AXSChat Podcast

The Power of Storytelling in Social Change

• Antonio Santos, Debra Ruh, Neil Milliken talk with John Graham

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Neil Milliken:

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Acces Chat. I'm delighted that we're joined today by John Graham. It's just Antonio and I this week because Deborah's taking a well-deserved break. John and I met through social media. No great surprise that, given that we've recruited many of our guests through social channels over the years of our guests through social channels over the years. But, um, john is many things, including the founder of giraffe heroes. He's also a public speaker, motivational speaker, but has an amazing back story. So, john, can you please give us a bit about yourself and and and your background and how you came to be interested in this space of inclusion?

John Graham :

Well, yes, I suppose I could start off by saying that I'm lucky to be alive. I've had an interesting life in terms of physical adventures. I started off when I was just 17 years old, shipping out on a freighter to the Far East. In those days there were no container ships, it was just a freighter with 50 or 60 big, tough guys who took one. Look at me, this 17-year-old from a placid little American city who had never been anywhere, and all of a sudden I was out there with them and they were determined to give me life lessons that they knew I'd never get in school. And they didn't disappoint. I won't go into great detail for your listeners, but you can imagine.

John Graham :

And that was the beginning of a life of adventure for me. I mean the next year I found myself, after having been trying to hitchhike through East Germany, climbing the Matterhorn, ending up in Algeria in the middle of the revolution. And I walked across Algeria in the revolution and I kept myself safe by putting an American flag on my chest which said to the rebels don't shoot me because I'm not French. And on and on, and on it went. I mean and on and on and on it went. I mean the next year I was with a team that made the first ascent of the north wall of then Mount McKinley Now it's called Denali highest peak in North America, and it's one of the most dangerous climbs on the planet. And we survived all that. And I hitchhiked around the world after that and then, because I was so infatuated with physical risk, I joined the US Foreign Service and I told them to send me to the wildest, roughest places they had, and they didn't disappoint either. I was in the middle of the revolution in Libya. Then they shipped me to Vietnam in the middle of the war, where I was the advisor to the city of Hue, which your listeners may remember from the Tet Offensive, and had a number of death-defying experiences there. But it was there in Vietnam, at the height of a battle in Vietnam and here I'm coming to the point of answering your question.

John Graham :

I guess it was there in Vietnam that I realized how shallow my life had become, because I wasn't a kid anymore. Now I was in my late 20s and I was in the middle of a shooting war and a war I didn't believe in, a war I knew was lost and a war that I had come to hate. But I was there only because it was the only war we had, and I was an adventure junkie and I was there for the adrenaline rush and all of a sudden it occurred to me how utterly shallow that was. And it was the lowest point in my life, neil, it was. I realized finally, finally, what I was doing with my life. I was making the world a worse place, not a better place, and doing it for very selfish reasons, just for the next rush, the next risk, because I kept surviving all these risks and got rather good at it, and after all, I was big and tough and so I could survive these physical risks. Anyway, after that, the State Department sent me to California for a year. I had a lot of what is now called PTSD to work out because the situation in Vietnam had been so dangerous, and also it was a great time for me to begin climbing out of that hole, that shallow hole that I just described, and it didn't happen overnight. It took me a while, but I gradually began to realize that with my skills and experience I could make the world a better place, and I got just kind of like hooked on doing good and then just to make the story even weirder for your listeners. Just as I was starting to lose some of my enthusiasm, mostly because I had run out of money, I was no longer in the Foreign Service, nobody was paying me.

John Graham :

I was signed on as a lecturer on a cruise ship and we were going across the North Pacific, heading for Japan and off the coast of Alaska. 150 miles off the coast from Alaska, this ship catches fire and starts to sink in the middle of nowhere and then, while we were in lifeboats, a typhoon comes on. So I find myself in a lifeboat, in a typhoon in the North Pacific. Most of the people on the ship had been rescued, but the storm was now so severe that the helicopters couldn't fly anymore. It was just too dangerous. So there were like the last eight people all men, because in those days anyway it was, you know, women and children first. I don't know if that's the same thing to do, but that's what we did. So there was eight of us left in the lifeboat and we were all dying. I mean, I've been in mountains before, so I knew what hypothermia was. We were all dying of hypothermia because, as the ship was burning, the officers lied to us about the gravity of the situation, so none of us had warm clothes and we were all going to die probably in a couple of hours. And not only that, it was getting dark now. We'd been on the lifeboat 12, 15 hours. We were freezing to death, and it was getting dark and it was a needle in a haystack, because in a typhoon the visibility is what it's like? 100 meters perhaps. So the only thing that could save our lives now was a Coast Guard cutter, a small ship frantically searching this wild, expansive ocean 140 miles off the coast, and it was a miracle.

