Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review. Remember that on this podcast, our focus is communication and today's guest is going to talk to us not only about TV and film industries,
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and the storytelling methods that we can learn from it, but also intercultural communications. Before I go any further and talk to Douglas MacLeod, who is in upstate New York, he is an associate professor of communication at Cobblestill New York University. Let me introduce him. Hi Doug, welcome to the show. Hello Roberta, how are you?
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I'm doing good. Good to have you here. Good to be here. Good to be here. So before we talk about all your credentials, tell us a little bit about yourself. My name is Doug McLeod. I'm an associate professor of composition and communication over at SUNY Cobolskill. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, half of my life, then moved to upstate New York back in 2001, just prior to 9 and 11. Then I was adjuncting at multiple institutions.
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Back in 2008, I had gone for my doctoral degree in 2001, graduated in 2008 with what's called a DA in humanistic studies, a doctoral degree. That's more of a teaching degree as opposed to a research degree. With that said though, I've grown to become someone who enjoys research quite a bit, and I do a lot of publishing and conferences. I've been at SUNY Global Skills since 2013 as a professor. I started there though in 2008 as a tutor and worked my way up from there. My wife and I have been living
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up in Cobolskill for 11 years or so at this point. And we've been married for 21 years. Wow, people don't stay married that long anymore. Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Power of communication. There we go. And that's exactly what we're going to talk about today. I'm not sure if a lot of us are familiar with what Cobolskill, the institution, what it does, what it's about. Would you like to tell us more about that? Sure.
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more of a rural college. It's a college of technology and agriculture, but their major focus is agriculture. Most of their classes are fisheries and wildlife sorts of courses. They do equine therapy, dairy management. We live about 40 minutes west of Albany. It's a very rural area with a lot of farmland. Our particular college is a very small one, but it's a tight knit one. It's a community kind of college.
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Even though it's not a community college, but it is a community college. You know, we have bachelor's degrees as well as associate's degrees. As I said, it's a rural college. We've got about between 2,000 to 2,500 students at our institution, most of which going into agriculture. But we do have some degrees within the humanities and liberal arts, one of which is a communications degree, which is something I teach. Right. Just one thing. When it comes to the focus of the institution.
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I think a lot of us are becoming more aware of how important those are because we've become so accustomed to all these white collar degrees and office jobs that we aspire to that the blue collar degrees, so to speak, or the blue collar skills, we live by those. You can have a corner office on the 50th floor of a building, but who's gonna do your plumbing and electricity? Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. The trades are very important.
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But what's interesting about our college is that, as I said, a lot of our stuff is based on farming. Let's face it, who's the person who is ensuring that we get fed day by day? That's a fundamental, and our school is very much trying to accommodate that in very profound sorts of ways. They're trying to feed the state, the country, the world. So we don't put a lot of emphasis on our farmers and how important they are.
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throw that out there right now, I think. We have to give them a lot of credit for what they do to help us survive. For sure. Just don't take for granted when you see your apples and your potatoes at Walmart. Remember where they come from. Yeah. That's right. So before we get into digital empathy specifically, let's just talk in general about communications, since you're a communications professor. What are some of the key things?
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that are important when it comes to communications for us as humans? Think at this point, if there was one thing I would say that is important for communication or how we go about communicating with one another is understanding. I think we need to have a fundamental idea of how we treat one another and how we need to treat one another. I think we need caring. I tell my students oftentimes that what's gonna be our downfall
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as a civilization is apathy and indifference. And I think that since we have this kind of thought processes of I don't care, you know, whatever happens happens. I don't care what I say, how I say it, who I say it to. We're gonna run into major, major issues and we're seeing that day by day from my perspective. So I would say caring and understanding is key to good communication. It has to be there. If you're indifferent or apathetic towards
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the person that you're speaking with, then it's not a dialogue, right? It's not. It's not a dialogue. They're speaking by themselves, yeah. Just two monologues, talking at each other, as opposed to really kind of delving into the complexities of whatever issues are taking place between those two individuals. So I would say understanding and caring need to be there, absolutely. They say that human beings have the need to be seen, heard, and validated. And what you just said about
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being apathetic is literally the complete opposite of that. So if I don't care about what you say and how you feel, I'm basically not living up to those needs, that seen, heard and validated. So at the same time, do I expect that in return from you? Right, the problem with that though, is depends on whether or not you're caring or not or understanding. If you're apathetic and indifferent like that other person is,
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there's no care at all. You know what I mean? Like you're saying, do you expect me to care about what you're saying? The fact is, is more than likely you don't feel that way. Right? That's where the concern lies is that, are we just a bunch of individuals who are going through life just to go through life? Or are we trying to develop the relationships that we have, develop more relationships in the hopes that could lead to something more fruitful? I don't know if that's taking place. I'm concerned about that anyway.
