Emotional Journeys: How Stories Shape Our Understanding with Lucinda Sage-Midgorden

What if the stories we consume shape our emotional intelligence more profoundly than we realize? Lucinda Sage-Midgorden's journey through storytelling reveals exactly that powerful connection.

From childhood family movie nights where discussions were mandatory to launching her Story Power podcast in her sixties, Lucinda shares how stories have woven through every aspect of her life. Her father, despite struggling with dyslexia, established a tradition that taught her to analyze characters, themes, and emotional journeys in film and literature – skills that would define her career and worldview.

With a refreshing "jump off the cliff and see what happens" attitude, Lucinda describes her path through religious studies, theater, teaching, and finally podcasting. Her insight that "every life is a library" transformed her podcast from merely discussing consumed media to exploring personal narratives from guests worldwide. The conversation takes fascinating turns through Marvel character analysis (Tony Stark and Steve Rogers representing opposite ends of the emotional intelligence spectrum), the visual storytelling in classic cinema, and how narrative understanding enhances our ability to read body language and emotional cues.

Particularly valuable for creative professionals, Lucinda addresses the common worry of content creation: "If you've lived on this earth even 20 years, you have stories. As a matter of fact, you have more stories than you think you do." Her upcoming YouTube project with her sister, "Classic Cinema with the Sage Sisters," demonstrates her continuing evolution as a storyteller.

Connect with Lucinda through her website sagewomanlife on WordPress, listen to Story Power on all major platforms, or follow her on LinkedIn to discover how stories can heighten your emotional intelligence and deepen your understanding of human nature.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Lucinda Sage-Midgordon
• 3:15 Early Foundations in Storytelling
• 8:01 From Theater to Teaching
• 14:31 The Podcasting Journey Begins
• 20:46 Stories, Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
• 27:06 Future Projects and Staying Connected
• 32:13 Final Thoughts and Episode Wrap-up

Transcript

Carl: 0:04

Welcome to Communication Connection Community the podcaster's podcast. This podcast takes a deep dive into modern day communication strategies in the podcasting space. We chat with interesting people who make the podcasting and speaking spaces exciting and vibrant. We also dive into the podcasting community with news updates, latest trends and topics from this ever-evolving space. So strap in, it's going to be one amazing ride. Let's dive into today's episode. Lucinda and it's Lucinda Sage Midgorden has been a story lover since she and her family watched TV and movies together. Her father taught her how to find the deeper layers of a story. This love prompted her to pursue a double major BA in religious studies and theater and speech. Now completely retired, Lucinda writes her weekly blog Sage Women Chronicles, manages her, her Patreon community and Apple Subscriptions, as well as produces the bi-weekly podcast Story Power. We're so thrilled to have you here today, Lucinda. Welcome to the podcast.

Lucinda: 1:15

Thank you, Carl, I'm happy to be here.

Carl: 1:18

It's nice to meet somebody who loves stories as much as I do. It's taken me a while to learn how to tell stories, but I've always been a lover of reading stories, watching movies just like you become a lover of that as well, so I'm so thrilled that we can talk about that. And, of course, I want to talk about your journey through podcasting, because it's something that not everyone jumps on the podcast bandwagon, and you have jumped in with both feet and are enjoying great success with it. So I want to ask you about how you got hooked on stories. What was it that led you to the story?

Lucinda: 1:52

My parents are the ones who started it with the family movie night. And most parents, you know or a lot of parents, I'll say read stories to their children as a good night thing. Well, my dad had dyslexia, had to teach himself how to read. Reading out loud was really hard for him, and my mom worked from even when I was a young child, even before I went to school, so she was really tired at the end of the day. And they instituted movie night and I think they wanted us to have an avenue to understand about humans, human nature and different situations that come up in life and how you deal with those. And I think I was maybe seven or eight years old when we started doing this and it was the Disney movie, you know, every Sunday they had at Disney, or it was a documentary sometimes, but yeah, and it was not OK just to say, oh wow, that was a really great movie. No, no, no, no, no. So who was your favorite character? What was your favorite part of the movie? Why did you like it, you know? And then we could ask questions too. I didn't understand why that character did that, and then we talk about, you know, possible reasons and eventually it was. What did the story mean to you? Now, mom and Dad didn't know any of those theater terms, theme, they didn't know any of those. But it just became a family thing and we did it every week and that's how I started to fall in love with stories.

