating audiobooks by day and then performing on stage at night or doing film and tv as well as audiobooks so audiobooks really was their day job that they were going to a studio nine to five putting their time in telling stories and then going and telling stories

6:34in another medium in the other time so i was just like oh yeah that's that's what i want to do and figure out how to release all of the non-acting or non-creative things so that i can just be you know a creative being and get paid well for it too so that was about uh 2015 i i narrated my first audiobook it's a fantastic option isn't it because you know for actors it is the whole thing of you know waiting tables and doing uh we've talked a lot here about at least on this podcast we've talked about our job and

7:08our work so you know our work is our art but our job is the means by which we you know we live from month to month and obviously we all want our job to be our work it's so good when it gets to be both

Endurance and Self-Care

7:21yes yeah well this is a fantastic opportunity isn't it because it is all the skills in an audiobook it is and it's quite subtle because it's all just sound but it's all the skills of an actor literally all imagination it's all of those things isn't it voice character creation yep accents dialects so why do you why should actors in your opinion why should they consider audiobook narration as a potential income stream so many reasons but the the main one i'll say is more people are listening to

7:55audiobooks than ever before it's if you haven't started listening yet start start checking it out and see what it's all about because i don't have the stats like globally but i know in the u.s a few years ago one in four people had heard an audiobook and then a few years later one in two people had heard an audiobook so the quick growth of it um can't be ignored more people are interested in just taking in audio and i think that's true for like podcasts as well we're just used to getting back to that oral

8:29tradition and hearing people tell us stories so that but then also it makes use of every act like you just said john it makes use out of every acting tool i've had i've never there's no other job i've done as an actor that i got to use my whole tool set if that makes sense like a really really understanding how to use my voice um all of the voice work i've done all of the character creation improvisation scene study um there are times when i it just feels more to me it feels more fluid like i get to go in

9:06the studio and just be the actor i i've always wanted to be and um and then someone gets to experience that and i get a paycheck and it's really quite lovely yeah that that's um i'm just wondering though

Listening and Presence

9:19as well if people are listening more to audiobooks does that mean that they're reading less i don't think so actually it's so interesting i was at a bookshop the other and i don't i don't have numbers on that but i will say i was just at a bookshop the other day i think um i'm a millennial but i think that like a lot of gen z is reading more and more i i've seen more like the bookshop i went to yesterday that's local had a bigger ya section than i've ever seen before bigger new adult section than i've ever seen before so i think people are just consuming in multiple ways some

9:52folks are listening to audiobooks others are reading um you know listening to audiobooks does count as reading you're still going through the process of taking that in and analyzing and all of that um but i i think with all of the automation that's out there with all the ai that's out there i think we are craving connection through human storytelling so i don't see this going anywhere and i will say there's a casting director a producer i had a conversation with a few months

10:23ago who said you know every time an audiobook company is purchased by a big conglomerate people at that company at those companies figure like they're gonna lose their job and they you know they're gonna just shut down the audiobook company and it ends up not being the case because they realize how valuable audiobooks are and how big of a following they have i suppose like in terms of

The Importance of Human Voice

10:47when you're reading a book you know the writer has a creates a set of mental pictures really what is the story it's a collection of mental pictures in the writer's head and then the medium they use is the words to convey that and i suppose whether whether you're reading you're you're creating the pictures in your head of what of what's being described or whether you're hearing someone an audio it's exactly the same process isn't it you're still creating the inner imagination in the audience's mind

11:18yes exactly and and what's cool is you're going to get both my experience and my lens based on my experience likes dislikes how i approach storytelling but then also the listener the listener is also going to take in the story through then their lens and everything so something i tell my clients i do often is when i narrate an audiobook i if it's if it's fiction there's a lot of different characters that i play in every book part of my prep work is being a casting

11:50director so i will create a character breakdown of all the characters in the book and then i will say if i'm a casting director who am i putting in each of these roles so before we got on this call jordan i was like i want to guess your accent and then we started talking about ewan mcgregor and um you and mcgregor i could choose or i could i could use jordan now now that i know you jordan i could be like oh jordan's gonna be the love interest in this next rom-com for this scottish character and so having specific people in mind helps me stay consistent but no one would the listener doesn't

12:23know that i'm thinking about jordan or i'm thinking about ewan mcgregor but it helps me get specific and then everybody else has their own experience of how they picture or experience that character does that make sense that's really yeah totally it's like i guess we talk in like spiritual cycles of acting you talk john about like having the having the pictures and if you have the pictures then the audience are going to get that and obviously like through film they're seeing that that that characterization and the kind of once in the drive through the eyes but you know this is obviously you know it's coming through the voice and it's coming through the tone and texture

12:56and stuff yeah totally and so and so for you've narrated is it over 175 yeah i'm i'm close to 200 i'm not quite positive what number i'm at yeah i'm not even sure if i've read 200 books in my entire life i will say i read so much more than i used to before yeah i really like that idea of like you're the the casting director and you're the director you know what i mean and but but it isn't a film set or a stage show it's all in your imagination yes i i wonder as well jordan we use a system when we

13:28create characters with something that i call mind triads and it's how you create the character's general psychology um and i wonder you know i'm just thinking if you're doing an audio narration book you could work out mind triads for each of the characters yes i'm sure you could absolutely i want to learn more about that john so yeah it's fascinating because we've got two parts as part of it is how to create the character's general psychology that's the mind triad that's made up the character's super image which is always a self-image i am this and because i am this i want this

14:02yeah yeah and so that's called the character's um super op we call it objective purpose and then germ of the character meaning the essence of the character i call the character's super action so if you're playing a character who's got a germ a rat it will change the rhythm of how you speak it will change the shape of your mouth it will change do you see what i mean it'll do that and i wonder there's a crossover i'm sure there is to help actors you know with with understanding that uh in prepping audio books because it would get a deeper interpretation of the character you know i'm sure

