Episode Details

What makes one presentation far superior than the next? What makes you want to binge-listen to some podcasts and just reject the others? What makes one book so readable while the other one is boring? It's the concept of info-tainment. Where information is used to get attention, but entertainment is used to keep that attention. Find out more in this episode.

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Useful Resources

To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/39

Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com

Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza

Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic

For the Headline Report (Free): http://www.psychotactics.com/

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Time Stamps

00:00:20 Start / 00:01:57 Table of Contents / 00:03:09 Part 1: Analogies / 00:09:45 Part 2: Case Studies / 00:10:00 Case Study: Shantiniketan / 00:13:19 Part 3: History Lessons / 00:17:14 Case Study: Shantiniketan / 00:17:14 Summary / 00:18:14 Final Notes /

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Sean D'Souza: I'm Sean D'Souza. Every morning when I go for my walk I listen to podcasts and I listen to audiobooks. As you know, I also learn a language, but whenever I'm headed out towards the café, it's always podcasts or audiobooks. I started to analyze. I started to think about what is it that I really like to listen to.

Now obviously you get a lot of speakers and a lot of different topics, so you can't just boil it down to one thing, but you can. The one thing that I like to listen to, and I find that a lot of people like to listen to, is something called infotainment. That's information and entertainment. People like to learn stuff, become more intelligent, but they don't want to be bored along the way. It's not just a matter of presenting the information in a good way. You literally have to provide entertainment, so how you provide entertainment. As part of my analysis I started reading a lot of articles and books. I started listening to more audiobooks, and then listened to some presentations as well, and I figured out the difference. The difference is a story well told.

I like to split up stories well told into three categories. The first is the analogy, the second is the case study, and the third are history lessons. How do we use these concepts to make our information more interesting, to make our articles more interesting, and especially to make our presentations more interesting? More importantly, why would analogies, case studies, and history lesson be so important. The reason is very simple. Information is tiring. That's it. Whenever you give someone information, if they already know the information, [inaudible 00:02:06] just revising the information. If you give them new information, some new concept, so new methods, it starts to seem very nice and very interesting, but as you go past five, ten, 15 minutes, the brain is trying to work out not only what you're saying but also how to apply it, so it gets extremely tiring. That's when the brain needs a break. The brain not only needs a break but it could also do with an example. That's where analogies, case studies, and history lessons come into play.

Let's start off with the first one, which is the analogy. In this episode we'll do something slightly different. I'll talk about good analogies and bad analogies, and good case studies and bad case studies, and so on. Let's start off with the good analogy. What is a good analogy? Well, let's start off with what is a bad analogy. I'm sitting there with this photographer and I've been trying to get in touch with him for quite a while, and he's been fo