Lessons from a live storyteller
Finding extraordinary moments in an ordinary life: A conversation about story catching and telling with Aaron Calafato, host of 7-Minute Stories.
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Hi Storytellers —
A while back, I stumbled upon an unusual podcast: Aaron Calafato’s 7 Minute Stories. Every week, Calafato, a trained actor and a dad of three from Ohio, tells a single, extemporaneous story about his life. Since founding the show in 2018, he’s told more than 300 short, captivating and mostly heartwarming stories about subjects ranging from the death of the movie night to a wondrous Elvis impersonator to racing Shamu, the killer whale.
The show is a sleeper hit: he says more than 30 million people have tuned in. Recently, Aaron expanded the 7 Minute Stories universe to add Storytelling University, bonus conversations (on the 7 Minute feed) about the art and science of storytelling. Storytelling University has featured guests like journalist Soledad O’Brien and Julie Shapiro, co-founder of Audio Flux and former artistic director of Third Coast International Audio Festival.
If that weren’t enough, on YouTube, Aaron recently kicked off a streaming show called Night Stories, which he describes as old-fashioned, live, late-night radio: just stories, no politics.
Like many audio journalists, I love live storytelling and have always wanted to try it. And yet it scares me. I was thrilled to talk with Aaron about his process and his purpose.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I can’t wait to learn more from you, Aaron. I think of you as a live storyteller who just happens to be podcasting.
I never thought about that, but it is a live captured thing that happens just to live in that audio space.
You’ve said that the medium doesn’t define your nature. What do you mean?
One of the things I get nerdy talking about, because it’s such a hack for anyone in the business of storytelling, is that the medium of how you tell stories does not define the fact that you are a story catcher first.
We catch [stories] in our memory. We catch them by ruminating about them. We’re constructing them internally.
Then after we catch stories, we tell them. And usually the storytelling mechanism is a social experience. It’s around the dinner table. It’s, “Hey, you won’t believe this story that just happened to me today!”
It’s the social bond. It’s the architecture of who we are as human beings.
Then the question becomes, how do you do it? I tried it with writing, but I sucked at it, but then I tried it with [for instance] sculpting. That’s the medium. So the medium, to me, is a very important way of doing it, but it is not the definition of storytelling.
I love just telling stories to a live audience, either in person — one person or a thousand people — or across an ocean through audio as the medium. I also love telling short form stories. So I put all that together and it’s telling a story every week about my really simple, normal life that, just like everybody’s, has extraordinary moments in its normality.
That was and has become my definitive medium. From there, we’ve spun it into different things like conversational podcasts like this. We’re spinning out animations. We’re universe building. But the foundation always is, “I gotta tell you the story about this thing that happened to me. Do you wanna listen to it?”
Story Catching
How do you catch a story? That’s a phrase that seems to come naturally to you, but not to most people. Or we catch stories, but we don’t know how to deliberately catch and retell them.
It’s a hidden thing, isn’t it? We’re always result oriented. Most of us, including myself, are like, I want to just tell this great story. I want to write this great novel.
It’s the product.
But one step before that is the medium. And that’s usually where the focus is. The focus is, “I love telling stories with a trumpet. I want to be a great trumpet player.” That’s not a terrible approach, but if you really look at the great storytellers across all mediums, they go one layer deeper, which is, “What’s informing the trumpet? What part of me is informing the note?”
Let’s dive into The Gun. In this story, you’re 11 years old. You and your mom are visiting her boyfriend and his kid, Matt, for the time. You set the stage: We’re going to hear about something that most adults would immediately say is not going to end well.
“And so we ran down the stairs, no parents, and Matt goes and reaches into this box, and he makes this gesture to me like you would when you put your finger over your mouth, and tell someone to ssh. And he pulls out what looks like this huge handgun with a really long barrel. I thought maybe it had a silencer, but I only thought that because I think I saw that in the movies, but I froze.”
What was the genesis of this story?
Well, going back to the whole story-catching thing, every week, I’m constantly rummaging up stuff in the basement. You know, Rocky Balboa in the [2006 Sylvester Stallone] Rocky Balboa movie, there’s this scene where Pauly’s back working at the meat factory.
Rocky goes down there and he’s kind of stuck at this place in his life. And Pauly says, “What’s wrong with you, Rock?”
Rocky says, “There’s some stuff in the basement.” I love that phrase that Stallone wrote: “There’s stuff in the basement.” And so, when I’m rummaging for those stories, I’m going into the basement. And sometimes you find stuff that’s like, “What the hell was that?”
So this story came from a dissonance. It came from a memory that I had that was profound, that meant something new to me as an adult. And it shocked me and I wanted to explore it and tell it.
Let’s dig a little deeper into what you just said, that you’re rummaging around in the basement for these memories. As a reporter, I’m used to finding true stories about other people. What do you find are helpful prompts for figuring out a good story from your own experience?