14:37yeah i the method i use i i learned a lot of different things through different trainings i did as an actor um practical aesthetics is one of the ones that i use often but also like stanislavski like what is the objective of the character what do they need what's the obstacle what's in their way and so when i'm coaching actors as an audiobook coach very often what tends to be missing sometimes is like the connection between the characters because folks who are just getting started sometimes are focused on like how does my narration voice sound how do my characters sound does can you tell that

15:13i'm a character and not a narrator i'm like yeah of course but now let's take it to a deeper level the magic is going to come when you're clear on what character one wants and what character two wants and now you're playing both of them and you're building that conflict and i think it's one of the most fulfilling parts of being an audiobook narrator is to create that whole scene on your own but it is also one of the most challenging things to be your own director there's a level of self-trust in your craft that you need to have and um just a willingness

15:46to go for it and uh some endurance required of course as well right what's the endurance part what what what is it that makes it what what's the obstacle that you find when you're with endurance oh my gosh well it's very different from being in rehearsals for a play where you might be one of a number of people in the cast and you might have a stage manager a director you might have all these people focused on the structure and in this in most cases we have to build all that structure ourselves

16:18and stay consistent so when we're given an audiobook we usually have a deadline i mean we always have a deadline uh of when it's due and so being able to structure your prep being able to structure the recording time and actually staying on track i find can be a challenge um because you have to you you don't have time to do 10 or 20 takes of a chapter you've got to trust your instincts you've got to trust your prep you've got to trust your craft and make it about telling an honest story and

16:52only stopping the recording when you need to because the sound came in or something like that and have you got an average amount of takes that you have generally i don't know because what i do is i use a technique called punch and roll recording which is the industry standard which means like when you hit record you'll hit stop when you've made a mistake and then you'll just go back to before that mistake and then you'll punch in and record over it so i don't i've never taken the time nor would i

17:24encourage anybody to take the time to know how many different takes you have there's because it's the the amount that we are recording we just don't have that time to overanalyze which i think is really really connects to the work that you do john because we have to feel so confident in what we have to offer that we can leave our baggage outside of the studio door and just tell the story yeah because if that stuff comes in then it's going to take us longer to get the work done well that's exactly the

17:55same in any acting isn't it is the actor's own baggage is probably the well apart from not knowing what you're doing the biggest obstacle to good acting is the actor's own baggage getting in the way and their own doubts and fears and how do i and thinking about their performance whilst performing yeah i think they all but they all come together don't they because i think like you say like if an actor doesn't know what they're doing then the default is to let their ego then take over but it really is that it comes in the prep doesn't it sounds like you're saying that you don't have a set now it takes because you've prepped it enough that you just you know it's all about

18:29the specifics of the audio that didn't quite land so i'll go back to the previous but rather than over analyzing like you say i never really thought about that that i guess a big one of the biggest stumbling blocks for people starting out is wondering how they sound or how their their voice is coming across that is you get together obviously with any actor themselves they doubt their performance because they're wondering how they're coming across i know i've definitely struggled with that in the past i think any self-tape i do if i've not prepped enough that's when i'll have a hundred takes because you are you start to spiral you start to go maybe this isn't good maybe this isn't right

19:02and it's you know that that's when you start to kind of unfurl i guess because you've not done that prep i think the all it sounds like the audio world you really do need to be so prepped so that you can just barrel on with the yeah sessions you've got yeah totally and it's not this it's it's going to be a different kind of prep than prepping a script because you're not going to mark it up all over the place you just don't have time to do that you're going to do i mean in general you're going to do a first read where you are noting what are the pronunciations i need to look up who are the characters maybe i'll do chapter summaries of like what happens in each chapter

19:37so that if today i'm going into the studio and starting up chapter four i remember what happened yesterday i'll listen to a little bit of yesterday and then i will pick up and know where i'm going but also i need to stay in a place of discovery like me the character of the narrator the characters don't know where we're going so being able to release that i think it's like i grew up playing musical instruments and my dad was a band director and i remember him saying playing a musical instrument is one of the only activities you can do that uses both sides of your brain i would be curious

20:13to see if someone did some research on our brain around audiobook narration what is being lit up because i do think we are the performer but we do need to be a little bit analytical but not obsessive analytical like the part of me that's a director can't be focused so much on my performance it's just i think after doing it for so many years i know like when to stop i know when i just need to step out of the booth take a walk around the block and and reset but i think our i just am realizing more and

The Great Audiobook Adventure

20:45more like our mental health and like spiritual health is probably more and more important for this work because instead of thinking about about takes what i will do is i will have a goal of like a certain amount of material that i want to get through in a session so i might say okay in these next two or three hours these next three hours i want to record one finished hour of material so i need to stay in a pretty good flow to get there even if i don't hit that quite one hour mark i need to

21:22make some progress so there's not time for trash talking in my head how often how long do you allocate for a session because this is something i've been finding because i'm finding usually like two hours is enough it depends on my timeline for the book so i something i recommend for anybody who wants to do this work is learn how long it takes you to record on average one finished hour because then if you're given an if you're given a timeline from the publisher you will know what you can fit

21:53in your calendar so for me i'll either do like a three-hour session or i'll block off the whole day and i will aim to have like six hours in the booth and i'll take breaks so i'll try to do like a three-hour block take a lunch break do another three-hour block and um i'm someone who like i crave human connection so i'm not an introvert and so it can be difficult for me to stay on all the time so i have um there's a group that i use called cave day and they do co-working sessions throughout the day on

22:26zoom so i will one of my computers i will just turn zoom on and be in a cave with them so basically what that means is at the top of the hour we'll all like get set together and then we will quietly work for 50 minutes and then um we'll come back and see how it went so i find that to be helpful to stay productive right and am i am i right in thinking one of the absolute chief skills in all of this is just the ability to listen yes tell me more i like that idea to to listen to be you know that

23:05obviously it's it's an audio book so it's you know it's audio is audio it's it's listening but for the actor themselves yeah what i found is i you know obviously it's it i'm i'm narrating a spiritual teacher uh in a conversation uh in a conversation and to do that i have to be at rest in my real self do you know what i mean i have to absolutely to that same place but what what i've found is just very acute listening is being really present and then the the words are kind of imbued with consciousness