Lucinda: 3:26

Then, in my senior year, I had started reading outside of school. You know novels that my mom put in my hand. But when I was a senior in high school, it's British Lit in English, and I fell in love with Dickens. I fell in love with Jane Eyre and I fell in love with Dickens. I fell in love with Jane Eyre and I fell in love with Shakespeare, all those British stories. And so I expanded what I had been reading and I've just became an avid reader as well. So movies, television, I remember we would watch Star Trek together, the original Star Trek, and talk about those. So that was really fun. And you know, I worked in child development centers and daycare centers and Montessori schools and my favorite thing was to read the stories to the kids and talk about them, you know.

Lucinda: 4:19

So then eventually, all of my educational choices, almost all of my work choices, had to do with stories, and theater became a really big part of my life. It was actually came along at a time when I was a religious studies major in the 70s. I was the only woman in the program at my small college and there were people who thought that I needed to be changing my major. But I was really there for the stories. That's why I was, you know, and so I was having a kind of a difficult time and someone suggested that I try out for some plays, and I did, and I think that's when I started to realize that what I was learning from the stories I could use out in the real world, and so I really started connecting with characters. And what did that character learn? And can I learn it too? Or what did they not learn? And, oh, what can I learn from that?

Lucinda: 5:24

Eventually, when I taught through Portland Parks and Rec and Vancouver Parks and Rec drama classes to little kids. But when we moved to Arizona, I needed a job and so I started substitute teaching and eventually the drama teacher found out that I had a master's in theater and she said I'm leaving, you need to take my job. So I applied for it and got it with an emergency certification, and that's when I was working on my master's of education, and right when I got that, somebody else wanted my job, somebody who wanted his daughter to have the job. He had been with the school district for a long time. So then I went to Douglas, Arizona, which is a border town, and started teaching English, and again it was all about stories, and it was really interesting because I didn't know much about the Mexican culture and most of the students were from Mexico and Spanish was their first language, and so we read all of our stories out loud and I think that that helped them. If they needed English skills, I think that helped them, but it was really fun to analyze the stories with them.

Lucinda: 6:37

And then something happened when I was 53 or something and I realized I think I need to be writing and so it's a progression. You know how that works your life is a progression. And so I quit and started teaching part-time at the college the community college that's here in our county and started writing, and that's when I started my blog and my novel my first novel and 2013 is when I started my blog. I published my first book in 2017. We did it independently. My husband happens to be a tech guy and an artist, a graphic artist, so he helps me.

Lucinda: 7:23

And then, right before the pandemic, I had been listening to a podcast that was all about books what should I read next? With Ann Bogle, and I loved it, but they never talked about movies or television. You know, for me you got to have the whole spectrum, and so I've been thinking about doing a podcast of my own that covered all of the creative arts, because my husband's a visual artist too. And when the pandemic hit and I learned how to use Zoom, I already knew how to use GarageBand. That's when I started. It was July of 2020. I started my podcast Now. I was in my 60s. What was I thinking? But I'm kind of one of those oh, let's just jump off the cliff and see what happens.

Lucinda: 8:11

And Barry helped me, you know, get it all connected to various sites that are, maybe, I should say, services that distribute podcasts, that distribute podcasts, and he helped me with the workflow and how often I was going to publish it. And so when I first started, it was mostly my students and, you know, work colleagues at the college or people that I had gone to college with, and it was all about what stories they had been consuming and what they learned from them. But about a year and it was right before Podmatch found me I talked to two of the three women that started the Douglas Oral History Project, and they just call people in from the community and record them talking about their life stories. And that's when I realized, oh, I need to expand story power to more than just what people are consuming and what they're learning from it. And so, because every life is a library and that it's evolved from there, podmatch has helped me find so many really interesting people people who have produced television shows or visual artists, of course, a lot of writers, musicians, and then I even talked to a. He's a certified financial planner. I asked him to be on the podcast because creative people need financial help too, and his specialty is helping people develop a retirement plan, and you know. So I've just talked to all these people from all over the world.

