Weight for It’s Ronald Young Jr.: Unlocking the Key to Storytelling Success

This transcript was auto-generated from an audio recording. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

We human beings all live in two worlds. We live in the outer world, where we’re interacting with others, all the time—and we live in our inner worlds, where at least as much activity is happening—all the time. Some say we think 70,000 thoughts a day. And a lot of those? They’re not that great. This episode is about how to make a narrative podcast about the things we obsess about. The thoughts that sometimes run our lives. And how to bring our inner lives to life in a way that makes for compelling, transformative storytelling—and that might call attention to the things we need to change in our outer world.

 
This episode is about being fat. It’s about shame. And it’s about changing the narrative about what weight means. 

Clip of Ronald Young, Jr. 

Who would you be ashamed to be seen with? Who would you be ashamed to be in love with? What would that look like for you and how would that change your behavior?

Elaine Appleton Grant  

That’s Ronald Young, Jr., creator of the Radiotopia show Weight for It. And I can’t wait for you to hear our conversation about turning ideas into stories, about the roles of rhythm and music, and about the one thing Ronald believes makes the difference between failure and success in audio storytelling. 

This is Sound Judgment, where we investigate just what it takes to become a beloved audio storyteller by pulling apart one episode at a time, together. I’m Elaine Appleton Grant.

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Elaine Appleton Grant
Storytellers, I’m going to go out on a limb and do something I’ve never done before on Sound Judgment. I want you to hear the trailer for Weight for It. Because it’s one of the single best trailers I’ve ever heard. And we all know how hard they are to make. It’s short. Ronald wrote it; sound designer John DeLore created it.

Clip from Weight For It

Ronald Young, Jr.: I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t thinking about my weight.

Man #1: The bigger you get, the smaller you feel in some ways. You start to feel invisible, or like you just don’t count, you don’t matter. 

Man #2: I survey rooms for chairs, couches, anything you can sit on…

Woman #1: I had strategically decided where I was going to sit based on my weight.

Man #2: Always trying to be one step ahead.

Woman #1: I would purposefully book with airlines whose seats were even an inch bigger…

Man #2: So that I don’t end up embarrassing myself. 

Man #1: Or you’re like not a full person participating in the world. 

Person: My mom once talked to me about whether we should get my jaw wired shut.

Woman #2: I mean, nobody wanted a relationship with me. 

Person: My brother told me he didn’t want to be seen with me.

Woman #2: That has to be my physical appearance.

Ronald Young, Jr.: A lot of my adult life has been spent waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. This show not only tells the stories of those waiting, but of those who can’t keep weight off their minds. I’m Ronald Young, Jr., and this is Weight For It. Coming soon, everywhere you listen to podcasts. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Tell me your conception of the trailer.

Ronald Young, Jr.

So the idea was, I first imagined that it would just be like—“I can't remember a time when I wasn't thinking about my weight, weight, weight,” and I just expected weight to kind of just echo throughout the entire trailer. 

It's one of those things where, as I was thinking about all the clips that I knew stood out to me that needed to be in there—they just, all of them, the clips, were talking to each other. All of them kind of worked, in terms of things that I've thought and things that I know that other fat folks have thought. And things that people that just think about their weight all the time have probably thought at some point. And so it felt very rhythmic. And as an overthinker, I thought it was just a good representation of how I think and how we think. And like I said, John DeLore was able to pull together—using sound design, he was able to pull it together very, very well.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I'm noticing, as I'm talking to you, some sheet music up against the wall. Are you in front of keyboards or something?

Ronald Young, Jr. 

Yeah, that’s my—I started practicing keyboard in January 2020, because I wanted to learn an instrument. I played drums as a child. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Well, and the reason that it sort of struck me as you were telling me this story about the trailer is that you clearly have a musical ear. You're hearing the sounds and the shape of things as you're thinking about them. Is that accurate?

Ronald Young, Jr. 

Yeah, it's very accurate. I'm a rhythm person, mostly, but I also hear melodies. In another life, I think maybe I would have been a musician or—you know, I was in band as a child. So I always expected I’m gonna grow up and learn a way to play the drums for the rest of my life..