John Graham :

It's a long story. It's well posted in a memoir I wrote called Quest Q-U-E-S-T. What happened next? And what happened next was that I just my famous ego just collapsed and I just looked up at the sky. I wasn't a religious person, I guarantee you. I looked up at the sky and I said look God, or whatever it is up there. Why am I being wiped out now? I admit that I had a pretty shallow early life, but now I'm doing some really good stuff. I mean, I ended up with the United Nations, for example, where I helped end apartheid, did some other good things, and I said I reminded God of that and I said well, why am I being wiped out? It makes no sense at all. I mean, I went to a Jesuit high school. I know about order in the universe. Why should I be wiped out now?

John Graham :

And the voice came out of that storm and I swear I heard it. The other seven guys didn't hear it. But the voice came out of that storm and it basically says stop bullshitting me. You're lecturing on a cruise ship and it and it's great fun, you're being paid very well, but you're forgetting all of your ideals. You're forgetting about the promises you made to reorient your life and do good, and so you might as well die out here, because the rest of your life isn't going to be worth nothing. So, anyway, there I was. I knew I was dying this time.

John Graham :

It looked like I wasn't going to get out of it, the lifeboat was getting to break up, and so I just turned my head into that wild storm and I just said I whispered, I don't know. I said, yes, okay, I get it, you win, I get it, I get it. And at that moment and I know how crazy this sounds, but I swear it's the truth At that moment this Coast Guard color, coast guard color the boutwell comes crashing through this wild storm and it would have hit us. Uh, it was so bang on accurate finding this little cockle shell of a lifeboat in a vast ocean in the middle of a huge storm. And we got rescued and and I kept my promise and I came back to new york and it was at that point that I met and then, within a year, married Ann Medlock, who had started the Giraffe Heroes Project, which is the only correction I want to make in your introduction, neil.

John Graham :

I didn't start the Giraffe Project, I wasn't smart enough, but Ann started it and I saw what she was doing and I realized that my way of changing the world, which is to use my wonderful gift of gab to give wonderful speeches.

John Graham :

Then we were in the middle of the Cold War, right, so I was lecturing for the peace movement and nobody was coming. Nobody really cared. But Anne Anne started the Giraffe Project, which is all about people sticking their necks out, hence the metaphor, giraffe and she was doing what people had done for thousands of years. She was telling stories in order to influence a culture. That is to say, she would find people sticking their necks out doing really brave things to solve tough public problems, whether it was in New York City where we both lived at the time, or whether it was, you know, a large global issue. Wherever it was, she'd find these people sticking their necks out and she would tell their stories and other people would hear or listen to these stories and they'd get off their butts and start doing something themselves and make their world a better place. And that's what happened.

Neil Milliken:

This is similar to what we've tried to do with Access Chat over the years, which is to highlight people's stories and really build a community so that we can amplify the good work that people are doing. But I'm assuming that the Giraffe Heroes is. You know, way precedes. You know, the internet and social media.

John Graham :

Yes, neil, it does, and they've started now, 42 years ago, basically in Anne's living room in New York City. She started it and began interviewing people in New York and getting their stories and in those years, of course, as you pointed out, before the internet, she was putting those stories on vinyl discs. Many of your listeners are too young to even know what a vinyl disc was. It was a piece of plastic that went round and round in a turntable and so Ann would create these 90-second or two-minute vinyl disc recordings of stories of people sticking their necks out, and she would get a movie star or someone to do the voiceovers and then send these vinyl discs out to little in the beginning little radio stations all over the country, and they sometimes would play it, sometimes they wouldn't, but that's how it started and it caught on. Caught on almost immediately.

