Because talking about narrative work isn't the same as doing it.
I tell clients that narrative work isn’t about finding the right words. It’s about the architecture underneath the message that determines whether it lands or disappears.
That’s easy to say in a proposal. It’s harder to prove.
So we built Get Me to the Gray.
Not because the podcast industry needed another show. And certainly not because I don’t have enough content streams. But because the most honest thing I could do as a narrative consultant was stop explaining what good storytelling looks like and start doing it in public, in real time, where you can watch the choices get made.
Every episode is a live case study in what happens when you refuse the clean narrative. When you bring someone into a conversation whose job, identity, or institutional role puts them at the center of a tension that doesn’t resolve neatly — and you stay there. No debate format. No pressure to find common ground. No winners.
That’s not a stylistic choice. That’s the work.
Most of what passes for “difficult conversation” in public life is actually performance. Scripts. Slogans. The pressure to fit into one of two boxes and defend it. GMG is built on the premise that polarization is amplified by that performance, not by honest dialogue. That tension isn’t a flaw of a conversation — it’s often the point.
Unequivocal doesn’t mean neutral. The show draws clear lines around truth, harm, and inclusion. We welcome disagreement. We don’t welcome distortion. We welcome complexity. We don’t welcome erasure.
None of that is in the headline.
The headline is the rollback. The renamed office. The carefully worded statement from the provost that says everything and commits to nothing. And because DEI offices spent the better part of a decade building their messaging around language that is now politically toxic, they find themselves holding real work they can no longer describe in public without triggering a fight they didn’t start and can’t win on those terms.
The work didn’t change. The message stopped matching it.
And when we say unscripted, we mean it. Every other month, we bring these conversations in front of a live audience here in Denver. On April 26, I’ll be sitting down with First Judicial District DA Alexis King Denver Book Society for a conversation about power, prosecution, and what justice actually requires of the people who hold it. It’s not a panel. It’s not a lecture or debate. It’s two people staying in the room where the tension lives, without flinching and without performing. We also invite guests into the conversation, with an audience Q&A and post-recording meet-and-greet.
We ticket our events for accountability and planning purposes, but as a company dedicated to mission-driven organizations, each live event has a beneficiary for ticket sales. This month, proceeds will go to GRASP Denver — a peer-run gang intervention program that’s been doing the hard, unglamorous, relationship-centered work of healing in this city since 1991. They showed up to our first event and stayed until the bookstore closed. This one’s for them.
Be in the room with us as we practice holding the necessary conversations we so often dismiss as “too polarizing” to have. Keep us accountable and watch narrative work in real-time. Tickets are on Eventbrite. And if you’re not local, the episode will be released Tuesday, April 28.
And if you can’t (or don’t care to) do either of those things, I encourage you to engage in conversations that make you uncomfortable. Don’t equivocate but stay curious.