23:39yes yes there's more life to them because you're listening to what you just said right because for me it's like yeah listening to what i being aware of what i just said as that other character or even if it is a non-fiction book what did i just say and how does that lead to this next idea i'm going to share yeah and i guess if you're listening to yourself it's listening without judgment that's the that's where the presence comes in right you're not just listening to what you've said and then analyzing over analyzing or was that right it has to be listening as the character listening as the

24:13the narrator who's telling that story yeah who is you you have to be completely present in what you're doing completely and that's going back to your question about endurance that is why it just takes such a level of focus right yeah yeah no i'm finding that and that's what i'm saying like two hours is plenty you know it's like i need to have a break my voice starts getting a bit tired after that i i like a good two hour or three hour and i think it's unfortunate when people have to feel

24:47like they have to narrate for like eight hours a day because then it turns into sounds like another nine to five so i like for there to be space and i i'm a big proponent in performers continuing to get paid more and more so that we don't have to try to do back-to-back audiobooks where you're working eight to ten because then that is wearing on your instrument as well and i think i read a while back and it's something that i think is true that we only have a certain amount of hours in the day where we

25:17can do deep work and this is definitely deep work you literally are just you've got to let you go to the side but bring yourself to life you know bring these characters to life through you so i do think the two hour makes a lot of sense john because i feel like that might have been what i've heard is like we have two hours of deep focus available to us each day if you think about any kind of medium if it's stage you know most stage plays are going to be an hour and a half two three hours

25:48max for that even or even if you're shooting you know it's a lot of it is waiting around and then you've got to be present for that you know five ten minute take or whatever it is and then exactly it's always in bursts isn't it so you can see why you could get lost yeah i had a headshot session yesterday and i just was exhausted after three hours of taking pictures do you know what i mean because i was like oh i haven't done that in a while that was a lot of being on having five different looks and i was like a lot of energy isn't it i was expecting a lot of myself afterwards in

26:18the day and i'm like why you just gave right i really was in character for three hours yeah how do you then like something like that so you did that madonna a rebel life but that's like 40 plus hours as well as it in terms of the actual project overall how how do you keep yourself like physically emotionally grounded for that kind of doing that kind of level of record do you have any like kind of habits or rituals that can keep you in check in that way so you're not kind of given too much of yourself like you say that kind of run yourself into the ground is there anything

26:49that you do that kind of helps ground you definitely i um my career is multifaceted so in addition to my acting um which audiobook narration is part of i'm also a coach and run a coaching business and also a co-owner of a studio so there's lots of different things and i tend to be i love having my hand in so many different things but when i am focused on a big project like that one i need to build a lot of boundaries in the other areas of my life so i can say i'm going in studio for these next six hours i

27:24don't have to worry about the email that has to go out so it's a lot of planning to make sure i can have that time reserved for me and my artistry um which has taken me a while to learn i will i will say i don't do it perfectly and it takes time to build out boundaries as anybody knows but it's important for us to do so i think that's a ritual is creating a schedule that is boundaried and that i also have some flexibility with so when it comes to a timeline if i'm working with a publisher say they give me a

27:59book that's like 10 finished hours i will know the amount of time i need to narrate that but then i will always add on some extra days because life is going to happen i might get sick someone in my life might get sick i might have a really awesome opportunity to be on tv or film or something else comes up so i want to make sure i have space for that so building in enough flexibility is important um and then prioritizing rest prioritizing hydration um and then on days where i'm going to record a lot i have

28:36a ritual of meditation i love using i don't know if i have it with me but i have this cool um actually hold on one second let me share it with you what it is i should be a spot i should um find a way to collaborate with them because i always shout out their product um this is a vix inhaler vapor it's like a it's like your own mini um humidifier so um this is something that i used to see people use on

29:08stage and i would bring this to the theater like if i was narrating in the during the day and then singing at night i my my voice would need some extra tlc so i love this because it just i i i'll listen to a meditation while i use that humidifier and just kind of soothe my voice before i use it and then i'll then i'll do a warm-up and then i will i'll probably jump into a cave again like start a co-working session and then look at my work for the day and get going so i let myself have a

29:44gentle way in and then once i find my flow i try to stay as consistent as possible for as long as i can and then when i find that i'm tapping out i'll take breaks right did you find that i think because i i mean it makes a lot of sense that you know that kind of looking after yourself i guess you know i think yeah a lot for a lot of actors the ones that are steadily and constantly work are the ones that do have that kind of plan in place you know they're kind of they're looking after themselves so they can if they're i will say going back to your question about the

30:17madonna book the one that was i think it was like 42 hours and at the end um i were i was lucky to work with a director for that so i didn't have to be in the director seat and that was really lovely um so tiffany rotash was my director and we also had some help with prepping from the publishing team so sometimes you get more support on projects i will i will say most projects a good 95 of the projects are self-directed and self-prepped um but it was so nice to be able to have someone to go through that

30:50journey with so we would connect sometimes we would just be like you know take a few minutes to just see how each other's day was and then we would dive into the work and i think our timeline probably ended up being longer than we thought it would be just for certain life reasons um but it was a big big commitment i loved it i learned so much because what was so cool about this book that was written by mary gabriel it is the definitive biography of madonna because no one has ever taken this big of a deep

31:22dive and i think mary i i watched some interviews with her and and she started doing the research and just found there was so much more to uncover about madonna and her connection to this like societal and social growth over the years so it's really a book about culture from the 60s to 2020 really uh so it was really i learned so much not only about madonna herself but also just like oh that's what happened

31:53in the 80s and 90s oh that's why we're where we are here oh wow so i think so often in like history class we never hear about what just happened so it was very interesting to to learn that and learn about all the different waves of feminism and uh and just learn what an advocate madonna has been so it was so fun to just really deeply immerse myself in someone's life and be inspired by it and she's been a disruptor and at the time there were certain things that i needed to hear a disruptor saying