John Graham :

Within a few years there was a big story on the Giraffe Project and the New York Times, and away we went. And I caught on to it, not in part because I fell in love with Ann Medlock and everything she was doing became way more important to me, but mostly because I realized that preaching at people to do good, whether it's on DEI topics or global warming or crimes against women or whatever. Preaching at people to act better rarely works. But what does work? If you want people to be heroically trying to solve problems, you tell them the stories of heroes. People have been doing that since Neanderthals were dancing around campfires 50,000 years ago and that's basically what Anne was doing and it was getting wildly successful. So now, working together 42, almost 43 years, we have found like 2,000 people and gotten their stories told. And all of those stories I'm sure you'll find more ways to tell your audience, but they're on our website, which is very simple. It's giraffeorg. You can link into these stories and read them, and they're all one's more inspiring than the one before and it's all about people sticking their necks out.

John Graham :

We've created, also over 42 years, a curriculum, um, which is now in english-speaking schools all over the world, including in britain. Um, and it's uh, about helping young people develop lives of courageous and compassionate action. And so you know. And now, what I do? I'm 82 now, so what I do? I don't run around the world giving speeches anymore because COVID more or less shut that down. If you remember, four years ago nobody was clustering in large auditoriums to hear people like me talk. So I really got into social media and I've been doing a lot of blogging and interviews, podcasts.

John Graham :

Plus, I've written five books on themes of risk-taking and leadership and solving public problems. Again, you know, it could be workplace problems, it could be community problems, it could be large global problems, like you know, iran or Gaza it doesn't make much difference. But we will look at what needs fixing, find someone working at it and then get their stories told, getting other people to say, heck, I can do that too. I can at least help this other person who's doing good work. I can start my own organization to do good work, and I can't do chapter and verse, but there's no question that we have inspired hundreds of thousands of people who otherwise might be still sitting in their easy chairs to get up and start doing something to help make their world a better place. It's great now, like I say, I'm 82 years old, I'm. People say when are you going to retire? I say we retire from what? I'm having too much fun, I love doing it and I I'm going to let you in.

Neil Milliken:

I know your passion and, like you, I have no plans to retire from doing something that motivates me to get up in the morning every day.

Antonio Santos:

And I'm sure Antoinette has a question, so I'll stop talking we recently talked with a guest that says oh, I'm the only person working on accessibility in my organization. Sometimes it's really hard. I'm the only person trying to push my organization to be more inclusive. And then I was listening to you and to what you're saying about stories. How do you feel that professionals like her, who are somehow isolated, trying to do something good in an organization, can expand and make things better for everyone?

John Graham :

Yeah, well, it takes sticking your neck out, and DEI is a hugely important issue and it doesn't just progress doesn't? As you well know, antonio, progress doesn't happen automatically. It's tough to take care of DEI issues in their workplace, so they don't do it or they're afraid of peer pressure saying hey, hey, hey, hey, you do that and our third quarter earnings will diminish because we'll be paying so much in terms of dealing with DEI, we'll forget our profit bottom line. Well, you know, I don't need to tell you, it isn't an easy path. Progress in DEI is coming slowly but surely, but it isn't an easy path and, like so many other issues, the only way to get it done is to stick your neck out, to use the wonderful American phrase. And so that's where the giraffe project comes in. We will find people, for example, who are in a place where DEI issues are ignored or where nothing is happening, and they get up and they're starting to do something, and it might mean going to a shareholders meeting and raising hell, or it might mean in the C-suite talking to the members of the boards of directors and stuff and insisting that the company or the organization do the right thing and investing in DEI technologies and creating DEI policies that make life fairer for a great segment of our population. But, like I say, and as you well know, it doesn't happen automatically. People aren't automatically always signing up, so it does take people sticking their necks out. And that's where the Giraffe Heroes Project comes in.

John Graham :

As a supporter of DEI issues because, like any other issues, we figured out that, you know, good hearts are all around us I'm always enthused and excited and gratified by the fact that I look around me and a whole lot of good people are doing good things and they're trying to do good things and that's just wonderful.