I find prompts prevent me from going into the basement. What I do is remain open to the stories that come at me, and then be willing to go down the path of finding the story, cultivating it and telling it.
I’ll give you an example. My wife and I are in Walmart and we’re walking by the gun section. I think, “Isn’t it weird that they have a gun section?” And then I look at a BB gun — there’s something, there’s an item. When I see that item, I remember this thing that happened to me.
Now, there are a lot of people who remember [something] and that’s it. They internalize it and they’re done. But I think, “Wait a second, what was that all about?” And if I feel it trigger a memory, I will usually realize, “That’s important. It might be worth investigating.”
And then I will tell my wife the story. I tell it privately in conversation.
So the second stage is if I tell it to a trusted person and it hits me and it lands on them, then that actually is something I should start to cultivate, and share, if I feel it’s right for my show.
It usually starts with a simple memory — an object, a smell, some sort of sensory reminder.
I’m always open because I am naturally always telling stories. I want to tell stories that help me move through the world, that help me connect with people, that help me share intimacy with partners and friends and family. Because if I don’t share stories, how the hell do they know me? It’s an offering to other people.
Scene-setting and sense memory
In the story you shared with me, The Gun, you and this boy, Matt, are in the woods. It’s a beautiful fall day. We can hear and feel the leaves crunching under your feet, which I think is, in part, why I feel like I’m in that world, because it’s so sensory.
But then the mood change is palpable. The pacing changes. How did you think about constructing that scene?
I only have a little bit of time [to tell the story]. How do I quickly establish the environment? Usually I do something very simple and easy to understand because I’m not Dickens, where I can spend six pages describing a wall. I always go to the universal — the crunching of leaves. If the crunching of leaves senses something for me, it senses something for everybody.
The way the air is, if you’re in a geography that has a climate that changes, that has four seasons, we all know that air smell — it’s a fire, there’s some sort of camping. There are also seasonal smells that we don’t talk about, but we all feel; rain has a smell. So I’ll use the senses to quickly establish the environment.
I do this for two reasons. One, it’s to explain to you, the listener, where you’re at really quickly, to level set. Because it’s you and me, it’s not just me. I don’t want this to be a lonely story. This is you through me and you next to me in it. Let me put you behind my eyes. I’m gonna show you what I’m seeing, but I can only have this much time.
The second thing I’m doing is for me. Remember, I’m performing this live. I need to know where the hell I was, what it looked like, what it smelled like. I’m actually using it as a sense memory, as a way to position myself, because I don’t know what the next line is going to be.
Right, so you’re feeling into the story.
I know generally where I’m going, but the word is spoken, not written. It’s not read off a script. So my mindset is, when I remember the leaves, then I remember, I saw [Matt’s] face. So then it gets me in. Once I’m in, now I can get really detailed.
I don’t want this to be a lonely story. This is you through me and you next to me in it. Let me put you behind my eyes. I’m gonna show you what I’m seeing, but I can only have this much time.
I need to transport myself through a universal connection like the senses. And then I need to look around as if my head’s on a swivel. What am I seeing? What little [details] do I see? I don’t need [to share] much, because the audience is smart enough to build their own world.
Dissonance
Talk to me about the concept of dissonance, which is more often referred to as tension or conflict. In this story, I hear a subtle change in tone and pacing, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up.
The way to do that is to share the environment and what [we] want to happen — and then sprinkle in the reality of what’s actually going to happen. When we take a walk in the woods, we want the leaves crunching under our feet. We want that transcendent moment of breathing in the air. We want to look through the trees and see that sort of [autumn] sunlight. That’s a good memory. We get transcendence from that.
While this happening, out of the corner of your eyes, something else begins to emerge. Sometimes that emergence coalesces with the ideal and it’s a really fun story and we all feel good. But sometimes what emerges is dissonance. And that’s where emotions start to come up. Now you’re inside of yourself going, “What’s happening?” I want to take you into my mind, into what it felt like for shit to start going out of control.
I love that idea of looking for dissonance. I did a podcast episode a couple years ago now with a woman named Katie Colaneri. Katie is the senior podcast editor at New Hampshire Public Radio. This episode was about the greenlight process that she had worked on for a year to figure out what would make the cut as a documentary, a series or even just a story for their longform documentary unit. She’s always looking for what they call the “holy shit moment.” You need that surprise. You need that, “Holy shit, that happened?” moment.
There’s a lot going on in this clip. Let’s listen.
“It was a fall day, and the leaves were crunching underneath my feet. And I remember the trees just gently swaying back and forth, and the leaves just falling all over the place. And then Matt starts shooting the gun just in the sky, just firing it.
