7 Minute Stories #podcast Show, host Aaron Calafato

7 Minute Stories is the leading short-form autobiographical storytelling podcast in the world, reaching over 30 million listeners through weekly unscripted personal narratives.

Each episode delivers a true story from Aaron Calafato’s extremely normal yet deeply relatable life in Ohio, told in about seven minutes with no script.This show is quick, immersive, and tinged with nostalgia. Each story feels deeply personal, fits into your day, and leaves you better than it found you. 7MS sounds like a Millennial swapping stories with Jean Shepherd, Spalding Gray, and Paul Harvey at a Midwestern diner.

New episodes every week.

Aaron Calafato is an exceptional storytelling  and narrative designer. His stories have been heard by millions around the globe on his award-winning Podcast 7 Minute Stories, on stage and on YouTube. 

To connect with Aaron ....
https://www.youtube.com/@UCnQrgud3s0Hpe0KWCYSI1xQ 
https://www.7minutestoriespod.com/follow
https://www.7minutestoriespod.com/
https://www.instagram.com/aaronccalafato

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

It's good morning for me here in Australia. Aaron Calafeto, welcome to Yellow Shelf.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

It is good afternoon here in Medina, Ohio, 20 minutes south of Cleveland. And I told you before we started recording, I love your opening. It is the it is the most warm. So I feel like I know you, uh, but it's great to actually meet you here through a screen. So we're getting closer.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Yeah, Aaron, and you and I are like kindred souls in different hemispheres because we like short content. So as podcast hosts, we love allowing the audience connect. And that's what I wanted to do here today. We have you on. You're a hugely successful podcast host. Your show is called Seven Minute Stories. Aaron, tell us all about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Yeah, seven minute stories to your point can feel like it's short form, but a lot can happen in seven minutes. Yes. Not only in our lives, but you can fit a lot into a story. And I know even with your short interviews, they're short, but I get so much out of them with the different podcasts and the different voices that are emanating out here in the podcast world and in the ether. Uh, seven minute stories is simple. I I started one as a person who told stories around the dinner table, learned from my grandfather and my father, uh, Italian-American heritage folks who you know immigrated here to the States, and was part of that culture of one, finding a seat at the table. That's the first thing, because I had to wait till I was 13 or 14. I got to go to the other table. And then when I was there, you'd wait, you'd wait. So you only had a short window between these amazing storytellers to get on there and then go, let me tell you a story. So you had to develop a hook, you had to make what you were saying concise, but you had to pack it with meaning so they wanted more. And so I developed this style over the years. And when the time was right, after touring for about three years, my wife said, You know, why don't you just put these stories out there? And one of the things I noticed was when I toured live, I would do uh hour-long monologues and I would look at the tape, competitive, and also just always wanting to get better. And I found that when I would watch the tape or listen to the tape, my stories, even within an hour construct, always hit at about seven minutes. And so there was something to that. And I realized not only could I reproduce them and I had a well of stories to tell. By the way, all stories that are autobiographical, all stories from my very simple, un, I think, uninteresting life here in Ohio, but seemed to resonate in its smallness and in its normalness because that's the most extraordinary I think we all experienced. And so I think we hit on something where, as a gift, I just started putting these out every single week. I don't write a single word.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

I know.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Uh my story's extemporaneous. So I just hit record and I just record the story and I kind of go from here to here to the end. And what's happened in the last few years, after about six or seven years of doing this, we've reached 30 million years in the last two years. So it's been a wonderful journey. And so that's what it is. It's me telling stories autobiographically through my prism. But I think with any great story, and I'm sure, and I've heard several of your episodes where people have tapped into this theme, whether they're writers, they're storytellers in some way, as an extemporaneous storyteller, you know, I just received a text from a listener I'd never met before in Missouri. And he reached back out to me and he said, uh, he said, you know, when I listen to your stories, I love them. At the towards the end of them, I almost replace you. Like I find myself in it. And to me, if there's any sort of vote of confidence or affirmation that what I'm putting into this is going the right direction, it's that at the end of the story, it shouldn't be me.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

It's them and any listener, right? So so if it becomes you, now you're just all you're doing is talking about you and it's become and you're just selling. But if you're really connecting, yes, the storyteller in and of itself has to actually take a back seat and open up a space. So that's the most surprising thing, I think, with the growth of this and also the connection that even people, by the way, our number two audience is the UK, or number three is Canada. So it's I'm finding that there is this universality to these little simple stories from Ohio.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Yeah. And Aaron, I wanted to mention, because I think this is fascinating, there's an art in being the facilitator like you are to keep it short.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Absolutely. I think I've one, I came from sort of the, I don't want to say the startup culture, but everything I've built, I've built from scratch. And so when I started trying to find a way to even create a distribution platform that made an impact or to reach an audience, there is an entrepreneurial sense and an acumen you have to sort of have to go, okay, I know I have this story I want to tell, and we have so many. And that's why I love your podcast because you're basically saying, look, there are these amazing stories, but here's an outlet that can actually filter through some that you may know or may not know, but at least creates a channel to digest or consider. And that's such a great service to storytellers. So I think as far as what I've tried to do, you know, look, a lot of people are talking for hours and hours and hours. A lot of people are taking a particular um point of view, whether it's uh political or talking about news. Listen, there's great people out there doing all that work from me. I've tried to make it an invitation and fit in between the spaces of people's lives. You know, I come from a working class background, and one of the things I knew growing up was there wasn't a lot of time in between responsibilities, in between going to work and taking care of your family. And even at that dinner table I talked about, there's lots of stuff happening. Life is happening. And so I've always tried to approach it. I know people, no matter where you're at, even if it's not a job, it's your life. You got stuff going on, and your life is as important or more important than mine. So I've always tried to be humble. My mom always used to say, take your shoes off before you go into someone's house. So if I'm growing something and I'm trying to share something with somebody, I want to try to do it in a concise manner, in a thoughtful manner, and give them something that has a meaning, but they can fit in between their lives. So that's I think where the art form came in was just trying to fit in between those little spaces.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Yeah. And look, you're more than 380 episodes into this. Like you have an amazing vault of work. Do you want to just touch on about your guests? Like, do you like plan them? Do they come to you? Like, is there I'm just curious about, yeah, are you considered in that space?