John Graham :

But what the giraffe project is about is more than just people doing good things. It's people taking risks to do good things because they aren't happening unless someone takes some risks, sticks their neck out. So we're looking not just for these wonderful good people with the right intentions DEI or whatever the issue might be. We're looking at people who are looking at these issues, confronting obstacles, enduring criticism, maybe enduring financial loss, whatever, but damn it, it's an issue that's important to them and they forge ahead and they are giraffe heroes in our book and we get their stories told and, as I said several times now, we depend upon other people hearing those stories and saying heck, I'm going to help that person because he or she needs it, or I'm going to start my own organization or my company isn't doing a damn thing and dei issues, so I'm going to show up in the next board meeting and raise hell.

Neil Milliken:

Um and you know that's what we do. So I good storyteller, but, but often I think that storytelling is is sometimes people are naturally good at it, but other people have to learn that, and so I think that the part that you're playing is to recognize the good work, recognize the bravery, recognize the value of the risk-taking and then amplify that by communicating about that in a way that people can really connect with.

John Graham :

Yes, absolutely. I must say, some of these wonderful giraffe heroes are practically inarticulate. I mean, they didn't do what they're doing because they're glib or because they can give a good speech. They do it because of their passion and their courage and their commitment. And, like I say, some of them are wonderfully articulate and spokespeople for their causes causes some aren't. In fact, it even gets more difficult than that sometimes, because sometimes you'll find someone doing extraordinary work, let's say dealing with the lack of moderate or low-income housing in their city, and they'll do their thing.

John Graham :

And you say, oh wow, this is wonderful. We think you're a giraffe hero, we'd like to tell your stories. And they say well, wait a minute, I'm not a hero. There's a problem out there. Nobody else was solving it. What do you expect me to do? Of course I'm going to do that. No, don't tell my story, because what I'm doing is completely ordinary. And so we have to convince them that their heroic acts are in fact heroic and that maybe even they have a certain responsibility to have their story told by us or others, because other people need to be inspired. So we create, sometimes we have to push people to be role models and examples. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes they're already well on down that path and they understand that part of their job is to replicate themselves and their work, but sometimes they don't, and so sometimes our job is to push people to allow us to talk about their heroism and you know.

Antonio Santos:

So, John, you also mentioned you know that you started looking at social media and blogging and podcasting. We went to different phases across social media, different ups and downs, and today, what seems to attract more clicks, likes and shares is something that is very divisive. Yes, how can we navigate on that to create something better? We don't want to be on this negativity and this device all the time. How can we use these tools and resources to be on this negativity and this device all the time? How can we use these tools and resources to to be more together and to improve the world instead of just being all apart? No, with all this negativity.

John Graham :

Good question and of course we all suffer from that, whether in the UK or the US, and we have an election coming up here in a month and it's been extremely divisive. Totally get that and I think the answer is Antonio, it's in telling a good story. It's in telling a good story. I suspect that when those cavemen were dancing around the fires telling the stories of heroes, that if they were nasty or in some other way were putting people off with half-truths and non-truths, that people would leave the campfire ring and not listen to them. But to tell a true, exciting, passionate story and tell it well inspires people and it moves them past not always, of course, but it helps move them past the polarization that we're all seem to be stuck in. So I guess the main answer to your question is resolutely telling positive telling stories, not just. I almost said positive, but that's not the case. Some of these stories aren't very positive. Telling the stories of some heroes, some problems out there in the world are horrendous and telling the story accurately is describing some pain. But you can if you do that and people get swept up in the story and they can lose sight, at least for the moment, of the fact that they hate somebody else's guts for their political views. So storytelling well done. And after 42 years, I must say we know how to tell a story well. It is a hugely important thing. And, yeah, I totally get the fact that there's so much division out there, so much lies, all that kind of stuff. We try to rise above that. We try to just tell the story flatly. Yeah, in one case I remember a couple of years ago, and we're apolitical, we don't put someone up as a giraffe here who happens to be a political partisan, pro-trump or anti-Trump. No, no, we would never do that. And even on the issues, sometimes we will put people up on both sides of a sensitive issue just to illustrate that what we're honoring is a process, a mental state, a behavioral thing that we're looking for in these people and we're not particularly oriented towards the particular content. That's why, for example, I can't say in all honesty that the Giraffe Heroes Project is a DEI organization, because it's true, but on the other hand, we are also a crimes against women organization. We're an anti-global warming organization. We're looking for people who are engaged in a process of solving tough public problems, and that's what we're looking for and we're trying to find every possible way we can do it.