But music and being raised into church, all of that has all kind of contributed to my relationship with podcasting and how I hear all of the things that I'm listening to. So even when I'm speaking on there, when I'm doing narration, I'm always thinking about rhythm, about beats, about breaths, about how you say something so that it sounds most impactful.

Elaine Appleton Grant

You know, I was gonna ask you whether you had an acting or a theatrical background. It's the musical background.

Ronald Young, Jr. 

Yeah, I was a band kid.

Elaine Appleton Grant

But you were not an actor.

Ronald Young, Jr.

I was never an actor. But I did some theater sports, drama class or two, way back in middle school. And unless you count being just silly and doing stuff with my friends, nothing formal, I would say.

Elaine Appleton Grant

But it's that that rhythm, that musical ear that you're bringing to the actual delivery on the mic.

Ronald Young, Jr. 

Yeah, it’s just naturally what I hear. And then just—I don’t know, there's just a way where I'm like, That's not—it's not supposed to sound like that. We gotta work on that inflection. So if I ever inflect wrong on any of the episodes of Weight For It, I know it, and if I didn't re-track it, it is still painful. I'll hear it and be like, Ooh, I should have went down.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Oh, my God, I'm right there with you. I'm extremely sensitive to that.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Ronald first got the idea for Weight For It when he was working on a show called Solvable for Pushkin Industries. The Solvable team talked to several people about bodies. They talked about food, and the clothes we wear, and about self-image. Those episodes did really well—and Ronald’s appetite was whetted. 

Ronald Young, Jr.
There's not many podcasts that are really telling stories about people and what they think about themselves and the world around them, and how their weight has impacted living life, navigating the world, which feels pretty anti-fat and pretty fatphobic. So I wanted to get inside the head of a person doing that. I started with myself, and I have friends…and I started thinking about questions I wanted to answer and stories I wanted to tell. And slowly, it all came together. It took about two years. I started thinking about this in January of 2022. And now it's August—we released in August—so almost two years from the time I first thought about it to the time we actually pulled something together and put it out.

Elaine Appleton Grant

This is a show built on exploring an idea, exploring an issue. And, you know, exploring weight and body image is as big as exploring death and sex and race and all these sorts of concepts that flow through all of our lives. It's really big, it can feel really amorphous, because it touches so much. And I'm very interested in—as someone who wrestles with this myself, as you take a big idea like that, and you need to turn it into concrete stories. It's a series, therefore it's a serialized narrative podcast where there's a propulsive movement to it from episode one to episode two, episode three, you have to have a destination. There's a narrative arc in each episode. And there's no plot, right? Like a true crime story, there's a plot, you can follow it in chronological order. So talk to me about how you started out with, I want to tell stories about bodies and body image and what we wrestle with, and got where you are now with this fantastic series that's hard to stop listening to.

Ronald Young, Jr. 

So I grew up in church, I've been in church my entire life. I've joined the church, got saved when I was nine, I'm now 39. So that's 30 years. And I've been listening to people preach sermons my entire life. I'm Pentecostal. If anybody's a part of the Pentecostal faith, you know the way especially Black folks preach at the church. It's very animated, it's very engaging. And for me, everything that stuck with me was attached to a story, because if they got up there and just started reading scripture, that stuff would go right over my head. But if they got up there and said, So last week, I was at work. And when I got to the grocery store, I noticed—you know, they'll start telling the story. Everything is blacked out at that moment. As a kid, I'm like, Yeah, okay, what happened at the grocery store? Okay, tell me next. Okay, what happened? And so I'm just on the edge of my seat. And then by the time they get to the end of that story, they'll be like, And my basket was full. And let me tell you, Jesus could feel your basket, then all of a sudden, I'm attached to the scripture, you know what I mean? All of a sudden, I'm in there. And that tradition is in me, it's inside me. Even as I'm talking to you, I'm starting to get goosebumps, because that tradition, it rests inside my soul. And so when I tell stories, I aim to do that in my telling. I'm trying to tell y'all something deeper, something that I've been thinking. I'm trying to articulate a thought in my mind. And it's nested inside whatever the story is. When we start with the first episode, we're talking about undesirability, you know what I mean? And the only way that I can explain that is to talk about something that I did desire or a person that I thought was desirable. And there’s one thing to just say, I went on Instagram, saw this girl, she had a skinny boyfriend—it's one thing to say that. But I really had to let people into my head in order to do that.