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I'm very concerned about that. So what you were saying before about the idea of, I want to get what I'm not giving you, if that person doesn't care, that person doesn't care. Right? I mean, it just- So they don't care with not receiving it either anyway. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. It's just like- You just don't care overall. I don't care overall. That's from my perspective anyway. And you mentioned that in your institution, you have students from other cultures.
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and you do talk about intercultural communications. If I find myself dealing with someone from a different culture, what are two or three things that I should be cognizant of in order to sort of break down those barriers and be able to communicate with that person? I think what you need to do is educate yourself about that specific culture. Now, the thing about that is you can't learn everything about
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one particular culture, right? And I mean, it's an impossibility, but the idea is to maybe learn about some of the fundamental aspects of the language, the customs and understanding. And this plays into it, the idea I had said understanding, right? Understanding a little bit more about how they relate to family, the customs as it pertains to food and music and culture. Just trying to find...
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Basics as a starting point and then you could start to build on those particular basics The problem is is now we're so saturated with so much stuff that it becomes an issue But I think what happens is oftentimes is that we don't necessarily even know if the information is real or not That's a big one lately. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, right So if we're trying to learn something about somebody else and we learn something that's not real How does that play a role in it? What I would say is try to find information
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Try to become educated, making sure that you find credible, reliable sources to be able to do that. Making sure that you do care and understand those particular individuals. It's amazing, because we're all human beings, right? I mean, it's a cliche kind of statement sometimes, but that's what it is, right? We are all human beings. So what makes us happy will make someone else happy in another country, another area of the world. Learn the fundamentals, know the fundamentals.
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learn some of the details that you can. And I think keeping an open mind. Yes. If you keep an open mind about what you're experiencing and say, okay, you know what, I'm learning. Being open to learning is very, very significant. So that's how I kind of see it. I fully agree with you on that. And speaking of keeping an open mind, I'm a South African. I spent the last decade in South Korea teaching English and now I've been in the US for two years. I find that
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I am most likely to hear something that potentially, okay, I don't get offended anymore. Otherwise that'd be great. If somebody says something that we can term ignorant, usually not only did they not seek information as you suggested, but they come to me with an assumption. So if you come to me and you say, oh, you're from South Africa. I was in Lagos last year. How far do you live from there?
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a passport and a 10 hour flight away. What exactly is your point? One, anybody who asks me a question, I like that person way more and I'm most likely to have a conversation with them because they want to know. Those of us from different cultures, if we meet someone from a different country, it's better to ask the question rather than to come, because once you come with an assumption, whereas if you ask,
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and we create a conversation and I'm so pleasant and I really wanna talk to you and tell you everything you want to know and more. And we create this good connection and bond. But if you come with the, oh, you're from South Africa. Do you have an elephant in your backyard? That completely, it's a conversation. I have learned in my experience that asking questions is way better than bringing in assumptions.
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I think that's what you were talking about before is be inquisitive is probably another element to this idea of communication then. We were talking about what are the things we need to do as far as intercultural communication is concerned is to ask questions, be inquisitive and don't go into it with assumptions. I think that's a wonderful point. That's a wonderful point. Yeah that's based on experience. All right when you were talking about the TV and film industry and I asked you earlier about storytelling.
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One of the things that this podcast what we like to focus on in storytelling, what are some elements that are important that go into storytelling? There are several things. First of all, I think educating yourself on film, specifically if you're talking about film, make sure that you watch movies, right? Make sure that you watch films and have a good understanding of them. And going into it with, again, an open-mindedness and even films that you may not like. I tell my students as a director that
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I can't stand his name is David Lynch. Sure, he's a nice fellow, but I don't like his work very much, right? I liked Eraserhead, but he's directed Blue Velvet, which is one of his more famous films. I've heard of it. Elephant Man, movie called Lost Highway, and he's kind of a surrealist director, but he tries to be marketable, and it kind of bugs me a little bit. There's a self-indulgence there that kind of bothers me. But with that said, I tell my students, I pretty much watched every one of David Lynch's movies.