And I didn’t hear a bang when he shot, but I thought it was probably the silencer that made the sound go dull. But then something happened. It changed from just him shooting out into the open to him starting to shoot at animals, like trying to find woodland creatures and trying to kill him and hurt them.
And sometimes he would shoot and he would miss, and sometimes he would shoot and he would hit. And I looked at his face and his eyes, and I didn’t like what I saw.”
This American Life uses a storytelling method called “action, stakes, reflection.”
So the action: You walk into the woods, he starts shooting, and then the stakes get a lot higher when he starts shooting. You don’t just call them animals, you call them woodland creatures. That immediately feels like Bambi — you can’t shoot a woodland creature. And then you have this reflection, which is “I didn’t like what I saw in his face, in his eyes.” Is this just what you do naturally or are you thinking about it?
I never start with the mode. If anything, that methodology probably comes from listening to great storytellers. So if I had to give credit, part of it’s being in a storytelling family. They naturally tell and you learn without knowing what the methodology is, what works. So when my uncle or my grandfather tells a story, I listen to them. Or I listen to an episode of This American Life or Spalding Gray, right? I was an active consumer of great storytellers. I always told my stories, but I’m always listening first.
My grandfather, when he told a story, he would do just that. He would lay out the environment: “I’m at this dance. It’s 1942. I just joined the military. I have my crisp suit on and I’m looking for the girl to dance with. And then all of sudden I see another guy cut in and it’s like everything went in slow motion.” So he’s doing this thing. And then he gets in a fight and then there’s a reflection. I’ve absorbed those things.
I will tell you there is an intention behind it. I would say a methodology like what you just talked about can emerge if you say to yourself, “I need the person who is listening to this to fully understand where I’m coming from. I need to tell them exactly what I see and I need to make them feel like they’re a part of this.”
I always approach stories like that. All I’m doing is transferring to them what the experience is like.
Why tell stories from your life, week after week, for seven years?
What I love is that storytelling circumnavigates barriers. It’s a direct connection to the heart and soul of another human being.
I feel I have a calling, in my small way, to create content that makes people feel connected. I want the community that I’m building to feel good. I want you to feel that you’re not alone. Like, I have weird experiences in the woods. I had this thing that happened and maybe, for them, there’s a private story that happened that they don’t want to talk about. It’s for them or their family, therapist or priest. But when I tell my experience, it affirms that private story. Great storytellers affirm the majority of stories that are private.
If you liked what you read, you’ll love the whole, sound-rich podcast interview with Aaron, coming soon. You’ll hear a a deeper dissection of “The Gun” and a treat: Aaron coached me on how to find a story from my own life suitable for a live performance.
Sound Judgment Kudos
In most issues, I give Sound Judgment Kudos to storytellers who are making sound judgments choices that improve our craft or serve others.
My first Sound Judgment Kudo goes to Chioke I’Anson and RESONATE Podcast Festival and Lauren Passell and Tink Media, for filling a serious gap in the difficult podcast landscape with a new show called Pitch Party. As I’Anson describes in the trailer, it’s an effort to help great independent storytellers find distributors — something that’s become much harder over the last couple of years. The show features a different pilot from an independent producer each week. Tune in to discover new shows and also for some great narrative shop talk.
My second Sound Judgment Kudo goes to the Solutions Journalism Network (SJN), which is offering ten HEAL fellowships for journalists reporting on solutions to the youth mental health crisis. Fellows will receive stipends of up to $5,000. The SJN promises that the three-question, one-video application should take no more than an hour to complete. Applications are open October 20 - November 17, 2025.
My third Sound Judgment Kudo goes to the middle and high-school winners of NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge. Ameya Desai, a fifth grader from San Jose, is the middle school champion for her story, “Far From Home - Shikata Ga Nai.” Avani Yaltho won the high-school challenge for her story, The Things We Buried. Congratulations to you both!
My own Sound Judgment
I had no idea that my return to the NPR airwaves after 14 years would spur so many old friends from all over the country to get in touch! My story about the coming clash between the hunger crisis and the national volunteer shortage, “Food pantries rely on elderly volunteers to feed hungry Americans,” aired on NPR in October.
Finally, I’m planning to be at Resonate this year. If you’ll be there, send me a note! I’d love to meet you in person.
If you liked this issue of the newsletter, you’ll also like these:
E for Emotion
And, with Resonate around the corner November 7-9, last year’s
13 Lessons for Storytellers from Resonate
As always, it’s a joy to be with you.
Elaine
Epilogue
“In Our Town, after Emily has died in childbirth, Thornton Wilder has her ask the Stage Manager if she can return home to relive just one day. Reluctantly he allows her to do so. And she is torn by the beauty of the ordinary, and our lack of awareness of it…and she asks the Stage Manager ‘Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?’ And he sighs and say, ‘No. The saints and the poets, maybe. They do some.’”
— Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water
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