Elaine Appleton Grant 

What's an absolute fundamental element that makes a story great? Or the lack thereof makes it weak to you?

Ronald Young, Jr.

You're walking me right into it. It's vulnerability. I think it’s vulnerability.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Which we will get to, we will get to.

Ronald Young, Jr.

Which I know we will get to deeper. But yeah, vulnerability and emotional truth, I would say.

Elaine Appleton Grant 

And you got both of them in spades in this series in spades. I love that. 

So the other part of the question that you didn't actually answer is this sense—and maybe you don't struggle with it. But I know so many people do. You go out, you've got this idea. I want to tell my own story. You're writing memoir, you’re writing narrative of what you're going through. And I want to tell the stories of these friends of mine. And maybe presumably, some people you sought out for the purpose of this podcast. You gather a ton of material. And then you've got to make choices to make those stories work and make the narrative threads between the stories work. And there's a storyboarding process, which probably evolves as you get new information, right? So how did you go from that basic idea to, it's going to be six episodes, and they're going to look like this?

Ronald Young, Jr. 

Well, first, it was going to be three episodes. So it blossomed into six because, you know, we had more ideas for the next three. The original premise of the series was going to be me talking about my present, my past, and my future, and that was kind of where I was nesting each of the stories I was trying to tell, first. And then it kind of went from those ideas to me specifically thinking about what was the story that I was actually trying to tell? 

So, episodes one, two, three, and four are very narrative episodes. We're telling a story of something that's happening, and then kind of teasing out the lesson in it. Whereas episode five is still a storytelling, but it's a little more chatty, because we're talking about plus-size clothing. That's a collaboration with Articles of Interest. And then episode six is an interview, because I really wanted to kind of wrap some of these concepts around some concrete theory from someone who knew the theory. So when we got through our narrative, once we said, this is what we want to say. At that point, I just had to  make sure that I had an actual story to tell; a story with a beginning, middle, and an end. It's not just the writing and the conceiving, it's the editing that really brings a story to life. And working with Sarah Dealy—

Elaine Appleton Grant

So Sarah Dealy was your story editor.

Ronald Young, Jr.  

She was my story editor. Yes. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Okay. And when you're saying WE wanted to, you're talking about you and Sarah Dealy, and I assume your sound designer, John DeLore?

Ronald Young, Jr. 

Yes. But yeah, having a good story editor is really what brings the story to life. At some point, you know, Sarah Dealy had me doing writing exercises. Ronald, just do a brain dump of everything you think about this episode. Every single thing, write it all down. And I would do that. And she would say, This is good, this is good, this is good. Think more about these concepts. And then I would take that and start to put it into my narrative script. And then we would whittle it down, whittle it down, whittle it down until it actually becomes a story. So there's a lot of people out there that are trying to do narrative stories without an editor. And I'm telling you, you are doomed—doomed to fail, because it's hard to edit yourself. You need that second set of eyes to really shape the story. So it was concepts first. Once we had stories attached to those concepts, it was a lot of feat of editing. And that's where we end up getting all these episodes out.

Elaine Appleton Grant

I love that. You are doomed to fail, in no uncertain terms.

Ronald Young, Jr.

I'm telling you. I try to tell people that; they don't understand. I'm saying your story—even if you made a great story, then that story could have been excellent. But you didn't have an editor. If you made an excellent story, that story could have been, you know, transcendental. But you didn't have an editor, you know?