32:27for my own growth as a leader uh so i think it's so fun when you can have a project as an artist that just opens you up and helps you learn your next thing yeah that's one of the great things about being an actor in general isn't it because you know one minute you're you're you know in the trenches of the first world war the next minute you're doing the merchant of venice and you're finding out about the history of the jews and it's just an overall education of life really as an actor of the different jobs you're asked to do and it sounds like you have a real fascination as well

33:00you know that i really am a curious person yeah i'm very curious and to get back to what you were saying jordan earlier about having like a you didn't say a regimen but i'm thinking about the habits that highly successful performers have i i just watched wicked for good i don't know if you've seen it yet but i loved it okay i'm i've come from a musical theater background so i was very excited to see it and i've watched some interviews with cynthia arrivo and ariana grande and just to hear their level of how seriously they take their daily regimen and their craft it's just inspired me to

33:37put more focus and energy to that i think i probably did a lot when i was first coming up or whenever i'm moving into a new part of my career but i i think i can tend to um rest on my experience sometimes so i was very motivated to just to just be reminded of how we have this power to just get better and better and and have fun just getting better at what we do and and be able to tell deeper

34:07stories and more human stories uh with putting that effort in and i i think over the years sometimes i can get distracted by social media and other things or comparison but i just think about like if i take that time that i'm spending doing those things into the craft work and the warm-up and the prep and all that it's just going to be more fun and the people who take in the art that i'm a part of are just going to get a deeper experience yeah because it's not just like i think for a lot of

34:39actors it can be confidence right you have the confidence of being able to do something but then it's the i think it's the actual when that technique becomes unconscious that's the real spark i think i heard ian mckellen talk about he was asked is is acting easier for me he's like yeah he finds it very easy just because he's been doing it for so long yeah actually what you said there about um cynthia riva i saw a uh a clip on on social media recently where she went to her old school and yes i saw that too my wife and i were just were laughing at the fact that when she's and

35:10she sang when cynthia riva started to sing it was probably the most effortless thing you've ever seen she just almost it's almost like she smiled and it just kind of rolled out of her face it's like incredible voice because she has got such you know all these years and years of practice that it just comes out in pure joy and pure kind of uh play at that moment yeah yeah so i think that's really cool i think audiobooks can definitely be a place for actors to experience that because of the high volume of this work available you if if you believe in like 10 000 hours to expert status like you will

35:44reach that i probably i don't know i probably reached that five years in there's something really cool about having a body of work and then having it be something that is valued by society the fact that you can get paid for this and that you can get in the u.s like getting health insurance through our work is something that we have to be working on so being able to get sag after health insurance has been a game changer for not only me but a lot of the clients that i've worked with many who've been

36:15a performer for many years i think a lot of my clients who are based in la have been in la for 20 or 30 years and now once they start narrating audiobooks the money that they're able to contribute from that they're finally hitting sag after minimums every year um so that is a truly transformative experience that i've seen for a lot of people yeah that's a big deal for actors in america isn't it yeah yes unfortunately yes but it i guess fortunately fortunately that we're able to do that but

36:48unfortunately that we have to go through hoops we won't solve that problem today so i won't i won't stay there now i was going to ask like when it comes to character creation yeah uh in the book how do you how when you're narrating how do you approach that i mean we touched on that a bit you know but how do you avoid it i suppose it's it's different if you're doing a children's book or if you're doing an adult's book oh is it that different i don't know uh it's still a voice isn't it how do you make sure

37:18the question is i suppose how do you make sure it doesn't just sound two-dimensional and um yeah partoony i don't think of it as just a voice i think of it as who is this character um again casting people helps me so as i pull the character breakdown together like the other day i was doing a book where the main character i was like oh this is emily blunt and i have this interview with emily blunt and i will put that in my notes that when i'm working with this character again i'm going to listen to that

37:51interview to make sure number one my accent is meeting what hers is or like in the land of um so having references so i will record myself basically the first line of any character i do i will copy that and put that in a special part of my recording session so that i can easily go back to those character voices and keep them consistent which is helpful not only for the consistency of the book but the consistency of a series like there's one series that i have where i've been

38:25playing these characters for 10 years so my first book was in 2015 and now they're on book 12 so having those notes having those uh sample voice files can be really helpful and so i'll take them for a walk i'll ask myself i won't overthink it i i usually will go with the first idea that comes to mind because i don't have a lot of time to overthink it uh sometimes i make choices and i'm like that was a choice so again sometimes it's not it's not perfect but as long as i'm being consistent and as long as it

38:58supports the author's work that's what's most important so i try not to add anything extra that wouldn't make sense so it's important to read the whole book because sometimes you're given details about the character later on in the book so you'll want to make sure you've got all that insight before you're actually creating the character hi i'm martin delaney and i'm here to tell you about the

39:30upcoming seminar for the spiritual psychology of acting i ended up studying the full course and it really helped me to develop as an actor and most recently to prepare for a major film role that i was involved in following on from the teachings and techniques of the great stanislavski and combined with the very best in modern psychology and ancient practical wisdom the spiritual psychology of acting will provide you with the right knowledge and a powerful toolbox of techniques to help you create any character to grow as an actor and to thrive within the industry the seminars last for two and

40:03a half hours each it's jam-packed with useful information and will give you a firm foundation in the main principles of the art and craft of great acting so if you love acting and if you're looking to up your game you can sign up via the spiritual psychology of acting website or click the link in the description and enjoy the many benefits the seminar will offer you and best of all it's completely free and and so you offer you offer a program don't you the the great audio book adventure yes the great

40:43can you tell us a bit about that yeah absolutely so my course the great audio book adventure meets the actor wherever you are in your training and your experience as an actor and i help you translate whatever acting experience you have whether it's you've worked in classes you've performed on stage film tv and we translate what you know about acting and then how to specifically use it for audio book narration so for anyone who's worked on stage and then you move to film there are certain

