Everyone has a story, according to Weinberg junior Evelyn MacPherson, the executive director of Nine Lives Podcast.
"I'd say seven out of 10 times, people say they don’t have a story, and that’s just not true," MacPherson said. "Everybody has a story.”
Nine Lives seeks to tell students' lesser-known stories so that listeners can hear about the experiences of their peers. Each quarter, Nine Lives creates about three podcasts that tell anecdotes from students’ lives. The storytellers are found through personal connections to Nine Lives members, through people reaching out to the podcasters or through “story booths” that are set up in places such as Coffee Lab or Norbucks, where passers-by can sit down and tell their stories.
On Tuesday, Nine Lives showcased eight such stories in a live show, a rather different move from its usual recorded product.
“Normally we record, we take out the ums [and] random background silence, we add music, and that’s great, and it’s really polished, but there’s such an authenticity to a live show,” MacPherson said. “There’s something really raw about it.”
Many of the stories shared revolved around something the storytellers have learned about their parents, as this is the theme of an upcoming Nine Lives podcast. Other stories told included Weinberg sophomore Danny Callahan’s complex encounters with Domino’s pizza and Communication freshman Katie Moffitt's childhood episode as she was tricked into thinking a wizard controlled all of the people in her town.
Weinberg junior Cami Rodriguez told the story of her great-grandmother’s funeral in Nine Lives’s most recent podcast, “Episode 17: A Note for Cuca,” and she performed it live on Tuesday.
“You pass people on Sheridan Road every single day and know nothing about their lives,” MacPherson said. “Or even if you know things about their lives, there’s so much that you don’t know."