When it comes to effective communication, it’s not just about the content. According to Len, using physical movement to tell a story and engage your audience is a pretty important skill and tool to employ.
EPISODE CREDITS
Guest Starring Len Cabral, Professional Storyteller
Produced & Hosted by Adam Greenfield
Executive Produced by Patrick Yurick, Instructional Designer – MIT OGE
Executive Produced by Heather Konar, Communication Director – MIT OGE
Special thanks to the following editors who provided us invaluable feedback that aided in the development of this show:
Christopher O’Keeffe, Co-Founder of Podcation
Kristy Bennet, Manager – MIT Women’s League
Jennifer Cherone, Phd Candidate – MIT Burge Laboratory
Erik Tillman, Phd, Formerly of the Kim Lab & Currently A Fellow at Vida Ventures, LLC
The Great Communicators Podcast is a part of Gradcommx. Gradcommx, targeted at enhancing research communication, is the first offering of Gradx – a professional development project created for the graduate student population at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Office For Graduate Education.
MUSIC & SOUNDS
“All The Best Fakers” by Nick Jaina is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://freemusicarchive.org)

“A Burst of Light” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://freemusicarchive.org)

“Caprese” by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License. (http://freemusicarchive.org)

“Deliberate Thought” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
EPISODE SCRIPT

Print The Script Here

ADAM GREENFIELD
Welcome to The Great Communicators Podcast presented by The MIT Office of Graduate Education, a professional development podcast expressly designed to bring lessons from the field to our graduate student researchers.
My name is Adam Greenfield and one of my passions is poetry, both reading and writing. I’ve also been lucky enough to have a collection of poetry published. And through this passion I frequently find myself at poetry readings, reciting some of my writing to audiences both big and small. To say I don’t get butterflies in my stomach each time would be a lie.
But over the years, as I’ve tried to better my performance and storytelling skills, I’m verbally practicing out loud to my cat and otherwise empty apartment. Part of that practice also involves physical movement. And what I’ve found is along with my communicating skills improving, there are less and less butterflies each time.
Now, when it comes to communication, especially to a live audience, even the greatest communicators started off a bundle of nerves. But if you ask each one, I bet they’d tell you with practice and an engaging communicative performance, including just the slightest physical movement, it gets easier and easier each time, even if in small increments.
Our guest in this episode is no stranger to using his body in front of an audience to enhance concepts and ideas within a talk or story. He’s not doing somersaults or jumping jacks but….
LEN CABRAL

A little movement goes a long way.

ADAM GREENFIELD