41:13adjustments you need to make when you move to a new medium so the same is true for audio books so we help you learn how to do that we teach you how the industry works the publishing industry and i highly recommend people work directly with publishers versus on the indie platforms that are out there there are some that might be great but my experience mostly has been working directly with major publishers and that's where i see the best paying work the most consistent work happening so i teach people how to

41:46break into that so you learn about the industry you start building your marketing materials specifically for audio book narration and then you start reaching out to publishers so all of that is included in our course how to do all of it and then how to actually narrate your first audio book that's an assignment that you have once you've learned everything from us we were like okay here's the keystone project do it make sure you understand everything and we're here to support you so uh it also includes how to set up your home studio i'm fortunate enough to do this course uh with my husband who's also

42:19my uh business partner justin mara and he's a sound engineer so he helps everyone make sure that their home studios are industry ready that their sound would pass what publishers are looking for because the sound for audio books is more specific and it needs to be more like no outside noises that's more important in audio books than any other voiceover because they're in most cases it's just the bare human voice there's not a lot of sound effects usually added um so we make sure you're you're ready

42:52to go there so we basically have put the a to z of what you need to know to launch your acting career into working directly with publishers in this course oh that's really good and what kind of transformations have you seen for actors yes i've not only seen as i said before a number of our clients now get health insurance through their audiobook work the abundance that they feel from that i've seen then translate into okay now going back to their other acting work and feeling more proactive the way we

43:28teach it is to be proactive and you are your own manager or agent because um you don't need representation to work directly with publishers so that can be helpful so how does that work so that there is no like like in traditional acting there's an agent casting director etc so you cut out all the middlemen and and it's just a direct relationship between the performer the narrator and the publisher yeah yeah the publisher might have a casting director or producer and so you would build

44:00relationships with them and i and i hear from casting directors all the time they're always looking for new talent because again they're just the number of projects available they you know people want to hear new listeners so of course if you've been doing it for a while that's great there will probably be consistent work there but they're always looking for new voices as well and then i've also experienced i'm thinking of a client who was coming back to acting after taking like a 20-year break and they

44:30knew they wanted to do film and television but they wanted to also release one of their day jobs they loved audiobooks but had no idea how to get started so for this person i helped them you know break in with and they now have narrated 100 books with this publisher were able to release one of those jobs and also booking film and tv they had like two major speaking roles at the same time as also doing this work so i think there's something about the level of confidence that comes when you're booking

45:02the fact that i've had almost 200 bookings in the past 10 years definitely helps my confidence if i'm auditioning for anything or if someone's like oh what are you up to in your acting career like i'm always like yeah well i've listened to this audiobook or you know this award came up that's another thing a lot of my clients have been nominated for and won lots of industry awards so for people who like that that's been a that's been a thing so yeah those are just a few examples there was a there's a phrase

45:33that you use when i was reading up on the audiobook adventure that thinks scrappy and be brave could you talk a bit about that kind of what that is like day to day like practically for someone starting out totally so think scrappy and be brave is actually a phrase that justin came up with when we found that people were afraid to build a home studio or to learn new technology i think when we i think it's hard to have a beginner mindset when you're good at something so being a great actor on film and tv

46:05and theater and then coming to the space where now you need to learn how to record yourself and maybe you thought like i don't need to learn tech i'm an actor now learning that you have to so that phrase came from like okay it's not going to be great at first you're just going to have to start and also the same with home studios you might think you have to spend ten thousand dollars on a fancy booth you don't like there are ways you can get started if you're willing to be scrappy if you're willing

46:35to just kind of see what will work for your budget and for your space there's lots of solutions there so yeah just kind of think scrappy and be brave is like just just dive in and allow yourself that imperfect time as you're learning and what are the basic bits of of uh technical kit that you need to do this job oh gosh i should pass you on to justin uh you'll have to have justin on at some point um so the basic you'll you'll need to have treatment which means like you need to be able to create a

47:11quiet space so whether that is a booth whether that is like different treatments um so different things you can put like on the floor on this on your ceiling on your walls it depends it depends on where like what your environment is like there are some noisier environments there are some quieter environments there are probably different parts of your home or apartment or flat that um are going to well done elise

47:44yeah you're absolutely right but like exploring what you'll need in order to make that the quietest space possible and then finding a microphone that is going to work well for your space and for your voice so justin often says like microphones are like shoes uh not the same one's going to work for every voice so don't expect that like be willing to explore a few options before you decide on one and we've also found that uh just because something is a fancy microphone that you've seen in a multi-million

48:19dollar studio before doesn't mean it's going to actually sound good in your space uh so i will i will give a shout out justin actually has is now creating microphones that are very specific for narrators and podcasters to work well in home studio spaces so i'm just going to shout him out our company is called tree cave um so if you want to look that up or i can share a link with you about that um but but yeah because justin's been studying specifically the home studios for years and he's

48:50helped hundreds of people around the world set up a space so now he's like i he just created a more affordable option that is going to do what you need it to do and then of course you'll need to do some treatment but those are the main things yeah with with what i'm doing i'm just doing it in this room in this studio with this mic that the that the editor has brought and set up you know that the equipment here to do um and i was like do i so do i need to get mattresses and a booth and all that and

49:21she she said don't need all that okay she said i can tidy it up with ai okay i don't like that but okay controversial but there's but and in other words not only what you mean by tidy up is like any background noise production yeah she can remove that in post-production uh-huh is that is that an important part of it or because you know because i feel a bit naked i don't i mean this room has got acoustic sound boards because i'm sure it's in here i'm sure it's a process that's not what publishers

49:53are traditionally using right now unless are you working directly with a publisher and is that what they're doing that's yes it's a publisher it's the study society of the publishers and we've just got the gig to create the audio books for them okay yeah i mean here in the u.s certain publishers have committed to like not using ai in that way um there's something about the human voice and a human voice listening to a human voice that is going to know like don't shorten that space they left that space there for dramatic pause or it's fine to leave that breath in because we can hear the human sound