Lucinda: 9:57

One of my favorite guests and I hope he's still doing okay is a filmmaker from Iran. He was one of my first guests from Podmatch and we talked for about three hours Editing. That episode was really interesting, but I do all my own editing recording. I'm the one who puts the intro outro together with some music, and I put it all together and then he converts it so that I can upload it to Libsyn and to my website. So, yeah, I'm pretty much my only employee. It's not a monetized podcast, but you know, we're retired, we don't need the income so much, and so I'm just really having fun doing it. I love it.

Carl: 10:46

That's what it's. I'm going to jump in right there and not to stop you because you're in a good flow, but if don't I'll get to the end and I wouldn't have said anything, so so let me jump in there. It's certainly an amazing journey and I like how this all started with a love of stories that was basically out of you know, your parents necessity and wanting to engage discussion. And you we're talking the 1960s when this began for you. And back in the 1960s, a lot of those Disney movies weren't the animated ones that we see today. They were live action ones, and some really cool ones too that I grew up watching on Sunday afternoons or Sunday evenings, whatever it was.

Lucinda: 11:28

Or evening. It was early evening.

Carl: 11:30

Like Sunday, at like five or six or something like that.

Lucinda: 11:34

Uh-huh, something like that yeah.

Carl: 11:36

Yeah, are you a bona fide Trekkie as well? Would you say you're a Trekkie?

Lucinda: 11:42

I mean, I don't know all of the details and stuff, but we watched from original to Enterprise. We're streaming now and we're kind of frugal with our streaming, so occasionally we'll go to Paramount Plus and we'll watch all of Picard and all of whatever. So we still have Strange New Worlds to watch and I've never seen any of the Pixar's.

Carl: 12:10

It definitely sounds like you're a Trekkie for sure, Maybe even more so than I am. I'm an original series guy next gen Voyager. I couldn't get into Deep Space Nine. Anyways, that aside, some great stories there, too, and I like how this journey has touched every part of your. Every part of your life has been story related or storyboarded. I guess you could say, in some capacity, let's talk about the journey into podcasting. You shared how you got there and what led you there. What's the experience been like for you, though, as a podcaster?

Lucinda: 12:46

I love it and this is the first thing that I have done that I've loved every single aspect of it, Even when I was an actress or a stage manager or a director. There were certain things about that that I, you know, was like, oh, what a slog. In the end it was always fun, but there were certain things about it that I you know it was like I wish I didn't have to learn lines, you know, or whatever. But this is fun. I love meeting the people, I love connecting with them, whether I'm a guest or a host, and I just love listening to their stories. As I said, every life is a library, and what I realized when I was preparing to talk to you was every podcast is a story.

Lucinda: 13:39

It has people telling their stories. And I used to tell my English students because I was teaching American Lit, and they'd say, why do we have to read this stuff by the founding fathers? Because we learn it in history. And I said, well, we're looking at what they wrote, not just for creating the United States, we're looking at, like we talked about Benjamin Franklin's whole publishing empire and the fact that he was he pretended he was a middle-aged housewife and wrote that column for his brother's paper and his brother got really upset when he found out about it, you know. So we were learning all kinds of fun little things about their background, not just that. But I said, every single thing that's written down, even if it's just the grocery list, has a purpose. There's a reason why people are writing this stuff down and that's it's our job to see if we can find out what that is.

Carl: 14:39

And it usually connects to. If not immediately, you can usually connect it or create from that a story.

Lucinda: 14:47

Yeah, right, yeah, and even if it's fake news you know new, the news has a purpose and it has a story behind it. And then this is sort of off. Well, it's because of podcasting. But one day I was walking through the living room and I was thinking about the MCU, because we've watched almost all the movies and the television shows and we have young nieces and nephews who love it, and that's how we got hooked on it. And I said, oh my gosh, because I connected that the story, all of the stories that I've consumed and analyzed over the years, have helped me become emotionally intelligent. And that's part of the purpose for me.