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Yeah. So it's for so happened at least in the last six months to a year, because of the listenership and I want to say demand, but it seems like there's a space to kind of build out a little bit of a universe. So the the main thread, the main thrust and releases of my stories are still on Thursday, and it's just me, a microphone, and my audience. And so it started just as a singular voice. There's no, it's just me telling the story. But we started a bonus series last year called The Storytelling University, and it comes out as a bonus series on the Seven Minute Stories feed. And that's where I get to kind of come out and say, Hey, I you hear telling you these little stories about my lives, but I'm curious about other practitioners, other writers, like folks that you have on your show. And so, you know, I have a wonderful team that I work with, and I have a guest coordinator, and there are just folks that I look for and I go, hey, I really want to talk to this person. I want to talk to that person. And sometimes there are folks that maybe I only know, and sometimes there are folks that are well known. And so, you know, I one of my first guests on that bonus series was Angus Fletcher. He's a story scientist at the Ohio State University. And he talks about the neuroscience of storytelling. Uh, I'm talking to an actor this Friday, many folks know around the globe called Rain Wilson. He was on The Office and he's a wonderful, and he's got his podcast Soul Boom. So we're doing an in-person interview. And so that's been a great opportunity to talk with other creatives and storytellers who are outside of my discipline and say, hey, listen, I'm an extemporaneous audio storyteller, and I got these social channels where I have iterative content around the seven-minute story world. What do you do? And what do you think? And how do you practice stories? So it's been a nice one-two punch now where I have that story that I share every Thursday. But now with my audience, I can kind of bring them into a conversational element as well and kind of build an ecosystem through my feed. So it's been awesome.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah. Aaron, you are on socials. I follow you on YouTube. I like to watch episodes and even some of the old stuff is awesome. Can you point us in the direction if we're watching anywhere in the world and we're curious? I'll put this in the show notes. Where do you want us to go? Point us in the direction of where to start to get curious about your show and your work.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

I'll give you a three-step process. I think the first step is because I'm biased, I love audio. I grew up as a radio person, and I actually think it's still compared to radio or compared to the written word, the best one-to-one experience that you can have going to an app to going to a podcast app. So the first thing I would do is whether it's Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Spotify, wherever you podcast, just search seven minute stories and you can start at the beginning or you can start right now and just listen to a story and listen, just take seven minutes. And my gut is you'll you'll enjoy it and you'll find a space that you can fit it in between the moments of your life. And hopefully it leaves better than you found it. The second place would be, to your point, would be on YouTube because there's a bunch of tons of content. There's little vignettes that I've done from the seven-minute story. So if you are pressed for time even more, we have little one-minute viral stories that are there. I have um some select video interviews that I've done from the seven-minute stories feed. Um, and I'm gonna be starting the live stream there as well. So find me on on YouTube there. And then lastly, we've actually had some wonderful um uh viral moments on Instagram. You can find me on Instagram, and so uh that's another place where you can kind of get some cured content and maybe a little bit of a different perspective where I'm thinking in the way that you are about what other movies do I love? What other stories are out there? And those are some easy digestible things that you can kind of scroll through and enjoy if you're into that. But those are really the three steps. But ultimately, would love to have your ear.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

If you're walking around, no matter where you're at in the world, uh, to tell you a story. And the cool and the last thing I'll say about this is this was a um I don't want to say a bet, but this was sort of an instinct I had when I started this, where everyone has a different way in the podcast space of digging out a podcast. And you know as much as as much as anybody that it is uh it there's there's a lot of treasure and time that goes to even facilitate and and create this. But early on for me, it became clear that I wanted to make this a free and open to the public nonprofit endeavor. And so the thing about mine, at least, is that at the end of the thing, at the end of the story, it's just a story. There's not there's not a code that you click, whatever. It is uh sort of my way of expressing, it's my art form and kind of gift out there to the world. So, so it what we're trying to do in the end of the road there is just kind of build a community of folks and a world that's connected, but as you know, also weirdly disjointed because of how disparate the media landscape is. Maybe there's a little thread there where you can go and go, yeah, actually uh I could have I could have a conversation with that guy. Or I I could I know what that feels like, and that's the goal there. And so far it's been wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Aaron, thank you so much for sharing. You and I just need to keep keep our audience curious and connected. And I think we're we're doing a wonderful service. Aaron, all the best.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

You do. Thank you for doing what you do as well, and thanks for having me on the show.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Cheers.