50:30of the breath so there's certain problems i see with using ai for that but oh no she meant if an ambulance goes by outside she can actually remove that oh yeah okay gotcha that'll be helpful just stop i just if if i fluff or yeah there's a noise outside or it's better to do that someone opens the dishwasher too loudly or whatever i just pause for a moment and then do it again and then i just send her the whole tape and she edits it oh great so it's not an overreliance yeah i mean talking of

51:02ai it'd be great to chat about your i mean you you you kind of broached the subject you had the opportunity recently to give a tedx talk which was really well received it'd be great if we could chat about that so the talk was called the power of a human storyteller in the age of ai yes and so i guess

The Power of Human Storytelling in the Age of AI

51:19first of all what kind of inspired you because i know it was it was a couple of years in the in the making wasn't it getting it kind of written and made and then kind of put out in the world what what inspired you in the first place to to create thank you so much for yeah i'm excited to talk about this um so the talk came from i would say a few years ago it kind of hit me for the first time which i don't know why it took this long to realize no one's brain thinks in the same way mine does and that's true for all of us we all have a very specific experience but i think as actors

51:50sometimes we can over rely on outside affirmation and trying to fit in a box like everybody else but there's been a more of my ownership and like more loving around who i am like self-loving that i've been working on in the past few years and i've found that when this is probably a through line in my life if i don't like the way something is going i'm going to talk about it and i'm going to bring it up and i'm going to see what i can do to impact change in that area if i can see it and so

52:22a couple years ago i knew i wanted to do a ted talk but i didn't know what it was going to be about yet but then as i started getting more involved in just leadership in the audiobook industry i noticed not enough people were talking about the power of the human voice um as ai is coming in very rapidly and really seeping into every industry it just became clear i wanted to offer a warning sign but also hope around the power of our gift but also our service as like using our human voice and

52:59storytelling and just like the talk is really about human connection and how stories have been a part of our evolution for the past 30 000 years so as this mad dash for ai happens which by the way my thoughts on it are lots of lots and lots of rich people are trying to cut out a lot of people and and they're getting people excited about ai but i also see that there's more need for human connection than ever part of my talk talks about the loneliness epidemic and one of the best ways for us to

53:34not feel lonely is by connecting with others so even if someone can't connect with maybe doesn't have a group of friends that they feel deeply connected to listening to an audiobook that is told by a human is human connection um so if what's what started happening in the past few years is that um some major uh audiobook platforms are now allowing ai storytelling to come in and in fact they're even encouraging authors to just put your thing in and let's we'll just get it done so they're flooding the

54:09marketplace with ai narrated audiobooks so that we'll get used to it so that they can normalize it and make it be a thing um so that eventually you know they can do as much of that as they want but if you've listened to an audiobook that is ai narrated you might notice that it is ai or you might not i think some of us know some of us don't but the biggest changes are everything we've already talked about earlier about how our experience how who we are like the work that we have been trained in as actors to really get as

54:45neutral but also bring who we are to the forefront of the story all of that is missed when it's just put through ai and there's i see a lot of potential harm if we don't keep that in check and so some of my call to calls to action in in the talk are to pay attention to how you feel when you connect with humans when you take in a human narrated audiobook and notice how it makes you feel i was what i loved

55:19about this talk is i gave it in anchorage alaska in august and one of the questions i i we haven't talked about it a lot yet but when i'm narrating an audiobook i'm thinking about the listener and they are i i've got a clear picture of who's my scene partner just as if you're doing a monologue you need to know who are you talking to what's the problem how are you like why do you need to say this now all of that i do all that analysis for an audiobook as well so i set up my talk in a similar way i was like i want to talk to the audience even if we're not going to be able to have a deep conversation and

55:52i'm not going to be able to hear directly from them a lot i still want to feel their connection as well so in the talk at one point i i was asking them like have you ever been in your driveway and you can't get out of the car because you had to hear the next chapter of the audiobook or maybe you've walked into your flat but you can't move into whatever else you need to do in your day because you just want to hear that next chapter and that is talking about human connection and the number of people that were like yes oh i feel that way was amazing to me and i i got that

56:26visceral reaction from the audience and then later in the talk i said who here is an audiobook listener i felt like almost the whole audience said me and i was like whoa we are i mean especially the people who probably go and listen to a ted talk love audiobooks so that was a great audience but in general we are taking it in and so the more awareness that we have of why we like the story why we go to it the more we're intentional about the way we're taking in content and then sharing it with other people

57:01the more connected we all feel and also the more likely human storytelling is going to stick around and this is what i see as our resistance to the growth of ai coming in and all that it's doing to not help with a planet all it's doing to not help with taking power from the people to the wealthiest so i see human storytelling as like a really brave act but it's like the most human thing that we can do

57:32do you think ai will go out of fashion

57:36i think we're in this moment of

57:40like obsessiveness about it if that makes sense and and i think that's working really well for the people who are selling it they're finding ways to get us like addicted to it in the same way that we're addicted to social media and the different things but like with social media and all the ways like we stayed home a lot in the pandemic people are craving human connection so it's like an awareness and a willingness to know like where does ai have a place in our society and where maybe

58:14is not the best uses for it like i wish we were using ai for like folding my laundry and like doing all the tasks that i didn't want to do not my creative work like creativity is the most human thing so that to me doesn't make a lot of sense it's funny because yeah i do wonder as well like how much of it is a fad and how much of it is just going to fall out of fashion because obviously we are seeing so much of it like this the ai slop kind of like tidal waves is coming over us but like obviously in social media like i you know i do enjoy watching the queen winning the

58:48fa cup with manchester united or doing a backflip in a pub or something i enjoy the dog podcasts i enjoy like or even like i guess music wise as well you know the amount of covers now you've got like what if the beatles did this oasis song or what if um this queen song was done in a reggae style you know these kind of ai kind of music covers they are getting so they sound so realistic and sound so as if they were you know were completely real and you can't really hear the joins or any kind of i mean there is a kind of a thrill to that i guess but then i i do almost see a limitation

59:21there it does become a bit of a fad and the problem i see is that no it's all piracy like it's all being stolen and there are not enough i mean there's barely any laws in place that are protecting the creator the original creator and they've already there's already so many platforms like spotify that have made it really impossible for people to make money through the streams of their work like musicians um so i think i would hope that it's going to take a big movement to really