Lucinda: 15:34

Doing the podcast is to help people connect with stories in a way that they can see their own emotional journeys, because stories are emotional. And I went Tony Stark and Steve Rogers are on opposite ends of the emotional intelligence spectrum. Tony Stark, in the beginning, is completely a mess emotionally and Steve Rogers is the anchor because he's emotionally intelligent almost the whole way through. So it was like, oh, all these little aha moments, I've always got something going on in the back of my head, you know, percolating in the back of my head.

Carl: 16:18

The wheels are always turning.

Lucinda: 16:20

Yeah, right, and that was one of the things that I loved about the Catherine McCord episode that I listened to a couple of days ago is she's doing the same thing but she's just using a different set of tools, and I love that. There's always more than one road to get to some on your healing journey Always more than one way to get there.

Carl: 16:44

Absolutely, and along that journey there's as I said, there's always a story. One of the things that I find with podcasters is especially new podcasters is they they get hung up on content. What am I going to talk about? I don't have any stories. It's like you've got to be kidding me If you've lived on this earth even 20 years, and that's it. You have stories. As a matter of fact, you have more stories than you think you do, and when you get to be our age right, so many stories we don't know where to begin.

Lucinda: 17:16

Right, exactly.

Carl: 17:25

But there's so many stories and so many experiences that draw and people want to hear that. You said something very interesting and it's the correlation that I've quite often said that people don't watch movies for facts. Yeah, okay, there are those people who are a little bit geeky and they'll geek out watching a movie or show and they'll be analyzing all the factual things that are in it, but most people are watching it for what. They're watching it for the story. You don't turn on Star Wars as an example. They're watching it for the story. You don't turn on Star Wars as an example. You don't watch any Star Wars movie to figure out how the Death Star or any of the ships or whatever were created. You watch it because of the storyline and the hero versus the villain and all of those things. You don't watch it to figure out hmm, I wonder what the gamma rays are. You don't do that. It's because of the story.

Lucinda: 18:13

Yeah, because I've had so many times when I've been in the theater, gone to see a play or watched a movie and something about the emotional journey of the character has I've gone oh whoa, I get that now gone, oh whoa, I get that now. Or a little thing that I had thought was true. The door was cracked open and I said, oh, I have a new perspective about that now. Maybe what I thought, the story I was telling myself in my head, wasn't true. So it's an emotional thing.

Lucinda: 18:51

And I remember when I was teaching American Lit and we read this I'm not going to say his name, right, probably, but a slave account by Aludo Equiano, who somehow had the account of him on the ship, and we were reading it out loud and I just started to cry and my students were all like Miss, what's wrong? What's wrong, you know? And I said I just feel terrible about this experience that this person had. And they said, well, you weren't alive, you weren't responsible for it. I said I don't care, I feel bad about it. I'm white, you know. I feel like it was my race that did this, you know. And they because most of them were Hispanic, you know, of Mexican descent, so they went oh yeah, oh yeah, and so they thought. I think from that moment on they thought about the story in a new way, in a different way, because I had started crying reading that horrible story about him, what he had experienced.

Carl: 20:15

That's, I think, the piece that for most of us is there, is that empathy that connects us all together. And again, that's why I say for most of us, because not all of us, but most of us have certain feeling of empathy, that we and, to your point, even take responsibility or feel responsible for things that, even if we didn't do them, we feel like is oh my goodness, that was my people that did that, or that was because of, or that was someone in my family used to think that way, or whatever. It is Phenomenal. And the other thing too. I just want to open up this and get your take on it and maybe I'll frame it as a question Do you find that the story or the journey that you've taken through not only watching stories and being a part of storytelling and theater and things like that do you find that it's made you more observant? You know your eyes are opened differently and you're seeing the world differently because of the stories that are connecting us all together?

Lucinda: 21:21

Yeah, yes, I'm not a big rereader of books. There have been two or three that I've reread. I read the last Harry Potter book three times in a row. I read the last Harry Potter book three times in a row. But mostly I watch television and movies over and over again because in that visual you get to read body language and facial expressions and you get to hear the tone of voice and then all of the elements of theater and movies, like the costumes and the colors of the set and the way the set is designed and the lighting, and all of that helps to tell the story. And so I pick up things when I see movies over and over again, like this is a really I've used this example more than once, but it's really silly.