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And the reason why is because I want to know why I dislike it. Right. The fact is, is that we need to embrace everything when it comes to that. You don't, you don't want to just watch things that you love and enjoy. Right. You want to watch things that kind of irk you. That's a weakness of mine. Oh, if I'm with friends and they watch a genre, I'm not interested in them. Like, I'll see you guys. I should be open-minded enough to watch it if they don't like it. Yeah. No, no. Listen.
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We had a little bit of a discussion about the idea of critical thinking, right? And so with critical thinking or creating an argument, there's this book called to the transition to college writing. And the writer keeps your show talks about the idea of how we need to suspend judgment when it comes to critical and analytical thinking, right? And so from my perspective, I can separate it. I tell my students, like, for example, if I'm teaching a class on Martin Scorsese, I have to show taxi driver. There's no getting around from my perspective.
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I hate Taxi Driver. I hate the film. It's a really deep, dark movie that is just so nihilistic. It's awful. Good percentage of his movies are dark. Sorry, Martin. Carry on. Yes, but Taxi Driver beats them all, from my perspective. With that said, I still have to show Taxi Driver and show how brilliant it is, because it's a brilliant piece of work. There's no doubt about that. If you want to become a better storyteller, you have to read and read.
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watch stories. I think also using your personal experience is very important. Write what you know is another kind of cliche, but I think it works. Writing what you know is key. I guess the other thing is have a good understanding of structure, plot, and that sort of thing. You don't have to go to film school to be a good filmmaker. Just know that for those who are listening here. If you want to become a filmmaker, in a lot of ways, a lot of people are already filmmakers. Think about TikTok videos, YouTube videos, and stuff like this.
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It's amateur work, but at the same time, if you get a million and a half views on something that you did, then you know, something resonated with people. Yeah, exactly. And that may be another aspect of good storytelling is being able to resonate with people, right? Know your audience. Right. My favorites for those who make home videos is when they put on the different personas.
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Maybe the person who will play the mom and he's the son. Yeah, three different people and they change outfits and like this is brilliant and they create this realistic situation we can all relate to. I remember a quick one. You know how when you have a leftover, let's say you had a pizza last night and you didn't finish it, you put it in the fridge, you go to work the next morning, you think about it. Not even that you're obsessed with that particular.
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but it's just the fact that it's a leftover. And when you microwave it, you know it tastes better than originally when you had it. Yes, right. So this guy, I don't know, and other cultures, but back home in South Africa, and he actually bites the burger once to prove that while it's in the fridge, it's his. The mom eats the burger while she's home. He comes home, look, he goes straight for his burger in the fridge and it's gone. And he asks his mom what happened to the burger. And she says, and whose refrigerator was the burger?
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Yours. Who pays for the electricity?
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to that. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, and I think that is what good storytelling is. If you can relate, if you could do something that's relatable to everybody on some level, that is significant. I think that's important. As I said, knowing your audience is so very important when it comes to that. We got to also remember that filmmaking in and of itself is a form of communication. It's a visual form of communication. It has its own language. And so I think that's significant to recognize too. And you have to be careful.
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Maybe that's another aspect of filmmaking and narrative is just be aware of how powerful a message that can provide or give to people, right? Seeing it from the perspective of bringing up Nazi Germany, thinking about propaganda and how powerful of tool Leni Riefenstahl, creating Triumph of the Will and Olympia. You know, it's a very powerful communicative device. Let's just say that. Right. Is there any story that you find is very popular with your audiences?
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I do presentations and I've spoken at conferences. My work is very interdisciplinary. I kind of jump around quite a bit. So how they enjoy it or not, I'm not necessarily sure. But whenever I do write a presentation or a conference presentation, I do try to tell a story but also provide theoretical concepts that I think can be connected to their everyday world, I suppose you could say. I try to make it less academic some way. Does that make sense?
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Yeah, so that it's not too technical and people cannot see themselves in the scenario. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I had a professor years ago at Brooklyn College and he was a very famous film book writer. I remember some of the things he would say I wouldn't, I couldn't catch, right? I just didn't understand it. At the time I didn't understand it. But his books were so easily accessible and I walked up to him one day and I said, listen, I have to ask you, why is it that you teach the classes that you teach like you do?