59:53push back and say like hey you can't just take an author's work and put it through ai hey you can't just you know so it's we all have an impact here our awareness about it are like noting what we can do and not saying like it's it's terrible none of it never but where does this have a place for where we grow next and how can we continue to understand the value of human creation and make sure we're

1:00:24prioritizing that i think someone the other day was talking about ai being like junk food and like human creation like quality i i like that i i agree with that well i had um uh do you know the singer the english singer nick drake no yes you haven't he's i'll check him out he's he's long passed away but um i've on social media i've got uh i follow there's a page of of nick drake right and he was

1:00:55it was a real remarkable talent his voice and just what he provided it was really remarkable it's really beautiful i mean you'll you'll love it at least it's absolutely amazing and someone put a video of nick drake from photographs singing some of his songs okay and i watched it and there's something because of the ai there's something he looked a little bit demonic of course because that's the thing because it was like well what have you done to nick drake and i've never actually seen video footage

1:01:28of nick drake i've only ever seen photographs and i didn't like what i saw and then i read the comments that's that's good that your body was like this is not right like this isn't quite right we need to be aware of that it was caused uproar like i mean you know nick why are people so willing to yeah there's a it's interesting like stop it take it down immediate like that is sacrilege what you're doing is sacrilege stop it now please remove it and that was the general consensus of the whole followers of nick drake is like you're playing stuff you really shouldn't be playing with there

1:02:02thank you for saying that and part of the talk like really the hopeful part of my message that is very connected to what you're saying is that most people don't want this actually and there is such a pushback on social media of that this kind of thing like when a plat an audiobook platform said okay we're gonna just you know essentially flood the marketplace they use different words um but all these authors and and narrators were like what no and listeners of audiobooks were like no like we listen to feel we

1:02:37listen for the heartbeat so that is something that ai can never it won't ever have and so we need to continue to value that asset that we bring yeah that thing of the human voice of just you were talking about the in your ted talk as well about the the loneliness pandemic um and that it's you know it's you know scientifically proven that we're not islands and that we we have evolved to be communities and that's how we're we're physically and mentally most health uh healthy and just having

1:03:13someone talking to you in an audiobook a real human being yes it must stimulate the parts of the brain that as if you are out and you were listening to a friend and you were connecting definitely must do the same kind of thing i think i do it with my cats you know i each of my cats each day i've got two persians they're blue persians they're absolutely gorgeous couple of cats and you know they'll be sitting there just all quiet like they do you know they sleep so many hours a day and i'll just go over and i'll give them a little stroke yes and i'll tell them how much i love you i love you so

1:03:48much and i know i'm like that with my dog too yeah yeah i communicated to them and and i know that they don't speak english you know they get it so they they probably speak persian so they don't understand the word i'm saying anyway but i know they feel it of course i can see that physiologically that they change when i speak kind words and i just tell them how i how much i love them and how much i care about them and what a blessing they are to have in my life yes you know that that just is well it's

1:04:21the same with plants isn't it they have they have studies where like positively to plants makes them grow making it's that kind of i guess there must be something in the human voice which is just yeah yeah magic i think it's like we had to just keep everything in check and remind ourselves to keep connecting to nature and through plants through animals through each other and remind ourselves that like the machine is like man created and we're living in an era of like extreme power extreme

1:04:56like people trying to control people this is like hopefully an era that will not last forever but it is having an impact now so just a big reminder that we as creatives are the feelers of our time we're the people that get to tell the stories and remind ourselves who we are yeah but where do you draw the line because personally i'm you know ai in our in what in what we run and offering the spiritual psychology of acting around the world my partner leila she's she's very much on the the the ai and

1:05:27she'll ask them to do a sort of a marketing campaign and stuff like that and they'll create all this content and i won't i just refuse to use any of it and all the con you know it's great for planning but i draw the line of every email i send out i craft it i must say i have learned something about writing emails from ai the way they've structured it and how to the point it is they've studied a lot they've they've taken a lot of people's writings and figured out what works yeah i mean yeah is it best to use it as a kind of as a friend that you can have sound bored ideas off

1:06:02is that maybe the best use of it it's so interesting that you said to use it as a friend because there's someone i i want to shout out um her her handle on instagram is called sensible woo but this is someone who uh her name is mary and mary is uh a formerly a disney archivist and is a awesome creative coach and she helps people with their podcasts and different things but i've been following her i i honestly have been staying away from ai for as long as possible and then over the summer i've kind

1:06:36of been like okay you know what it is here how how do i want to use it if at all and being really mindful of winning when i'm using it but she she always says don't it's not a friend make sure you remember it's not a friend because some people will then just connect with it and not humans and that's problematic um but i think for me i have used it for some organizing or like if i getting started if i just need to like get myself in action and i'm

1:07:15either overwhelmed and i need to organize my thoughts or if i'm procrastinating something and i just want to get it going that's when i found it useful so i i like to keep it very light in my life and just as much as possible make sure i'm still using my brain for everything um that i need to use it for and i don't want to lose just like i'm someone who sometimes just continues to add numbers or like subtract try to do it on paper instead of going to a calculator first because

1:07:47i'm just like what if these things don't exist someday i still want to make sure i know how to add numbers i still want to make sure i know how to multiply it's like maps i guess isn't it i think i love direction i love being able to know how to get somewhere exactly so i that's kind of me um i think we all need to figure out where it has its place but i also think we need to notice its impact if we just go all in on that and stop using our our own creativity what i loved about creating the ted

1:08:18talk was we weren't we weren't allowed to use ai so i noticed how how that felt like what you know what writing just from from my brain is like and i'm getting ideas for like to write a book and i'm pretty sure i'll want to do the same thing i'm pretty sure i'm going to want to be like let's not use ai at all and let's just use our brain and maybe it might take a little bit longer and maybe that is like a more conservative way to use it but that's something for me that i'm trying like john what you