Lucinda: 22:10

I watched now Voyager happens to be one of my favorites. It's a Betty Davis movie from 1942. And I think I had shown it in my dramatic structure class like four times and I had seen it a bunch of times before that. And all of a sudden again I'm walking someplace in the house and I went the shoes, her costumes, and at the beginning she's walking down the stairs. She's got these industrial strength shoes on and that's what they're showing is her feet, and then later, when she's on the ship, she's coming down on the gangplank and she has these beautiful, fashionable shoes on. That's a clue to, and all of the costumes are clues to her evolving as a human being.

Lucinda: 22:59

And so I yeah, I pay attention to body language and, and you know, when I'm listening to speeches, like we're in politicals, I'm watching people and listening to those speeches and I'm going something's not quite right there. I don't know what it is, but there's not something, because their facial expressions, their voice and their body language don't match up, and so there's something quite not quite right. And I think that's one of the things my dad was trying to teach us too was what pay attention. Pay attention to body language, and eye contact.

Carl: 23:33

Eye contact is huge. If eye contact is diverted, you typically know that someone's either feeding you a line or they're not telling the full story of what it is. That. And kids are bad at it because kids haven't figured out how to lie right. They haven't quite figured it out, but you watch enough. Be they politicians or just even speakers in general, when they're faced with a challenging question, you can tell if they're answering it accurately or truthfully, based on eye contact, body language, shifting of the eyes, crossing of the arms, all kinds of different things that are keys to that, and that's again it goes back to. We see those observances, or we observe those, rather, when we're watching television shows, especially crime dramas. You can tell when the criminal is lying because they crossed their arms and they look away. You can always tell.

Lucinda: 24:34

Yeah, there's a whole study and the television show Lie to Me was about the guy who kind of started this scientific and when I was teaching communication class we were talking about it. And when I was teaching communication class we were talking about it. And you know certain ways that you look, determine whether you're remembering or making it up. So yeah, that's right. And you know, when I was teaching if somebody would ask me a question that I was stumped about, I'd go, wow, that's a really great question. I never thought of that before.

Carl: 25:04

You know, let me get an answer for you.

Lucinda: 25:08

Yeah, let's think about that, let's go find out what that, because I'm one of those exploratory, you know, learners. I just watched a movie that was made in like Uzbekistan or someplace like that, about some historical figure that I'd never heard about before, and she was a warrior woman and chief of her. She had to become chief of her tribe because her father and then her husband died and she defeated the ruler of Babylon. It was like wow. So I had to go, you know, do research about her, because I'd never heard of her before.

Carl: 25:48

Wow, wow. Story is very powerful and sometimes the stories that we don't think will impact are the ones that have the most impact, and sometimes the simplest stories too. I remember a speaker trainer telling me this story of he calls it the mustard story and how he got inadvertently, accidentally got mustard all over somebody and the person didn't know and it was just the type of person that was a big, burly kind of guy. You wouldn't want to get in a fight with them and you certainly wouldn't want to spill mustard on him. I'm not going to tell the whole story here, but only to have it diverted by somebody else asking can you pass the mustard Right? So, without giving the whole story, it's amazing how sometimes those smallest little stories that you think it's never going to have an impact have the most impact in our lives and on our journeys.

Lucinda: 26:43

Yes, that's so true. Parties yes, that's so true. And it happens a lot for me when I am like I said, I always have things going on in the back of my head and then somebody will say something or I'll hear something in a movie because I'm all about paying attention to the lines in movies and television, because that's how you get the clues and then somebody will say something and I'll go well, I get that now. You know all of this info from way back when and, yeah, I get that now. Oh, oh, okay, cool.

Carl: 27:20

My favorite is the murder mystery dinner theaters where, if you are not paying attention to the lines people are saying or the certain props that they might be holding, if you're not paying close attention, so if you're not listening and observing, you're going to miss the figuring out whodunit, basically because you haven't been following along. Where, if you are not paying attention to the lines people are saying or the certain props that they might be holding, if you're not paying attention to the lines people are saying or the certain props that they might be holding, if you're not paying close attention, so if you're not listening and observing, you're going to miss the figuring out whodunit, basically because you haven't been following along.