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And then Wright in a very simplistic, he says, well, it's more marketable that way. That's the reason why. So in the classroom, you're expected to be more academic. And when you're creating something that is meant for the masses to read, you have to be less academic. Right. So they can understand. Right, right, right. And I'm not saying that the general public couldn't understand that stuff either. I'm just saying that nine times out of 10, I don't want to place a stereotype on particular individuals.
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there's a possibility that they would understand it. But if you're going to make some money off of it, what you need to do is make it accessible to all. Wider reach of audiences. Yeah. We were talking about digital empathy earlier. Right. The question on most people's minds lately is, why are we so quick to just get on our keyboards and just type whatever comes to our mind? Because let's think about it in real life, even if you fight with someone.
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You don't tell them everything that's on your mind. Some things you hold back because you're thinking, if I say this, there's no going back. Yes, right. Why do we not have that filter when it comes to just typing stuff on Twitter and commenting and replying to comments? My perspective is social media has created this monster, I suppose you could say. In that years ago, if we were to put out some form of insult or something like that on Twitter, there was an anonymity that was connected to it, right? So.
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A person could say something on Twitter or Facebook or whatever the social media platform was out there and then walk the streets without anyone knowing that they said it. What happened was, I think we feel that we are somewhat entitled now. We have our freedoms in this country. I'm talking more about America specifically now, you know, in other countries that would be different. We have this freedom of speech. So what happens is, is now it's transferred into the streets, right?
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We don't have that anonymity anymore. In fact, we don't want to have that anonymity anymore. We would rather just express ourselves the way we want to express ourselves. And then we tell people, well, that's my prerogative. But no, we need to stop this and understand that there should be a filter that's connected to this. We need to find ways to filter out all that. I think we've lost the art of rhetoric, the art of persuasion. I always tell students, if you ever want to watch good debate, watch Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.
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Watch those three debates. Those are two great rhetoricians going at it. And the difference is so minimal as to how it plays out and who wins those particular debates. I remember watching that and hearing Mitt Romney say, if you remember, he goes, binder full of women. He said, binder full of women. Yeah, when they asked him about Bain and company. Exactly, right, right. And I said to myself, he's done. Those moments when people say things just in the wrong way.
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Then I say, watch that debate and then watch Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, or watch Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and tell me that we still have an art of persuasion. There's an art form, a process behind it. It's not like that anymore. We don't have those processes. It's reactionary. It's interesting you bring that up, because now I'm wondering, people just follow their leaders in general. They may not do it even consciously. That's why you say leaders set the example and then the rest of the country follows.
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Yes, when you talk about those later debates, that's what people are following and becoming more and more people not knowing how to have a healthy debate. I think that's true. I think there's a level of truth to that. And I think the reason why that's the case is social media has created that. If we have one line of 140 characters, we could get our point across as opposed to really kind of looking at things in a well-rounded way. There's no well-roundedness anymore. I tell my students, listen.
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It amazes me how World War III could be created by 140 characters, right? The concept of how the world has changed. It's no longer about conversation or discussion or comprehensive understanding of things. And social media has created that problem. I don't know what it's doing to us as a civilization, to our mental health. Why are we so angry? Well, why are we so angry? That's a great question. I think we're angry because...
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We're seeing more than we used to see. I think maybe that plays a role in it. Like for example, I think about George Floyd, right? We see the video of him being murdered. We see that as terrible as social media can be, it also can provide justice in some ways too, right? Catching that moment and seeing that take place. Maybe the other question is, how is it someone that isn't angry? The idea of having emotion is so significant.
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and we see George Floyd being murdered on camera. From my perspective, we should be angry. We should be angry at that. That shouldn't be something that should be happening. Yeah, apathetic about. Well, that's the thing too, right? And I think that's what it is. In some way I say, I can work with people who are angry because at least there's an agenda and emotion behind it. Yes. You could actually have discussions and be passionate about something, you know, as opposed to just not caring. That's where the problem really lies.
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The reason why we're angry is that we're seeing a lot more things that we didn't see in the past, things that weren't exposed or were hidden, but in a way that's also helpful in learning more about the systemic problems that we have. Right. Wouldn't you say people who choose not to see are protecting their mental health and their sanity? Because it's a lot. It's too much.