Elaine Appleton Grant
In the first episode of Weight For It, we learn that Ronald is longing for a relationship…and feeling undesirable as he worries about his weight. In episode two—called The Shame Spiral— we learn a very different side of him, one I didn’t see coming. For those of you who haven’t listened to Weight For It, it helps to know that Ronald grew up—as he said earlier—in the Pentecostal Church. He even plays some gospel music as he tells the story of his extremely clean-cut childhood. His parents were very strict. There was no dancing, very few extracurricular activities, no dating. You can imagine how excited this 18-year-old was to go off to college…and meet girls. Including the girl at the center of this episode: his first college girlfriend, Kaitlyn. Now, the bulk of this episode is the story of Ronald’s relationship with Kaitlyn.  But that’s not actually where it starts. It starts in a surprising place, with a conversation with a friend. Here’s a clip; it starts with Damon.  

Clip from Weight For It

Damon Young: For years, years, I felt shame about my teeth. You know, I got teased about them a bit when I was a kid, I had a gap between my front teeth and also my parents couldn't afford braces. So that was like another layer of shame. The shame of, you know, just not having much. And in America, teeth is is a billboard that acknowledges class. You know, if you watch a cartoon of villains, they usually have bad teeth. If someone has mostly bad teeth, they're usually like a villain, or meant to be stupid.

Ronald Young, Jr.: Damon is stating something here that I know intimately. The idea that something was decided about the way we're supposed to look. It's always hard to determine the origin of that decision. But that decision about how we look, that judgment? It's echoed in our conversations, in our culture, and in our art. And as a result, those of us who exist outside of the decided standard, just trying to live our lives, now have to bear the shame. In this case, Damon is talking about his teeth and the messaging that comes with bad teeth in society—that it's inherently tied to flaws in character and low intelligence. Logically, most of us know that isn't true.

Elaine Appleton Grant

So my question is, you've got this whole episode that is largely a story, as we said, about something from your past. But you start with this narrative essay about someone completely different, and about a different issue: teeth. Talk to me about the framing here. How did this come about?

Ronald Young, Jr. 

Originally, the reason I reached out to Damon Young was to talk about dudes and friendship, and how peer pressure can cause you to make different decisions than the ones that you made. We talked for about thirty, forty minutes. That was the last ten minutes of the interview. But when I started thinking about the idea of shame, and me being ashamed of Kaitlyn, Kaitlyn being ashamed of herself, and then also then being ashamed of how I treated Kaitlyn…thematically, I was just like, well, this sets the tone for the rest of the episode.

So I really think sometimes a good parable, or just something small, like a short—Pixar does it all the time, just sets a little short, a little appetizer to get you started. And those aren't necessarily always related to what we're about to watch. But in this case, I really wanted people to be thinking about shame. And also, it allowed me to introduce the theme of that episode, the theme song, because if you listen to the episode, every time I start talking about shame, we bring a different version of that theme back in, to bring that feeling back in over and over again. It's a pretty song, but it's also just a little bit unsettling. It's a little uncertain as it plays, which I think is the way that shame plays out. But because it was threaded throughout the rest of the episode, we just had this wonderful opportunity to kick off the episode just talking straight up about what shame does to us. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

The effect on me was to make me go, we all have some version of this. It doesn't matter what it relates to. And I thought that that was the point that you were essentially trying to make, is yeah, you know, for some people, it's being fat. Some people it might be a disability, or I don't know, being short—I'm very short. Oh, it could be anything. We all have something.

Ronald Young, Jr. 

Yeah, I think he sets it up well. When Damon talks about his teeth, specifically, he also—and we didn't use all of it, but he goes into a whole list of things that people could probably be ashamed about. And it does set a bit of relatability for the listener to say—hopefully in that moment, you're saying, well, what am I ashamed of? As you’re kind of walking in? And then as the story goes, the real question you should be asking is: what would you be ashamed—who would you be ashamed to be seen with? Who would you be ashamed to be in love with? What would that actually even look like for you? And how would that change your behavior? And I think that all of those things are kind of wrapped up there at the top.

Elaine Appleton Grant

In fact, let me play a clip for you about that very thing.

Clip from Weight For It

Man #1: Now this guy in high school, he loved bigger girls. 

