Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for having me today. I am so thrilled to be here with all of you at Frank. And I’m really looking forward to sharing the story of and action, which, as Liz mentioned, is the new project that I direct and that Kristen Grimm and Erin Hart, who many of you know, put into motion at Spitfire Strategies last year. And indeed, and action in a nutshell gives a heads up to nonprofits about upcoming films and TV shows on their issues, which these groups can then use to motivate people to take action. But before I get to that, I’d like to talk a little bit about why I think stories matter. And to start, I could list a bunch of platitudes, all of which are true. Stories entertain us. They move us emotionally. They make us laugh and cry way more than a bunch of facts and figures ever could. And that’s all true. But I think there’s one essential truth about stories that make them especially powerful forces for social change. And if you’ll indulge me, and I really hope you do because I do not have a plan B, I’d like to try a little experiment to show you what I mean. To do that, I’d like everyone to think of a scene from a TV show or movie that made you really, really sad, that maybe even made you cry. OK, got it. So if you could replay that in your mind silently, it’s not community theater. So I’ll give everyone a few seconds to replay that in your mind. OK, is everyone nice and depressed? Good. That’s good. OK, think of the characters, the setting, the time period. Now please raise your hand if you are the same gender as the character with whom you empathize most with in that scene. OK, maybe about half. Now keep your hand up only if you also share their race or ethnicity. OK, but don’t put your hands back up, so only if you’re the same gender and their same race and ethnicity. OK, now keep your hands up only if you’re the same age too. OK, drop in like flies, very good. Now keep them up if you also share their same socioeconomic status. OK, one or two. Now keep them up only if you live in the same area. I think I maybe see one. Now keep them up only if you also went through the same exact situation that they did in that scene. OK, I think we have one person, so that’s good. Not too many people, right? But we all felt and understood exactly what that character felt and understood, right? Yes? You can say yes. And it’s said that the more specific a story is, the more universal it becomes. So if you want to reach and move the most people, you shouldn’t make your story some big abstract thing. You should make it specific and grounded to a specific place, a specific time, a specific person. So that’s the central paradox of stories and what I think makes them most valuable for changing the world. I think stories matter because they’re the best telepathy devices, they’re really the only telepathy devices we have. They allow us to get into the minds and thoughts and feelings of people and say yes, wow. I’m not an African-American woman and domestic worker in 1960s Mississippi. I’m not a teenage immigrant traveling to the United States in search of a better life. I’m not a young science genius in need of just a little encouragement to fulfill my dreams. I’m not a transgender woman of color who is also facing the challenges of incarceration. And in honor of our host state, does anyone recognize this movie? Cocoon Wright, where this movie takes place here in Florida. I am not a senior citizen trying to live a fulfilling life in a society that seems to value life, a value youth above all else. I’m none of these things, but I understand what it might be like to spend a day in their lives. If you think about it, stories are the only things that allow us to cross the unfathomable distances between each other. Usually we’re in our own lifeboats, set at drift at sea, separate and apart. Think about how many times you’ve been in a business meeting with the purpose of getting everyone onto the same page. And by the end of the meeting, you agree, yes, we are all totally on the same page. Only to meet two months later and you realize you’re not on the same page, you’re not even reading the same book, and you never ever were. It’s amazing and really depressing. Stories are what allow us to hop into each other’s lifeboats, if only for a few hours in the movie theater or while binge watching Netflix. Okay, so that’s why I think pop culture stories have this awesome potential for social change. Now how do we use them at and action? At first blush, everyone assumes that we try to create our own films or TV shows or that we try to go into the writer’s rooms of existing TV shows to get them to take up social and environmental issues. And there are many great groups doing that already and it’s not our niche. And action takes another approach and one that we’re really, really excited about. And action is here to leverage the hundreds of great stories about important issues that are already out there on film and TV and that go totally unused. And I’m talking both about documentaries and quote, unquote, very special episodes of film and television shows, but I’m also thinking about the shorter, more minor storylines that pop up in TV shows and Hollywood blockbusters more generally. If you think about the last movie or TV show you saw, you can probably think of dozens of social and environmental issues from climate change to gun control to economic security. So we thought to ourselves, hmm, what if we can inform nonprofits working on these issues about these storylines that might otherwise pass them by? These groups could then use these moments as spotlights to get folks engaged on social media or through events. And groups in fact already do use storylines like this here and there with great success. If you were here at Frank last year and saw Ai-jen Poo speak about her group’s use of the help to shine a light on the issues facing domestic workers. So we thought if we were able to kind of systematize this, it would be a win for change makers and a win for the entertainment industry as well. There aren’t win-wins, a few, I insist there are, since we’d be driving buzz and eyeballs their way as well. So put it a different way, it would be how we could get people to step into each other’s lifeboats if only for a little while to share things from the same perspective. So for the past eight months, since we got started, we’ve been searching for upcoming storylines, which we then blast out on social media. I’m based in LA and so we’ve also been building our entertainment industry network there too. We’ve done a few cool things already, like work with IFC Films and the ACLU and the Billy Crut-Up film, The Sanford Prison Experiment, which resulted in the meme you see here, which got over 600,000 impressions. We also live-tweeted and, for example, did a live-tweet with the medical researcher and executive producer from Grey’s Anatomy during a cliffhanger episode last fall. What we’re really excited about, however, is the launch of our website, God willing, in a few weeks, a preview of what you see here. The centerpiece of the website will be a searchable database, so you’ll type climate change or aging and then you’ll receive a list of storylines back that will feature those issues. For example, if you work on immigration, you’ll type that into the search bar and you’ll see if there’s an upcoming movie or maybe an episode of The Simpsons that’s relevant. By the way, you’ll also be able to sign up for email alerts as well. You can say, oh, I’m interested in immigration, but also wetland issues and those will be automatically pushed to your email inbox. But if you’re kind of stumped with what you’re supposed to do with this notification of these upcoming storylights, the good news is that we’ll host a variety of resources and how-to guides on our website as well. We’ll be doing lots of hand-holding to help groups dip their toes into the water and realize that pop culture is a really great way to get traction on your issues. So our ultimate vision is that we will be finding and distributing hundreds of storylines a year to an equal number of organizations. We’ve already found about 250 so far, which we’ve sent out on social media, and that will help these groups become really great at using these opportunities to get people to care about and to take action on the issues, whether that’s through social media or signing petitions, volunteering, et cetera. One question we get, by the way, is what do we do about storylines that aren’t quite perfect? In other words, Canon’s SUD Group still use storylines that get the issue wrong or even backwards. And our answer generally is yes. I mean, there’s always a judgment call here, but we think it makes the most sense for organizations to engage people where they’re talking about the issues already and to move the conversation where they want them to go. And my favorite recent example of this is the film Stonewall, and that was the Roland Emmerich film that was heavily criticized for not depicting the important role of trans activists and activists of color in the birth of the American gay rights movement. But if you think about it, the conversations and social media memes this criticism spurred, arguably led to greater knowledge about the trans and minority leaders of the Stonewall riots than if the film, this kind of little crappy film, had actually gotten it right. So we often think that engaging in discussions around issue-oriented storylines is important, no matter how accurately or not the storylines present the issue, because doing so allows your organization to engage with the conversations that are already happening in pop culture, and you’ll then be in a better position to change their direction. Okay, I’m just about out of time, so for the more shameless plug part of the presentation, I invite everyone to visit our blog, which will soon transform like a beautiful butterfly into our amazing website, and that’s andaction.org. You can also write me directly at chrisandaction.org if you’d like to keep updated about our launch and other activities. Thank you very much for having me.