John Graham :

Neil, I don't think I told you this because I've just started doing it, but I have now launched on Twitter and on um? Uh Instagram, uh, 90 second videos aimed at people in their twenties, uh, in which I tell very briefly a story of one of my hair raising risky exploits and then from that draw a life lesson on leadership, for example, on risk-taking, uh, or what I just did, one on manhood, for example, talking about my own struggles to find proper male role models in my life. And then I ended with a call to action and I've learned how to do that now. Sometimes in a 90-second, instagram has a limit of 90 seconds. Twitter is three minutes, twitter. I have three minutes to do this and it's wonderful. I've done the first four now and I'm going to do a hundred of these things and plaster them all over the planet on Twitter and Instagram.

Neil Milliken:

TikTok as well, because that's where the youngsters are.

John Graham :

Oh, I'm sorry, Did I say Twitter? It's Twitter, yes, but TikTok? I'm sorry, I misspoke. Our three-minute pieces are on TikTok. Yes, they're on TikTok. What am I talking about TikTok? Yes, so they're on TikTok and Instagram and it's great fun.

John Graham :

I've had to learn, because I have a gift of gab I don't normally do my stories in three minutes, as you've gathered from just listening to me to do my stories in three minutes, as you gathered from just listening to me, uh, and so I've had a. I've had to really learn a whole new way of talking to reach 22 year olds, um, uh, and and I'm getting there. It's trial and error, but that's my newest effort is on tiktok and instagram, uh, for a much younger audience. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the name of the series you'll love this is a badass granddad. So if you look at tiktok, it'll be ready. The first one should be up in about three weeks. And if you look at uh, your look at your tiktok feed, instagram feed, look for um, badass granddad, and that's I have to look for that now, see if I can find Badass Green Dead on Instagram, because no, it's not there yet it's not there yet and we haven't no you have an account yet oh yeah, I have an account and I have.

John Graham :

I've hired a firm of young people. My executive producer is 21 years old. He didn't love to be my great grandson, and so he's teaching me how to talk to 21-year-olds instead of droning on like an 82-year-old. So I'm learning from him, he's learning from me and the whole idea.

Neil Milliken:

Now you've got a new follower. Fantastic, I love that. I love that you're willing to learn new methods of communication to make sure that the message gets across intergenerationally. Antonio and I spent some time running campaigns on social media around sort of positive accessibility stuff. I regretfully haven't had so much time to do some of that over the last few years as social media has changed and the work that I've been doing has also changed and become taking up a lot more of my time. But I I definitely miss the opportunity to connect with people through some of these media. So I love that you're doing that. Um, maybe I'll have to, um, yeah, point that out to my father, because he's exactly the same age as you and so, um, so I think that that would be great Just before we go, because we're coming towards the end of our time.

Neil Milliken:

You mentioned, sort of almost off the cuff, that you'd been working at the United Nations and then you'd done work in helping to resolve apartheid. In helping to resolve apartheid, right, um, those are huge, huge topics that you sort of just glossed over briefly. Um, now with apartheid, you know, clearly there were math, there was massive polarization there, but there was also an approach, certainly on on of understanding. There needs to be rapprochement and you know, I think that what happened with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the storytelling helped create the nation that's there today. That's there today. So, again, maybe we have something to learn from that nation and that process. Was it something that you observed?

John Graham :

Well, I'll tell you what. I was there at the United Nations Again. By now I had sort of like come around. I was no longer the adrenaline-seeking missile that I had been. I was really trying to do good in the world, and it wasn't just anti-apartheid, it was like peace and justice issues all over the so-called third world we called it in those days third world Poor countries of the southern hemisphere, for the most part Asia, africa, and because I was then a fairly senior person in the US government and I was in charge of America's policies toward Africa and most of the third world at the United Nations and I realized that one of the key supports for apartheid was the shipment of guns and military equipment to the South African military and police, which were then used to suppress and even kill blacks in South Africa. So if you could cut off a supply of guns and military equipment to the South African military and police, you would enormously weaken the apartheid mechanism for continuing apartheid. So I said, oh, that's interesting.