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Well, I think the mental health aspect of things, we'll talk about social media platforms and the way that individuals bully other people and that sort of thing. I think that's terrible and that's horrible. And as I said, it gives people more access. Like back in the old days, if you were bullied, it wasn't consistent. You could go home and you could play your video games, relax and hang out with your parents or hang out with friends or whatever the case may be. And it wasn't something that was a barrage. Yeah. A barrage of those sorts of things.
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now that we have social media and we're constantly on the phone and constantly on our social media platforms, what ends up happening is that it doesn't stop. It's a never-ending saga of vitriol and hatred. How could anyone be sane if that's the case? I mean, it's almost an impossibility. I think that plays a role in it too, as you were saying. And it's again, the consistency over and over and over again. It's like being beaten with a bat every minute of every day for the rest of your life.
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I think that's a problem. Maybe we should remember that these things, even if you delete them, they stay in the cloud forever. Maybe you might want to think twice before you type something on the keyboard. We live in an Orwellian world now. Big Brother is always watching. The camera is always on. Only question is, is there accountability or ramifications for the problems that are taking place? But when are we going to stop blaming the victims? When are we going to start really putting emphasis on accountability? Especially when we're talking with one of them.
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there really should be accountability. And maybe most people will think twice before spreading the vitriol. Yeah. Exactly. Jimmy Kimmel, right? He has this mean tweets segment on his show where he will call in celebrities to read mean tweets directed at them. So imagine somebody said, Denzel Washington, your head looks like a potato. Whatever. And they read it themselves. I always ask myself, do people really sit on their keyboards and really take the time to do that?
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Or is it this argument of, listen, these celebrities, they got hundreds and millions of dollars, they don't care. It's not gonna hurt them. Unlike us who have real problems as people say. No, I think that celebrities have problems. And I think perception is reality. If they think they have a problem, then there is a problem. Every problem is gonna be different from everybody else's problem. There's no doubt about that. My problem is gonna be very different than Kanye West's problems. For sure. So I understand that component of it,
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A problem is a problem. And as I said, perception is reality. So if that person has this perception that they do have something that's serious going on, we need to take it seriously. That's another component of this. We don't necessarily take things seriously anymore. I mean, the idea of someone getting abused regularly and then you have no ramifications for that, what happens? That person is suffering in silence. And maybe that's another reason why we have these sorts of issues, right?
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The idea of suffering in silence is too toxic for us. So what we do is we need a form of escapism to get out of that sort of thing. And the only way to do that is maybe bully somebody else. We're getting into dangerous territory. We really are. We have to be very careful of that sort of stuff. Before we go, Doug, please tell us your last words of wisdom when it comes to communication and how we deal with each other nowadays. I find your wording very fascinating. You say how we deal with one another. I think we have to...
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move away from that sort of wording, the idea of not dealing with one another. I think we need to start to listen to one another, have conversations, have discussions, work with people. My wife likes to say, meet them where they are. And I think that's what we need to do. There's a part of me that says we have to get back to the fundamentals. We're living in a very complicated world right now. And I think that if we can get to a place where we're kind of back to the basics.
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I think we could start to build off of that once again. Is that an impossibility? Maybe, but I'm gonna be hopeful about it, why not? Start the dialogue, yeah. That's right, start the dialogue. This has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Yeah, Roberta, thank you very much. It was an absolute pleasure as well. I'm very happy to meet you and to speak with you. So thank you very much for this opportunity.
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Happy to meet you too. And before you go, would you like our listeners, if they want to continue this conversation with you, would you like them to reach you on social media? You know, the funny part about it is you had mentioned my Twitter account. I actually don't have one. I tell my students, often times it's better as a professor not to have those sorts of things because what ends up happening is you start to have problems, right? So the best way to contact me, if you wish to have a discussion with me is through my email account, which was McLeodCMAC.
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leodc at cobleskill.edu. Okay, I will write that on the show notes. Oh, okay, yeah, that would be great. That would be great. Yes. So if anybody wants to continue the discussion with Doug McLeod, I will write his email address on the show notes and we can talk more about communication, digital empathy and intercultural communications.
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Thank you so much. Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review. Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Roberta. Enjoy the rest of your evening. You too.