Lucinda: 28:01

Right, yeah right. We watch a lot of murder ministries. We like British murder ministries, so we're always looking for the clues, you know.

Carl: 28:11

There's always a clue there somewhere. Let's move things along. I do want to ask you where do you see the podcast going in the next year or so? You're enjoying the journey. I just asked this question of a group of individuals I was speaking in front of. I asked them where they saw their podcast going. So I'm going to ask you that question when do you see your podcast a year from now?

Lucinda: 28:30

Well, actually my podcast Story Power will probably continue on in basically the same form. But my sister, my youngest sister I'm the oldest, she's the youngest are talking about starting a YouTube channel called Classic Cinema with the Sage Sisters, because we could talk forever about movies and we love the classic ones, and isn't it interesting how you can learn things? Or sometimes, like I watched not too long ago, inherit the Wind and it was like, oh well, things haven't changed very much from 1920, something.

Carl: 29:07

Wow.

Lucinda: 29:08

Because it's all about Scopes Trial, where the teacher was teaching Darwin and that was against the law in Tennessee, I think it was and yeah. So sometimes you watch movies, you go, wow, things really haven't changed very much. Or wow, they were way ahead. They were way ahead of us, you know. So, yeah, we're going to probably do that at the beginning of sometime in 2025. But it's just going to be a YouTube channel to start with. We may expand it into a podcast, but I have to finish my second novel before we do that, and she's going to retire herself in the middle of 2025. So then we'll have more time to do, wow, phenomenal.

Carl: 29:51

It sounds like that even in the place that you're at in your life right now, you're still keeping very busy. A lot of things on the go. Lucinda Sage MidGordon. How can people get ahold of you if they want to find out more about what you do or what books, podcasts? Where can they find you?

Lucinda: 30:07

Well, mostly everything is on my Sage Woman Chronicles website at WordPress and it's sagewomanlife. But I have also a website on Libsyn, which I can't remember what, that I publish and schedule my podcast so that it goes out to all of the outlets, which are Apple, spotify, amazon, and then I also put it on my website and YouTube. I have a YouTube channel for StoryPower, and then you know, I am on social media, but probably the one I'm the most active on is LinkedIn and it's just my name, lucinda Sage hyphen Midgordon, on LinkedIn. But I do have a writer page on Facebook. It's Lucinda Sage Midgordon, without the hyphen. My personal one has the hyphen, and then let's see what other. I don't go to Instagram very often, but I do have an instagram. It's sage mid gordon yep, that's.

Carl: 31:14

We'll make sure that all of those links are posted in the show notes so people can connect with you, especially if you want to listen to the podcast. It sounds like a phenomenal show and and I love our conversation that we've had today. Lucinda sage mid gordon, before I turn you loose to go, immerse yourself into a story, either one that you're going to create or one that's already being created. I'll give you the final thought.

Lucinda: 31:35

Okay, One of my favorite quotes that I use in my intro to Storytower is a quote by Roger C is a quote by Roger C Schenck, who is a cognitive scientist, and it is humans are not ideally set up to understand logic. They are ideally set up to understand stories. And that's my final, final thing for today.

Carl: 32:04

That's a great place to leave it. Lucinda Sage Midgordon, thank you so much for being my guest today. Thank you.

Lucinda: 32:11

I enjoyed it a lot.

Carl: 32:13

And thank you for joining us today. Special thanks to our producer and production lead, Dom Carillo, our music guru, Nathan Simon, and the person who works the arms all of our arms, actually my trusty assistant, Stephanie Gafoor. If you like what you heard today, leave us a comment and a review, and be sure to share it with your friends. If you don't like what you heard, please share it with your enemies. Oh, and if you have a suggestion of someone who you think would make an amazing guest on the show, let us know about it. Drop us an email, askcarl@ carlspeaksca. Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter as well. You'll find all those links in the show notes, and if you're ready to take the plunge and join the over 3 million people who have said yes to podcasting, let's have a conversation. We'll show you the simplest way to get into the podcasting space, because, after all, we're Podcast Solutions Made simple. We'll catch you next time.