Man #2: I don't know what he's talking about. 

Man #1: You know what we used to call this guy in high school? Used to call him the Herdsman. Because the girls were so big, they actually resembled actual cattle.

Ronald Young, Jr.: I remember when this episode came out, because me and my friends used to watch it. And one of them suggested that they started using that nickname, the Herdsman, for me. It was kind of a running joke. Ronald likes fat girls. And as a young, impressionable adult, I didn't have the confidence, nor even the language to really respond in a constructive way. So instead, I tried to hide Kaitlyn. I only saw her at night. I tried to limit my time around her if I thought I would run into friends. But despite my best, or worst efforts, my friends knew. And every chance they got, they teased me for it. I should have just liked who I liked, and said it with my chest. But there's something uniquely hurtful about people laughing, joking, or straight up saying to your face: the person you like is unattractive, and you're weird for liking them. And the truth is that now, in a lot of ways, I understand that as a young person, I was very self-centered. Everything was about how I felt or what I wanted. So it was hard to recognize that in trying to make myself feel better, I was actively hurting Kaitlyn. I understand that now emotionally, and I sympathize with Kaitlyn. But now, I'm fat. And I understand it physically. And I empathize with Kaitlyn in a way that I don't feel like I deserve to. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

You drop this bombshell, right? You build up this—it's almost like a symphony in a way. We go from this beautiful—but obviously not pleasant as a kid—sheltered childhood, replete with the gospel music in the background; that was a nice touch. And then we feel really happy for you as you describe the mutual attraction between you and Kaitlyn, but we don't know that there's any issue, and then you drop this bombshell. Tell me about the plan for that.

Ronald Young, Jr. 

I will say, the reason why we laid it out that way was because I felt like I first needed to establish the mindset I was in when I got to college. And the only way I could establish that mindset was talking about how I grew up. What that actually looked like and why that directly influenced me walking into college, into this environment, especially even the girls that I liked, or the girls that I thought I was supposed to like, et cetera. And I felt like the only way we could really get into the mind of why I would behave this way was to know where I came from. If I just started in college, if I started in college and said, met up with this group of guys, met this girl, didn't treat her so well, you would kind of not really have any context to that. And so with each level of this story, we're kind of just setting the context a little bit more to talk about why what happens next happens next. Or why we feel the way that we feel later. Because deeper into the episode, we start to get to the point where knowing what you've heard in episode one, it should be a little surprising that there's something like this that happens in my past. 

Just in establishing the themes of the show, I'm talking about desirability, and how I feel undesirable as a fat man. And it's—to go from that story to another story in which I treated someone as if they were undesirable because they were fat is kind of like—again, it's setting up the context of saying, what is the differences and the journeys that we can go on, as our bodies change, and as our perspectives change? And then we get to a point where in order to get the more context to get where we're going towards the end, we really have to dive into Kaitlyn’s story.

Elaine Appleton Grant
Storytellers, remember I mentioned how strict Ronald’s parents are? Well, you need just a bit more context coming up—and that is that Ronald didn’t admit to breaking one of their rules in high school until many years later. That moment was…instructive. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Later this year, at the Resonate podcast festival in Virginia, you'll be teaching a workshop on vulnerable storytelling. And you run a podcast production company. So do I. And I have long found that the biggest thing that holds people back from making the podcast or the radio show that they've been dying to make is the fear of exposing themselves. You bared your soul in this passage. I mean, you even called yourself a villain earlier in our conversation. But your delivery is so—I don't know, comfortable, I think. You're just so comfortable on a mic, or at least you sound it. You're talking as if you're telling a story over a cup of coffee You make it sound like this is just who you are, and it's no big deal to say, I did this. I feel guilty. I feel ashamed. So talk to me about how you decided to share these deep feelings of shame. 

Ronald Young, Jr.