John Graham :

So then I went to South Africa and I remember I'll never forget this walking down the streets of black townships outside of Johannesburg and feeling all of these hundreds of black eyes boring into the back of my white head and just feeling the hate and the tension. And then you know, that evening, because I was a white American diplomat, I was at a fancy cocktail party at a mansion in Johannesburg behind iron fences and guard dogs, and you know I really got a snootful. That apartheid really stank. And I came back resolved to do something about it, understood after a little research that the weakest point of apartheid in many ways was its necessity to have a strong military state in order to keep the whites on top. And so I figured, okay, I'll undo that. And I started doing that Now. I had a hard time doing it. Why? Because despite the many promises for human rights by our dear president then, jimmy Carter, america was doing very little beyond lip service and ending apartheid. And so was Western Europe, including the UK. We were all wringing our hands saying apartheid is terrible, oh, it's terrible. But we were allowing gun runners in our own countries to make a lot of money shipping guns and military equipment to South Africa. So when I got up and started and voiced my opinion that, damn it, we were going to end it, we were going to end the supply of military equipment and that would make a difference. I wasn't exactly applauded, mostly because of racists in the US Congress who didn't want us to do anything that would help the black people of South Africa. Instead, they wanted us to keep supporting, for financial reasons, the white power structure in South Africa. So they told me to shut up and sit down.

John Graham :

And so then came a really key moment for me to stick my own neck out. I couldn't do it openly, so I started surreptitiously and I mean surreptitiously I started meeting with African and Asian members of the Security Council, not in the United Nations buildings, but two or three blocks away in little restaurants and stuff. We organized a plan where I would feed information to say the Zambians, for example, about who were the worst senators and representatives in Congress who were hypocritically saying one thing and then wink, wink, allowing guns to go into South Africa, and I would tell them which laws and regulations were the problem. And I would give him all this information, all of which I could have been fired or even put in jail for releasing, because some of it was classified confidential information. And what happened was that I built a coalition in the Security Council around stopping the flow of guns and arms embargo on South Africa, to the point. I'll never forget this.

John Graham :

I got a notice once. Someone showed me a cable in those days, a cable that an African foreign minister had sent to the American secretary of state, and this cable was just vitriolic about the hypocrisy of the Americans in saying all the right things about ending apartheid, but that not doing a damn thing. And I realized, in the center of that cable were two sentences that I myself had drafted a month before given to my contact in Africa it happened again to be Zambia and then he had given them to his foreign minister and then he came rocketing back to my foreign minister. So I was playing a double game. And then at a certain point, when I'd built up enough pressure, I went to my masters and said hey, we're making these attacks on the American government and making President Carter look like a fool because he's saying all the right things about human rights. And this is an instance where we're on a totally wrong side of this issue. We have to change. And that finally got the American government to crack down and agree to a really tough arms embargo. And when we agree, then, pushing and shoving, we got the British and the French and the Germans to agree and of course, the Russians and the Chinese were already in agreement.

John Graham :

So long story short is that in April of 1980, the UN and you can check the records on this the UN clamped down and instituted a really tough arms embargo and shut off the flow of guns and military equipment to South Africa, and that played a key role in the ending of apartheid. So I feel really good about that. But I risked everything. I risked jail. Possibly. Certainly I would have been fired had my subterranean meetings in little restaurants with African diplomats been discovered. No one knew I was doing that. No one knew I was doing that, and especially when my messages were coming back to the American Secretary of State. It was wonderful.

Neil Milliken:

You've stuck your own neck out. I think that's the lesson for everyone that wants to see change in the world is that it's on us to take some responsibility for ourselves, you know, and to be brave. So thank you, John. I mean, I've really enjoyed this conversation. It's been fantastic. We look forward to continuing the conversation with the Badass Grandad on social media. It's been a real pleasure today. Thank you so much.

John Graham :

Thank you so much for inviting me. Neil and Antonio, Thanks very much.

People on this episode

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Antonio Santos

Host
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Neil Milliken

Host
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Debra Ruh

Co-host
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John Graham

Guest