1:08:50said before though that is an area i have def i have used ai for planning some large email campaigns because i and i i think it's a bummer that we have to but i feel like the amount of emails that we have to write for our online businesses is just kind of ridiculous so i have i have used it um in that kind of situation from time to time i see it like a creative art i've framed it that's like the art of writing an email that communicates a topic you know i i'm sharing information i'm giving and there's

1:09:26there's some content there and for me it's it's really important you know that yeah that it reads nicely and that it's it's um conveys what i've got in my head and heart and that's amazing how it can help us do that yeah and i'm i'm taking the time like if i do use ai in helping craft an email making sure i'm reading it out loud and making sure it's in my voice and shifting things to make it be in my voice otherwise that feels um do you think that at least do you think that your your best

1:09:56prediction do you think you know will it when it will will humans win out in the end i guess you know we've always been worried about you know that kind of i certainly hope so robots taken over and you know what emotionally humanly speaking like that connection thing do you think that our human connection is stronger than than the kind of the power of the i i think if we continue to take the time to have these conversations and notice how we're behaving and continue to prioritize human connection humanity will go on i think when we give up and say well it's just gonna happen so might as

1:10:33well just give in and whatever i think when we do that we make it easier for people to make that change happen very quickly um but i i believe so much in the power of of our our voice and again like john what you said earlier about um nick drake's music and everybody on that post saying take this down that's it it's someone being willing enough to say no and us banding together in that so it is

1:11:03important for us to question it it is important for us to ask for it to exist in the things we want it to exist for and and not take over a space that really needs to be a human space which i believe it makes me think of do you know the ianesco play rhinoceros yes absurdist play where literally everybody's i've actually seen a production of it it's a festival theater years ago um and and everybody starts turning into a rhinoceros and it's like the kind of uh they become less than human

1:11:39really that's the the thing and i wonder if that's like with with ai you know everybody's turning into rhinoceroses like yeah i think we have to ask ourselves like why why am i going to ai for this do i need to and why am i choosing to it's it's convenience isn't i guess because i sometimes think about you know even years ago before google was really a thing you just had to remember oh what's the name of that film again what was who's that actor you just had to rack your brain yeah it's great process you would just kind of wonder about it and kind of just try and think about it yeah and

1:12:10it's now just leads to go oh well hold on i'll just check and it's over in seconds almost the fun goes out of the set yeah there's some value there's so much value in i mean as creatives we need downtime for our brain to just process so like you just said jordan i think that there's value in staying curious and not knowing and going through the process to figure out or let our brains figure out over time yeah there's an existential crisis really it's like who are we you know do you know what i mean it's like it's a really it's a sort of tipping point of like well what are we

1:12:43about what i do think the what does it mean to be human the actions we take now are definitely going to affect what happens next so i do i do think that this is a time for all of us to get involved and think about that through our actions um if we love human storytelling share the things you love post about those things share those things more than you share the ai stuff um you know there's always things you can do like i don't know like if if environmentally you have a car that's not that great but then you can donate to someone else i mean do checks and balances in your life of like

1:13:18how can you make sure we're still prioritizing the things that matter um i i have a lot of hope for humanity but i also think connecting back to like the psychology spiritual psychology there's a level of a mindset that we can have around this of humanity will go on creativity will go on as long as i believe it will and then take action to make that happen so i don't know if that's connected to any

1:13:48of the work that you do john but i know for me continuing to have a place of like well i don't want to live in a world that doesn't have human storytelling so what are all the things that i can do to make sure this continues on uh so yeah that's the that's what the ted talk was about i'm everywhere i can share that message i'm happy to and i think it's an interesting time yeah i think it needs careful consideration i've certainly given it careful consideration of my use of it i mean i've

1:14:19never really i haven't used it a great deal anyway i've used it sort of to look up things bits and pieces of here and there and i have found it helpful but i don't want it to do anything creative and we also have to fact check things and we also have to realize the the lack of uh diversity equity inclusion there's a lot of problematic things that we're getting very skewed perspectives on so as long as we're as long as we're aware of all of the problems and we're aware that it's not perfect and that things still need to be fact checked that's important to keep in mind too

1:14:52if curiosity killed the cat then hopefully curiosity will be the savior of human civilization keeping curious keeping keeping that sense of play alive yeah yeah i just wonder who's going to be that one guy left that isn't a rhinoceros you know that's that's that's what happens in the story in the play is that there's one guy let's plan not to be let's all be that guy let's all be that guy yeah yeah um before we wrap i want to share that i have a free class going back to the great

1:15:26audiobook adventure if it's okay to share yes for folks who are interested in just dipping your toe into audiobook narration i offer a free class called narrate your way to abundance because really audiobook narration has been this place of abundance for me um so i like to keep it in that optimistic positive place for you to continue to grow in your acting career so you can go to audiobookadventure.com slash class to access the free class and thank you so much that's great

1:15:58it's been great really great chat yeah it's been a chat hasn't it it's been a proper chat i mean i could go on all day yeah this is a really interesting subject and i like how we've kind of gone we've gone off script haven't we we've gone to where we where we want to go so that's really great thanks for all you're doing thanks for this conversation thanks for making space for us to have this conversation yeah thank you elise and um i highly recommend doing elise's uh audiobook narration uh i think that

1:16:29that's got a lot to offer actors uh not just you know in terms of just making a living but i think just it's a fantastic way to just keep working on your skills as an actor because you are the you know generally you're the actor the director you're the casting director you're you're everything it's your own little show in your head isn't it it's fantastic yes yes you've been listening to the spiritual psychology of acting podcast big thank you again to elise for

1:17:09her insight and honesty and for being such a great guest you can find links to everything that we chatted about elise's tedx talk her courses her podcast all in the episode description so do go check those out if you enjoyed this episode and are enjoying the podcast please do share it with your friends and family subscribe give us a five star review all of that helps us out massively we'll see you again soon for the next episode in the season but until then as always be excellent to each other

1:17:44we'll see you again soon so so so so so so so

1:18:21so so you so