So, one of the first vulnerable stories I told was when I told the story of how I went to prom. And I told the story on the Story District stage here in Washington, DC. And then later on, I played that story for my parents. And I also recorded that interaction. And it was risky. I was afraid the whole time, because these are my parents, you know; they're gonna be like, Why are these mics here? What are you talking about? Where's this going? But, you know, they listened. And they talked into the mic, and we talked about it, and nothing bad happened after that, you know. So, what I learned in—and especially from telling stories on stage—what I learned is that vulnerability and emotional truth are really the heartbeat of any story that you tell, because that vulnerability, that emotional truth, is how you connect with other people. Because once you say it out loud, then a person can say, Oh, I was thinking the same thing.

We don't tell people our thoughts, you know what I mean? We don't tell people what's going on in our heads. They won't know unless you say it out loud. It is an incredibly vulnerable moment when you look at someone that you care about, or even that you may not have a great relationship, and you tell them the truth about what you're thinking. You reveal yourself in that moment. They learn a little something about you. And depending on how they react, you learn something about them as well. All of that being said, I wanted to do that in podcast form. And that's what Weight For It is supposed to be. It's supposed to be me revealing myself, so that other people that are having these experiences can know that this is not an individual experience. This is probably more communal than you think. And if it is, then maybe we should all come together and do something about it. 

Elaine Appleton Grant 

And so you did not struggle saying, I treated this woman this way. And I feel bad about it, or…

Ronald Young, Jr. 

No, I struggle. It's—you know, I don't struggle with saying it, I struggle with having done it. That's kind of where—trying to reveal to people that I am a person who has done something bad. And I think honestly, that's the ultimate vulnerability, because a lot of people aren't being honest about the ways in which they were villains to other people. I think we always assume, from watching movies and television, that we're always the protagonist. But imagine you are the antagonist in someone else's story. And if you're not afraid to say that, then maybe there'd be more room for us to walk around and forgive each other. It's another concept I learned at church, where the idea of confessing your sins means that God is faithful and just and forgive you. And I feel like that's true of us as well. You know what I mean? For me, if someone admits what they did and says, Sorry, I'm not going to hold on to it. You know what I mean? Like, we're probably walk around offending each other until the day that we die. But as long as we're honest and open about it, and say, Hey, I did the wrong thing, and try to change your behavior—and try not to do that same thing, again. Do a new, terrible thing! Don't do the same old, terrible thing. As long as we're learning and growing, that I think we’ll be okay. 

And I think that was the intention of that episode, was to say, I'm not better than anybody. If people think that I'm enlightened because I'm talking about these—I'm not, because I was also a jerk to someone, and I will possibly be a jerk to someone in the future. Not on purpose, and I'll think that I'm doing the right thing, but I won't be. And I think having the power to say that out loud is important and it's a tool of connection.

Elaine Appleton Grant

That's beautiful. I want to play a short clip from Kaitlyn that's just a little later in the same episode. And you're talking to her 20 years later, and the two of you are reflecting on what happened.

Clip from Weight For It

Kaitlyn: I felt like a secret. I felt you were ashamed of the way I looked. And that was why. Because I was cute. I knew I was cute. I knew I was pretty in the face. I knew I had a good sense of humor. I knew I had a good personality. It was all—I figured it was all physical. That's the whole—you know. So I felt ashamed of how I looked. And I always had. I mean, that wasn't something that was new.

Ronald Young, Jr. That wasn't the first time Kaitlyn has said that to me. The first time she said it, we were on the phone catching up, mid 2021. I remember she said, you were ashamed of me. She said it directly, like that. I was quiet for a while, because I didn't know what to say. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

It seems to me, on the surface of it, that there's sort of two levels of vulnerability. That, you know—storytellers, if we are working on these sort of personal, baring our soul kinds of tales, we need to work on ourselves. But also, you elicited such vulnerable—I want to say honest, but I don't know these people, so hopefully, they're honest—stories from all the people you spoke with. Even Kaitlyn goes on to share that she—was not at the time, but is an alcoholic. She allows you to share that she abused prescription drugs, she allows you to share that she had her children taken away. She talks about this very freely. What do you have to say to people about how you talked to Kaitlyn and all the other voices in your show? That enabled them to feel comfortable doing that—not simply with you, but knowing that it was going out into the world?

Ronald Young, Jr. 

Well, I mean, I think Caitlyn is like me in that she doesn't have anything to hide. When you talk about shame, we're talking about the idea of you thinking that something deserves to be hidden. And when you take that out of the equation, all of a sudden, there's less of a worry there. You're gonna say it, and people are gonna think what they're gonna to think. Now, I don't know what goes through everyone's mind when I do an interview. But I will say, there was some interviews that didn't make this season. And it was because there was a lack of vulnerability there. There was a couple of individuals I talked to, that were not willing to share as much. And they  presented this very invulnerable, I am 100% healed, everything is fine front in front of me. And to be honest, I'm just not interested in putting stories like that on the show.

Elaine Appleton Grant

What do you think it takes to become a beloved host—or, at the very least, to make a podcast that brings listeners back again and again? What's your answer to that?

Ronald Young, Jr. 

You know, I don't know.. But I will say, if you want to keep doing this work, and you want to feel like you're good at it, you just can't stop. The thing that gets me is I'm relentlessly optimistic, and I'm very persistent. So I will keep trying, even though I'm tired. I will keep trying. And I will keep moving forward. And I will keep improving with every iteration. And I think that if you have any sort of talent or any sort of penchant for storytelling, that is going to serve you well in your journey.

Elaine Appleton Grant

And let me read to you a Tweet that I saw of yours yesterday. You wrote, I'm always developing a podcast in my mind. If they get made depends on how much money and time I have. But I think a new goal is that I'm just going to make all of them, by any means necessary. Life is too short to die with ideas stuck in my head. Strap in.

Ronald Young, Jr. 

Yeah. That's how I feel.

Elaine Appleton Grant

At the end of every episode, I give you a few of the many takeaways from these conversations. Here are today’s.

1. Learn to draw upon rhythm and music to improve your delivery on the mic. Ronald grew up with the musicality of the storytelling and the singing he heard in church, and that turned him into a storyteller who is enchanting to listen to. But we can all do this by feeling the rhythm and cadence of language: Where are the beats? Where are the breaths? It’s not just storyboarding that makes great stories; it’s how we deliver our stories. 
2. Don’t censor yourself. At the beginning of the scripting process, Ronald’s story editor, Sarah Dealy, had him write down all the ideas he had for each episode. Only then did they narrow those ideas down into a structured narrative. 
3. Build stories in layers. Think about context: what does the listener need to know, right now, to understand this episode? To tell a story about his college girlfriend, Ronald had to first explain some stuff about his childhood. What context do you need to offer to make your story land?
   
   

That’s all for today. One thread running through this season’s episodes on big idea storytelling is reframing: reframing how we think about class, marriage, and money; body image and shame. Ronald Young’s inquiry is how to make life as a fat person better. But what if you’re not concerned with improving your life, but instead, with making dying better? Even…joyful? 

Clip of Nikki Boyer

Peggy's married a lot of people on their deathbeds. A lot of people say, I want to die knowing I was married to you. And what made them wait that long? And now they're dying? I think we—we wait sometimes to give ourselves permission to do the things that—you know, maybe scare us a little? 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Next time on Sound Judgment, it’s Nikki Boyer, the award-winning host of Dying for Sex, back with her new—and dare I say moving, sad, and funny—show, Near Death.

If you love Sound Judgment, help us grow our show. Visit soundjudgmentpodcast.com and click on Reviews. You can give us a five-star rating that’ll go straight to Apple and Spotify in a heartbeat. And leave us a review on Apple. Answer this question: How did this interview with Ronald Young, Jr. make you think differently about your own storytelling? And thanks. 

Sound Judgment is produced by me, Elaine Appleton Grant. Audrey Nelson is our production assistant. Sound design and editing by Kevin Kline. Podcast management by Tina Bassir. And gratitude to the rafts of producers, editors, sound designers and other team members behind every great story. Without you, the world would be a less beautiful place.

See you next time, storytellers. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

You fell in love with that storytelling as a very young child, as so many singers who have come out of particularly the Black church have done. I can tell you can sing, by the way…